67
‘I DON’T THINK SO, DEAR,’ SAID THE POOR OLD LADY. ‘SAME colour hair as this one, but …’
Evadne Richardson was in the interview room at Lewisham. Shortly after calling in news of Karen Curtis’s death, we’d taken her mother out of the house and I’d driven her back across London. She knew we hadn’t been able to identify formally the woman found upstairs in her house, but the description she’d given us of Karen’s clothes left little doubt. She’d asked several times to see her daughter and couldn’t understand why we kept telling her it wasn’t possible.
She was braver than I think I would be, in her situation.
‘Take your time,’ I told her. ‘It’s important that you’re sure.’
She looked again at the snapshots of Victoria and Cathy Llewellyn, before taking off her glasses and bringing the photograph closer to her face. I gave her time, conscious that upstairs in the incident room, people would be watching us. She shook her head again and I thought I saw a tear shining in the corner of one eye.
‘These photographs were taken a long time ago,’ I said. ‘The girls would be older now, in their twenties. What about this one?’ I was pointing to the older of the two girls.
‘She looks, I don’t know, I may have seen her,’ Evadne said, looking up at me and then back down at the photograph. ‘She was pretty, dear, like you. Nice little thing.’
My face was still swollen and discoloured. I wasn’t remotely pretty. I began to suspect that Evadne Richardson would be little use in court as an eye witness.
‘Did you get a good look at her face?’ I asked, knowing I had to go through the motions. ‘Did you, for example, notice a scar at all?’ Tulloch had told me to check whether our nurse bore any resemblance to Emma Boston. So far, Emma’s alibis checked out but Tulloch wasn’t letting her go easily.
Mrs Richardson thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice a scar. Do you think she could have hurt my Karen? A nurse?’
‘I don’t think she was really a nurse,’ I said.
I got back upstairs to find Tulloch had returned from Evadne Richardson’s house. Karen Curtis’s severed head – we had to assume the murdered woman was Curtis until we knew otherwise – had been nowhere in the house. Nobody had asked the obvious question out loud.
‘The woman at Mrs Richardson’s house was killed between thirty-six and forty-eight hours ago,’ said Tulloch. ‘That’s according to the attending surgeon. We know Karen Curtis was alive at seven thirty on Monday evening because that’s when her mother last saw her. The chances are she was killed shortly after that.’
‘By this nurse,’ said Anderson
‘Probably,’ said Tulloch. ‘Our killer, knowing Mrs Curtis’s habit of visiting her mother on Monday evening, arrived at the house that afternoon wearing the uniform of a district nurse. Mrs Richardson is used to being visited by nurses, the woman appeared unthreatening and had ID. She had no real reason not to let her in.’
I found a vacant chair and sat on it.
‘Mrs Richardson didn’t see the nurse leave,’ continued Tulloch. ‘She just heard the front door close. What seems likely is that the killer remained inside and quietly made her way upstairs.’
‘Waiting for Karen Curtis to arrive,’ said Anderson.
Tulloch nodded. ‘A few hours later, Mrs Richardson said goodbye to her daughter but heard her going upstairs, which was unusual. A short time after that, she heard someone coming back down again and assumed it was Karen leaving the house. It seems safe to say it probably wasn’t.’
‘Whoever it is, she knows these families well,’ said Anderson. ‘She persuaded Geraldine Jones to go to the Brendon Estate late on a Friday night. She found out where Amanda Weston was living and that she was on her own in the house. She may even have known Amanda wasn’t due back at work for a few days. Then she called on Charlotte Benn when she was on her own. Now we find out she knows where Karen Curtis’s mother lives and when Karen visits.’
‘She does her homework,’ said Tulloch. ‘But so would I in her position.’
The door opened and Joesbury came in. Tulloch gave him a half-smile as he settled himself down at the desk opposite mine.
‘What we don’t do is panic,’ Tulloch went on. ‘We know who her next victim is and we have her safe. We can keep Jacqui under armed guard if necessary. And we have time. The Ripper didn’t strike again until 10 November. That’s nearly six weeks away.’
‘She won’t wait that long,’ I said. ‘This isn’t about the Ripper any more.’
Everyone turned to face me. ‘What do you mean?’ asked Tulloch.
‘If it hadn’t been for all the Ripper business,’ I went on, ‘the coincidence of the dates, the letters, the body parts turning up all over London – if it hadn’t been for all that, we might have realized earlier what was going on. Someone might have spotted the connection when Amanda Weston was killed. But the whole of London was on alert for a copycat serial killer and that was exactly what she wanted. It gave her time to get to Charlotte and Karen. It was all just smoke and mirrors.’
Nobody answered me. I couldn’t see anyone about to disagree.
‘She’ll know we’ll have figured it out by now,’ I said. ‘And she’ll have planned for it. She’ll have a way of getting to Jacqui Groves that we haven’t anticipated.’
‘Who’s she, Flint?’ asked Joesbury. ‘Who are you talking about?’
No choice but to look up at him. ‘One of the Llewellyn sisters,’ I said. ‘It’s got to be.’
Joesbury stood up, a tiny smile on his face. ‘Say that again,’ he said.
‘The girls’ name.’
‘Llewellyn,’ I repeated, sensing people around us looking puzzled.
‘Now that’s interesting,’ he said. ‘Everybody else in the room is pronouncing the name phonetically, Loo-ell-in.’
‘And?’ I said, my heartbeat picking up.
‘You’re making that odd guttural sound in your throat,’ he said, ‘more like a “cl” than a “l”. You’re saying the name the way the Welsh do.’
I stared at him for a second, conscious of everyone watching us. ‘I’m from Shropshire,’ I said. ‘Last time I checked, it was on the Welsh border.’
‘Yeah, whatever, you two. We need to find them both,’ said Tulloch. ‘Lacey, I’m putting you in charge of interviewing the homeless. If they came to London penniless, they would have lived on the streets for a while. Flint, are you even listening?’
Joesbury and I were still glaring at each other. I turned away and fixed my attention on Tulloch.
‘You can have a team working with you,’ Tulloch went on. You can have some WPCs out of uniform. We also need to get people to Cardiff.’
‘They inherited money,’ said Stenning. ‘They could have got off the streets. And they could be working together. We could be looking for two women.’
‘We can’t rule anything out,’ said Tulloch. ‘We need them both.’
‘I found Cathy this afternoon,’ said Joesbury in a quiet voice.
Silence.
‘Excuse me?’ said Tulloch.
‘An hour ago,’ he repeated. ‘Just after lunch.’
Tulloch looked like he’d slapped her. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you say anything? I want her brought in. Now.’
‘Hardly possible, I’m afraid.’
‘Why?’
Joesbury was looking at me again now. ‘She’s been dead for nearly a decade.’