Chapter 13
They went to bed at eleven and Mark dutifully made love to Amanda. His heart wasn’t in it but experience saw him through. It wasn’t long after he was back in bed that he heard the regular pattern of Amanda’s breathing. He lay on his back so that he didn’t fall into a deep sleep but for two or three hours dozed and woke intermittently. When the digital display on his clock showed ‘03.00’ and not a second before, he set the clock in the alarm mode to ‘07.30’ so that it wouldn’t change. It was possible that she would wake when he got out of bed and he wanted her to think it was the right time for him to get up for work. He should be back by then to set it correctly. The alarm he didn’t set. He didn’t want that going off even if he wasn’t back.
Then, before getting out of bed, he turned around several times to see what Amanda would do. Her breathing became more irregular and she turned towards him; her eyes briefly opened. He said he was getting up but, before he was out of bed, her eyes closed again. He didn’t imagine she would remember him speaking.
Downstairs the back door to the flats opened into a garden bounded by a brick wall at its rear. Over the wall there was a disused cemetery, bounded on its south side by an old mews used now for light industry and garaging. Mark climbed over the first wall and walked over to the southern edge of the cemetery where he climbed a second wall and then scrambled on to the roof of a garage. It was the garage he rented under an alias. Neither the owner nor his agent had ever seen him; he had done it all by post and that’s the way he paid the rent. The mews wasn’t residential so no one was around as he climbed down on to the roadway and unlocked the garage door.
Inside the garage were his special things. He undressed and put on a waterproof overall plus hood used for de-contamination work; on his hands he wore latex gloves, on his feet a pair of cheap trainers — all new. The others he had dumped and burnt in a hospital incinerator soon after use.
He ignored the ten-year-old car he garaged there and had used for the other episodes. This time he needed no car, so he took an upright bicycle from the wall brackets on which it was stored and propped it up outside. His watch told him the time was 3.30am. He checked in his pockets for the keys he needed and cycled off.
Half way down a road at right angles to Clarissa’s street, a passageway led to a path behind the houses. He cycled up it and then along so that he was behind a house three doors down from Clarissa. He lent the cycle against a fence and used a fence post to lever himself up and then down into the garden. He did the same with the three fences that lay between him and Clarissa’s garden.
Her back door had been locked and the key placed in its usual place. He unlocked the door and then placed the old key in the lock and shut the door. There would be no signs of a break-in but no one could guarantee that the back door had been locked. And no one – not even a distant locksmith – knew he had a spare. As soon as he walked out of the kitchen into the hall, he saw that something was wrong. It was too light; the porch light had been left on.
Ideally, he wanted to switch all the electricity off at the mains, so that, should something go wrong, he couldn’t be identified. But, if he did that, then the porch light would go off. Was there someone outside watching? It was possible. But it was probably worth the chance so he turned the mains off and walked quietly upstairs. Clarissa’s bedroom door was open and he gazed at her for a while without going into the room. She was very still and then groaned and turned before becoming quiet again. He stepped lightly across her carpet slid his hands around her neck and squeezed.
Her back was towards him and he pushed her head into the pillow as she struggled. He then laid his whole weight on her body to reduce her thrashing and waited. Every time he did this, he thought back to Hitchcock. In one of his films there was a protracted struggle while Cary Grant aided by his leading lady killed a Russian agent. He had read that the purpose of the scene was to show how difficult it was to kill someone. But he had never found it so. The film was pure fantasy.
He supposed she was dead by the time he heard the doorbell ringing but he would have preferred to hang on for a minute or two longer. But the sound of footsteps along the side passage sent him across the room and down to the landing before he could satisfy himself. There was a figure between himself and ground floor but the man’s attempt to switch on the lights showed that he was not seeing in the dark as well as Mark himself. He bundled past him and with a couple of sharp kicks broke through the man’s grasp. He was out of the back door, over four fences and then away on his cycle with no further trouble.
He stopped off at the garage to change his clothes and take the discarded overall, shoes and gloves away with him in a plastic bag. This he left behind a bush in the cemetery before climbing over two walls to make his way to the back door of the flats. It was quiet and dark inside. Upstairs he let himself into Amanda’s flat, undressed and joined her in bed. Amanda gave a half groan and turned away from him. He wondered whether she had been in the same position all the time he had been away. The clock he reset; its display then showed ‘04.27‘.
Anderson had asked her to keep the porch light on and it did help. No one could open the front door without him seeing. It wasn’t long after he had relieved Fielding that he felt distinctly sleepy. It had been a long time since he had done such work. He tried to remember the tricks they had all used to prevent themselves falling asleep. Smoking was always out; matches and lighters could be seen and maybe even the glow of a cigarette end. But then he no longer smoked anyway. Chewing sweets or peppermints? He thought not, he would feel sick in the morning. Sheer willpower — that should not be beyond him. He had his duty to perform plus a personal interest, what else could he possibly need. Of course, if he could have relied on the Super’s support, then a team of youngsters could have been doing this, not two senior detectives.
He hoped it hadn’t been dozing but he had to admit that he hadn’t seen it go off. But there it was: the porch was dark. He was out of the car and up the front path very quickly. The old-fashioned bell rang clearly in the hall when he pulled the lever. No one could sleep through that. He rang again but no lights appeared in the house and no sounds came from the hallway when he opened the letter flap. He ran down the side of the house and tried the door into the kitchen: it was unlocked and he was inside. There was still no sound. The largest room in the house was on the first floor front — that was where she slept. There was a glimmer of light that came through a hallway window from a street-lamp twenty yards down the road. He tried several light switches but none worked. He took the first flight of stairs two at a time.
As he climbed the stairs, he saw a dark shape move along the banisters on the first floor and then, as he reached the landing, a hand on the end of a stiff arm landed in his chest. It reminded him of his Rugby days at school. It was a good hand-off and cleared the way for the man as Anderson fell back into the corner a few steps down in front of him. The figure was almost passed him when he thrust out both hands and held tight on to the man’s left foot. The man was heavy and his impetus took them both down the final flight. They landed in a heap at the bottom but the other man was quicker on to his feet and Anderson felt the air squeezed from his body as the man stamped on his belly. The man had reached the ground floor before Anderson managed to leap forward and grasp another foot. This time the man spun round and used his other foot to stamp on Anderson’s neck. Anderson’s grasp loosened and the man was away out the back door.
There was little hope of catching him but Anderson didn’t intend to leave the house. He went back upstairs into the front bedroom. Clarissa was lying on the bed very still, very passive. He drew the curtains and the light from the street allowed him to see the tell-tale red marks around her throat. She had been strangled like the others. He went across and felt her neck. For a moment he was not sure but the excitement in his own heart and the thumping in his chest told him he was right before his mind allowed him to accept it. She was alive. He turned her on to her back before phoning for an ambulance. Then his lips sought hers with a fervour not matched during their one night together. He inflated her lungs, felt for her heart and gave six fierce pumping movements with both hands. He had repeated the procedure six times before the ambulance men were ringing the bell. Once they had taken over, he called Comben.
Anderson felt sure it had been Turney but, at ten to five, it was far too late for Comben to catch him before he got back to Amanda’s flat. He asked his sergeant to wait for him and soon they were both standing on Amanda Clayden’s doorstep. Mark Turney answered the entry-phone. He let them in. Anderson looked at his bare feet as he opened the door upstairs. He was wearing a man’s dressing gown but apparently nothing else. There were no marks around his ankles, no scratches, so there wouldn’t be any signs of the struggle under Anderson’s own nails. For the first time he cursed his habit of cutting and buffing his nails close to the tops of his fingers. Clarissa might have struggled, of course, but then any signs of a wife on her husband could easily be explained away. Even if she recovered, she might not have seen him and so might not be able to give evidence against him. He would get away with it.
Still, Anderson was sure it was Turney’s ankles and firm muscular limbs that he had held and felt in the pit of his stomach. And there was something else, something that explained the paucity of material sent for forensic analysis. He had a memory of feeling shiny material and of seeing a fuzziness about the face that he had sensed even in the faint light. And the hands — no sense of flesh more like rubber. Turney had not been dressed normally and Anderson did not think they’d find those clothes in Amanda’s flat. Turney had a hiding place.