“More Dutch courage? Is that what you need? I still don’t believe-”
He didn’t know how it happened. One moment he was looking at his own reflection in her pupils, and the next he had his hands around her throat. He shoved her back against the cabinet, knocking bottles and glasses over. She clawed at his eyes, but her arms weren’t long enough. She scratched and pulled at his wrists, making gurgling sounds deep in her throat, back bent over the cabinet, feet off the ground, kicking him.
He was throttling her for everything she’d ever done to him: for being a faithless whore and spreading her legs for anyone who took her out for an expensive dinner; for telling the whole country he was a sick pervert who would be in jail if there were any real sting in the justice system; for framing him.
And he was strangling her for everything else, too: his arrest; the humiliation and indignity of jail; the loss of his friends, his job. The whole edifice that had been his life exploded in a red cloud and his veins swelled with rage. For all that, and for treating him like a fool, like someone she could keep on a string and order around. Someone she didn’t even believe had the courage to kill her.
He pressed his fingers deep into her throat. One of her wild kicks found his groin. He flinched in pain but held on, shoving her hard up against the wall. She was sitting on the top of the cabinet among the broken crystal and spilled liquor, her legs wrapped around him in a parody of the sex act. He could smell gin and whisky. The robe under her thighs was sodden with blood and booze, as if she had wet herself.
Michelle continued to flail around, knocking over more bottles, making rasping sounds. Once she pushed forward far enough that her nails raked his cheek, just missing his eyes.
But just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Owen loosened his grip on her throat and she slid off the cabinet onto the floor, leaning back against it, not moving.
Someone hammered on the door and yelled, “Michelle! Are you all right?”
Owen stood for a moment trying to catch his breath and grasp the enormity of what he had done, then he opened the door and rushed past the puzzled neighbor back down to the street.
VII
“I think Deborah Harrison lied to her mother about losing her diary,” Banks said to Gristhorpe as they waited for Ken Blackstone’s call. It was well after closing-time. No hope of a pint now. “I think she kept it hidden.”
“So it would seem,” Gristhorpe agreed. “The question is, how did it get into Jelacic’s hands? We already know he couldn’t have been in Eastvale the evening she was killed. Even if the diary had been in her satchel, Jelacic couldn’t have taken it.”
“I think I know the answer to that,” Banks said. “Rebecca Charters surprised someone in the graveyard yesterday, in the wooded area behind the Inchcliffe Mausoleum. I thought nothing of it at the time-she didn’t get a good look at whoever it was-but now it seems too much of a coincidence. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny it was Jelacic.”
“It was hidden there?”
Banks nodded. “And he knew where. He’d seen her hide it. When Pierce was released, and I went to question Jelacic again last week, he must have remembered it and thought there might be some profit in getting hold of it. It’s ironic, really. That open satchel always bothered me. When I first saw it, I thought the killer might have taken something incriminating and most likely got rid of it. But Lady Harrison told me Deborah had lost her diary. I saw no reason why either of them would lie about that.”
“Unless there were secrets in it that Deborah didn’t want anyone to stumble across?”
“Or Lady Harrison. If you think about it, either of them could have lied. Sir Geoffrey had already told me that Deborah did have a diary, so his wife could hardly deny its existence.”
“But she could say Deborah had told her she lost it, and we’d have no way of checking.”
“Yes. And we probably wouldn’t even bother looking for it. Which we didn’t.”
“Didn’t the SOCOs search the graveyard the day after Deborah’s murder?”
“They did a ground search. We weren’t looking for a murder weapon, just Deborah’s knickers and anything the killer might have dropped in the graveyard. All we found were a few empty fag packets and some butts. Most of those were down to Jelacic, who we knew had worked in the graveyard anyway. We put the rest down to St. Mary’s girls sneaking out for a smoke. Besides, it’s only in books that murderers stand around smoking in the fog while they wait for their victims. Especially since now everyone knows we’ve a good chance of getting DNA from saliva.”
“What about the Inchcliffe Mausoleum? Deborah could have gained access to that, couldn’t she?”
“Yes. But we searched that, too, after we found the empty bottles. At least-”
The phone rang. Banks grabbed the receiver.
“Alan, it’s Ken Blackstone. Sorry it took so long.”
“Any luck?”
“We’ve got him.”
“Great. Did he give you any trouble?”
“He picked up a bruise or two in the struggle. Turns out he’d just left Pavelic’s house when our lads arrived. They followed him across the waste ground. He saw them coming and made a bolt for it, right across York Road and down into Richmond Hill. When they finally caught up with him he didn’t have the diary.”
Banks’s spirits dropped. “Didn’t have it? But, Ken-”
“Hold your horses, mate. Seems he dumped it when he realized he was being chased. Didn’t want to be caught with any incriminating evidence on him. Anyway, our lads went back over the route he’d taken and we found it in a rubbish bin on York Road.”
Banks breathed a sigh of relief.
“What do you want us to do with him?” Blackstone asked. “It’s midnight now. It’ll be going on for two in the morning by the time we get him to Eastvale.”
“You can sit on him overnight,” Banks said. “Nobody in this case is going anywhere in a hurry. Have him brought up in the morning. But, Ken-”
“Yes, it is Deborah Harrison’s diary.”
“Have you read it?”
“Enough.”
“And?”
“If it means what I think it does, Alan, it’s dynamite.”
“Tell me about it.”
And Blackstone told him.
Chapter 20
I
At ten o’clock the next morning, with Jelacic cooling his heels in a cell downstairs, Banks sat at his desk, coffee in hand, lit a cigarette and opened Deborah Harrison’s diary. Ken Blackstone had given him the gist of it over the phone the previous evening-and he had not slept well in consequence-but he wanted to read it for himself before making his next move.
Like the inside of the satchel flap, it was inscribed with her name and address in gradually broadening circles, from “Deborah Catherine Harrison” to “The Universe.”
First he checked the section for names, addresses and telephone numbers, but found nothing out of the ordinary, only family and school friends. Then he started to flip the pages.
He soon found that many of her entries were factual, with little attempt at analysis or poetic description. Some
