Her mother could offer no argument against that.
“So,” her father said, “you’re off on an adventure. Well, good for you. You must have known there were times when your mother and I…we…we didn’t know what the future was going to bring.”
“I’m all right, Daddy,” Kirsten said. “Really I am.”
“Yes, of course. Will you be seeing Dr. Masterson at all while you’re up there? About the…you know?”
Kirsten nodded. “Probably,” she said. “It won’t do any harm to ask about it, will it?”
“No, I don’t suppose it will. I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you a lift up there. We’ve got a very important project on at the moment and I just can’t take time off. Perhaps you could rent-”
“That’s all right,” Kirsten said. “I was planning on taking the train. I have to learn to get around on my own.”
“Well, that’s fine, as long as you feel comfortable with the idea. You’ll be needing some money, won’t you?” he said, and went over to the top right-hand drawer of the sideboard to fetch his checkbook.
45 Susan
Sue got out of the house easily enough without anyone seeing her and went to celebrate her first housebreaking with veal scaloppine, garlic bread and a bottle of Chianti at the expensive restaurant on New Quay Road. After that, she stopped off at her room, then walked about a mile along the coast and threw her holdall, weighted down with heavy pebbles, into the sea. She stood and watched as the tide first threw it back, then sucked it out again and swallowed it. Even if it did turn up somewhere, she thought, it wouldn’t be of any interest to anyone.
Now it was time to put the final stage of her plan into operation. First, let him sweat for a while.
And sweat he did. The first time Sue saw him on the day after she had broken into his cottage, he looked harried and preoccupied as he walked in to work. It was raining, and he kept his hands deep in his pockets and his head down, but his glittering eyes swept the street and the windows of the houses all around him. He must have noticed her sitting in the front of Rose’s Cafe, Sue thought, but his eyes just flicked over her as they did everything and everyone else. He was nervous, on edge, as if he was expecting an ambush at any moment.
After he had gone by, Sue turned back to the local newspaper. There was no change reported in Keith’s condition and the police seemed to have got nowhere in their search for Jack Grimley’s killer. So far, so good. It would soon be over now.
Near lunchtime on the second day, from the same vantage point, Sue saw him slip into the newsagent’s. Quickly, she left her tea and crossed the street to go in after him. He wouldn’t recognize her. This time, she was dressed differently; also, she wore glasses, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. He glanced around with a start at the bell when she entered, her head lowered, then turned his gaze back to the newsagent.
“All right today, love?” the woman asked. “You look a bit peaky.”
“Not enough sleep, that’s all,” he mumbled.
“Well, you take good care of yourself, you never know what germs is going round these days.”
“I’m all right,” he said, a little testily. “Just tired, that’s all.” Then he paid for his tobacco and left without even glancing at Sue, who bent over the newspaper and magazine section as before. She picked up the local paper and the Independent. When she took them over to the counter to pay, the woman clucked her tongue and said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with him. Show a bit of polite interest and he damn near bites your head off. Some people can’t even be bothered to be civil these days.”
“Maybe he’s worried about something,” Sue suggested.
The woman sighed. “Aye,” she said. “We’ve all got plenty to worry about, haven’t we, what with nuclear war and pollution all over t’place. But I still manage to find a smile and a good morning for my customers.” She went on, almost to herself, as she counted out Sue’s change, “Not like Greg Eastcote, that isn’t. Usually such a pleasant chap.” Then she shrugged. “Ah, well, maybe he is just tired. I could do with a bit of a lie-down myself.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” said Sue, folding the newspapers under her arm and walking over to the door. “He’s just tired.”
“Aye. No rest for the wicked, is there, love? Bye now.”
As Sue walked along the street, Eastcote’s van passed her by and took the same route out of town as it had before. Another delivery. Whether he would be back later or would be staying out overnight, she had no idea. She could imagine, though, that he would be loath to leave his cottage empty for very long. In fact, if she were in his shoes, she would make sure she was back before dark. After all, he didn’t know that she had broken in during daylight.
She wondered what he had made of the extra lock of hair. Did he know it was hers? Surely he must suspect? Or perhaps he thought he was being haunted, that the supernatural was responsible for the sudden appearance of a seventh lock? Like the seventh daughter of a seventh son was supposed to be powerful in magic. One thing she did know: he had seen her, as one would notice any stranger in the street, but he didn’t know who she was. Maybe when he got over the shock, he would start to think clearly again and count the times he’d glimpsed her from the corner of his eye; perhaps he would connect the girl in the navy-blue raincoat with the girl in glasses and a ponytail. But by then it would be too late.
Sue walked by the river toward town. The good weather seemed to have made a return. It was a beautiful day, with plenty of that intense blue sky you sometimes get at the seaside, and just enough plump white clouds drifting over to give a sense of depth and perspective. Beyond the greenish shallows, the sea reflected the sky’s bright ultramarine. Sue stood on the swing bridge and looked around at the harbor. It was like another world to her now, after so long spent in the other, dingier part of town.
The tide was well out, and some of the light boats rested almost on their sides, with their masts at forty-five- degree angles to the slick mud. To Sue’s left, beyond the high harbor wall, stood the buildings of St. Ann’s Staith, a mixture of architectural styles and materials: red brick, gables, chimneys, black-and-white Tudor-style fronting, even millstone grit. Further along, toward the sheds where the fish were auctioned, the jumble of buildings rose all the way up the hillside to the elegant white terrace of hotels that formed East Terrace.
People walked by, carefree and smiling: a courting couple, the man with his arm so low around the girl that it was practically in the back pocket of her tight jeans; two elderly ladies overdressed in checked tweeds and lace-up shoes, one carrying a walking stick; a pregnant woman, glowing with health, her husband walking proudly beside her.
All this normality, Sue thought. All these ordinary people going about their business, enjoying themselves, eating ice-cream cones and bouncing garish beachballs in the street, and they have no idea about the monster walking among them.
They have no idea that Greg Eastcote murdered six women and maimed one, that he slashed at their sexual organs with a sharp, bone-handled knife, and just to make sure they were dead, he strangled them. When he’d done that, when he’d finished his crude surgery, he carefully cut off a single lock of hair from each bruised and bleeding body, took it home with him, tied it up in a pink ribbon and placed it neatly in his sideboard drawer. Six of them all in a row. Seven now.
According to the press clippings that Sue had saved, he hadn’t raped any of his victims. Clearly he was incapable of that, and the rage he felt toward women for causing his condition partly explained his actions. But only partly. There was an enormous chasm between his motives and his deeds that nobody could fathom. In a vision, the Dark One had appeared to him in a perversion of the Caedmon story and told him to sing his own song. And so he had. Only his accompanying instrument wasn’t a lute, it was a knife, and the tune it played was death.
Sue wanted to jump up on the bridge rail and shout all this out to the complacent holidaymakers heading for the beach or the amusement arcades. They would shove their coins into slots, listen to the bingo caller, or sit on the beach in the sun on striped deck chairs, newspapers shielding their faces, edging back every so often as the tide came in closer. Then, late in the afternoon, they would go to one of the many fish and chip restaurants and eat.
None of them knew about the man with the oily smell of fish on his fingers-probably the last thing his victims smelled-the Ancient Mariner eyes and the raspy voice. She wanted to tell them all about Greg Eastcote and the atrocities he had committed against women, all about the blood, the pain, the utter degradation and humiliation,
