'No. Not yet.'
'I just wanted to say that I know it wasn't him and that I'll do anything to help. Maybe you could tell his solicitor that.'
'Very well.'
'I'll give you my number. Or, no, I'll ring you again, or Terry when he's back. All right?'
'Very well.'
There was a silence, then we both said goodbye.
I stood in the centre of Jo's main room and looked around. It was like that awful stage of looking for something when you start looking again in the places where you've already looked. Even worse than that, I didn't know what I was looking for. A diary would have been useful. I could have discovered if she'd had anything planned. But I had already rifled through her desk. There was nothing like that. I wandered around picking up objects from shelves and putting them down again. There was a pot plant standing on the shelf by the window. My mother would have been able to identify it. She would know its Latin name. But even I could see that it was yellowing. The soil was hard and cracked. I brought a tumbler of water from the kitchen and dribbled the water on to the sad plant. It ran down into the cracks. That was another thing, wasn't it? Would a grown-up responsible young woman like Jo go away on holiday and leave her plant to die? I watered the banyan tree as well.
All of the pieces of evidence I had found were like mirages. They shimmered in the air, but when I ran to clutch them they melted. I had been living in the flat. It might well have been that she went on holiday leaving me in residence. She might have assumed that I would be there watering her plants.
I looked at the pile of mail that I had already filleted in search of anything useful. I flicked through it, for want of anything more sensible. One envelope caught my attention. It was the gas bill that I hadn't paid yet; my own funds had run out. It had one of those transparent windows, so that you could see the name and address inside. I gave a little grunt of surprise when I saw the name: 'Miss L. J. Hooper'. Almost in a dream I found Ben's card and called the number of his mobile. When he answered he sounded busy and distracted, but when he heard my voice, his tone softened. That made me smile. More than smile, it sent a warm feeling through me. It made me feel ridiculously like a fourteen-year-old with a crush. Could you have a crush on someone you had just spent the night with?
'What is Jo's first name?'
'What?'
'I know it's a stupid question. But I was looking at one of her bills and she has an initial. An L before the J. What does it stand for?'
I heard a chuckle on the other end of the line. 'Lauren,' he said. 'Like Lauren Bacall. People used to tease her about it.'
'Lauren,' I repeated, numbly, and I felt my legs tremble. I had to lean against the wall to hold myself up. 'Kelly, Kath, Fran, Gail, Lauren.'
'What?'
'That man, he used to give me a list of names of the women he had killed. Lauren was one of the names.'
'But.. .' There was a long pause. 'It could be a coincidence .. .'
'Lauren? It's not exactly in the top ten.'
'I don't know. There are some funny names in the top ten nowadays. The other problem is that she didn't use the name. She hated it.'
I started murmuring something, more to myself, so that Ben had to ask me what I was saying. 'I'm sorry, I was saying that I know how she might have felt. She might have given that name to him because it was her way of refusing to be beaten by him. It wasn't her, Jo, that he was humiliating and terrifying, but someone else -her public self.'
I put down the phone and forced myself to remember. What had he said about Lauren? Kelly had cried. Gail had prayed. What had Lauren done? Lauren had fought. Lauren hadn't lasted long.
I felt sick. I knew she was dead.
Jack Cross's tone did not soften when he heard my voice. It darkened. It grew weary.
'Oh, Abbie,' he said. 'How are you doing?'
'She was called Lauren,' I said. I was trying not to cry.
'What?'
'Jo. Her first name was Lauren. Don't you remember? Lauren was one of the list of the people he had killed.'
'I'd forgotten.'
'Doesn't that seem significant?'
'I'll make a note of it.'
I told him about the clothes as well, the clothes of Jo's that I'd been wearing. He seemed cautious.
'This is not necessarily significant,' he said. 'We already know that you were living in Jo's flat. Why shouldn't you have been wearing her clothes?'
I looked down at Jo's grey cords that I'd put on, then I shouted, 'For God's sake, what sort of evidence is good enough for you?'
I heard a sigh on the line. 'Abbie, believe me, I'm on your side, and as a matter of fact I was looking through the file just a few minutes ago. I'm even putting one of my colleagues on to it. We haven't forgotten you. But to answer your question, I just need the sort of evidence that will convince someone who doesn't already believe you,' he said.
'Well, you're going to fucking get it,' I said. 'You wait.'
I wanted to slam the phone down but it was one of those cordless phones that you can't slam, so I just pressed the button extra hard.
'Oh, Abbie, Abbie, Abbie, you stupid, stupid thing,' I moaned to myself consolingly.
Twenty
I knew Jo was dead. I didn't care what Cross said, I knew it. I thought of his whispery voice in the darkness: 'Kelly. Kath. Fran. Gail. Lauren.' Lauren was Jo. She had never given him the name that people she loved called her by. She'd given him the name of a stranger. It was her way of staying human, of not going mad. Now he could add another name to his litany: Sally. Although perhaps Sally didn't count for him. She was a mistake. She should have been me. I shivered. Nobody knew where I was except Carol at Jay and Joiner's and Peter downstairs. And Cross and Ben, of course. I was safe, I told myself. I didn't feel safe at all.
I closed the curtains in the main room and listened to the new messages on Jo's phone. There wasn't much; just one from a woman saying that Jo's curtains were ready for collection, and another from someone called Alexis saying hello, stranger, long time no see, and he was back at last, and maybe they should meet soon.
I opened the one letter that had arrived that morning an invitation to renew her subscription to the National Geographic. I did it for her. Then I phoned Sadie, anticipating she wouldn't be there, and left a message saying I wanted us to meet soon and I was missing her, and found as I said it that it was true. I said the same kind of thing on Sheila and Guy's answering-machine. I sent a cheery, vague email to Sam. I didn't want to see or talk to any of them just yet, but I wanted to build bridges.
I made myself an avocado, bacon and mozzarella sandwich. I wasn't really hungry, but it was comforting to put the sandwich together methodically, then sit on the sofa and chew the soft, salty bread, not really thinking of anything, trying to empty my mind. I found myself seeing the pictures I'd made for myself when I was kept prisoner in the dark: the butterfly, the river, the lake, the tree. I set them against all the ugliness and all the dread. I closed my eyes and let them fill up my mind, beautiful images of freedom. Then I heard myself saying: 'But where's the cat?'
I didn't know where the question had come from. It hung in the quiet room while I considered it. Jo didn't have a cat. The only one I'd seen round here was Peter's downstairs, the tabby with amber eyes that had woken me in the night and spooked me so. But thinking about the question that I'd posed was giving me a peculiar feeling, like a tingling in my brain. It was as if a half-memory was scratching at my consciousness.
Why had I thought of a cat? Because she had things that went with a cat. Things I'd seen without noticing. Where? I went to the kitchen area, pulled open cupboards and drawers. Nothing there. Then I remembered and went to the tall cupboard near the bathroom where I'd come across the vacuum cleaner and Jo's skiing stuff. There,
