‘The landlord. What can you tell us about him?’
‘Not a lot. He was an unpleasant man, but he left me alone. She certainly dealt with him.’
‘As you say,’ Larry agreed.
‘Is there any reason why Ingrid would kill him?’ Wendy asked.
‘He was always looking at her, and then she was struggling to pay the rent. Apart from that, I can’t think of a reason.’
Isaac returned with Sara. Sean had been talking to some of the onlookers, to see if anybody knew anything.
‘It’s Charlotte Hamilton,’ Isaac said.
‘Where is she, sir?’ Wendy asked.
‘This time she did not clean up. She panicked, and when a person panics, they make mistakes. Find out where she went after here. This time, it should not be difficult.’
Isaac returned to the office, the others stayed at the murder scene. Isaac knew why he was being summoned back to meet Goddard. His career had been on the line more than once over the years, but this time it looked serious.
Isaac realised he had no defence. The woman moved wherever she wanted, killed whomever she wanted. Unless the team had a break, he was off the case.
It had almost cost the career of Sara Marshall, although she had survived due in part to her being an excellent police officer, in part because she had married her boss.
Isaac, apart from his mentor Richard Goddard, had no one, and this time it looked as though he was about to issue a warning to him, or at least a reprimand.
***
Charlotte walked around the centre of Newcastle looking for accommodation. Nowhere was safe, and for once she was getting desperate.
Even now, the police in Newcastle would be on the lookout for her, although she had walked past two police constables at the station and they had taken no notice. They would have if she had been wearing the same outfit as when she had killed Dennis Goldman, not only because it had been provocative, but also because Newcastle was unusually cold. Before she had gone to London, she had not thought of the climate as so bitter.
She entered a pub, pulling her suitcase.
‘Bit heavy for you, luv,’ the man behind the bar said.
‘I’m looking for accommodation.’
‘Room upstairs if you want.’
‘How much?’
‘We can discuss it afterwards,’ the man, who looked to be the worse side of fifty, said. Charlotte noticed the tattoos on his arm and the muscular physique.
She took her luggage upstairs and had a shower. She then dressed inconspicuously and made her way out to St Nicholas Hospital. She stopped on the way to look at her old house. A young couple with a baby were there. A large dog was fetching the ball that the man threw. She had no idea where her parents were, but she would find out. She took some photos.
Charlotte walked around the boundary of St Nicholas Mental Hospital. It had not changed since she had left at the age of nineteen. It was the same foreboding edifice that represented pain and imprisonment and rejection by her parents. She checked out the back fence that she had climbed over in her early teens to meet the local boys. She wondered what had happened to them, although she assumed they were now older and wiser, not foolish and full of bravado as when they had made love to her. To them, she had been a plaything, purely for their own amusement. One of the young men had been friendly to her; Charlotte remembered him with some fondness, but, yet again, he had been deceitful, the same as Gregory Chalmers, professing love, only feeling lust.
Wrapped in a coat with a hood, and wearing warm, sensible clothing, she waited, knowing full well the routine of the one person she wanted to see. She hated the woman for taking her away from her parents, for subjecting her to pain, for giving her medicines that left her depressed or comatose, unable to react.
It was late afternoon when Gladys Lake emerged from the building and walked through a churchyard on the way to her cottage on the far side. Charlotte had been there a few times, part of her therapy and her integration into society. She remembered the lace curtains, the bay window, the old cat. It was evident now that with the Lake woman it had not been therapy, only a way for her to ease her guilty conscience after all that she had subjected her to.
‘Another six months and you will be all right,’ she had said. Charlotte realised that it had all been lies, and the six months had stretched to one year, then two, and then up to the age of eighteen, when she was free to leave as an adult.
***
Gladys Lake moved slowly across the churchyard, casually glancing at the gravestones as she walked. Under one arm she had some files, across her shoulder the strap of a large bag. She was wrapped up against the weather, and the rain had started again; not that it ever stopped for very long, but now it was turning to sleet.
‘You never expected to see me again, did you?’ the woman who had emerged from her left said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gladys Lake replied.
‘Have you forgotten me already?’
The doctor thought the voice was familiar, yet she could not identify the woman, which was not surprising as she had a scarf wrapped around her lower face, and a hood pulled over her forehead. All that she could see were the blue eyes.
‘I have never forgiven you,’ Charlotte said.
Gladys Lake quickened her pace and attempted to flee. She dropped the files that had been under one arm; she did not stop to pick them up. The woman behind her, younger and fitter, began to close in on her.
‘Leave me alone, please.’
‘You remember.’
A couple walking their
