‘If you must.’
‘We don’t know who was targeted. We’re assuming it wasn’t your daughter, but what can you tell us about Guy Hendry?’
‘I told you. I knew him when we were both young, and then, he’s there with Gillian. I told her to be careful. The man’s a charming rogue, or should I say he was. I was with him for a few months in my teens before he became the big celebrity. I fell for him in a big way, but I could see no future in it. Gillian would have enjoyed the lifestyle for a while, and then she would have left him and looked for someone more suitable.’
‘She was part of that lifestyle. I’ve seen her on the television, the occasional game show,’ Wendy said.
‘Gillian always had a good moral compass, the legacy of her father and me, but she was ambitious, and you’ve seen her. The sort of woman who turned men’s heads, as I did in my day.’
‘You still would.’
‘I try to look after myself, but now it doesn’t seem so important, does it?’
‘It does,’ Isaac said.
‘You’re a charmer too. I can see that.’
In the nearly thirty minutes they’d been in the front room of the terrace house, Maureen Dickenson had not once shed a tear or expressed remorse at her daughter’s death. Isaac thought it unusual but knew that different people react in different ways. He assumed that, behind the façade, the woman had experienced sadness and disappointment and heartache in her life, and one more blow, as severe as it was, was not going to cause her to break down and show her true feelings. He imagined that once they were gone, she would relent and let the emotions flood over her.
After twenty minutes, more than the five initially promised, a knock at the door.
‘I’m Gillian’s aunt, Maureen’s sister. How is she?’ a woman who looked older than her sister said.
‘She’s holding up.’
‘Was Gillian with him?’
‘She was.’
Inside the house, the two sisters embraced; Stephanie, in tears.
‘You mentioned Guy Hendry when I opened the door,’ Wendy said when the two women eventually sat down.
‘I didn’t like him, not like Maureen and Gillian,’ Stephanie said.
‘It goes back a long time,’ Maureen said. ‘He wanted Steph before me, but my sister you’ll come to realise is more sensible than me. She rejected him at the first instance, and that’s when he came on to me. No doubt Gillian was the same to him, a plaything on the rebound from another.’
‘That’s not something that a mother would be pleased to think of their daughter,’ Wendy said.
‘Gillian had her head screwed on, and if a middle-aged lecher wanted to fritter his money, and if she wanted to think it was love eternal, then no harm has been done. And besides, she wasn’t the sort to come home pregnant.’
‘Were you?’
‘I suppose I was foolish back then, but don’t try and read anything into it. Guy had been my lover, and now he’s Gillian’s.’
‘Men such as Hendry make enemies: jealous husbands, disgruntled boyfriends, discarded women.’
‘Hendry was a total bastard,’ Stephanie said. ‘Not that there weren’t some who didn’t hate him, but killing him and Gillian in cold blood, that makes no sense.’
Wendy looked over at Maureen and could see that the enormity of what had occurred was starting to sink in. ‘Do you have a doctor we could call?’ she said.
‘I’m a qualified doctor,’ Stephanie said. ‘I’ll stay here and make sure my sister is fine. It may be a good time for you both to leave.’
‘If there are further questions, we’ll come back. I’m sorry that we had to be the bearer of sad news,’ Isaac said.
‘You’re only doing your job. Just make sure you get the bastard who did this.’
‘We will.’
Outside the house, the two police officers stood for a while.
‘How do you think it went?’ Wendy asked.
‘Better than most. The one part of the job I hate, telling parents that their child is not coming back home again.’
‘She took it well.’
‘I know,’ Isaac said as the two of them walked to their car. Gillian Dickenson was the first, she wasn’t the last visit for that day. Guy Hendry’s family had to be told next, and then there were the others who had died in that salon that day; Larry Hill could deal with some of those.
As for the others, additional police officers would be charged with the responsibility of informing the nearest and dearest. The time to inform had to be that day, as it would not take long for the identities of those in the salon to become known, and Guy Hendry would be on the evening news – a television personality, a man about town, a lothario, was always good copy.
As Isaac and Wendy drove away from the area, Isaac glanced up at the Dickenson house. Wendy phoned for a uniform to be assigned to the house to keep away the media and the onlookers.
***
Kensington High Street, and four hours had passed since the shooting. The traffic was lighter on Isaac and Wendy’s return to the crime scene. Gordon Windsor was standing nearby, a coffee in his hand.
‘They’ve all been identified,’ Windsor said. Isaac thought the man looked drained, more than usual. They had worked together on many cases before and had seen sights that no sane person should see: headless corpses, bodies decayed after years in shallow graves, throats cut.
‘Worse than most?’ Isaac said.
‘The women are the hardest to take.’
‘I had met Gillian Dickenson once before,’ Isaac said, realising that he had not mentioned it to the woman’s mother.
‘We’ve all seen her on the television. Very attractive once, I suppose, but now it seems ghoulish to make comments about how pretty she had been. She’ll not look
