The teenagers for whom Strike was unintentionally mounting a one-man comedy show were now openly gasping and crying with laughter. Only when Strike bent down awkwardly to pick up the now cracked chocolate hedgehog, one hand on the teenagers’ table to steady himself, did one of the young women spot the metal rod that served as his right ankle. He knew what she’d seen by the abrupt cessation of her laughter, and the frantic, whispered shushing of her friends. Panting, sweating and now aware of half the carriage’s eyes on him, he shoved the damaged hedgehog back into its bag, found The Demon of Paradise Park in his holdall and then, sweating slightly, but taking malicious pleasure in the po-faced shock of the teenagers beside him, sidled back into his window seat.
After flicking through the book in search of the part he wanted to re-read, Strike finally found the chapter two-thirds of the way through the book, entitled “Capture.”
Thus far, Creed’s relationship with landlady Violet Cooper had been key to his continuing safety. Violet herself admits that for the first five years of his tenancy, she’d never have believed harm of “Den,” who she saw as a lonely and gentle soul, fond of their singalong evenings, and probably gay.
However, the pains he’d once taken to keep Violet happy had begun to irk Creed. Where once he’d drugged her because he was planning to pound bones to dust in the basement, or needed to load a corpse into the van by night, he now began lacing her gin-and-oranges with barbiturates purely to avoid the tedium of her company.
Creed’s manner toward Violet also changed. He became “mean” to her, “taking the Mickey when there was no need, saying nasty things, laughing at me for using the wrong words and stuff, treating me like I was stupid, which he’d never done before.
“I remember one time, I was telling him about the place my brother bought when he retired, cottage in the country, everything lovely, and I said, ‘You should’ve seen the garden, his roses and a gazebo,’ and he laughed at me, Dennis, well, jeered, really, because I’d said it wrong. Gazz ybo, I said, and I’ve never forgotten it, he said, ‘Don’t use words if you can’t say ’em, you just look thick.’
“It hurt my feelings. I hadn’t seen that nasty side of him. I knew he was clever, he used to do the Times crossword every day. Knew all the answers on Mastermind, when we watched it together, but he’d never put me down before.
“Then, one night, he starts going on about my will. He wants to know who I’m going to leave the house to. He as good as asked me to leave it to him.
“I didn’t like that. I wasn’t an old woman, I wasn’t planning to die any time soon. I changed the subject, but he started on it again a few nights later. I said, ‘Look, how d’you think that makes me feel, Dennis, you going on like this, like I’m on my last legs? You’re making me feel like you’re going to do away with me.’
“He got uppity and said it was all right for me, but he had nothing, no security or nothing, and what if he got turfed out on the street by whoever I left the house to? And he flounced out. We made it up, later, but it left a nasty taste.”
It would seem the height of foolhardiness for Creed to persuade Violet into changing her will and then kill her. Quite apart from having an obvious motive, he’d be risking the ingression of police into the basement where he was concealing the remains and belongings of at least five women. However, Creed’s arrogance and sense of inviolability seem to have known no bounds by this time. He was also stockpiling pills in larger quantities than ever, which brought him into contact with more than one street dealer. This made him more widely recognizable.
One of his new drugs contacts was Michael Cleat, who sold barbiturates stolen from a contact at a pharmaceutical company. Cleat would later cut a deal with police in exchange for his testimony at the killer’s trial. Creed, he testified, had asked Cleat whether he or his contact could procure a doctor’s prescription pad. Police suspected that Creed was hoping to fake a prescription for Violet, to explain her possession of the means to overdose…
In spite of the coffee, Strike’s eyelids began to droop again. After another couple of minutes, his head sank sideways and the book slipped out of his slack grasp.
When he woke up again, the sky outside had turned coral pink, the laughing teenagers were gone, and he found himself ten minutes from Truro station. Stiffer than ever and in no mood for the family reunion, he wished he was heading back to his attic flat for a shower and some peace. Nevertheless, his heart lifted slightly when he saw Dave Polworth waiting for him on the platform. The bag of chocolate hedgehogs rattled slightly as Strike clambered laboriously off the train. He’d have to remember to give the broken one to Luke.
“All right, Diddy?” said Polworth, as they shook hands
