He turns away, pulls his cap down, and heads down the street. There is a nice café at St Luke’s where he could grab a coffee before heading back to his den. He needs time to consider the pros and cons of going after Hopkins and he is gagging for a brew. It has been a long twenty-four hours. Grinning at being outdoors, enjoying the fresh air, he flings his shoulders back. It was a close shave earlier, but the adrenalin that pumps through his body makes him laugh out loud. He is unstoppable – completely unstoppable.
Chapter 34
Bradford
According to the uniformed officer who’d taken the statement, Robert Flateau, the victim’s husband, worked as an anaesthetist at St Luke’s hospital. After finding his wife on return from his nightshift, Flateau had somehow managed to stumble to a neighbour’s house for help. After managing to make some sense of Robert’s garbled mutterings through his tears, the no – nonsense neighbour had roused her own husband, to double check her distraught neighbour wasn’t hallucinating. One look at her husband’s ashen face on his return from the Flateau home, had her grabbing the phone and phoning emergency services to request police and ambulance.
‘No need, Maureen – she’s dead.’ Her husband had said and had fallen onto a nearby chair and covered his face with his hands.
‘Not for her.’ Said Maureen, nodding towards the sofa where Robert Flateau sat huddled over, muttering to himself with tears streaming down his face. ‘For him.’
As a result, Robert Flateau was now in BRI, under sedation. Although they’d need to interview him at some point, Gus didn’t consider it a priority, convinced that, as in Maureen Brookes’ murder, they’d find the anaesthetist’s alibi held. Nonetheless, he was pleased when Alice requested an officer’s presence by his bedside, so they could put some sort of timeline together.
Driving back to The Fort, Gus’s knees scrunched up in the front seat of Alice’s Mini Cooper, they discussed the crime scene. ‘What do you reckon to that nursery rhyme, Al?’
‘Bloody creepy. Always hated them at school and was glad my parents were more into forcing me to remember bird species than reciting barbaric rhymes.’
‘Barbaric.’ Gus laughed. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘You saying ‘Rock a Bye Baby’ isn’t creepy? What happens to the sprog when the bough breaks? Not a very nice image for kids to be singing about, if you ask me … and which responsible parent puts their child in a damn tree during a storm?’
Clearly about to go off on one, Alice leant closer to the steering wheel. ‘And Jack and Jill? Bet you anything she was a sociopath – bet Jill pushed her brother down that hill and only pretended to tumble after him. It’s the sort of thing Katie would have done to you.’ Alice titled her head to one side and poked Gus in the arm. ‘In fact, I bet she got the idea from that rhyme.’
Amused, Gus’s grin deepened. ‘Don’t be daft … Katie never pushed me down a hill when we were kids.’
‘Hmmm.’ Alice didn’t sound convinced. ‘You can’t deny she liked to torture you though, can you? Still does if you ask me.’
The last part of her statement was muttered under Alice’s breath, but he knew exactly what she was referring to. Katie had asked him last year to donate sperm to his ex-wife who was now Katie’s partner. Her logic was that she and Gabriella wanted a child as genetically similar to them as possible. Typically, Katie hadn’t bothered to consider the implications for Gus and had enlisted their parents to pressurise him, using Katie’s ongoing cancer treatment to guilt trip him. While Gus wanted to push the entire sperm donation thing to the back of his mind, Alice was less inclined to do so. Fiercely protective of Gus, she’d been appalled at Katie’s request and even more appalled at the blatant blackmail and manipulation she’d employed to get Gus to consent.
‘Playing on her cancer was a low blow.’ Alice was still on the ‘Katie and Gabriella are bitches’ topic. And Gus, with his thoughts filled with his mum’s secrets, didn’t have the energy to get into that with Alice. Distraction was needed. ‘Mulberry Bush.’
Alice frowned. ‘What?’
‘Here we go round the Mulberry Bush – that’s not a toxic nursery rhyme.’
Alice laughed. ‘I used to think they were singing ‘Here we go round the mouldy brush’ – couldn’t work out what was so exciting about prancing round a mouldy brush.’
Lips twitching, Gus laughed. ‘Trust you.’
His partner glanced at him. ‘But … as it happens, Mulberry bushes are toxic. They’re hallucinogenic – been banned in parts of the USA for years – why would anyone encourage kids to prance round a toxic tree? Beggars belief…’
Off on one big time now, Gus closed his eyes, content to listen to her diatribe about the evil of nursery rhymes because at least he didn’t have to talk about Katie, Gabriella, or the approaching birth of their baby.
‘Now take that one ‘Boys and Girls Come Out to Play’ … Bloody sure that’s a paedophile’s wet dream and that one about an egg falling off a wall – violent – as is the ‘Hickory Mickory Mouse’ one.’
‘Dickory…’
‘Yes, that’s a good way to describe them – they are all dickory. Isn’t there something about carving knives and tails being cut off? No wonder we have so many sociopaths … and don’t get me started on fairy tales … they’re as bad, if not worse…’
Rolling his eyes, Gus didn’t bother to correct her. Instead he looked out the window and wondered what possible significance Lavender Blue, a
