The Polka Dot Girl Page 22

  Rue de Claudel. Long, broad, elegant, a gifted architect’s touch all over it. Even the trees looked designed, aesthetically correct, in just the right proportion and position. Really, what a beautiful place to live. Fit for a queen. And so quiet: the suburbs usually are in Hera. It felt disconnected from the city, or barely connected, the thinnest thread of association between them. Linked by roads and the jagged-tooth topography of urban development, but spiritually on separate planets. Not surpris- ingly, an area with such grandiose notions didn’t lower itself to vulgarities like actual numbers on the buildings, so it took me a while to find Number 44. I slowed the car to a cruise and asked these two old dames walking a tiny dog, its tiny legs pumping like a clockwork toy even though the women were barely shuffling. They directed me back the way I’d come. I turned and returned and eventually pulled up outside That Island.

  No name, naturally. No indicator that this was anything but another large house in another large garden in an area overflowing with them. I parked on the street and pushed against the huge wrought-iron gates—open. That was good: I’d been wondering about my next move should they be locked. Without a warrant I’d no legal authority to vault the gates and stroll on up there. But I probably would have done it anyway, and hang the consequences. Now I stepped through the gates as they creaked ominously, pulling them closed behind me.

  The gardens were lush, verdant, rather overgrown. Not as smartly kept as at Caritas Heights, but there was an agreeable sense of disorder about the place. Like the vegetation had been let run wild, up to a point. I liked it. Coniferous trees stretching for the heavens like giant fingers, shorter deciduous ones spreading and shedding and blocking the light from the long grass on which they stood. Creepers curling up and around trellises, rose bushes that reached three feet above my head, a not unpleasant smell of soft rottenness. This garden was dense with life, super-organic, ripe and heady. The house was coming into view as I walked the winding path, crunching through the blue and white pea gravel at my feet. It looked artificially colored, giving a nice contrast to the bounding nature all around. I hadn’t seen anyone else yet—not one living soul—which seemed a little weird to me. Shouldn’t there be a gardening staff, maintenance, security out front? I subconsciously touched the butt of my gun as it jostled against my hip.

  Now I could see That Island, the house itself. Again, not as impressive as Caritas—smaller, less striking, less shocking—but pleasing nonetheless. It was huge by any regular standard, three stories, with a steep pointed roof in the center, small turrets at either side, a stone-faced front, large windows, decorative wood beams, a widow’s walk running what looked like the whole way around. Old and old-fashioned, a little mixed-up, getting shabby, but charming and picturesque. It took me half a minute to reach the building, and still no sign of life. The place was silent but for vague, distant sounds of insects, arthritic tree branches moaning, a pond babbling somewhere. No traffic noise in this far. No noises at all. Eerily quiet.

  That Island was closed. Closed for business, closed to all activity. I shook the door by its brass handle to make sure but it was obvious: nobody was home. There weren’t any signs proclaiming it, the windows weren’t boarded up, but this joint was emptied out, ghostly. I peeked in the window to the left of the door and saw a greeting room, a sort of small foyer, with a walnut reception desk, rich-colored carpets, two armchairs, brackets in the wall for large candles. No dust, no cobwebs, no sheets covering the furniture. But no life either. It was like the Mary Celeste on land: as though everyone had simply vanished, poof, in an instant. There and then gone.

  Damn it. This was no good to me. I needed in. I projected ahead, envisaged calling Etienne, making up some bullshit story about chasing a perp to this place, seeing them bust in the window and following through… Yeah. That would have to do. I was going into That Island.

  I stepped back, looked around for something to throw, a rock, a heavy lump of wood. A smallish red brick lay nestled under weeds and moss, drowning in it, swallowed by all that hungry life. I bent down and worked the brick out of its spongy grave, turned back to the house, took a deep breath and leaned back to throw as hard as I could.

  Which meant I was off balance when a crazed fucking demon attacked me, leaping out of nowhere and clawing at my face, screaming like a banshee. Which led me to fall backwards, bringing her down too, crashing hard onto the gravel, bashing my coccyx off the brick I’d dropped behind me. A shard of pain spiked up my back and down my ass and leg, and the woman was still screeching, nails scratching at my face like a cat in an alleyway fight, and my own fighting instinct kicked in and I flapped at her hands with my hands, keep her away from the eyes, take the cuts to your flesh but keep her out of the goddamn eyes. My mind was shocked and dazzled, stunned numb, but my body was fighting back. She drew blood in two, three, four places on my cheeks and forehead, and I winced and took in tight little breaths and let myself go low to the ground and then pushed with my hips, with all my strength, ejecting her off me and springing to a standing position. I still couldn’t see her face as she rose from the ground, damp tendrils of hair straggling down it, obscuring it, but fuck that, I didn’t need to recognize her to hit her. I planted one foot in front of me and stepped forward with the other, my arm locked, my fist coiled and strong. I caught her good on the eye socket and she stumbled backwards but didn’t fall.

  My breath was coming fast and uneven, adrenaline flooding my system, making me feel high, kinetic, almost unhinged. Then she screamed again, a horrible, animalistic sound, and launched herself at me, claws out, eyes rolling wildly behind the veil of hair. The woman grabbed for my own hair and I thanked my lucky stars I decided to chop it all those years ago, pulling my head out of harm’s way, smacking her with my open palm on the ear as her momentum carried her past. The sound rang out, it sounded painful, and the maniac dashed off, around the side of the house. She was out of sight before my mind rejoined the battle and told the rest of me, Run, you asshole, get after her.

  I ran. I sped around the corner and saw her kicking heels speeding around the next corner and ran harder. I came around the back of the house, the garden different here, neater, smaller, more artifice than out front. I looked around, breathing through my nose, willing oxygen into my bloodstream, my teeth gritted, my face beginning to hurt. No sign of the crazy woman and then I heard her, wailing in pain as she struggled through a hedge at the edge of the property, maybe 15 yards away, hidden behind more of those massive trees. I ran towards the sound and through the hole she’d made in the hedge, my little frame slipping through easily. There she was, across the road, one quick glance back at me, panic and loathing on her face, and she was gone. I started running again.

  We fish-knifed through three or four streets, a small public park, the yard of a private boarding school, she always that little bit ahead of me but the distance diminishing. The woman was tiring, you could tell it by the way her head was starting to wobble. I was tiring too but I couldn’t let my head go, couldn’t let myself go, had to keep pushing hard and harder and harder still. I rounded a corner of yet another plush garden and saw nothing for a moment and then I saw her, she was on me again, charging with something long in her hands, a garden implement maybe, a rake or a fork, raised above her head like the executioner ’s axe. She screamed and I yelled and charged right back at her, instinct driving me now, and as we came within each other ’s orbits I ducked down low, bending my left leg and skidding on my left foot along the wet pavement and kicking like a fucking mule with the right. Bang, I caught her on the knee as she swung the weapon uselessly and she buckled and stumbled and fell, her head cracking off the ground, hopping back up into the air with the force of the impact, smacking down a second time, hopping, smacking, finally stopping. Her eyes rolled into dull oblivion and her head didn’t move again.

  I stood and absently rubbed my torn trousers, touched the bloodied knee underneath. My attacker was out cold. With a knock like that, she’d be lucky if she didn’t fractur
e her skull, but that wasn’t my worry right now. My breath was coming back to normal, I was forcing it back, deeper, slower, calmer. Be calm, Genie. Breathe and be calm. It was quiet and we were alone. After all that, I still hadn’t seen anyone else. That Island was an island, alright.

  I found a cigarette somewhere on my person, as if by radar, lit it and took a few deep drags. I smiled and shook my head, a little hysterical underneath the overwhelming relief, ecstatic to be alive and more-or-less in one piece. Then I crouched down to my attacker and pulled her hair to the side. I was looking at the insensible form of Dinah Spaulding, actor and creative consultant, and one of the “confessors” to Madeleine’s murder. I smiled again and patted her on the cheek.

  “Thanks, Dinah,” I muttered. “Thanks a lot, sweetheart.” The crazy gal with the sharp nails had just proved to me that there was a conspiracy.

  Chapter 21

  Odette

  EVERYTHING was speeding up, taking on its own impetus, a worrying velocity. Within two hours of my little dance with danger, That Island had been razed to the ground, Dinah Spaulding was claiming insanity and Liz Arendt had gone deep underground. I had to get a handle on all of this. I had to finish things soon.

  After gathering myself I’d grabbed a passerby and told her to call the emergency number and request back-up for Detective Auf der Maur, Homicide, while I stood guard over Spaulding. The cuts on my face began to really hurt as I waited for the cavalry, pinching and piercing in the cool air. A patrol car screeched to a halt, très dramatically, about ten minutes later. They bundled Spaulding into the back and I grabbed their standard-issue first aid kit, applying antiseptic cleanser with a thick cotton ball. It hurt like all hell but had to be done. The cuts were only skin-deep, I figured, no real damage caused. They’d fade in a few days. The patrol car whooshed Spaulding to lock- up and I walked back to That Island.

  We must have run faster and farther than it seemed at the time, because the return journey took about 15 minutes and when I got there the house was ablaze. I could see black smoke from the distance and broke into a trot as fast as my sore ass would allow. By the time I reached Number 44 I could see huge pillars of flame, orange and red, roaring into the sky. A small crowd had gathered in shock and curiosity, all remaining at a discreet distance outside the garden walls. I guess people really didn’t interfere in each other ’s business around here; decorum and propriety were everything. Not for me, though. I rudely shoved my way through them, hollering and waving my badge in the air like it was a fire-hose and I was here to quench the blaze, but nobody could have put this out. As I approached the building a fierce geyser of fire shot up from somewhere in the bowels of the house and ripped through the roof, which started to cave in on itself. It smelled like a professional job, literally: the sickly sweet odor of flammable oil suffused the air. And the fire appeared to be coming from within, from right in the center—The Arsonist’s Handbook, chapter one, page one. But I couldn’t get close enough to know for sure, couldn’t get any closer than about 25 yards away; the heat was too much, it was searing and unbearable.

  I went back to the front gate and had one of the rubberneckers call the fire brigade, though there wasn’t really any fear of the inferno spreading to other houses. The garden was heavy and sodden, it wouldn’t catch fire. I also had them call in two more prowlers and a forensics team on my authority. Still nobody had moved closer to the flaming building, and still I’d seen nobody inside or outside the doomed house. I made one last, wholly superfluous check that the crowd was keeping a safe distance from danger. Then I turned and watched That Island burn.

  Nobody knows nothing. Nobody seen nothing. You got nothing, cop.

  All the old clichés of police movies and paperback potboilers were starting to come true in my real life. Now I was sitting in Etienne’s office, weary, befuddled, slightly soot-blackened, with a plaster over the stitched-up cut on my forehead that had proved, on inspection, to be slightly more than just a scratch— Spaulding had nails like a hellcat. The Chief and me were running through the morning’s events, and I couldn’t tell which of our heads was spinning the quickest. It had been a weird fucking day so far.

  Etienne said, “No one saw anything. That’s, basically that’s where we stand, correct?”

  “Yep. Six officers corralled and questioned everybody at the scene of the fire. None of them noticed anyone acting suspiciously.”

  “And do you believe that?”

  “Mm…yeah. I think I do. I mean, this area, Chief. It’s real spread-out, big gardens, very private gardens, you know… Sure. Someone could have snuck in there, started the fire and snuck back out before it had really caught. Easy. People up there don’t pay much attention to other people’s business, either. They consider it a badge of honor to walk around with your nose stuck in the air.”

  “Alright, Auf der Maur, save the political speeches for later. Go on.”

  “Okay, uh, forensics can’t say yet what started the blaze. Like, the house was still burning by the time I left to come here. But one of ’em I spoke to, what was her name? Koutchner, right, the team leader. She reckons it was an incendiary device, like a small homemade bomb, maybe. Relatively simple to put together. Set off inside the house, probably in a center room, gasoline splashed around to speed up the process. Definitely wasn’t the outside of the building that was torched. So we’re maybe talking someone who had access. But this is all just speculation yet.”

  “The owner?” Etienne asked. “This Elizabeth Arendt? Could it have been her?”

  “I…suppose so. Yeah. Why not? Or with some help from her friends.”

  “And she’s disappeared?”

  “Uh-huh. Soon as I left That Island—that’s the name of the joint—I issued an arrest order on Arendt. Had one of our patrol cars head straight to her place of work. You know she’s an accountant or something, a financial controller, like a number cruncher? Works in MacDaffy’s, huge place down in the financial district. Wasn’t there. Her colleagues haven’t seen her all week. Which, they say, isn’t like Liz. She’s a real little busy bee, that one. Normally.”

  “And we’ve checked her home.”

  “Yep. That and her mom’s home and her sister ’s. Of Liz, there is no trace. And none of them have had any contact with her since last week sometime. Didn’t even know she’d been arrested. Figured she was just busy with work or whatever.”

  “Could they be covering?”

  “They could… I mean, family is family, right? But I don’t think so. I don’t think they know anything about Lizzie’s weird other life.”

  “I understand Spaulding is going to try for a psyche plea.”

  I hummed cynically. “Yeah. Claims temporary insanity. Says she’s never even heard of That Island. Spaulding can’t, or more likely won’t, say why she was there or why she attacked me. She actually is saying all this. Just, I mean, brazen like that. Says she doesn’t remember anything for weeks. Not the Madeleine confession, being questioned, Jamie Sobel, nada. Doesn’t know how she ended up in the clink. I could tell her.”

  I pointed to the cuts on my face and smiled wryly. Etienne allowed herself a smile—just a small one, all strictly within departmental guidelines—lifted her phone and muttered into it, “Kim, bring us in two coffees, would you, please?” She looked at me: “You’ll have coffee?” I nodded and Etienne repeated, “Two coffees, Kim, thank you.”

  She hung up and continued looking at me, that piercing gaze that made grown women feel like they were back in the infants’ class. I think I actually gulped as the Chief said, “Where do we stand now, Detective? The full story, if you would.”

  I gave it to her: “Okay. First up, this place today, this club. I went there because it came up in… Various sources pointed me towards it. A few I don’t want to name, a few I can tell you about when this is all wrapped up.”

  She nodded her assent. I went on, “Basically, That Island has something to do with Madeleine Greenhill’s murder. Or her life, at any rate. The
fact that Arendt and Spaulding are involved proves it, I think. It’s all tied in somehow. Anyway, this is why I was there in the first place. Figured I’d poke around, maybe dig something up. But now, I mean, forget it. The place being torched like that—we won’t find anything now.”

  “Until we track down Ms Arendt.”

  “Exactly. Next up, Bethany Gilbert’s killing last night: the two are connected. Her and Madeleine, they’re connected. I’m about 99 per cent sure the same woman did both murders.” “This…Erika something who tried to kill you?”

  “Twice. Uh-huh. Same one. Erika Baton they call her. I’m sure it was her killed the Gilbert girl too.”

  “What did Joanne Farrington say?”

  “Not the same weapon—the retractable steel baton thing—but Chief, it’s the same MO. I can feel it in my bones. It’s her.” Etienne dropped her head into her hand. “Jesus. And we knew this a few days ago. You and me, we knew who’d killed Madeleine Greenhill and allowed her to continue walking around. Now another girl is dead.”

  “There’s nothing we could have done, Chief. Honest to God, putting out an APB on Erika Baton would just have driven her into hiding. You don’t just trace an address and march in there and arrest someone like that. This woman is smart, she’s a profes- sional killer with a sewer rat’s instinct. She knows how to hide. And we’ve got a leak, somewhere inside. You know this. Someone here is connected to all this. We’ll have to catch Erika by the side door, you know?”