Thread of Evidence Read online

  She remembered seeing a small evening bag of Simone’s on the top shelf of the wardrobe. It would look better than the tatty old thing she had. Vikki hesitated only for a moment, then told herself that if Simone didn’t notice that the dress was gone, she was hardly likely to miss an evening bag.

  In for a penny, she thought recklessly as she transferred her few bits and pieces to the evening bag. She tucked it beneath her arm and stood before the mirror again, turning this way and that. It would have to do, she decided. There was no way she was going to let that kind of money slip through her fingers. Besides, if it was anything like the other times, the dress would come off as soon as she got there anyway.

  Now, she must do something with her hair.

  Vikki Lane approached the entrance of the Tudor Hotel with trepidation. She’d walked all the way from Cresswell Street, and her feet were sore. She leaned against a shop window, balancing herself, first on one leg, then on the other, as she took off each shoe, and sighed with relief as her feet were exposed to the cool night air.

  Somewhere nearby a clock began to strike the hour. Vikki peered unbelievingly at her watch. Eighteen minutes to twelve and the second hand was still. She shook the watch violently, but it made no difference.

  And she’d been congratulating herself on arriving early!

  Muttering beneath her breath, she thrust her aching feet back into her shoes and crossed the street to the hotel. No time for caution now; she’d just have to chance it.

  She could see the desk and the lift beyond it through the big glass doors. A man and a woman stood behind the desk, their backs toward her. She sucked in her breath. She hadn’t counted on the man being there; if he was the one Simone had told her about, she’d never get past the desk. Hardly daring to breathe, Vikki opened the door and slipped inside, eyes glued to the pair behind the desk. If either one of them turned round, they couldn’t help but see her.

  She slipped off her shoes and flew barefoot across the marble floor to the safety of the stairs. She didn’t stop until she reached the second floor, pausing only long enough at the top of the steps to put on her shoes before moving down the corridor.

  Room 203 was at the far end. She raised her hand to knock, but as she did so the door swung inward. It was dark inside. Vikki jumped when someone spoke.

  “You’re late! I told you midnight on the dot. Come in and shut the door.”

  She recognized the voice and breathed easier as she stepped inside. “I’m ever so sorry,” she said, “but my watch …” A hand rested on her shoulder. “Never mind that,” he said impatiently. “Let me take your coat.”

  “It’s all right,” she said quickly, fearing he would turn on the light and see the mess she’d made of the back of the dress. “I can manage.” She began to shrug out of the coat, but his hand tightened on her shoulder and she found herself being turned with her back toward him.

  “It’s no trouble,” he said. “No trouble at all.”

  CHAPTER 3

  SUNDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER

  At the front desk of the Tudor, Brenda Jones yawned. She wished Quint would stop fussing and let her get on with her work. It was bad enough having to work the night shift without the night manager poking and prying into everything she did.

  The muted sound of a buzzer broke the silence. Brenda picked up the phone. “How may I help you?” she asked pleasantly, more for the benefit of Norman Quint than because she was feeling particularly helpful.

  “Help me,” gasped a hoarse voice. “Please help me. Quickly. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you, sir, but—”

  “For God’s sake, come quickly. Room 203. I need …”

  There was a crash, then silence. The line was dead. “Hello? Hello, sir? Are you still there?” Brenda listened intently for several seconds, then, frowning, turned to Quint.

  “What is it, Mrs. Jones?”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Quint. I think it could be someone playing the fool.” The voice had sounded odd. And there was always someone who thought it very funny to have her run up to his room for nothing—or to proposition her. “He said he needed help.”

  “What room?”

  “Room 203.”

  Bolen! What the hell did he think he was playing at tonight? “Are you sure?” Quint asked sharply. “Did he ask to speak to me?”

  “He said he needed help,” said Brenda worriedly. “He sounded … odd.”

  Quint’s mouth set in a thin line. He was tempted to tell the woman to forget it, but on the other hand, since it was Bolen … “Go up and check,” he ordered brusquely, “but don’t take all night about it.”

  Brenda crossed the floor to the lift, and once inside, pressed 2.

  The sound of raised, excited voices grew louder as the lift came level with the first floor and stopped. The doors opened, and she found herself face to face with a crowd of boisterous young men pushing and shoving each other around.

  Part of the Rugby crowd.

  The thought of that mob crowding into the lift with her was too much. She moved to get off, but was forced back and surrounded as they all pushed into the lift.

  “Going up, then, are we, luv?” yelled one lad in her ear. He was fat and sweaty, had long, lank hair, and smelt of beer. “Let’s all go for a ride together.” The doors closed and the lift began to rise.

  “I must get out,” said Brenda firmly. “There’s an emergency.”

  “Oh, aye? Well, we’ve got an emergency as well, haven’t we, lads? We’re one short for the game, and you’ll do nicely in the scrum.”

  The roar of approval that went up was deafening in the small space. Brenda Jones prided herself on her ability to cope in most situations, but surrounded as she was by this unruly mob, she was suddenly afraid.

  The doors opened. She struggled to get through, but no one would give way. “I must get out,” she pleaded. “I told you, there’s an emergency.”

  “Oooohhhhhh dear,” said Lanky Hair.

  “Oooohhhhhh dear,” chorused the others, and a voice in the corner began to sing: “Oh, dear, what can the matter be? Oh, dear …” The others joined in, roaring the song at the top of their lungs.

  The doors closed and the lift continued upward.

  Let me take your coat. It’s no trouble. Let me take your coat. It’s no trouble …

  The words kept running through her brain like an endless tape. Why wouldn’t it stop? Why was it so dark?

  Vikki moved her head, and lights exploded behind her eyes. Her stomach heaved and red-hot fluid spewed from her mouth. She could feel it running down her chin and neck. She choked, struggling for breath. She vomited again and forced herself to roll on her side, gasping, gagging, retching as yet another stream spewed forth. She struggled to her knees, holding herself up with shaking arms and praying for the pain inside her head to stop.

  Vikki opened her eyes and gazed with horror at the stinking mess around her. She couldn’t think. Her vision blurred every time she moved, and she didn’t know where she was. Her arms were shaking so hard that she had to force herself to turn and sit up. Her vision cleared.

  As she stared at the scene before her she wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

  The man lay naked in a pool of blood beside the bed, slack-jawed, eyes wide and staring. His hairy chest was soaked in blood, dark, almost black. A telephone, dragged from the bedside table, lay on its side beneath his outflung hand. It, too, was smeared with blood.

  Vikki scrambled on all fours in her panic to get away, oblivious to the pain stabbing at her head. She slipped and fell, scrambled to get up and found her hand entangled in some soft material.

  Simone’s dress! Blood-spattered and torn. She didn’t understand. How could the dress be … ? She looked down.

  She, too, was naked and her skin was streaked with blood.

  “Damn that woman. Where is she, anyway?” muttered Norman Quint. The telephones were ringing and she was nowhere to be seen. He glanced at his watch. Twelve-thirty and no sig
n of her; she’d been gone for at least fifteen minutes.

  Annoyed, he threw down his pen and picked up the phone, only to hold it away from his ear as a woman’s voice, shrill with anger and indignation, demanded to know what he was going to do about the louts charging up and down the fourth-floor corridor, keeping everyone awake.

  Before he could reply, two more calls came in, and then a third, all voicing the same complaint. Swearing beneath his breath, Quint came out from behind the desk and punched the button for the lift. Behind him, the telephones continued to ring. “Come on! Come on!” he muttered as he watched the light above the door.

  It had to be that Rugby crowd. The ones who had booked in late when the bus that was supposed to take them home had broken down. They’d all been boozing heavily, but he couldn’t afford to turn that many people away. So he had charged them top rate and taken them in.

  The lift arrived and Quint got in. Still muttering, he stabbed the button for the fourth floor. The doors had almost closed when a wraithlike figure darted across the open space between the bottom of the stairs and the front door. In a second she was gone and the doors of the lift had closed. Quint frowned. He’d only caught a glimpse of her, but he was sure the girl was barefoot and carrying her shoes.

  It took almost half an hour to sort things out and get everyone back to their rooms. Fortunately, by the time Quint arrived, some of the more sober members of the team—who had themselves been trying in vain to sleep—had come to the rescue, and it was they who finally took charge and wrestled their friends into their respective rooms.

  Brenda Jones was shaken but physically unharmed. In desperation, she had pretended to enter into the spirit of the game, hoping for a chance to slip away, but Lanky Hair stuck by her side, as did a couple of his mates, and their idea of a contact sport was not one she shared.

  She felt unclean, and as she and Quint descended in the lift together, she began to tremble. Even Quint, who was not the most sensitive of men, could see that she was upset, and in a rare moment of compassion told her to go out to the kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. And it was only then, while she was waiting for the kettle to boil, that Brenda remembered the call from 203.

  Later, no matter how hard she tried, Vikki couldn’t remember how she’d managed to force herself to move. It was all a jumbled blur, with images appearing and disappearing like pictures flashed at random on a screen.

  She remembered the clock with its bright-red numerals beside the bed: 12:18 A.M. She couldn’t believe it. She was sure she’d been unconscious for hours, yet according to the clock it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. She thought it must have stopped, but even as she watched, the figure changed to 12:19.

  And she remembered the sheer terror of the moment when she realized how it would look if someone found her there; remembered, too, trying to wash the blood off her body, and seeing her face for the first time in the mirror and bursting into tears.

  There were scratches on her face and neck; one eye was almost closed, her lips were swollen, and a bruise was spreading darkly on her chin. She’d been beaten, yet try as she might, she couldn’t remember a thing about it, and that scared her more than anything.

  She remembered the knife. A knife stained with blood that skittered across the floor to disappear beneath the bed when she’d snatched up the dress. She’d recoiled, sobbing hysterically as she scrabbled about the floor, frantically searching for her knickers and her shoes.

  She found her shoes, but her knickers were nowhere to be seen, and she daren’t stay any longer. In frantic haste, she scrubbed at the top of the dress in the bathroom basin, and dried it on a towel as best she could before pulling it on. It felt wet and cold against her skin, but it would have to do. She found her mac on the back of a chair, slipped it on and buttoned it to the neck to hide the tattered dress. There was a scarf in the pocket of the mac, and she pulled it tightly round her head to hide as much of her bruised face as possible.

  Thank God there had been no one in the corridor. She’d been tempted to go down the back stairs, but she didn’t know where they might lead, so, shoes in hand, she’d returned the way she’d come. She’d hesitated only for a moment at the bottom of the stairs before bolting for the door. Outside, she’d paused just long enough to put on her shoes before walking swiftly through the darkest back streets that she could find.

  What was she going to tell Simone? The dress was torn and soaking wet, and … Oh, God, the bag! Simone’s evening bag! Vikki groaned aloud. She’d completely forgotten it till now. How was she going to explain that away without telling Simone everything?

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t tell anyone what had happened. How could she when she didn’t know what had happened herself? Everything was so mixed up in her head. She remembered nothing between the time she’d stepped inside room 203 and when she woke up on the floor.

  How could she explain to anyone that she’d killed the man who’d hired her for the night, yet couldn’t remember doing it? No one would believe her.

  A car cruised slowly past the end of the street. Vikki slipped into the deep shadow of a shop doorway and tried to stop herself from shaking. Coppers! That was all she needed. She leaned her pounding head against the glass. She wanted to curl up and go to sleep—to sleep and wake to find that this was nothing but a nightmare.

  But it wasn’t, was it? It was all too real and there was nowhere she could go. She thought of turning herself in to the police, then dismissed the thought at once. She’d be charged with murder. They’d remember her from two weeks ago when she’d spent a night in the cells with Joanna Freeborn. They’d check … Joanna!

  Vikki held her hands to her head as she tried to think. Joanna had said she lived on a narrow boat at the end of a canal that was no longer used. What was it called? Something or other Arm. Raddington! That was it. “Rhymes with Paddington, like the station in London,” Joanna had told her. Vikki had promised herself that she would visit Joanna one day if only to thank her again for helping her through that dreadful night.

  Terrified of what might happen in the morning, and unable to sleep, Vikki remembered how Joanna had sat with her for much of the night, talking, soothing, and, more importantly, listening. “I felt as if I’d known her all my life,” she told Simone the following day. “I felt safe with her.”

  In fact, Vikki recalled, she had talked of almost nothing but Joanna for days, until Simone had turned on her and told her bluntly she was sick to death of hearing about this woman who lived on a boat. “Who put good money out to pay your fine?” she demanded. “Who’s been watching out for you these past weeks? If this woman is so bloody fabulous, why not go and live off her for a while? Now get your arse out there on the street and start paying some of that money back!”

  The words had stung at the time, but thinking about it now, Vikki realized that Simone had every right to be annoyed. If it hadn’t been for Simone, she might well be in jail at this very moment, and she was grateful. But she didn’t want to live like this; tramping the streets at night; trying to avoid the police; shaking with fear every time she got into a car with a stranger, wondering what he would want to do with her, and knowing he could do anything he chose.

  In the cold darkness of the cell that night, Joanna had given her a glimpse of another kind of life, a life where she wouldn’t have to be afraid, where she could live with normal, decent people, have a normal, decent job, and a life where love meant something other than a one-night stand.

  Tears rolled unchecked down Vikki’s cheeks as she sank slowly to the ground. Propped with her back against the door, battered, bruised, head pounding with every pulse-beat, she just wanted to sleep, never to wake again. She drew up her knees, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her throbbing head. Her thoughts began to drift and she found herself thinking once more of her erstwhile friend.

  Joanna Freeborn was a striking woman. Her arms and legs were tanned deep brown, and her face glowed with the vibrant colour that only long ex
posure to sun and wind and rain can bring. Her jet-black hair fell almost to her waist in lustrous waves, and there were crow’s-foot lines around her eyes that crinkled when she smiled. How old was she? Thirty, thirty-five, perhaps? It was impossible to tell.

  She worked, she’d told Vikki, in the local pub, and belonged to a group called The Wanderers. “We do plays,” she said. “There are eight of us, although it’s not often we can all get away at the same time. We play village halls, mainly, the odd fête, and last winter we did The Foreigner for four nights at a theatre in Chester, and they said they’d have us back again this year.”

  The police had charged Joanna with being drunk in charge of a horse. “But that was a lie for a start,” she told Vikki. “That horse had a mind of its own, believe you me! Anyway, I’d have brought it back in the morning.”

  She’d been to a party in town, missed the last bus, and decided to walk the five miles home. But halfway there she saw a horse grazing on the grass verge. “A big white horse. Friendly old thing. There was no one about; no open gate nearby where he might have come from, so I took it as a sign from heaven that he’d been put there for me to ride.”

  Her eyes danced. “I tried explaining that to the policeman, but he was an officious little sod, so I ended up in here for the night.”

  Now, huddled in the doorway, shivering, Vikki remembered other things Joanna had told her that night. The pub where she worked was called the Invisible Man. Joanna had said the sign outside the pub showed a small terrier on the end of a leash, but there was no one holding the other end. The space where the dog’s owner should have been was blank. Vikki hadn’t known whether to believe her or not.