Chapter Forty-One
Forty-One
Beverley picks up the phone, turns the dial frantically.
She needs to speak to Roger. The call rings out, unanswered.
Frustrated, she slams down the receiver, casting her eyes around the newspaper office’s lobby.
Elsie is upstairs, gathering her belongings and making her excuses.
They have to be quick. Beverley lifts the receiver again, dials the main number for the police precinct.
Eventually someone picks up. She doesn’t recognize the voice.
“This is Beverley Lightfoot.” She knows she’ll get what she wants only by using her old name. “I have some information for Detective Greaves, on the Central Valley Slaughterer case. I need to speak to him. Urgently.”
“Detective Greaves is not in the office right now.”
Beverley grits her teeth. She knows what this means.
“Is there anyone e—” Beverley is cut off by the dial tone.
She groans. Now there’s only one other option. She really doesn’t want to do it. She knows it’s risky—if Roger’s off shift and at home, then Enid will be there with him—but she’s going to have to go there to tell him what she and Elsie know.
He has never actually given her his address, but she knows where he lives.
She has imagined his life with Enid so very often: a perfect whitewashed house with a couple of seats on the porch, where he’d drink a cool beer on a hot evening; a well-stocked kitchen, Enid making pies from scratch.
If Beverley dwells on it too much, it makes her feel as if she has filth under her fingernails.
Enid doesn’t deserve it. Beverley knows that. She doesn’t deserve all the sneaking around and the lies, so very many lies.
And now Beverley is going to have to meet her.
Will Enid be able to tell? Will she take one look at Beverley and see her husband’s kisses on her?
It’s not a long drive to Roger’s leafy suburb, and when she pulls up, the house is more modest than she expected.
There are no lounge seats out front, but there is a large oak tree in the yard, its branches gnarled with age.
A few leaves are starting to burnish to amber.
Fall is on the way. Things are changing.
She steps out of the car but finds she cannot make her way in just yet. She leans briefly against the driver’s door and considers the house, imagining Enid and Roger treading their way through the hallways, clasping fingers briefly as they pass each other.
She considers the large living room windows, imagining what happens behind them when the curtains are drawn. Does Roger kiss Enid when he returns at the end of the day? Does Enid even know about the killer they’ve been seeking? Does she know she is being so awfully betrayed?
Beverley wishes she could stay this way, on the periphery of a marriage she is about to ruin, but the police need this information right now. She takes a deep breath and pushes herself off of the car.
She can feel the neighbors’ curious eyes on her back as she makes her way toward the door, raises her hand to knock. She pauses, puts an ear to the wood. Nothing. She grasps the knocker and beats the door loudly.
“Hello?” she calls reluctantly, knocks again, waits for footsteps.
Has Roger mentioned that he and Enid were going away? She doesn’t think so.
She looks around her, assessing her options, then steps into the flower bed, eases her way past a rosebush until she reaches a window.
She cups her hands together and peers through the glass.
Everything appears normal inside. There is a large television, switched off, and a coffee table with a few magazines piled up on it and a pair of slippers by its side.
Bookshelves line the walls, neatly ordered.
There are no abandoned cups or plates to suggest that someone was disturbed and had to leave, no signs to suggest anything untoward. Roger and Enid must both be fine.
Unless…
Beverley’s stomach twists. What if Roger already knew that Peter Farrer was the killer?
What if he confronted him, went behind Cornwell’s back to show him who was really the expert in this case, and things ended badly for him?
Could Peter have been here, at the house? Could he have taken Roger and Enid?
She swallows. She knows she should wait, check that Roger and Enid are okay. But she has no more time to waste. The women will have to confront Sharon themselves and hope she believes them.
As she turns the key in her car’s ignition, her brain buzzes with something undefinable, something tinny and nagging and persistent.
She cannot afford to stop. She cannot afford to be pulled off track.
She is so close to the final act; she cannot be distracted now.
Peter Farrer is the killer. He has slaughtered five women, and if she doesn’t get to Sharon’s soon, he will be free to kill more.