Хилари Боннер - Deadly Dance

No, thought Vogel, but we damned well have missed it. We’ve been working alongside a crazed murderer for years and we didn’t have a clue.

I knew exactly what would be happening within MCIT. I had specialist knowledge of similar investigations. Nothing on this scale, of course, nothing like the havoc I, Aeolus, have wreaked. But I knew I could second-guess the lot of them.

There would already be a call out for Willis’s vehicle. They had probably already spotted me at least once or twice. Sooner or later, they would pick up on the direction in which I was now travelling. They would have already sent a team to search Willis’s home.

That didn’t matter. They would find nothing there that would lead them to be able to apprehend me. Nothing which would shed any light on what I had done in order to protect myself. I was Aeolus and I could not be harmed. I must not be harmed. I still had another life awaiting me in another land.

Perhaps they would work it out in the end, but that’s probably giving them too much credit. Anyway, by then, I would be clean away. After all, how would they dare stop me, when my freedom was the price they must pay to allow poor, little Dawn Saslow the chance to survive?

Not that the chance was all that great, fifty-fifty probably. Sure, I’d left her food and drink, but she probably needed medical attention from the blows I dealt her.

I wouldn’t expect her to last long. Her only real hope for surviving was if nobody got in my way and I reached my destination safely and quickly. Otherwise, she would die.

I felt no animosity towards Saslow. Indeed, she had been probably the least annoying of my alleged colleagues within the Avon and Somerset Constabulary.

But neither did I feel anything else for her. No affection. Not even professional regard. It is impossible to feel such things, when her abilities were so much more inferior than mine.

I wished her no harm. But if she died, then she died. I did not care. I was Aeolus. I had to protect myself.

Vogel was on his way back to his office when Willis’s ex-wife arrived. So much had happened since his phone conversation with her, that he’d practically forgotten that Vera Court had agreed to come in.

Vogel had never met Vera. He’d transferred to the Avon and Somerset only relatively recently, long after Willis and his wife had parted. In any case, he doubted that Willis would have ever included his wife much in his working life. Vogel, being a private man himself, hadn’t even considered that there was anything odd in Willis’s reticence concerning anything personal. He kicked himself now. Willis was right, he thought, he was supposed to be so damned clever and yet he’d spotted nothing amiss. He chastised himself. Another, more outgoing officer might have been so much more aware. Although, of course, Willis had somehow or other kept up his front within the force for many years. And nobody came close to guessing what lay beneath his calm exterior.

Vera Court was a surprise. Vogel didn’t know why she should be, but she was.

She was tall and thin, with spiky blonde hair. She was dressed young and streetwise, sporting stonewashed jeans, boots and a funky, leather jacket. She appeared to be neither mumsy nor downtrodden ex — nothing like the rather cliché-ridden image he had imagined.

She and Vogel walked together through the incident room, en route to his office. Vogel could see her looking around at the photographs and charts lining the walls. She no doubt watched the news on TV and read newspapers. Vera Court had already made it clear on the phone that she was no fool.

‘Is this about these murders?’ she asked. ‘The serial killer with different identities?’

Vogel dodged the question as he gestured for her to take a seat.

‘Look, please bear with me,’ he said. ‘I just need to ask you some more questions. First of all, can I ask you if John was ever violent towards you when you were together?’

Vera Court looked stricken.

‘Why are you asking that?’

‘Please, Mrs Court, I know this must be very disconcerting, but could you just answer my question. Was John ever violent towards you?’

Vera Court answered quickly then.

‘Once,’ she said.

Vogel was mildly surprised. Not that Willis had been violent towards his ex-wife, but that it had only been once. He studied the woman carefully. Was she telling the truth? He was almost sure she wouldn’t lie. She’d already worked out how serious this all was.

It was just that, in his experience, if a man was violent towards his wife once, he almost always was again. And again. This was unusual. But then, everything was unusual in this case. John Willis thought he was a figure out of Greek mythology. No. He didn’t think he was, Vogel corrected himself, he became a figure out of Greek mythology in his own head. Freda Heath had told him that people with DID actually did become their alter egos.

‘It was the beginning of the end really, Mr Vogel,’ Vera Court continued. ‘In more ways than one. He nearly killed me.’

She paused. Vogel waited in silence for her to begin again.

‘He tried to strangle me. He put his hands around my neck and squeezed. All the while, it was as if he were not seeing me. We were in bed. I was asleep. Can you imagine that, Mr Vogel? I woke up to find him on top of me. I was gasping for breath. I couldn’t speak and, in any case, I instinctively knew it would make no difference. There was a pair of scissors on the bedside table. I grabbed them and lashed out. I stabbed him in the shoulder. It wasn’t very deep, but then he went really crazy. He started to hit me in the face. He dragged me out onto the landing and pushed me down the stairs. All the while he didn’t speak. I fell awkwardly. I broke my ankle and my left wrist. He just walked casually down the stairs, stepped over me, opened the front door and left the house.

‘I didn’t hit my head thank God. I was in horrible pain, but I remained conscious. The children were in the house. The eldest, Sam, he was five and little Lucy just three. They both woke up. There’d been such a commotion. Sam came on to the landing. I told him I’d been a silly mummy and fallen down the stairs. I said would he go to the phone and bring it to me. I dialled 999. I also told the emergency services I’d fallen down the stairs. I don’t know if they believed me.

‘I’m sure they didn’t at the hospital. They kept asking me about the marks on my neck, then questions about my husband. I did what so many wives do, even nowadays. I told them nothing and made excuses. I said my husband locked up men who beat up their wives, that he was a police officer. They backed off a bit then.

‘I should have told the truth but, apart from anything else, I was in shock. John had never laid a finger on me before. Although sometimes, if we’d just had a silly row, only like husbands and wives do, he would look at me as if he hated me. Stare at me and not say anything. I’d sometimes thought he might attack me, but he just used to back off in silence and go to the spare room. Afterwards, he would seem to be perfectly normal again, in as much as John was ever normal. He always blamed his migraines.’ She glanced up at Vogel. ‘I expect you know about the migraines?’

Vogel nodded. The times, albeit not that often, when Willis had simply said his head had gone and he had a migraine. Like on the day Melanie had been killed, he would always leave at once. Wherever they were, at Kenneth Steele or out on inquiries. Usually, he would drive himself home. Vogel had occasionally wondered about that. How could a man drive in that condition? Vogel had never suffered from migraines, but his mother had. During her brief yet severe bouts, she’d been incapable of functioning at all, let alone driving a car. Now it was all beginning to make sense.