Nicci French - Until it's Over

The image was of the same woman Owen had photographed several times: perfectly bald, with a high-cheekboned unsmiling face and close-set eyes. But this time the eyes were shut. She was arranged like a corpse and on her face were marks. I stared while the image blurred, then resolved. Slashes scored firmly over her alabaster skin. Unequivocally like the slashes… Bile rose in my throat.

‘Hello.’

I spun round, letting the photos drop back on to the table and fan out.

‘Owen,’ I said. Fear was rippling through me and my mouth was dry.

‘You look done in.’ He gave me a smile that at any other time would have filled me with pleasure.

‘Yes.’

‘Horrible,’ he said. ‘I mean for you.’

‘You mean for her.’

‘For you. Do you want to tell me?’

‘No.’ I felt cold to the bone. Cold, tired, scared, wretched and sick. I wrapped my arms round my body and hugged myself.

‘Sometimes it’s better to…’

‘No.’

‘All right.’

‘Owen, I want to show you something.’ I shuffled through the photos on his desk, noticing that my hands were trembling, until I came to the one of the slashed face. ‘There.’

‘So?’ He looked at me, his face hardening.

‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want you to tell me – to tell me -’ I found I was having difficulty in forming words; they felt thick and unwieldy in my mouth. I pressed my hands together and continued: ‘To tell me why the marks on this woman’s face match the marks on the faces of Ingrid de Soto and Leah.’

There was an absolute silence. His face grew grim, as if the lighting had been turned down in the room, and he stared at me.

‘Well?’ I asked at last.

He took a step forward and, though I shrank back, he grasped my arms so hard that I felt his fingers digging painfully into my skin. ‘What are you saying?’

‘They were mutilated like that,’ I whispered.

‘Leah and the other?’

‘Yes. Let go, you’re hurting.’

He dropped his hands but didn’t move away.

‘Nobody knows. I wasn’t allowed to tell. How did you know?’

‘Shut up for a moment. Let me think.’

‘You must have known. Unless.’ I stopped.

‘Unless it was me?’

‘Yes.’

He gave a sour smile. ‘You think I took the photographs, then went and killed a woman – no, two women to make them look like that. Do you want to make a run for it now, before I attack you too?’

‘Stop it, Owen. Tell me.’

‘What?’ He gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Tell you I didn’t kill them? That would be enough for you, would it? A denial?’

‘They’re identical.’

‘You need to decide whether or not you trust me.’

Without knowing what I was going to do, I lifted my hand and gave him a stinging slap on his cheek and he reeled back, lifting a fist. ‘This isn’t about us, you idiot,’ I said. ‘This is about women who are being murdered. You have to explain.’

Owen looked at me. He lowered his fist, unclenched it, and took a step backwards. His face lost its hard look, and instead became weary and bleak. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’

‘So?’

‘I don’t know.?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘The only explanation I can think of is that it’s a nasty coincidence. But I guess you’re sick of coincidences.’

‘If I were a detective, I’d want to know when you took the photograph. What day, what time.’

‘If you were a detective, I’d tell you I don’t know,’ said Owen. ‘I could tell you within a few days.’

‘Isn’t the time printed on the image?’

‘I don’t use digital for this. We were both shooting dozens of rolls of film, day after day. This one was taken…’ Owen paused for thought ‘… between something like the beginning of May and a week or two ago.’

‘That’s not good enough. Would…’ I hesitated and pretended to search for the name of the woman I’d seen in his photographs ‘… Andrea remember more precisely?’

‘I doubt it.’ He crossed to the window and stared out. ‘You say exactly the same?’

‘Pretty much.’

He picked up the photograph, looked at it, then said, ‘I guess I have to take this to the police, don’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going out now,’ he said. ‘I might be some time.’

‘Owen?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Who else has seen these, apart from me?’

‘Nobody. Not even my agent. Not even Andrea. They’ve been here in the folders.’

‘I guess it could be a coincidence,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Maybe it’s just the way men see women,’ said Owen. ‘That’s what you think, anyway, isn’t it?’

I frowned at him. ‘Do you think this is funny?’

‘No, I don’t. Why do you think I’m leaving?’ He gestured towards his overflowing suitcase. ‘You should leave too.’

‘You think so?’

‘There’s a curse on this house.’

I shivered. ‘Sometimes I’m so scared I can’t breathe,’ I said. ‘And sometimes it doesn’t seem real and I tell myself that soon I’ll wake up and none of it will have happened.’

‘So who can you trust? Astrid, who do you trust?’

I stared at him for a moment and he stared back. Something about him seemed different, darker than I’d known. ‘Terrible coincidences happen, don’t they?’ I said.

Owen took a step towards me and scrutinized me. It was as if he was trying to see something that even I didn’t know was there. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘But…’

‘About Pippa.’

‘Things like that don’t mean anything to Pippa,’ I said. ‘But they do to me, and I thought…’ I stopped and turned away from his burning gaze.

‘You thought they did to me too?’

‘I guess.’

‘If you need to know,’ he said, ‘it was before anything happened between us. I wanted you to know that. It’s important to me.’

‘I knew that,’ I said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Right, I’m off to the police with this. Why don’t you start packing?’

‘Don’t you get it yet, Mel? They think it’s one of us.’

I stood outside the kitchen, my hand lifted half-way to the door, listening to his words. The fear that was always inside me seemed to swell now, blocking off my passageways, preventing me breathing or uttering a sound.

‘But how can they…?’

‘And that’s not all.’ Davy’s voice, more authoritative than I’d ever heard it, cut off Mel’s wail. ‘That’s why Owen’s packing his bag. That’s why Dario’s running round like a headless chicken. That’s why Miles was throwing up in the bathroom and putting all those letters from Leah into the garbage before he’s marched off to the police station. That’s why Astrid looks completely distraught.’

I put my hand on the slightly open door, waiting to push it.

‘But the police are wrong,’ cried Mel, her voice cracking in distress.

‘Are they?’

‘Yes, of course they are. What are you saying, Davy? You don’t mean this. You can’t. This is horrible, just horrible.’

‘We have to look at it clearly, my love, and if that means…’

‘I heard what you were saying,’ I said to Davy.

‘I didn’t mean to make this worse.’

‘No. I agree with you. That’s what the police think and that’s what we’re all trying not to think but thinking anyway.’

‘Are the police treating you properly?’

I shrugged. ‘That’s hardly the point. It’s like a frenzy down at the station. There’s an incident room and photos and charts everywhere, and about thirty police officers charging around. Have you seen Miles?’