Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(72)

He stood back and admired his handiwork. The room was an assault on the senses. Wall-to-wall pictures, articles, photos of death. He imagined the moment the police would break down the door to his apartment and burst in. They would find this room, this shrine, and it would be photographed, and those photos would be published in print and online—and one day, very soon, a book would be written about him too.

There was a soft tone as an email came through on his computer. He went to it and guided the mouse to open the email. It was a message from an eBay seller. He had won his bid on a vintage bedspread. He smiled a gummy smile. He printed off the image of the bedspread and took it over to the article glued to his wall, where there were images from the inside of Kate Marshall’s flat in Deptford. He held it up against the photo of her bedspread, taken in her bedroom in the aftermath of Peter Conway’s attack on her.

“Yes,” he said, comparing the two. “It’s a perfect match.”





40

Ten miles away, Enid Conway sat at her kitchen table preparing to take the latest messages from the Fan to Peter. It was a messy job, slicing open the sweet toffees to scrape out the soft centers. Her clothes were covered in stains, and her kitchen table was strewn with lumps of melted toffee and chocolate. She worked with a surgical scalpel, which made the neatest, cleanest cut, and she wore latex surgical gloves. The toffee couldn’t be handled for long—it quickly melted in her hands—so she was working with frozen toffees. She also had the heating switched off, and the kitchen windows were all open. Cold air circulated and with it a smell of takeaway food and exhaust fumes.

It was often noisy at night, and it was something she was used to after so many years, but tonight it made her jittery. A couple of kids were roaring up and down the street on a motorbike, and the high-pitched drone of the engine was going right through her.

She took another toffee and carefully removed the wrapper. Her hands were sweaty under the latex gloves, and she had trouble keeping the toffee still as she carefully pressed the tip of the surgical blade into it, working her way around. She needed to slice it clean in half so when it was put back together the join looked neat.

There was a shout from next door, and it made her jump; the toffee she was holding slipped, and the tip of the blade went into the ball of her thumb.

The sweaty latex glove began to quickly fill with blood, and she hurried to the sink.

“Shit,” she cried, pulling off the glove and holding her thumb under the cold tap. It hurt like hell. And she looked at the wound, squeezing it. It was deep. “Fucking hell!”

She held it under the tap for a few minutes until the bleeding stopped. And then she took out her first aid kit, applying antiseptic cream and then a tight gauze and plaster. When her hands were dry, she took a bottle of Teacher’s whisky from the cupboard, and she poured herself a glass and downed it with a couple of painkillers.

She surveyed the mess on the kitchen table: the melted lumps of toffee, the balled-up latex gloves, and the heat-sealing machine that sat on the edge. The whisky warmed her insides, and she went to the two passports that were sitting on the counter next to the microwave. Enid checked for any blood spotting through the bandage on her thumb, and seeing the bandage was clean, she opened the passports.

The first had her photo, but the name was June Munro. June was the same age but with a different birthday.

She was shocked at the quality of the fake; the paper felt right to the touch, and there was the thick plastic last page with the biometric data. The passport would expire in nine years. There were a few stamps in the back for authenticity: a two-week trip to Croatia the year before, and another to Iceland, and another to the US. There was also an American B-1/B-2 traveler’s visa. She picked up the second. It had the same stamps for Croatia and America. The photo of Peter that she’d taken in the visitors’ room at Great Barwell looked good. His name in the passport was Walter King, which she thought was odd, but he looked almost distinguished with his gray hair. His birthday made him one year younger.

Inside the microwave was a ten centimeter–thick packet of euros: four hundred and fifty €500 notes totaling €225,000. She also had another packet of smaller-denomination euros totaling €7,050 and a set of ￡20 notes totaling ￡5,000.

The sight of it all made her shake with excitement and fear. She had taken three of the €500 notes to the bank, choosing them at random from the pile. It had been a risk, but she had to know. She’d successfully changed them for pounds. They were genuine. The passports looked kosher. He’d told her that they’d cost fifteen grand apiece from a very reliable source. None of this had come for free. On delivery of this all, she’d signed her house over to a blind trust. It valued the house at just under ￡240,000. It was worth more, especially for the ghoul factor, as the childhood home of a serial killer.

Enid poured herself another whisky. It made her nervous having all this money in the house. She was due to visit Peter the next day, and she needed to stash it all somewhere safe.

It would all be worth it, she told herself. She knew they would cross the Channel by boat and slip into a Spanish port unnoticed. The passports were set up for the Schengen Area covering the whole of Europe. As far as the authorities were concerned, June Munro and Walter King were both in Spain. After Peter’s escape, every port, train station, and airport would be on high alert, but once they were in Spain, they would be able to lie low for months or even years and move around Europe without having to go through extensive passport checks.