Butchers and Other Stories of Crime

The Staring Man

When she returned from the honeymoon, Donna took two rolls of film to a shop in Kensington High Street that printed them the same day. She was dying to see herself in all the exquisite clothes Jamie had bought for her in Vienna. There were traditional Austrian dirndls and a dazzling selection of designer suits and dresses from the big-name couturiers in the Graben. Thoughtfully, she had travelled light. All she had taken on the honeymoon, apart from jeans, T-shirts and underclothes, was the Sonia Rykiel gown that she had been married in, a gorgeous cerise-coloured creation. It might have been made for her. Jamie would never know it was from the Nearly New shop in Fulham Palace Road.

She collected the photos and slid them from the package as soon as she was out of the shop. The first few were taken on the steps of Kensington Registry Office. Just a handful of friends. Donna would have liked the full works: a pony and trap to the parish church, bridesmaids, Mendelssohn, and Jamie in a grey top hat. But she could never have afforded it herself, and she refused to ask her appalling mother to foot the bill. Jamie, who was certainly capable of writing a cheque, had been through a church wedding once before, and had gently pressed for a civil ceremony this time. Donna had gracefully given way. She had not been prepared to make an issue of it. She had her priorities, and number one was to land her catch.

The first of the Vienna pictures. The Figaro House where Mozart had lived. Obviously they had not found the dress shops at that stage, because she was still in blue jeans. A pity. The narrow street with its sombre greys and greens would have been a perfect backdrop for the crimson dirndl and white blouse that Jamie had bought her later that afternoon.

Absorbed, she worked her way through the prints, assessing her outfits and finding them mostly as elegant as when she had tried them on. She was slightly disappointed that Jamie had taken so many pictures of buildings, but she hardly glanced at those, except one of the front of the hotel in which she was waving from their bedroom window. It had been lunchtime, she remembered, and she was still in the pale blue silk nightie he had draped across her pillow as a surprise the previous evening. She smiled at the recollection. He was captivated by her. He had woken her every morning with a kiss and a caress. They hadn’t eaten a single breakfast in the two weeks.

She looked through the photos several times more that afternoon. It was partly self-congratulation, but there was something else. She was looking for reassurance. She had not been entirely honest with Jamie. The truth couldn’t be hidden from him much longer.

She showed him the pictures after dinner that evening. They now lived in Jamie’s beautiful Georgian riverside house at Strand-on-the-Green, near Kew Bridge. He had already asked his solicitor to make Donna the co-owner. Jamie believed marriage was a partnership in every respect. On Friday, they had an appointment with his bank manager to open a joint account.

He reached for her waist and pulled her on to his lap on the sofa in front of the real-flame gas fire. She picked the photos off the ceramic-tiled table nearby, and started going through them, holding them for Jamie to inspect. He was nibbling her ear lobe.

‘Pay attention, lover boy,’ she chided him lightly. ‘I gave up my lunch to collect these for you today. I want to show them to you.’

He touched his lips to hers. ‘Show me anything you like.’

‘Jamie!’

He pretended to take an intelligent interest in the photos, reaching to take one out of her hand. ‘That’s come out well.’

‘My Italian suit?’

‘The entire picture. The way the trees line up, giving that wedge of sky on the right. It makes an interesting composition. The park at Schönbrunn, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t remember,’ said Donna, and she might have added that she didn’t care.

‘Obviously you made a strong impression on someone.’

She perked up. ‘The cameraman?’

‘I meant the guy on the seat.’

She hadn’t noticed anyone else in the picture. She took it back to look. To the right of the gravel path, partly in shadow, was a garden seat. On it, a youngish man in a tan-coloured bomber jacket had turned in an obvious way to look at Donna as she posed.

She commented modestly, ‘He’s probably looking at the palace.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

She turned to the next pictures, a series of shots that Jamie had taken on the Fiaker tour. They had sat side by side in the carriage, and he had snapped his camera at each old building the driver had pointed out. She didn’t tell Jamie, but she thought he might just as well have bought a set of postcards.

There was one picture at the end, when she had posed with the driver in his brown bowler and grey velvet jacket that handsomely set off her peacock blue.

‘There he is again — the same bloke!’ said Jamie.

‘The driver?’

‘No, silly. The guy in the other picture. Look, he’s there in the background, leaning against the scaffolding beside the Stephansdom.’

Donna studied the picture. ‘It’s just someone wearing a similar jacket.’

‘No, look at his face. Where’s the first picture?’

They compared them. Certainly the two jackets were identical and the faces looked similar, pale in colour with gaunt cheeks and deep-set, shadowy eyes. In each picture, they were fixed on Donna.

‘Your secret admirer,’ said Jamie.

‘I hope not. He looks weird to me. Anyway, I’ve got an admirer.’

‘And he doesn’t make a secret of it,’ murmured Jamie, sliding his hand over her left knee.

She let the photographs drop on the carpet.

After they had made love on the sofa, they drank iced Perrier water. Donna decided that if any moment was going to be right for a confession, this was it. ‘Darling, I haven’t been entirely honest with you. I feel very ashamed. I’d like to tell you about it.’

‘Don’t worry, angel,’ he answered with consideration. ‘If it’s about the past, forget it. I’m a realist. I can’t believe someone as pretty as you would have got to twenty-four without experience.’

‘That isn’t what I mean, Jamie.’ She looked into his confident blue eyes and prepared to see them swivel with amazement. ‘I married you under false pretences. All that stuff I told you about working as a company director in the family business wasn’t true. I’m an out-of-work actress. When I go up to town, I don’t really go to work in the City, I do the rounds of the theatrical agencies.’

Jamie smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘Darling, that’s nothing to be ashamed of! I’d much rather be married to an actress than a boring old company director.’

‘My family isn’t in business. We don’t have a country house in Cheshire,’ she went on, determined to clean the slate. ‘Daddy wasn’t a Master of Foxhounds, he was a tobacconist in Balham High Street. When I was twelve, he had an affair with one of the girls from the supermarket across the street. My mother divorced him and went to live in Scotland.’

‘I married you, my sweet, not your parents,’ Jamie pointed out with durable good humour.

‘Yes, but you still don’t know the truth about me. My cottage in Devon doesn’t exist. I invented it to impress you. I don’t have any furniture of my own. I’ve lived in furnished accommodation since I left school.’

‘School? You mean Cambridge University?’

She sighed. ‘Darling, that was another fabrication. I feel so terrible telling you all this. I didn’t go to public school or university. I was at a tin-pot drama school that didn’t even put us in for CSEs. All I got there was a plummy accent from the elocution lessons. It didn’t even get me any parts worth having. It simply fitted me for what I am — a con-artist.’ She lowered her eyes. The penitent look was something else she had learned in drama school.

Jamie had let go of her hand. He was sinking under the torrent of revelations, but slowly. He was still thinking about the cottage in Devon. ‘You don’t possess any property, then?’ he said slowly. ‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not a brick. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Jamie. I’m a wicked liar. I wanted you so much that I lied through my teeth to get you.’

She watched him with wide, fearful eyes. In her mind, she had acted out this scene a dozen or more times and endured every kind of retribution from obloquy to a physical beating.

He said in a voice that was still struggling to come to terms with what he had been told, ‘But we agreed to share everything, our property, our money, everything.’

‘Yes. And I have nothing except the few things I moved in with.’

‘But you have some money of your own. We agreed to open a joint account. Surely you have a bank account?’

‘An overdraft,’ admitted Donna, thankful that she had found the courage to tell him everything.

The colour had drained entirely from Jamie’s face. He stared into the fire for a long time.

Donna moved closer to him and said, ‘I love you. I lied because I love you. I could see you were unhappy living alone and I wanted you for myself.’

The last statement was true. She had met Jamie through an escort agency. It was a classy place that employed a lot of actresses between shows. They treated you like the Civil Service and sex was definitely not in the contract. The clients were mostly wealthy businessmen like Jamie who needed to socialise and paid everything with Diners’ and American Express. When Donna had filled in her form with a couple of other girls she knew from drama school, it had all seemed a huge joke, and she had laughingly invented posh parents and a cottage in the country. But when she had met Jamie, the joke was over. He wasn’t fat and middle-aged, like most of the clients. He was the most eligible guy she had ever met, tall, twenty-seven, good looking and, above all, rich, rich, rich. He was a widower, and it was practically written all over him that he was desperate to marry again.

She wondered whether this was the moment to sway towards him and solicit a forgiving kiss. His blitzed look was not encouraging.

He said in an expressionless voice, ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

Donna decided that the appropriate action for a remorseful wife was to remain downstairs and spend the night on the sofa. A few hours’ sleep would probably bring Jamie round.

She washed in the kitchen and fetched a car blanket from the Mercedes. She would sleep in her underclothes tonight.

While she was arranging the blanket, the bare sole of her foot touched something cold on the carpet: one of the honeymoon photographs. She picked it up. It was a flashlight shot taken in one of the wine gardens — what did the Viennese call them? — Heurigen. She was in the sweet little black number with the diamante brooch and the reckless plunge. With her long, blonde hair, she always looked stunning in black. That evening, people had turned to stare as she had walked among the scrubbed pinewood tables. She hadn’t imagined it; they were there in the photograph casting sideward glances at her. One, she now noticed, looked remarkably like the guy in the tan-coloured jacket in those other pictures. But this one was in a dark brown suit.

Well, Donna told herself, he wouldn’t wear the same thing all the time, would he?

She had to be sure. She went to the sideboard drawer and took out the magnifying glass that Jamie kept there. She examined the photo minutely.

It was him. It was definitely him, that washed-out, cadaverous face, those hollow eyes, watching her. She shuddered. Even here in the security of her new home, she felt creepy. He must have been following her around Vienna. How else could he have appeared in three photographs taken in different places? A pulse was beating in her forehead.

Suddenly, irrationally, she felt afraid to spend the night downstairs alone. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders and hurried up to their bedroom without even turning out the light.

In bed, she pressed dose to Jamie’s broad back and the fears receded.

He said, ‘Are you all right? You’re shaking.’

She didn’t tell him the reason. It would have seemed like a cheap bid for affection. Naturally, he was still brooding over her deceit. She murmured, ‘It’s a reaction, I expect. Darling, will you forgive me?’

He was silent for an agonising interval before he said, ‘At least you had the decency to tell me the truth.’

‘You were bound to find out soon,’ admitted Donna. ‘I should have told you before the wedding, but I was so afraid of losing you.’

‘As it happens, I haven’t been entirely frank myself,’ Jamie unexpectedly volunteered. ‘There’s something I’ve been keeping from you. You’ve been honest with me, so I want to clear my own conscience. I didn’t tell you the whole truth about Fiona.’

‘Your wife?’

He turned on to his back. ‘Yes. I told you she died. I didn’t tell you the circumstances.’

‘There’s no need, my darling,’ Donna assured him.

‘Yes, you ought to know.’ He hesistated. ‘You see Fiona was murdered.’

She caught her breath. ‘How?’

He answered in a voice that was low, but determined to recite the facts, ‘Someone strangled her. It was while I was in Paris on a business trip. I think I told you that I have to go there periodically to visit our sales rep there. Someone broke into the house in the night and strangled my poor Fiona with a length of flex. I found her when I got back on Sunday night.’

‘Oh, Jamie! Who?’

‘They never found out. There was no reason why anyone should have wanted to kill Fiona. She wasn’t the sort to make enemies. She was sweet-natured, loved by everyone who knew her.’

‘Was she...?’

‘Sexually assaulted? No. And the motive wasn’t theft, because nothing was taken. We had some beautiful things around the house. Pictures, silver, antiques. Her family were very well off. I wouldn’t be living in this style if it weren’t for Fiona, poor darling. They questioned me, of course. I suppose if you think coldly in terms of motive, I had one. I certainly profited from her death. But I was in Paris from Friday night until Sunday. They checked with British Airways and the hotel and found it was true.’

‘So who could have done it?’

‘Nobody knows. They went through her diaries, questioned her friends, the neighbours, her family. It’s a mystery. God knows, I’ve tried to think of an explanation. I think her family still feel it would never have happened if she hadn’t married me.’

‘Poor Jamie! That’s unfair.’

‘But understandable. There have been times when I’ve wondered whether the killer had some grudge against me.’

Donna frowned. ‘He hated you so much that he strangled your wife? It doesn’t sound very plausible.’

‘Doesn’t it? In business, you make enemies sometimes without knowing it, people whose ambitions you frustrate, people who regard you as a threat or a menace.’

‘Is there anyone you suspect?’

‘No one. That’s just the point. It could be someone I didn’t even know I had crossed. I try not to think about it now. I could easily get paranoid. Do you understand?’

‘I understand, and I’m glad you told me, darling,’ said Donna; she smiled in the darkness. Her own unscrupulous conduct seemed of less importance now.

No more was said that night. She drifted into sleep without giving another thought to the man in the photographs.

Next morning, they went to some trouble to behave considerately to each other. If the revelations on each side had tested the relationship, at least there were indications that they both wanted it to prosper. Jamie announced that he would clear Donna’s overdraft and still open the joint account. Donna put up her hair in the style he liked best and promised him a candlelit dinner when he got home. He kissed her before he left for work.

The fears of the previous night seemed trivial as she went about the house that morning. She picked the rest of the photographs off the living-room floor and put them in their wallet without looking at them again. She had more important things on her mind, such as which dress to wear that evening.

After lunch, she walked into Kew to the butcher who sold the best steaks and bought two large fillets. At the chemist’s next door, she picked up a new lipstick and a musky perfume that she had not tried before. She had always envied the women with enough money to treat themselves to whichever luxuries they fancied.

She strolled back in the autumn sunshine, stopping for a moment by the bridge to watch an eight at practice on the Thames. The house overlooked the river, and all the activity on it was a happy discovery for Donna.

She was still watching the oarsmen as she approached the house. They appeared to be heading straight for a group of ducks, but she need not have worried. The ducks judged their escape to perfection, without even seeming to hurry. She was so wrapped up in this drama that she failed to notice the figure standing on the embankment opposite the house until she was within a few yards of him.

‘Darling, I almost passed out on the spot,’ she told Jamie that evening as soon as he came in. ‘It was him — the man in the photographs. He stared at me just like he did in Vienna. He was standing outside the house as if he was waiting for me. It was horrible! My blood ran cold. I walked past him, past the house, trying to pretend I didn’t live here.’

‘And when you came back, he had gone?’

Donna’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘How could it be the same fellow? Why?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m not mistaken. I don’t imagine things.’

‘Of course you don’t, but you must admit that you over-reacted a little when you looked at the photos. He made a strong impression on you. The image stays in the mind, and next time you see a thin-faced guy near the house...’

‘It isn’t like that, Jamie! It was him. I know it was him.’

Over dinner, Jamie tried a different tack. ‘Okay, let’s accept for a moment that you’re not mistaken. He was the same guy. There’s no reason to feel afraid. He hasn’t threatened you, has he?’

‘I feel threatened.’

‘Because it’s all in your mind.’

‘No!’

‘After dinner, we’ll take another look at the photos, and I think you’ll find you’ve made a mistake.’

‘I burned them in the grate this afternoon. I couldn’t bear to have them in the house.’

‘Our honeymoon pictures?’

As a romantic occasion, the meal was already a disaster. They drank the wine and Jamie ate his steak, but Donna pushed her plate aside. She couldn’t stomach food in her present state of mind. She went off to make coffee.

‘By the way,’ Jamie said, when she returned, ‘I think I told you that I have to make the occasional trip to Paris to confer with our rep over there. He’s asked me over next weekend to meet some clients.’

‘You’re going to Paris?’ she said in disbelief.

‘Don’t look so alarmed, darling. It’s strictly business, I assure you. I’ll be back on Sunday night.’

‘Take me with you, Jamie.’

‘That won’t be possible. Company policy. Wives don’t go on business trips.’

‘To hell with the company! You can’t leave me here alone after what has happened!’

‘Nothing has happened.’

‘I shall go out of my mind!’

‘You’re being melodramatic, Donna.’

‘How can you contemplate a trip like this after what happened to your first wife?’

‘Come now, that’s unfair. What am I supposed to do: give up my job altogether?’

Donna said, ‘They never found Fiona’s killer. What if it were the man who watches me?’

‘That’s crazy! Why should it be him?’

‘You said yourself that it was possible he killed her because he had a grudge against you. He might be planning to murder me.’

‘Donna, you’re overwrought. We’ve been through a heavy time together. Why don’t you see the doctor in the morning and get some tranquillisers? In a couple of days you’ll feel entirely different. By Friday, you won’t care a damn about my Paris trip. Listen, I’ve had a good idea. You could go up to Harrod’s on Saturday and buy yourself something exciting to wear when I come home. They stock some very exotic underwear.’

‘I’d rather have it from Paris, thank you.’

‘All right, I’ll see what I can bring back for you.’

He was intractable. The next morning, he drove her to the doctor’s. She was given some capsules and a lecture about the stress of the first few months of marriage. She had already decided not to take the tranquillisers. If she saw the staring man again, she didn’t want Jamie telling her she was muzzy.

But she didn’t see him, and by Friday she was more or less reconciled to spending the weekend alone in the house. She had told herself sternly that she would have to face it some time; when she was over the first weekend, she would feel less anxious about any others.

He was booked on the 5.15 p.m. Air France flight from Heathrow and Donna drove him there in the Mercedes after she had confessed to flushing all the tranquillisers down the toilet. He was amused, rather than angry. He seemed pleased that she had conquered the fears herself.

Before he left her at the gate for United Kingdom passport holders, he embraced her and told her where to locate the brandy in case she needed it for her nerves.

She answered that she wouldn’t need it now. As he moved towards the ticket check, she called out, ‘Jamie!’

He turned. ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t get black, will you? White or pale yellow.’

‘Oh!’ He smiled, blushed, and went through the gate.

As Donna turned away, she looked into the eyes of the staring man. He had been standing within a yard of her. This time there could be no doubt. It was the skull-like face of the photographs, the cavernous eyes, the sallow colouring.

She blurted out, ‘Who are you?’

Furrows of apparent surprise formed on the high forehead. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What do you want? Why have you been following me?’

He shook his head. ‘I think you are mistaken.’ He backed away and she quickly lost sight of him among the crowd around the departure gate.

For a moment she considered running after Jamie to tell him, but the security people on the gate would never have let her through. She might have asked to have his name called over the public address system, but what was the use? The man was gone now, and Jamie would say she had imagined it.

She had not imagined it. She was trembling and she had to find a place to sit down, but she was sane. She had to hold on to her sanity, her certainty that she was not mistaken.

After a while she had a coffee and then drove home. Along the motorway, she weighed the possibility of moving into a hotel for the weekend. Jamie would laugh when he got back, but he could well afford the cost. He would probably charge it to the company.

The other prospect was to sit at home in the terrifying knowledge that the staring man knew she was alone in the house.

She decided to go home, collect her night clothes and a couple of paperbacks and then drive back and check in at the Post House, the hotel near the airport. She would spend the next two nights there and meet Jamie when he flew in on Sunday evening.

Just before Junction 2, the Kew exit, she glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed a black Volvo trailing her quite closely. In the twilight, she couldn’t see much of the driver. She took the right turn under the elevated section, down Lionel Road, past the station and briefly into Kew Bridge Road before turning into Strand-on-the-Green. The Volvo was still close behind.

Her garage entrance was electronically controlled. She turned on to the drive, pressed the remote control and drove swiftly inside. The door closed behind her. She had intended leaving the car outside while she fetched her things, but that would have meant entering the house by the front door and possibly being intercepted between the car and the house. Once inside the garage, she used the interior door to enter the kitchen. She ran into the front room and watched the street from behind the curtain.

The Volvo was drawing up outside. She still couldn’t see the driver properly. He was apparently content to sit at the wheel of his car. But only for a minute. The door swung open. Donna drew back nervously into the shadows, but the street lamp gave her a clear view of the man as he slammed his car door and turned towards the house.

It was him. He was even wearing the tan-coloured bomber jacket. And he was stepping up to the front door.

The sound of her own door chimes was petrifying to Donna. She stood with her back against the wall, praying that she was not visible from outside.

He pressed the bell push a second time. Donna held her breath.

She saw him crouch and peer through the letterbox. Was he going to force the door? She had mentioned only the previous week to Jamie that the catch on the fastening was not very strong. There was no bolt or chain to secure the house against an intruder.

He took a step away as if he might be about to try using his shoulder. First, he took a glance around him to see if he was being watched.

Donna shivered as those piercing eyes turned in her direction, peering through the window, apparently staring straight at her. Then, thank God, he turned and walked back to the car, opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat and took out a cigarette.

There was no question now of escaping to the hotel for the weekend. She was trapped here. Thanks to the automatic door on the garage, she had driven in unobserved. Now her best chance was to stay out of sight and not use the lights. She felt sick with fear at the prospect of spending the evening in a darkened house, but it had to be so. There was no phone to use because Jamie had refused to have one installed, insisting that for peace of mind in his own home he preferred to be inaccessible.

As dusk deepened into darkness, and the car remained in the street, Donna summoned enough courage to lower herself to a crouching position and crawl out of the front room into the hall and out to the kitchen. By the light of the fridge kept marginally open, she managed to make some sandwiches and pour herself some red wine. It warmed her. She began to make plans. She would spend the night on the sofa in the front room, where she would be instantly alerted if the man broke into the house. She preferred that to lying upstairs in bed ignorant of what was happening downstairs.

Nine-thirty was not too early to make preparations. She improvised a bed with cushions and several coats. Outside, in the lamplight, the Volvo was still there. He was sitting inside, waiting. Donna could see the glowing tip of his cigarette as he inhaled. She had no intention of sleeping, but she stretched out on the sofa in a position from which she could see the window.

The strain of the past few hours must have taken a toll, because as she got warmer under the coats, it was increasingly difficult to keep her eyes open. But she was startled into wakefulness when she heard a sound outside. She turned her watch towards the lamplight. 4.20 a.m. She had slept for hours. Had she really heard a sound, or was it part of her dream?

There was definitely a sound. Footsteps on the gravel outside the window.

She propped herself up sufficiently to see the white, terrifying face of the staring man briefly illuminated by torchlight as he shone it around the window, searching for an opening.

Donna screamed.

She lost all control and dashed from the room and upstairs to the bedroom. She flung herself on the bed and moaned into the pillow for what seemed a long time.

Then a new sound entered her consciousness: footsteps on the stairs, moving upwards, towards her. Her flesh crawled.

The steps approached along the passage. The handle of the bedroom door made a slight scraping sound as it was turned. The door opened, the light came on, and there, unbelievably, was Jamie.

‘Jamie! Oh, Jamie!’ Donna sprang up and flung her arms around him. ‘Jamie, my darling, how did you know?’ She tried to kiss him, but something was preventing her.

It was pressing against her neck, holding her away from him, pressing her down towards the bed.

‘Jamie, what is it?’

She lost her balance and fell backwards. In that split second she saw the ligature stretched between his hands, the piece of white plastic flex with which he was about to strangle her. She saw the look of hatred and contempt in his face and she understood that her husband Jamie was a killer, a ruthless murderer.

He said nothing, simply pressed the flex against her throat and began to draw one hand behind her neck to encircle it. She could do nothing to stop him. He was straddling her body, with his knees pinning down her arms. She was unable even to scream.

Then abruptly Jamie gave a grunt and the pressure on her neck slackened.

She was overwhelmed by a suffocating darkness, but she was not dead. Jamie had fallen on her. He was smothering her with his body. She struggled to get free, finding the strength to raise her knees and force him to one side. Amazingly, he did not resist. His body had gone limp.

Suddenly his weight was off her chest and she could breathe. She was looking up at a face, but it was not Jamie’s. It was the face of the staring man.

Donna whispered, ‘No!’

‘All right. It’s all right, my dear,’ he told her. ‘I won’t hurt you. I’m a private detective. I just knocked your husband on the head. You’re safe. He’s out cold and handcuffed. He would have killed you like he killed his first wife. It was all set up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The trip to Paris. His alibi. He flew over, checked in at the hotel and went straight out and took a train to Calais. He was on the 10.45 night ferry back to England. Seventy-five minutes for the crossing, another train trip and he was able to get here quite anonymously to carry out the murder. Then he planned to take the same route back and be in Paris again for a business lunch. That was the method. The family of his first victim felt sure he was guilty, but they couldn’t work out how he had done it. They hired me to investigate him. I had my doubts about his alibi, but I couldn’t prove anything. So I had to be patient. The family backed me, paid my expenses, and I followed him, waiting for him to give something away. I was in Vienna, watching you.’

‘I know.’

‘It was only a theory, so I couldn’t warn you until he actually showed signs of repeating the murder. I tried to speak to you earlier this evening, but you weren’t answering the door. I simply had to sit out there and wait. I chose a window to force an entry, so when he turned up, I was right behind him.’

‘You knew he planned to strangle me?’

‘It was a carbon copy of the first killing. Why not? That appeared to succeed. I presume he fixed a joint account to grab your money? You’re rich like the first one, I take it?’

Donna looked up at the detective and thought about what she would answer. Really, when he wasn’t staring he was quite attractive. ‘Quite rich,’ she said with a beguiling smile. ‘Yes, I suppose I have more money than sense.’