Taste of Blood

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was coming up to lunchtime when the desk sergeant called through to ask Jane if she would take a call from Alice Caplan.

‘We’ve accepted an offer on the house,’ she told her.

‘That’s great. Congratulations,’ Jane said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

‘The thing is, it’s all happening rather quickly, so I’ve been sorting things out, deciding what to take and what to leave, and I found a load of photographs of Sebastian Hoffman’s bedroom which must have been taken for the ‘before and after’ album. I wondered if you were still interested in seeing them.’

Jane was out of the office within moments of ending the call. She felt bad, knowing that the discovery of a body buried near their property might put an end to the sale of their house, but she also knew she couldn’t let it lie.

Alice Caplan opened the front door with a smile, and Jane handed her a bunch of flowers she’d bought from a nearby petrol station.

‘Oh, that’s so sweet of you. Come in, it’ll be a good excuse for me to stop working. I am collecting bundles of things to give to the charity shops.’

Mrs Caplan led Jane through into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Buster could be heard barking somewhere in the background.

‘The photographs are in that big manila envelope on the table.’

Jane opened the envelope and emptied out a pile of photographs, all of Sebastian’s bedroom, taken from different angles.

‘The fireplace had lovely pine designs from the twenties, but it had so many coats of awful paint over it, it took forever to clean it up.’

Alice put Jane’s coffee down on the table as Jane leafed through the photographs.

Jane took the photographs she wanted and put them into her briefcase, then put the others back into the envelope. She was eager to finish her coffee and leave, but felt she ought to make conversation for a few minutes.

‘The house is certainly looking amazing now. You’ve obviously put in a tremendous amount of work. And you clearly know what you’re doing when it comes to interior decoration.’

Mrs Caplan laughed. ‘Well, it was sometimes hard work persuading David not to cut corners. He has such a temper, and can fly into absolute rages about my overspending!’

Jane smiled as she finished her coffee, but at the same time she took a mental note of what Mrs Caplan had just let slip. They had appeared to be the perfect couple, and she’d seen no hint of David Caplan’s temper.

‘I hope all goes well with the sale, and thank you again. I’ve taken the photographs I need, but I will of course return them.’

‘Oh, don’t bother, they were just extras. All the good ones are in the album.’

Mrs Caplan walked Jane to the front door and was still standing there, smiling and waving, as Jane drove out. So much for the perfect couple, Jane thought.

Instead of driving back to the station, Jane returned home. She took out the photographs and laid them out on the kitchen table. Now that she looked at them closely, they were actually quite disturbing, with the words THIS IS THE END MY BEAUTIFUL FRIEND scrawled over and over again in thick, black letters on the walls. There were images of tombstones, death’s heads, devil faces in dark red, skeleton faces with hideous female lips. But what really had Jane’s heart racing was the wax doll lying on the floor by the big double bed. It was dressed in a suit with a collar and tie and had a noose around its neck. Next to it was a naked blonde-haired doll with what looked like splashes of red paint on its chest and stomach.

Jane felt a chill as she gathered up the photographs. Had Sebastian been some sort of devil-worshipper? Had he been involved in aborting Georgina’s baby?

She grabbed the envelope and got back in her car, knowing exactly who she needed to talk to to find out what it all meant.

Jane parked behind Sandra’s VW, hurried up the path and rang the doorbell.

‘I need a consultation with Vera. It’s very urgent,’ Jane told Sandra when she opened the door.

‘You can’t. She’s resting,’ Sandra said with a frown.

‘I just need to show her some photographs. It’s really important, Sandra. Please,’ Jane persisted.

‘Wait here,’ Sandra said, closing the door.

Ten minutes later, Jane was about to press the bell again when the door opened.

‘She can give you ten minutes, and then you will have to leave,’ Sandra told her.

Jane was ushered into the hallway and up to Vera’s room. She knocked on the door. Vera was wearing the same kaftan and had a tray of food on her card table. She glanced towards Jane as she wiped her mouth with a napkin.

‘This was awful, some takeaway which I can’t eat, noodles swamped in some sweet sauce. I don’t know where she orders this rubbish from.’

Vera bent down and placed her tray of food beside her as she gestured for Jane to sit.

‘I’ve got a session tonight and I can’t tire myself out, so you’ll have to be quick. I don’t think you have any idea what these sessions take out of me.’

Jane opened the envelope of photographs and laid them out. Vera seemed completely uninterested.

‘What do you want me to do with these?’

‘Explain what they mean. They’re from Sebastian Martinez’s bedroom.’

‘Lovey, I am a medium, not a fortune-teller. What do you want me to do?’

‘I am just very concerned. It all looks like some kind of devil worship. They freaked me out.’

‘Oh, these are from Angelica’s son? Let me get my glasses and have a proper look.’

Jane waited as Vera put on her glasses and selected one photograph after another, peering at each intently before putting them down. She then placed a couple to one side and looked at Jane.

‘Well, I recognise all the Jim Morrison lyrics. I was quite a fan of his many moons ago. The poor bloke was an addict, but he could write poetry. Sebastian was obviously a fan, and some of the other writing is Sebastian spelled backwards. Then there are all the skulls, which I think are to do with the Mexican Day of the Dead — it’s like a big holiday celebrating the dead.’ She paused. ‘Are you wearing a flowery perfume?’

Jane shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Odd smell, can’t say what, maybe lilac.’

Vera tapped a photograph with her finger. ‘This skull, he’s made it with eggshells. I know Angelica is from Mexico and her first husband died, so that skull would be a sort of celebration of his passing. Sebastian might have been taken to a celebration as a child, or his mother encouraged him to remember his father in this way. You’d have to ask her. They all dance and dress up as skeletons and some are in devils’ capes and masks. It’s nothing to do with Satanism. I just think this boy is Mexican and has embraced the memory of his father.’

‘What about the dolls?’

‘Well, I’d say he hated his adoptive father and wanted him out of his life, dead or alive. I know his mother loathed the man, so she might have encouraged it.’

‘What about the other doll, the girl covered in blood?’

Vera shrugged. ‘I don’t think he meant her any harm. This is just a tormented teenager in love. You know, not all of the writing was done by the same person. Some of it’s much smaller and neater.’

Vera brought the photograph close to her face as she held onto her glasses. Licking her lips, she read aloud.

‘“Thou lovest me”, and the next line...’

She squinted, peering through her broken glasses.

‘“Too much, as I loved thee, we were not made,

To torture thus each other, though it were

The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.”’

Vera put the photograph down.

‘Byron, and don’t think I’m a literary genius: it’s written underneath, and in even smaller writing is another name, Georg... I can’t see.’

‘Georgina,’ Jane said quietly.

Vera gathered up the photographs, putting them in a neat pile before handing them back to Jane.

‘I am not going to charge you for this session, love. Truth be told, I feel sorry for you because I haven’t given you what you wanted to hear, which I think was me telling you that this boy was dangerous and evil, when in reality he was just a screwed-up teenager who was sent packing by a man he detested, his stepfather, after whatever love he found with that young girl was taken away from him. I’ve heard enough about him from Angelica to know he was abusive and never accepted the poor kid.’

Jane was taken aback when Vera leaned across the table and grabbed hold of her hand.

‘You have to let this go, love, you are taking more interest than is good for you, I can feel it. If you don’t let it go it will consume you, because you’re trying to distract yourself from what is happening in your own life. Go home, and please don’t bother me again, dear, because I can’t help you.’

Jane could feel herself getting emotional. ‘I am here because of what you told me, that you could taste blood.’

Vera shook her head. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’ve said a lot of things that maybe I shouldn’t have, and you have taken them literally.’

‘But you said you were certain he was dead.’

Vera grabbed the edge of the card table to push herself up. She glared angrily at Jane. ‘I will not be a part of this obsession of yours, and I refuse to have any further meetings with you. So don’t try and see me again. I mean it, love, let this go and sort yourself out.’

Jane didn’t say another word. She put the envelope in her briefcase and walked out, passing Sandra by the front door. She gave her a ten-pound note, then hurried to her car, eager to get home.

Sandra walked in and held up the ten-pound note.

Vera frowned. ‘Should have charged her a hell of a lot more than that, and from now on, Sandra, you never let that woman back in here again.’ She sank back in her chair, the taste of blood filling her mouth. ‘And don’t you ever order from that Chinese takeaway again. I feel sick to my stomach.’

On the way home, Jane had clenched the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white, and she was so pent up and angry she dropped her door keys before she could unlock the front door, kicking it hard to slam behind her. She went into the kitchen and took a bottle of vodka from the fridge, pouring a large measure into a glass before gulping it down. She then hurled the glass into the sink, where it shattered. She had never felt such rage, banging her way up the stairs and then kicking open her bedroom door. Furious with Vera and her dismissal of the photographs, she stood staring at her reflection in her dressing-table mirror. The marks left on the carpet from where Eddie had fixed up his TV made her want to scream.

She took a deep breath and then did just that, letting out a howl which kept on and on as she looked at herself. Eventually she flopped onto her bed, emptied of emotion. First, she went over in her mind how she had mismanaged the situation with Eddie, how she would have really liked to face him out, even slap him for his betrayal and lies. Then she thought how much she would like to confront that tweeting-voiced Caroline: she had certainly moved fast. She closed her eyes, making herself face the truth that it had stopped working between them some time ago; she had not wanted to sell her house and if she was honest with herself, she had been hesitant about marrying him. She sat up, looking around the bedroom.

Standing by the open doors of her wardrobe, looking at the few empty hangers where his clothes had been, she swished her clothes along the rail. It was as if he had never lived there — but he had, and she had been pregnant with his child. For the first time, Jane allowed herself to really accept the loss, and she cried for a while, a different emotion to her tears of anger because the truth was it had been in many ways a relief.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she wondered how Eddie would have reacted if she had told him. She shook her head, trying to fathom how she could have been so blind to what was happening. She had spent more time thinking about Angelica’s missing son than what was going on right under her nose. She thought about how many hours she had spent on the ridiculous situation with the warring neighbours, and how she had been wrong about the Caplans as being the perfect couple. At no time had she even considered that David Caplan was guilty, but now after Alice had said her husband had a short fuse and a nasty temper, she thought it was perfectly possible he had swung that spade with the intention of harming Martin Boon.

Jane forced herself to accept that she had become dangerously obsessed with Angelica Martinez and her missing son, that perhaps DCI Hutton was right. She questioned the way her theories had come to dominate her every waking hour, and accepted that it was to avoid facing the reality of her failing relationship with Eddie.

Vera had told her to let it go, and now she had let all her emotions out and was calm again, she decided that was exactly what she was going to do. She undressed, preparing to take a shower, and thought about calling Eddie, not to have a showdown, but an adult conversation.

She laughed suddenly, surprising herself.

‘Maybe I’ll ask him to lay down a new carpet!’