Page 45 of The Stranger in Her House

I print out the names and addresses of all his matches and slip the list into my handbag. I see out the rest of the day before leaving a note to say I’ve been offered a full-time job elsewhere, and I exit that place for the last time.

Later in the evening and I’m back at my kitchen table, pouring myself a large mug of coffee, rolling half a dozen cigarettes and turning on my laptop. I begin with the address listed as Paul’s on the charity’s database, but I can’t find it online. And according to Google Maps, it doesn’t exist. I type in the postcode and address twice more as I have fat fingers sometimes, but I draw a blank each time. I can’t deny it leaves me feeling deflated so early on.

Next, I input the names of the women Paul volunteered to help and search the internet for everything I can find about themor their families. Most, to my relief, are still alive, but for others I find death notices and obituaries linked to local newspaper stories. By the time midnight arrives, I have no cigarettes left but I do have three names out of twenty whose circumstances mimic Gwen’s.

Eliza Holmes, Lucy Holden and Alice McKenzie.

The women’s deaths are spaced a year to eighteen months apart. Each lived in a different county to her predecessor and under a different police authority. According to newspaper reports of their inquests, they died in a similar manner: a rapid decline in dementia-related health, followed by a sudden, accidental death. The first died of exposure after locking herself out of the house on a winter’s night. The following two fell down staircases to their deaths.

Cold prickles cover my back, arms and neck like a fridge door has been left open behind me.

As far as I can tell, none of these women had any direct family descendants. But the smoking gun is an online visit to Public Record Search. It costs me £14 per certificate – a sizable chunk out of my weekly budget – but it’s worth it when, early the next week, they arrive through the post. It turns out each woman married before she died: one for three months, the rest for less than a handful of weeks. And each certificate contains a different groom’s name.

Paul Edwards, Paul Jamison and Paul Field.

The common letters in their signatures are identical. The swirls of the Ss, the loops of the Ls, the dots over the Is.

I check the evidence again and again and again. But I have never been more certain of anything else in my life.

Paul killed at least three women before he murdered Gwen. I am up against a serial murderer.

CHAPTER 35

CONNIE

It’s taken me ninety minutes, three separate buses, a maps app and a comfortable pair of trainers, but finally, I’m here. This 1970s-style suburban home is registered in the name of Fran Brown and I already know from my stint at Help for Homes that she is an eighty-six-year-old widow with vascular dementia. She’s also the most recent name to have been paired with Paul. Under the ‘action required’ heading, he’d been tasked with tidying up an overgrown garden, much like Gwen’s. And as far as I can work out, the only difference between the two women is that Fran has a next of kin, a son called Jon, but he lives in Dubai. It was he who contacted the charity to organise the help.

I look the place up and down. It’s larger than Gwen’s, meaning a bigger potential pay-off for Paul. The drive is empty and I can’t tell if anyone is inside, as heavy sets of net curtains block my view. What is it with old people and net curtains? I’m too conspicuous standing here, so I find a wooden bus shelter a little further along the road and take a seat inside. I have no idea if I’m wasting my time, but I don’t have anything better to do and I desperately wantto know if this is a pattern of Paul’s – bury one, begin with another. Is he doing this just for the money, or for the thrill of the kill?

I’ve yet to contact the police with what I’ve learned because I still don’t know enough yet. If I’m about to accuse Paul of being a serial killer, I’ll need some pretty damning evidence. I can’t risk messing this up and him getting away with it, or I can kiss goodbye to Gwen’s estate and getting justice for her.

I pass the next few hours listening to true crime podcasts on my headphones, surfing news websites and, when necessary, taking pee breaks behind some nearby bushes. I also scan my fake dating app profiles, keeping some and deleting others. It’s been a while since I’ve logged on and I find more than two hundred unread messages. I hold back from sending replies even though they’ve historically been a good way of making a fast buck. I need to focus on one thing at a time.

That reminds me to check the balance again in my bank account. I’m still overdrawn, I see, and it’s not getting any better. My earnings from dog walks and ironing are split between keeping the electricity running and a court order to pay back the couple I stole from, which is what landed me in prison. The rest has been spent on utility bills, mobile phone credits, bus fares, etc. There’s nothing left over. Last week, I had no choice but to visit the food bank in town for the first time. I’m also two months behind with rent on the bungalow. I’ve been ignoring the emails and phone calls from the letting agency. I’m aware of my rights and I know they can’t kick me out yet. At best, I reckon I have another four months left until a court evicts me. But I should be living better than this at my age.

I keep telling myself that I’ve endured worse and survived it. You don’t have much of a choice if you were raised by the mum I had.Mum, I repeat to myself. I liked calling Gwen that. It was the first time I’d got to use the word, as it’d been erased from myvocabulary by Caz, my biological mother, from the start. ‘I don’t like being reminded of it,’ she’d say. ‘People see motherhood as a weakness around here.’

A moment from the last time I saw her, back in London, creeps into my head. I can hear her voice as she proudly told me how, even before I was born, I was a criminal. She’d use her pregnant belly as a distraction, and while she asked shoppers in supermarket car parks for directions as they loaded their bags into boots, a friend would steal handbags or wallets from their trollies or inside their cars.

Then, when I arrived in her world, she’d hide clothes, food and bottles of cider from shops in my pushchair – and later, when I started walking, under my coat. And if they set any alarms off, she’d apologise and blame me for taking them when she hadn’t been watching. For years I believed it was a moth infestation in our flat that created holes in everything we wore. It turned out it was because she’d cut out the security tags with scissors rather than prise them apart and risk splitting the anti-theft dye capsule. I only have a handful of photographs of myself as a child, and in one of them I was around four or five and on a yellow bike with stabilisers, which she had stolen from a nursery playground she once walked past.

For the most part, it was only ever just Caz and me. When I was old enough to ask about my dad, she’d claim she had no idea who he was, then remind me how lucky I was to be here in the first place. She was seventeen when she discovered she was five months pregnant, and the only reason she didn’t have an abortion was because she’d passed the legal cut-off point. ‘Besides,’ she’d add, ‘the government pays for you. So every cloud, and all that.’

Caz made money any which way she could. She’d cash stolen cheques, organise fake Christmas club hamper schemes, sell on credit cards, or fence anything from jewellery to electronics. But targeting the elderly in distraction burglaries was her favourite scam. She’d appear on their doorsteps flashing a fake identificationcard, claiming to be there to read their utility meters. Meanwhile, I was young and small enough to creep into their houses through open windows and sometimes even cat flaps, and quietly rifle through their valuables. It never ceased to amaze me how often I’d find cash or jewellery hidden in biscuit tins, bread bins and under mattresses.

I suppose I had an inkling what I was doing was wrong, but at that age, you do as you’re told and Caz knew best. Also, she was a much nicer person to be around when we had money, even if it was someone else’s. If I left a house empty-handed, she’d give me the silent treatment for the rest of the day.

Once, she hooked up with a Polish man called Svaro who taught me how to pickpocket. On Saturdays we’d catch the Tube to tourist spots in Covent Garden, Oxford Street or Camden Market, where I’d move about unnoticed, taking wallets from jacket pockets and purses from unsecured handbags. Svaro was the closest thing I had to a father figure until he stole one too many times and was deported.

I was forced to go solo and put into practice everything I’d learned from Caz and Svaro when she was sent to Holloway Prison. The magistrate didn’t fall for her mitigating circumstances – poverty-stricken single parent, alcohol- and cannabis-dependent, struggling to make ends meet, etc. – and jailed her for a year for storing someone’s counterfeit cash. Even with time reduced for good behaviour, it would be five months before she was released. She knew from her own experience the hell of children’s homes, so she told my social worker I was going to stay with her sister in Devon. She had no sister and no one ever checked. Caz left me with £100 to fend for myself and a note saying:Time to pull your weight.I was twelve.

I missed her like anything and was determined to make her proud by surviving without her. Shoplifting and pickpocketing were now second nature to me. Some nights I went withoutelectricity, as I’d run out of money to feed the meter. But on others, I lived like a queen, sprawled across the sofa eating boxes of stolen After Eights mint chocolates and smoking from cartons of counterfeit cigarettes Caz had also stashed away for a friend.

But something about that stay in prison altered her. On her release, it was as if she had ditched her few remaining parental duties and put herself first, completely. She didn’t return to the flat to live, and only appeared on fleeting visits to leave me a little money or hide away more stolen goods. Sometimes a fortnight might pass before I’d see or hear from her. There was no way to contact her, and each time I asked where she was spending her time, she’d fob me off with lies about finding a job or looking after a sick friend.

Occasionally she brought one of these ‘friends’ home with her and they’d disappear behind her bedroom door, only to re-emerge hours later with vacant looks about them, eyelids half-closed and reeking of melted plastic. I knew what she was doing, of course. She tried to hide the blackened pipes from me under the mattress or clothes strewn across the floor, but she gave herself away when she once set fire to her duvet and only just escaped self-cremation.

A vehicle passing the bus shelter catches my eye. It’s a grey van resembling Paul’s. I peer out and watch as it parks outside Fran Brown’s house. My muscles tense as Paul exits. He makes his way to the front door and unlocks it. Then he returns to the van and stretches out an arm to help someone out from the passenger side. An elderly woman grabs hold of it to steady herself before together they make their way towards the house. She is frail and unsteady on her feet, much more so than Gwen was. Then the front door closes and they disappear.

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