I See You (42 page)

‘How much longer do we have to wait in here? I want to see Mum.’

‘I’m sorry, we needed confirmation from the control room they’d switched over the CCTV feed.’

Craig
had responded swiftly to Kelly’s concerns that Melissa might be able to see Katie and DC Chandler leaving the maintenance room, thereby blowing their cover. He had switched the live feed with recorded footage from the same time the previous day, when the footfall at Leicester Square would be roughly the same, and the risk of Melissa noticing the jump would be small. Kelly hoped he had been right. ‘It’s all fine now, we can leave and she won’t be able to see us.’

As she opened the door, Kelly’s radio crackled into life.

‘We need an ambulance to Anerley Road,’ came the disembodied voice. ‘It’s urgent.’

Katie’s eyes widened.

‘Tell them to make on silent, and hold off when they get to the address.’

‘It’s just a precaution,’ Kelly said quickly, as the younger girl’s eyes filled with tears. She turned the volume on her radio down until it was virtually inaudible. ‘Your mum’s fine.’

‘How do you know?’

Kelly opened her mouth to give more platitudes, then closed it again. The truth was, she didn’t even know if Zoe Walker was still alive.

The
blood is everywhere. It spurts uncontrollably from Melissa’s neck, covering her desk and turning her shirt crimson. The fingers on her right hand spring open, and the knife she was holding clatters to the floor.

I start to shake. I look down and realise I, too, am covered in blood. My own knife is still gripped tightly in my right fist, but the adrenaline I felt when I stabbed her has passed, leaving me dizzy and disorientated. If she comes at me now, I think, I won’t be able to stop her. I have nothing left. I reach down and with my free hand I pull off the duct tape from around my ankles, kicking over the chair in my haste to move away from Melissa.

I needn’t have worried. Both her hands are clamped around her throat, in a futile attempt to stem the stream of blood that pulses between her fingers and coats her hands. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out, beyond a rasping, bubbling noise which causes red foam to coat the inside of her lips. She stands, but her legs won’t comply, and she sways unsteadily as though she’s drunk.

I cover my face with my hands, realising too late that they are speckled with blood which smears across my cheeks. It forms a dull shadow on the edge of my vision and fills my nostrils with a metallic tang that makes my stomach heave.

I don’t speak. What would I say?

I’m sorry?

I’m not. I’m filled with hatred.

Enough
hatred to stab the woman I thought was my friend. Enough hatred to watch her, now, fighting for breath, and not care. Enough hatred to stand by as her lips turn blue and the urgent beat of her blood slows to a quiet, imperceptible rhythm. The fluid that a moment ago was spurting feet away from her, now ebbs gently, its urgency spent. Her skin is grey; her eyes the only living thing in a dying husk. I look for remorse, or for anger, but see none. She is already dead.

When she falls it isn’t to her knees. She doesn’t stagger, or clutch at the desk in front of her like in a film, or reach out to grab me and take me down with her. She falls like a tree, crashing backwards on to the floor with a bang to her head that makes me foolishly worry it might have hurt her.

And then she’s still; hands splayed out to her sides, and her eyes wide open, bulging slightly out of her ashen face.

I’ve killed her.

It’s only now the regret sets in. Not because of the crime I’ve committed, or even because of what I’ve seen – a woman drowning in her own blood. I regret it only because now she’ll never have to face her crimes in a court. Even at the end, she’s won.

I sink to the floor, feeling as drained as though the blood had left me, too. The key to the door is in Melissa’s pocket, but I don’t want to touch her body. Even though there are no signs of life left in her – her chest does not rise, there is no death rattle as air leaves her lungs – I don’t trust her not to suddenly rise up; to grip my wrists with bloodied hands. She lies between me and the desk and I sit and wait for my body to stop shaking. In a moment I will need to step carefully around her, to dial 999 and tell them what I’ve done.

Katie. I need to tell them about Katie. They need to go to Leicester Square; I need to know if she’s still alive – she needs to know I’m okay, that I haven’t given up on her … I stand
up too fast, my feet skating on the slick of blood that seems to cover the entire floor. A stripe of blood dissects the computer screen on which I can still see the CCTV image, the door to the maintenance cupboard still resolutely closed.

As I find my balance I hear the distant wail of sirens. I wait for them to die away but they grow louder, more insistent, until they hurt my ears. I hear shouting, then a crash that echoes through the house.

‘Police!’ I hear. ‘Stay where you are!’

I stay where I am. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

There’s a thunderous noise in the hall, and an almighty bang as the kitchen door flies open and hits the wall behind it.

‘Hands in the air!’ one of them shouts. I’m just thinking how ridiculous it is to expect Melissa to do that, when she is clearly incapacitated, when I realise they mean me. Slowly, I raise my hands. They are covered in blood, which has streaked across my arms, and my clothes are stained dark red.

The officers wear dark boiler suits and helmets with visors down and POLICE in white letters on the side. There are two at first, swiftly followed by another pair who arrive in response to the first’s clear command.

‘Support!’

The first two approach me, stopping several feet in front of me. The other pair move rapidly around the room, shouting instructions to each other. Elsewhere in the house I hear more police moving around. The sound of running feet is interspersed with cries of ‘Room clear!’ which drift down into the room in which we stand.

‘Medic!’ someone shouts. Two new officers push through and run to where Melissa is lying on the floor. One of them presses their hands against the wound in her neck. I don’t understand why they’re trying to save her life. Don’t they know? Don’t they know what she’s done? It is a pointless endeavour anyway; the life has long since left her.

‘Zoe
Walker?’ It is one of the two police officers in front of me who says my name, but their helmets mean I can’t tell which one is speaking. I look from one to the other. They have positioned themselves two metres or so apart, so that as I look forward one is at ten o’clock, the other at two. In every respect they are mirror images of each other; one foot slightly forward, their hands above their waists and open-palmed; non-threatening, but ready for action. Behind them I see the medics kneeling beside Melissa. They have laid a clear plastic guard across her face and one of them is pushing measured breaths into her mouth.

‘Yes,’ I say eventually.

‘Drop the weapon.’

They’ve got it all wrong. It was Melissa who had the knife; Melissa who held the blade to my throat until the skin split. I take a step forward.

‘Drop the weapon!’ the police officer says again, louder this time. I follow his gaze, looking up to my right hand, where the silver blade gleams through its coating of blood. My fingers snap open of their own accord, as though they have only just become aware of their contents, and the knife skitters across the floor. One of the officers kicks it further away from my reach, then pushes up the visor on his helmet. He looks practically as young as my children.

I find my voice. ‘My daughter’s in danger. I need to get to Leicester Square – will you take me?’ My teeth are chattering and I bite my tongue. More blood; my own, this time. The officer looks to his colleague, who lifts his own visor. He is much older, a grey beard neatly trimmed beneath kind eyes that crinkle at the corners as he reassures me.

‘Katie’s fine. She was intercepted by one of our officers.’

The rest of my body begins to shake.

‘There’s an ambulance on its way – they’ll take you to hospital and get you sorted out, okay?’ He looks at his young colleague.

‘Shock,’
he explains, but it isn’t shock I feel, it’s relief. I look beyond the officers. A paramedic is kneeling beside Melissa, but he isn’t touching her, he’s writing something down.

‘Is she dead?’ I don’t want to leave this room until I know for sure. The paramedic looks up.

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God.’

‘Not
much of a celebration,’ Lucinda said, looking at the packet of peanuts Nick had torn open and put in the middle of the table.

‘I’m sorry it’s not up to your usual standards, your ladyship,’ Nick said. ‘I’m not sure the Dog and Trumpet does caviar and quail’s eggs, but I can see what’s on the specials board, if you like?’

‘Ha ha. I didn’t mean that. I just feel a bit flat, you know?’

‘I feel the same,’ Kelly said. It had been so frantic; the drive on blues and twos to get to Katie Walker, followed immediately by the race to reach Zoe, marked police cars screaming to a halt outside Melissa’s house. The ambulance had held off at the end of Anerley Road; the waiting paramedics unable to do their job until it was safe to enter. For the last few hours Kelly doubted her heart rate had dropped below a hundred beats a minute, but now she was crashing.

‘It’s just an anticlimax, that’s all,’ Nick said. ‘You’ll bounce back tomorrow, when the hard work really starts.’

There was a huge amount to do. With access to Melissa’s computer, Cyber Crime had been able to swiftly shut down findtheone.com, and access the full list of members. Tracing them – and establishing what, if any, crimes had been committed – would take somewhat longer.

Companies House checks had revealed that Melissa West was the registered director of four cafés in London; Melissa, Melissa Too, Espress Oh! and an as yet unnamed business in the heart
of Clerkenwell, banking impressive profits despite the absence of sink, fridge or cooking facilities.

‘Money laundering,’ Nick had explained. ‘Coffee shops are perfect vehicles because so many people pay in cash. On paper she can legitimately take a few hundred quid a day, whilst letting the businesses run at a loss.’

‘How much do you think her husband knew?’

‘I guess we’ll find out when we bring him in.’ Neil West was overseeing the installation of a multimillion-pound IT system at a law firm in Manchester. His diary, conveniently synched to his wife’s, and easily accessible from her computer, told them he’d be flying in to London City airport the following day, where police would be waiting to arrest him. On his computer, upstairs in the home office, were files relating to each company Neil had worked with, each including an expansive contact list. The firms employing Gordon Tillman and Luke Harris had both contracted Neil in the past, and there was every expectation that further parallels would be drawn between Neil’s contact list and the list of findtheone.com customers found on Melissa’s computer.

‘Do you think she’d have left him to pick up the pieces?’ Lucinda said. Zoe had outlined the plans Melissa had shared to leave the country, and Cyber Crime had identified flights to Rio de Janeiro that she had looked at online.

‘I think so,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t think Melissa West cared about anyone but herself.’

Kelly thought about what Katie had told her, about the bitterness in Melissa’s voice when she talked about looking after Zoe’s children; about not having children of her own. ‘I think she did. I think that was part of the problem. Setting up the website was strictly business, but involving Zoe and Katie? That bit was personal.’

‘I hate that she got away with it,’ Lucinda said, reaching for the peanuts.

‘She
was stabbed in the carotid artery and bled to death,’ Nick said. ‘I wouldn’t call that getting away with it.’

Kelly gave a half-smile. ‘You know what I mean. She put Zoe and Katie Walker through hell, not to mention the hundreds of women who had no idea they were even at risk. I’d have liked to have seen her in the dock.’ Kelly’s phone flashed, and she swiped the screen to unlock it, idly scrolling through notifications she didn’t have the inclination to respond to.

‘What’s this? A celebration or a wake?’ Diggers appeared at the table, and Kelly sat up, as though standing to attention. It was the first time she’d seen him since the dressing down in his office, and she avoided making eye contact with him.

‘Can I get you a chair, sir?’ Lucinda said.

‘I’m not stopping. I just dropped in to buy you a drink. You’ve all done a grand job; I’ve already had the commissioner on the phone congratulating us on a good result. Well done.’

‘Thanks, boss,’ Nick said. ‘I was just telling them the same.’

‘And as for you …’ Diggers looked at Kelly, who could feel herself going red. ‘I hear we’ve got a lot to thank you for.’

‘Everyone was working on it at the same time,’ Kelly said, reluctantly looking up, relieved to find genuine warmth in Diggers’ face. ‘I just happened to be there when the final piece dropped into place, that’s all.’

‘Well, that’s as maybe. You’ve certainly made a valuable contribution to the team. Now, what’s everyone having?’ The DCI went to the bar, returning with a tray of drinks and another bag of nuts. He hadn’t bought one for himself, and Kelly realised she risked missing her opportunity if she didn’t ask now.

‘Sir? Do I have to go back to BTP?’ As she spoke, she realised how much she was dreading it; how much she’d loved being part of a team again, without the gossip and suspicion that plagued her time in her home force.

‘Three months, we said, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, but I thought that, with Melissa dead and the website
blocked—’ Kelly knew there was work to be done – that Laura Keen’s murderer was still on the loose, and Cathy Tanning’s prowler remained uncaught – but at the back of her mind was the telling-off she’d had in Diggers’ office. Was this the opportunity he needed to bring an end to her secondment?

‘Three months,’ Diggers said briskly. ‘You can lead on the interview with Neil West, then let’s have a proper talk about your career. Maybe it’s time for a fresh start in a new force, eh?’ He winked at her and shook Nick’s hand, before leaving them to it.