Now You See Me (13 page)

Authors: Sharon Bolton

BOOK: Now You See Me

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âI could get a cab â¦' I tried.

âNo,' said Tulloch, glancing my way. âYou're staying with someone I trust and Mark lives just across the river from you.' She leaned over the desk to reach the phone and caught the look on my face. âOh, for heaven's sake, Flint,' she snapped. âHe doesn't bite.'

Knowing that to argue any further would make me look childish and make a nonsense of what I'd just promised Tulloch, I picked up my bag and headed for the door. As I passed Tulloch, I saw her giving Joesbury one of her eyebrows-to-the-ceiling looks. That was him told, too.

B
EST INTENTIONS OR NOT, THERE WASN'T MUCH BURYING OF hatchets in evidence on the drive home. Joesbury turned on the car stereo as we pulled out of Lewisham car park and cranked up the volume. I sat in the passenger seat, hugging my bag to my chest, listening to a hypnotic blend of house and jazz club music. After a while the bright orange and white lights of south London started to hurt my eyes and I closed them. I was a lot more tired than I'd realized.

The city had quietened down by this time and it didn't take us long. Joesbury slowed the car as we turned into my road and I opened my eyes.

âThank you,' I said, as he pulled up to the kerb. I made myself blink, wishing my head didn't feel so fuzzy. The hot, noisy car had acted like a drug. I needed cold air and silence. As I pushed open the door I noticed he'd turned off the engine. Without looking back, I got out and stood up. I heard a door slamming and realized Joesbury, too, was out of the car.

âYou're not coming in,' I said, turning to face him.

He didn't flinch. âWrong,' he said over the roof of the car. âI'm not leaving you until I know there are no bogeymen under the bed and that all your entries and exits are secure. Tully would never let me hear the end of it. Would you like me to go in first?'

I turned and walked slowly down the steps. I took my time finding keys, although I knew exactly where in my bag they'd be. All
the while I could feel him, inches away, hear him breathing softly.

Fuck it, nobody came into my flat. Nobody.

âWould you mind checking the space under the basement steps?' I asked him as I put the key in the lock. âI've had some real low-lifes hide under there and spring out at me.'

âYou're wasting your breath, DC Flint,' he said. âIt's impossible to insult me.'

I turned on the spot, looked him up and down. âMaybe I just haven't seen enough of you yet,' I replied.

For a second I thought he might laugh. Then both corners of his mouth stretched into a slow smile. He didn't take his eyes off me. âWell,' he said, âthat sounds like a bridge we should cross when we come to it.'

I turned back to the door, unlocked it, found the light switch and stepped inside. What the hell was I thinking? That was twice now I'd given this man the come-on. Even if he hadn't been one of the most obnoxious men I'd met in a long time, there was almost certainly something close and romantic between him and Tulloch. I dropped my bag on a chair and walked over to the fireplace, automatically taking off my glasses and leaving them on the mantelpiece. Just get it over with. Let him do what he had to do and leave.

When I turned back he was standing just inside the doorway, taking in the largest room of my flat, not even trying to hide his surprise at the clean white space, the minimum of furniture and, apart from plants, the complete lack of personal possessions. When I said nothing, he got to work.

First, by checking the front door. It was a Yale lock, ridiculously inadequate by London standards, but it's not like I have anything to steal. Then he crossed the living room and the small galley kitchen and disappeared. I heard him open the door to the bathroom and pull back the shower curtain. What he was hoping to find in the bathroom cabinet I don't know, but I heard that open and close too. The sound of wardrobe doors told me he was in the bedroom. Then I heard the creak of the conservatory door. He'd gone outside.

Curious, I followed. I heard the sound of something heavy landing on soft ground, as though he'd jumped from a height. He reappeared just as I arrived at the rear door.

âShed key?' he asked, holding out one hand.

Knowing there was no point arguing, I told him where he'd find it, tucked away on the shed roof. I watched him walk up the path, open the shed and disappear inside. In my head, I was counting, ten, nine. At six he came out again, staring straight at me, his hands raised. The word was hardly necessary, but he said it anyway.

âWhat?'

âKeeps me fit,' I replied. âDavina McCall swears by it.'

I didn't give him time to point out that Davina McCall probably didn't dress her punchbag as a man. I turned and walked back through the flat. He'd seen everything. From the living room, I heard him lock the conservatory door. Then he reappeared. He stopped in the archway between living room and bedroom.

âFirst of all, I have never seen a woman's flat like this in my life before,' he said. âChrist, Flint, don't you even have a teddy?'

He was a senior officer, we were now officially part of the same team and, in his eyes at least, he was doing me a favour. I was going to stay calm. âGoodnight, DI Joesbury,' I replied. âThank you for your help.' I was standing in front of the hearth. I wasn't moving till he was out of there.

He wasn't moving either. âSecond, you can't stay here by yourself,' he said. âTully will have my innards for breakfast.'

Stay calm. âI've lived here quite safely for five years, the doors will be locked and, in the circumstances, I'd rather you didn't talk about innards,' I said.

Joesbury's lips twitched again. He held up his left hand and with his right started counting off splayed fingers. âOne, there is a gate leading directly into the alley outside,' he said. âI managed to get over it with a buggered shoulder. Two, the conservatory door has half rotted away and a good push would send it flying. Three, your front door has a Yale lock that I could open with my credit card in ten seconds. You don't even have a chain on it.' He stopped, dropped his hands and shook his head at me. âThis is south London,' he went on. âEven without a maniac on the loose, do you have a death wish?

Probably, was the nearest I could get to an honest answer, but not one I was about to articulate. âI'll put a chair against the door and I'll sleep with my phone,' I said. âNow, will you please excuseâ'

âI'm going to need that phone,' he said. âI'll sort you out with a new one tomorrow. Right, have you got a blanket?'

âWhat?'

âI'm sleeping on the sofa.'

âOver my dead â¦ no, absolutely not, get out of here.'

He crossed to the sofa and began pushing his fists into the cushions to plump them up. âTully can probably have you transferred to a safe house tomorrow,' he said, picking up two loose cushions and arranging them to act as pillows at one end of the sofa. âAt least until we can get some decent locks installed here,' he went on. âWe can get an alarm rigged up to the station.'

âDo you not understand the English language?'

âAny chance of a spare toothbrush?' he said, pulling off his jacket and sitting down. He was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt and had the faintest vaccination scar just below his right shoulder. Heavily muscled arms.

âYou're not staying here.'

âFlint, I'm tired.' The bastard was actually taking off his shoes. âStop wittering and go to bed.'

âI can't sleep if you're in the next room,' I snapped back, before I had a second to think about the consequences of admitting something so â¦ oh my God.

Stalemate. Joesbury looked up at me. Then he stood. I took a step back and almost fell over the hearth stones.
Oh no. Of all the men in the world, not this one.

âAny point suggesting I don't have to be in the next room?' he asked me in a voice that was barely audible. I wasn't even going to think about it. I shook my head.

Joesbury continued to stare at me for a moment. Then he looked at his watch and pulled out his mobile phone. âDidn't think so,' he said.

Fifteen minutes later, a woman police constable was ensconced on my sofa, watching television with the volume turned low and drinking coffee. I was in bed, still wet from the shower and wondering when I'd stop trembling.

Sunday 9 September

C
LASSICAL PIANO MUSIC WAS PLAYING SOFTLY IN THE mortuary of St Thomas's Hospital. The room was modern, but there was something about the arrangement of so much gleaming steel, the careful placement on the counters of jars and dishes, that looked timeless. For all its grim purpose, it felt like a calm room. And given what we were about to see, calm felt good.

The pathologist, a Dr Mike Kaytes, looked at us across the central worktop. âNot too much I can tell you,' he said. âThey normally send me a bit more to work with.'

As well as Kaytes and his technician, a boy who couldn't be much more than twenty, there were four police officers in the room: Dana Tulloch, Neil Anderson, Pete Stenning and me. This was my first post-mortem, Stenning's too, he'd confided on the way over. Anderson and Tulloch must have attended others but they didn't seem any more at ease. Didn't have to guess why.The small piece of flesh lying in the centre of the polished steel worktop looked obscene.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the music for a second. I'm not a great music fan, I'd never think of listening to classical, but there was something about the delicate precision of the notes, the clarity of the sound, that helped.

Kaytes was a tall, barrel-chested man in his late forties. He had
thick grey hair and bright-blue eyes. On the third finger of his left hand, beneath the surgical glove, a sticking plaster had been wrapped around where his wedding ring would be. He leaned forward and poked at the upper corner of the specimen. âIt's definitely human,' he said. âLook here. See what we've got on the fallopian tubes.' He was pointing to gunmetal-grey, pea-sized objects. âThese are filshie clips,' he went on. âNot even chimpanzees are that advanced yet; this woman's been sterilized. And it's a fresh specimen,' he finished.

The pianist played a series of notes, pure and clear, interspersed by long silences.

âFresh as in â¦ ?' prompted Anderson.

âRecently harvested,' said the pathologist. âWe're running tests to see if we can pick up any of the more common preserving solutions, such as formaldehyde, but, frankly, you can invariably smell the stuff. And this has barely begun to deteriorate. I'd say it's less than twenty-four hours old, fresh as they come.'

As the music started to build in volume and tempo, I imagined the pianist's fingers running up and down the keys. And I really hoped Kaytes wasn't going to use the word âfresh' again.

âCan you tell us anything about the woman it was taken from?' asked Tulloch.

Kaytes nodded. âAdult,' he said. âFrom the size of it, I'd say she'd had at least one pregnancy of twenty-four weeks or over.' He stepped away from the worktop and arched his back. âThe uterus enlarges in pregnancy as the fetus develops,' he went on, âbut then very rarely shrinks back completely to its pre-pregnancy size until some time past the menopause. So this woman wasn't elderly. She'd also given birth.'

He beckoned us closer and re-angled one of the lights so that it shone directly on the organ.

âWhat you're looking at now is the cervix,' he said, extending a gloved index finger.âAnd this little hole here is the external os of the cervix, basically the escape route for the emerging infant. Can you see that it's slit-shaped and a bit distorted?'

I told myself I was back in biology class. I'd never been squeamish then.

âHow is that significant?' asked Tulloch.

âPrior to a vaginal birth the os is neat and circular,' said Kaytes. âThis isn't. She'd had at least one vaginal delivery.'

There were pronounced veins on Tulloch's neck I hadn't noticed before. The muscles of her jaw seemed tighter than usual. âSo she was a mother,' she said. âAny idea how old?'

âLet's open it up, shall we?' said Kaytes, taking up a scalpel just as there was a surprisingly cheerful burst of music. Two fingers, tapping down repeatedly on the same keys. I glanced over at Tulloch while the incision was being made. She didn't flinch.

âWell, there are some fibroids, but none of them really large enough to distort the uterus,' said Kaytes. âTwo or three of them are calcified, which tends only to happen in later life.'

I caught Stenning's eye. He gave me a tight-lipped smile.

âI cut a few sections of the vessels before you got here,' said Kaytes. He stepped away from the table and switched on a microscope on the bench behind him. âBear with me a sec.'

We waited while he adjusted the focus. The microscope was connected to a computer screen and as the screen flickered into life we saw an incomprehensible collage of pink, black and yellow. âHere we go,' Kaytes said, tapping the screen. âWhat you're seeing now is a segment of uterine artery, with some early signs of atherosclerosis, basically a thickening of the arterial wall. That's age-driven, although smoking and diet can exacerbate it. The sterilization points to a slightly older subject as well. My educated guess would be that this lady was somewhere from thirty-five to fifty-five.'

âIs it possible â¦?' began Tulloch. âDo we â¦ do we have to assume she's dead?'

At my side, Anderson sucked in a breath. It had never occurred to me that the owner of the uterus might still be â¦ Jesus.

âNot necessarily,' replied the pathologist. âHysterectomy is still one of the most common elective operations in this country. But without medical support, there'd be a huge amount of bleeding, the pain would be close to unmanageable and there would be a massive risk of infection.'

It was getting harder, by the second, to persuade myself that this was nothing more than a biology class.

âIs it possible this was the by-product of a hysterectomy?' asked
Tulloch, who seemed the only one of us with her brain fully engaged. âRemoved in the last twenty-four hours and then smuggled out of the operating theatre as a joke.'

Kaytes looked bemused. âNot even medical students would try that nowadays,' he said.

âAre you sure?' said Tulloch. âBecause the alternative is a whole lot worse.'

Kaytes made a resigned face and bent down to the worktop again. After a few seconds he shook his head. âThere are no clamp marks across the residual uterine and ovarian vessels,' he said. âAlso a surgeon would use diathermy to control the small vessels, particularly around the cervix. There are no coagulation burns to suggest that. The incision around the cervix is by no means neat, in fact I'd say there's some evidence of pretty amateurish hacking. And you've got this piece of tissue here, which is a small segment of the ureter, indicating this was done in a hurry.' He stood upright again and let the scalpel dangle in his fingers. âThis wasn't the result of a legitimate operation,' he said.

âBut he would still have to know what he was doing, right?' asked Stenning. âI mean, there's no way I could cut a woman open and take out her uterus.' He looked round at the rest of us almost defensively. âI wouldn't know where to begin. I wouldn't even know what it looked like.'

Anderson nodded. Tulloch gave Stenning a small half-smile.

âWell, that's true,' replied Kaytes. âWhoever did this would need some basic knowledge of anatomy. Maybe someone who's worked in medicine without actually being a surgeon. Possibly even a butcher, someone used to cutting up large animals.'

Tulloch's eyes closed and I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. Exactly the same conjectures had been made about the original Ripper. Someone with rough anatomical knowledge. For a while suspicion had fallen on the numerous slaughterhouse workers who lived around Whitechapel and Spitalfields.

âTo be honest, though,' continued Kaytes, âyou can research just about anything on the internet these days. I wouldn't want to send you off on a wild goose chase, looking for a psychotic doctor when it's just someone who's read a couple of textbooks.'

No one answered him.

âAny truth in what I've been hearing?' asked Kaytes. âHave we got a wannabe Ripper?'

Tulloch was about to answer when her mobile beeped. Excusing herself, she stepped to the corner of the room and took the call.

âWhat's the music?' I asked, after a second.

Kaytes looked at me properly for the first time. âBeethoven,' he said. âOne of the piano sonatas. Les Adieux, in fact, played by Alfred Brendel.'

âHe saves the symphonies for when the detective superintendent comes down,' said the technician in a voice that was pure estuary. âWhen we get a bad one, he puts on the Fifth.'

âGets him every time,' agreed Kaytes.

Over in the corner, we heard Tulloch take a deep breath. Then she ended the call, turned back and nodded to the pathologist.

âMike, thank you,' she said. âThat was very helpful.' Then she looked at the rest of us and her eyes were gleaming. âWe have to get back,' she said. âThat print they found on Emma's phone. They've managed to trace it.'

I rode back with Stenning. For a while, neither he nor I spoke.

âIt seems clumsy,' I said at last. âLeaving a print behind.'

âOnly a partial print,' Stenning reminded me.

I nodded. âHow are the Jones family doing?' I asked, because I didn't want to spend the entire trip back obsessing about possible evidence and who it might point to.

Stenning shrugged. âNot great,' he said. âThe youngest son is home now. He should have gone back to university but he's put it off a couple of weeks. The au pair thinks they're still in shock. They want answers, of course. They're starting to blame us.'

âWe haven't given up on the family angle though, have we?' I said, as the lights changed and we pulled away. âWe're still talking to them, trying to find any connection she may have had with Kennington.'

âYeah, but there isn't anything there, Flint. No financial motive that we can find, no dodgy goings-on, everyone close to her had a good alibi, husband isn't having an affair that we know of.'

âThere was nothing on the bag we found the uterus in,' I said. âIf
he was careful enough to keep that clear, why leave something on the phone?'

âThey get careless,' said Stenning. âThat's how we catch them. If they'd had fingerprinting and forensics back in 1888, they'd have caught the Ripper.'

I didn't argue, but I wasn't so sure. Nineteenth-century Whitechapel had been densely populated. Watching eyes were everywhere and at the time of the Ripper murders there was a heavy police presence on the streets. The Ripper had managed to act and escape each time undetected. I was inclined to think that whatever tools the police had had at their disposal, he'd still have stayed one step ahead.

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