Now You See Me (21 page)

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Authors: Sharon Bolton

BOOK: Now You See Me
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‘W
ILL THEY TAKE DI TULLOCH OFF THE CASE?' I ASKED Anderson, as we pulled into the car park at St Thomas's Hospital and he stopped in a bay reserved for ambulances.
‘She should be so fucking lucky,' he replied, opening his door and climbing out. ‘They'll keep her on the case till the bitter end. She's the one they'll hang out to dry when it all goes pear-shaped.'
Anderson was walking too quickly as we went into the hospital through the main reception and took the lift one floor down to the mortuary. I kept up as best I could. Last time I'd been here, it had been to view a human uterus; I wondered if Kaytes would complain that we never sent him anything complete to work on.
His young assistant met us and helped us gown up. When we went into the examination room, Kaytes was leaning over a desk completing a form. He put the pen down and turned to face us.
‘Never-ending paperwork,' he said. ‘Your package arrived ten minutes ago. See to the sound system, will you, Troy?'
Troy crossed to Kaytes's iPod and, smiling to himself, switched it on.
A grey bag lay in the middle of the central worktop. Kaytes pulled on some gloves and unzipped it, just as the music started.
‘No DI Tulloch today?' he said, as he extracted the clear plastic bag we'd seen at the library from out of the grey one. ‘Right, let's see what we've got.'
Kaytes opened the bag and let its contents pour out on to a large, shallow stainless-steel tray. The soft glooping was one of the most disgusting sounds I'd ever heard and I had to force myself to concentrate on the music for a few seconds. It was an orchestral piece this time, sweeter, more harmonious than the piano sonata I remembered. Kaytes turned round and took up tongs. He began spreading the various pieces of viscera around the tray to get a better look. ‘Well, it's fresh, whatever else it is,' he said.
‘How can you tell?' asked Anderson.
‘Smell it,' invited Kaytes. Anderson and I looked at each other. Neither of us moved any closer to the worktop. ‘Yep,' continued the pathologist, ‘that's a heart.'
The orchestral music gained in volume as the heart in question was gently moved to one side of the tray. It was a pale-pink piece of muscle, about the size of my fist. Two large, roughly truncated vessels full of clotted blood emerged from the wider, upper part.
‘Is it human?' asked Anderson. Without the boss around to be impressed, his bullishness seemed to have diminished.
‘Could be,' replied Kaytes. ‘It's certainly about the right size, but we'll have to run the tests.'
Kaytes lifted something with the tongs. I took a step back. ‘This is, though.' He held it closer to the light. It was almost circular, about the size of half a grapefruit.
‘Please tell me that's not what I think it is,' said Anderson.
Kaytes was still looking at the object in the tongs. ‘As far as I know,' he said, ‘humans are the only animals with recognizable breasts, as opposed to teats, that don't have heavy hair growth around the nipple.'
Anderson turned to me. ‘Did he do that? The Ripper? Did he cut off … ?'
‘He did,' I said, feeling something sticky in the back of my throat. ‘Mary Kelly's breasts were both cut off. He didn't take them, though. They were left at the scene.'
‘Jesus,' repeated Anderson.
‘There's something else here,' said Kaytes, pushing more bloodstained tissue out of the way. He lifted it away from the tray. ‘This isn't organic,' he said.
Anderson and I both waited while Kaytes crossed to a sink at the
side of the room. A piano started to play, its notes light and clear, and yet sounding so incredibly sad. Kaytes had turned on the tap. A second later he came back and put something down on a clean part of the worktop. Anderson and I had no choice but to step closer.
Rinsed of gore, the tiny piece of jewellery was gleaming under the lights. It was silver, a simple, inexpensive necklace. Most of it was chain, and the part intended to sit on a woman's collarbone was made up of nine interlocking letters that formed a girl's name.
Elizabeth
.
‘We never released the fact that he was naming his victims,' said Anderson, running a hand over his face. ‘We kept quiet about his clothes and about that. Fuck a duck, he's still out there, isn't he?'
‘O
UR LATEST VICTIM WAS FOUND BY HER HUSBAND TWO hours ago,' Tulloch was saying as I opened the door to the incident room. ‘He'd come home from work early to get changed for an evening function. Which I suppose we should be grateful for, because otherwise one of her kids would have found her.'
DS Anderson had been right. He was still out there. We'd arrived back at the station to learn that a fourth body had been reported. Anderson had gone straight to the scene. I'd stayed behind waiting for news.
Now, it was just after seven o'clock and most of the team were back from the house in Hammersmith where the murder had taken place. I spotted a vacant seat and headed for it.
‘The police doctor who attended the crime scene believes she was killed some time early this morning,' Tulloch said. ‘There were no signs of a forced entry or of a struggle. Apart from the master bedroom, the like of which I hope I never see again in my life, the house was untouched.'
Tulloch pressed a button on a nearby computer and we were looking at a photograph of the crime scene. A woman with short, dark hair was lying on a large bed. Her feet were on the pillow, her head at the foot of the bed. As far as the rest of her was concerned, I couldn't have said anything for certain.
The door opened and Joesbury came in. He'd taken off the sling since I'd last seen him.
‘We think the killer made her lie, face up, on the bed,' said Tulloch. ‘Possibly, like our friend Cooper, he uses a gun, real or replica. He approached from behind, took hold of her by the hair and pulled her head back. He cut her throat from left to right, indicating he's probably right-handed. We'll have to wait for the post-mortem to be sure, but it looks as though he made several cuts.'
The room in the photograph looked like someone had taken a spray can to it.
‘Most of the blood appears to have come from her severed throat,' continued Tulloch. ‘Which suggests he waited for her to die before beginning the mutilation. No obvious sign of rape or torture this time.'
‘Different killer,' Stenning suggested, sounding more hopeful than certain.
‘Possibly,' agreed Tulloch. ‘She had an easier death than Amanda Weston. On the other hand, the extent of the post-mortem mutilation is the worst we've seen so far. Large areas of skin were removed from the abdomen and legs, most of her internal organs were cut out and left lying around the bed. Her ribcage was smashed with something like a hammer and then forced open. Her heart was taken out and both breasts were severed. One was found at the scene. The other made its way to the children's room at Victoria Library.'
Low murmurs around the room.
‘Sorry, Dana, I didn't catch her name,' said Joesbury, who was rubbing his left arm as though it was still bothering him.
I hadn't heard it either. I'd spent the afternoon in a different room to most of the team.
‘Benn,' said Tulloch, glancing down at her notes. ‘Charlotte Benn. Married to Nick, a criminal barrister.'
Tulloch's voice started to fade. ‘Two sons,' I thought I heard her say next. ‘Felix, aged twenty-six, and Harry, aged twenty-two. Madeleine, her daughter, is seventeen and still at … Lacey, what the …? Christ, someone catch her.'
There was a sudden rush of movement around me. Someone – Stenning, I think – was holding me upright. I heard the sound of a chair being dragged and felt myself being lowered into it. The black cloud in my head started to thin out.
I was on the other side of the room from where I'd been sitting, close to the door, without any recollection of getting up and crossing the office. Mizon was in front of me, holding out a plastic cup of water. Automatically, I took it. Tulloch had crouched down beside Mizon. I kept my eyes firmly on the floor.
‘I'll get someone to take you home,' Tulloch said.‘You are back on sick leave until I say otherwise.'
‘No,' I said, louder than I'd intended. I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. ‘I'm fine. Just give me a minute, please. I'll find a quiet room.'
Tulloch opened her mouth to argue, then looked at her watch. She didn't have time to nursemaid me. ‘Go and sit next door,' she said. ‘Pete, go with her.'
I found I could stand up. I fixed my eyes on the door and made it that far. Stenning was at my side.
‘Now, it shouldn't surprise anyone too much to hear that Charlotte Benn's children went to St Joseph's School in Chiswick.' Most heads had turned to face Tulloch again. Not Joesbury though. He was still watching me.
‘There is a connection between these families,' Tulloch went on. ‘Something that goes beyond children at the same school. We have to find out what that is. I've asked Gayle to take the lead on that.'
The door closed behind us and Stenning and I walked the few metres along the corridor to the next office.
‘What can I get you?' he asked me, once I was sitting at my own desk.
I shook my head and gestured to the door. ‘Nothing, I'm fine. You need to get back in there.'
Stenning didn't argue. ‘Sure?' he said, but he was already turning to leave.
‘Pete.' I stopped him just before the door closed. ‘The second victim, Amanda Weston – she used to live in London, didn't she?'
Stenning gave a quick, impatient nod. ‘When she was married to her first husband,' he replied. ‘Sure you're OK?'
I forced a smile. ‘Fine,' I said. ‘Go on, you can fill me in later.'
I gave Stenning a few seconds to get back to the incident room before running my hands over my face, telling myself firmly I had to focus, and then switching on my desktop computer.
HOLMES – or Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – records and tracks the progress of all serious inquiries carried out by the UK police. Whilst I was still in uniform, my knack of finding and processing information had been spotted and I'd been sent on a four-week inputter course. I knew the system very well, but after coming back on light duties, I'd been inputting the endless detail that tying up a major investigation demanded. There was a lot on here I just hadn't got round to reading.
The first file I opened up was that of the Jones family. Geraldine Jones, the first victim, had been married to David, a fund manager in Leadenhall Street. He was believed to earn in the region of half a million a year, including bonuses, and they'd lived in a very nice house on the river in Chiswick. They had two sons, Jacob, who was twenty-six and a junior doctor, and Joshua, who was at university.
Jones. Such a common name.
With unusual efficiency, someone had started a file for the latest victim and her family. Charlotte Benn had been forty-nine and hadn't worked since her eldest child was born. She and Nick had two sons, Felix, aged twenty-six, and Harry, aged twenty-two. Their daughter, Madeleine, was seventeen and still at St Joseph's.
Knowing I couldn't avoid it, I opened up the file on the Westons. As Stenning had just told me, Amanda Weston, whom Joesbury and I had found in the Victoria Park boat shed, had been married before. Daryl was her second husband and she'd moved out to Hampshire when they married. Previously, she and her children had lived in London, not too far from the Jones family. Her children, Daniel, now aged twenty-five, and her daughter, Abigail, aged sixteen, had gone to St Joseph's School in Chiswick. Their name, in those days, had been Briggs.
Geraldine Jones. Amanda Briggs. Charlotte Benn.
Next door, in the incident room, the focus of the investigation would have switched to the connection between the three families. Tulloch would be ordering a trace on the money situation in each family on the off-chance the husbands had got involved in some dodgy investment and tried to pull out, resulting in the wives being killed as a warning or punishment. That would be a complete waste of effort.
Any time now, almost certainly within the next twenty-four
hours, the families themselves would realize what was going on. They would tell Tulloch and her team exactly why the three women had been killed. They would tell her who was next on the list, who victims four and five were intended to be. It would become blindingly obvious who had killed Geraldine Jones, Amanda Weston and Charlotte Benn. My colleagues would know that Joesbury had been right all along.
They would know that the killer was me.
I
LEFT THE STATION TWENTY MINUTES LATER. NO ONE SAW ME go. Before slipping out, I'd done everything I could think of, which hadn't been much. I'd also left a note saying I wasn't feeling great and would take the following day off. It would buy me a bit of time.
On top of my wardrobe at home is a bag I keep packed with things I'll need if I have to leave in a hurry. The few important papers I have are in there, and so is some money. I keep a safety deposit box at a private-security company. I change companies every year but the contents stay the same. Cash. Enough to be able to disappear very quickly.
I changed into jeans, a warm sweatshirt and trainers before grabbing a jacket. I hadn't eaten for a while but didn't want to spare the time. I would get something on the way.
I switched off the lights and left the flat. It was starting to rain and, judging from the cloud cover, it was going to continue for some time. I considered taking my bike, but only for a second. It would make me a lot harder to trace, but I just wouldn't be able to move fast enough. I planned to be in Portsmouth in a couple of hours, ditch the car and become a foot passenger on the next available ferry to France. Once on the continent, I'd take a fast train south. In a couple of days, there'd be no trace of me left. Lacey Flint would cease to exist.
As I locked the door, I could feel tears stinging behind my eyes.
I'd always known that one day it would come to this; that I would take off, leaving everything behind. I just hadn't considered how much it would hurt.
I climbed the steps on legs that felt too heavy and beeped open my car.
‘Going somewhere, Flint?'
I should have known it couldn't be that easy.
I turned round slowly. My nemesis had parked illegally on double yellows. He was pulling a jacket round his shoulders as his eyes went from my face to the rucksack slung over my left shoulder.
Hold it together, girl.
‘Local leisure centre,' I said, stretching the corners of my mouth into what, under the dim light of a streetlamp, might pass for a smile. ‘Every part of me aches and I plan to spend the next hour in the steam room. Want to come?'
Joesbury didn't look convinced. ‘Tempting,' he said. ‘But I already made plans.'
‘Have fun,' I replied, turning back to my car, flicking my eyes across the road and back again. No one else in sight. He and I seemed to be alone in the street. ‘And by the way,' I went on, ‘if keeping an eye on me like this is supposed to be a covert operation, you suck at it.'
I reached for the door of my car, hardly knowing what I was going to do once I got inside. Joesbury was no fool. If he was allowing himself to be seen, he wasn't alone. There would be someone else, just out of sight. I was trapped. I looked up the street again. Still just the two of us. There was a Swiss army knife in my bag. It might not kill him, but it would slow him down, give me chance to get away.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and almost screamed out loud I was so pent up.
‘Actually, my plans include you,' he said. ‘I'm under orders to make sure you're OK.'
Tiny drops of rainwater had collected on his eyebrows. I watched one fall on to his lashes and shimmer there for a moment before he blinked it away. ‘I'm OK,' I said. ‘Thank you. But space would be good right now. And I really do feel like shit.'
‘I'll give you a neck rub,' he said, taking the keys from my hand
and locking the car again. ‘Come on.' He was guiding me towards his own car, holding the passenger door open. I climbed in, telling myself I could not panic. If Joesbury got suspicious and wanted to see what was inside my bag, it was all over.
So I'd go later. I'd take the bike, after all, ride through the night. Or catch a bus or a train to Portsmouth in the morning. I could still do it. I just had to stay calm.
The inside of the car smelled of damp hair and clothes. At the junction with the Wandsworth Road, Joesbury switched on the car stereo and I braced myself for the usual rush of rhythmic club sound. Instead, a soft male voice started singing about flying.
‘This is Westlife,' I said, after a few seconds.
Joesbury didn't look at me, but the crease at the corner of his mouth deepened. ‘Borrowed it from Dana,' he said.
In spite of everything, I almost laughed.
‘What did I miss back at HQ?' I asked, as we headed east, close to the South Bank.
‘The headmaster of St Joseph's was at the station when I left,' Joesbury told me. ‘Chap called Edward Seaton. Cooperative enough. He and Gayle have been using the school's telephone tree. That's a sort of list—'
‘I know what a telephone tree is,' I said. ‘You ring the name at the top of the list, she rings the next one and so on.'
‘Right,' said Joesbury. ‘They're going back ten years, contacting every family who sent kids to the school, first checking the mothers are still OK and then warning them to be extra careful in the next few days.'
‘Isn't that going to cause a panic?' I asked, realizing Joesbury was driving faster than was strictly legal and had twice looked at his watch.
‘Yeah, I suggested that myself,' Joesbury said as we approached some lights. He picked up speed and then braked hard when they changed. I lurched forward against the seat belt and my bruised ribs didn't enjoy the experience.
‘And?' I said.
‘And Tully drew herself up to her full five feet four inches, pressed her screech button and demanded to know if she was the only person in the room who understood the meaning of the phrase
“double event”. At which point I decided I was taking the night off.'
You had to admire the man's nerve. ‘She was OK with that?'
Joesbury turned quickly and grinned at me. ‘She knows I'm crap at admin, which is basically all they can do for now,' he said. ‘And they're calling a meeting. Tomorrow morning at the school, for all past and present mothers.'
‘What do you imagine the press will make of that?' I asked after a second.
‘She's inviting them as well,' said Joesbury. ‘It's looking like the school is the key to whatever's going on. She wants every woman connected with it on full alert.'
I thought about it for a moment. It was a good idea. It would also mean that some time tomorrow morning, the game would definitely be up. I had no choice but to leave tonight. Just one big problem in my way. The one in the driver's seat.
My rucksack was on my lap. Relying on the music to drown any sound, I unzipped the front pocket and found my knife. Then I slipped my hand into my coat pocket. As I was doing that, my big problem turned into a short, no-through road and pulled over. He switched off the engine and, with an exaggerated look of relief, the stereo system. ‘I want double brownie points for that,' he said. ‘I brought you a coat.'
He was out of the car before I had time to ask where we were, and why I would need another coat. Knowing I didn't have much choice but to play along, I tucked my bag under the seat and climbed out too.
We were in Southwark, not far from where I'd worked up until a few weeks ago, and practically on the riverbank. Directly across from us were the lights and buildings of the city. Joesbury handed over a large oilskin coat, pulled a baseball cap on to his own head and set off towards the water. I raised the coat hood and followed, very slowly.
The river was metres away, the safety barrier nothing but two iron bars held by vertical struts, and Joesbury was waiting for me at the top of some narrow stone steps that I had a bad feeling led to the beach below. As I drew close, he pulled a torch out of his coat pocket and set off down them. On the fourth step, his left foot slipped sideways.
‘You need to watch it,' he called over his shoulder. ‘They're skanky. Hold on to the rope.'
A weed-encrusted rope had been nailed into the embankment wall. It looked just like the one I'd clung to on the night Sam Cooper had drowned. The night I almost had. I didn't want to touch it. And I certainly wasn't going down to that beach.
I still hadn't looked at the river, but I could hear it, had heard it the moment I got out of the car, even above the rain. The soft play of water against wooden pier struts, the insistent, rushing hum that always seems to hover around moving water.
‘I'll wait in the car,' I called, but the wind had picked up and I wasn't sure he'd heard.
‘That would defeat the object.' He'd turned on the last step and was looking back up at me.
‘I'm not comfortable near the river,' I said. I still hadn't looked at it but I had a sense of it creeping closer. The tide was about to turn. If you spend enough time near a tidal watercourse like the Thames, you learn to hear the particular dip in sound it makes at low water. The whisper that says,
I'm coming back.Jesus,
I was getting in the car now.
‘I know that,' said Joesbury, who'd taken a step back up. ‘Who would be? But you can't work for the Met and be potamophobic. Come on.'
He climbed another couple of steps and grabbed my hand. Then he was pulling me down. This was the moment. The knife was in my pocket. Straight into his stomach and pull hard upwards. He'd fall to the beach and within a couple of hours the river would take him.
‘Potoma-what?' I said, as I stepped on to the crunching, litterstrewn surface of the beach. I could feel my trainers sinking into what I hoped was damp sand but had a feeling probably wasn't.
‘Fear of rivers,' said Joesbury, who was dragging me towards some dark shapes a few metres away. Directly ahead and soaring above us were the protruding, futuristic spikes of the Millennium Bridge. It glowed like beaten silver in the darkness. Down on the beach we'd moved out of the reach of the streetlamp and had just the thin, moonbeam trail of Joesbury's torch to light the way. ‘Looked it up an hour ago,' he went on.
The dark shapes ahead had taken the form of a low pier. It looked wet, half-rotten and far from stable, and there was no way on this
earth I was stepping on to it. Joesbury leaped up and I tugged my hand free. He turned back to face me.
‘My grandfather worked for the Marine Unit,' he said. ‘Back in the early fifties when health and safety wasn't anything like what it is now. Officers got dunked on a regular basis.'
I folded my arms. Wherever this was going, I wasn't interested.
‘They had to be pretty good swimmers,' Joesbury went on, ‘but even so, when they were pulled out, nearly all of them got a serious case of the potamowhatsits. So they took 'em out again, in a small, low-slung boat, just as soon as they could. Sort of like putting someone back on a horse after they've fallen off.'
So this was about doing me a favour? ‘I appreciate the thought,' I said. ‘But I'd rather do it some other time.'
‘That's what they all say,' said Joesbury, with what I was beginning to think of as his nasty smile.
‘Please can we go back to the car?' I tried one last time.
Joesbury inclined his head at me. ‘Do I strike you as someone who gives up easily?'
Just get it over with. I kept close to him as we set off along the pier. Across the water, the ghostly dome of St Paul's soared above the surrounding buildings.
‘This pier disappears completely when the tide's up,' said Joesbury, as I realized we were walking over water. ‘The Marine Unit use it for accessing the South Bank at low tide.'
I didn't reply. I couldn't decide whether it was better to focus on the lights of the opposite bank and have the glimmer of the river at the edge of my vision, or keep them firmly on my feet and see the swirl of the scum through the slats of the pier. Frankly, eyes tight shut and clinging to Joesbury felt like the best idea, but I rather doubted I'd get away with it.
We'd got to within two metres of the pier's end when Joesbury stopped. The tide was coming in fast by this stage and the wind blowing up the length of the river was helping it along. Every tiny wave seemed to creep a little closer to our feet. Joesbury put his hands on my shoulders and moved me to his left side, effectively screening me from most of the wind. A gallant enough gesture, I suppose, but I really didn't like the way the pier rocked.
‘I've suggested to Dana that you interview the children tomorrow,' he said.
As clouds crossed the sky the river shimmered from black to purple, and bright circles of ruby-red light danced across it. I glanced up. The ruby lights were being reflected from a crane just by St Paul's.
‘What?' I said, as his last words sunk in.
He was looking downstream towards Southwark Bridge. ‘You're the youngest on the team,' he said. ‘You'll be the least threatening.'
‘Actually I wasn't planning to go in tomorrow,' I said. ‘I left DI Tulloch a note.'
Joesbury glanced back at me, then down at his feet. ‘Yeah, it's in my pocket,' he said. ‘She hasn't seen it yet.'

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