by Peter James
While, like himself, Steve Cowling grew a little older with each visit, the dentist had an endless succession of assistants who grew younger and more attractive. The latest, a leggy brunette in her early twenties, holding a buff envelope, smiled at him, then removed a clutch of negatives and handed them to Cowling with a flirty glance.
He picked up the alginate cast Roy had given him twenty minutes earlier. ‘Right, Roy. This is really quite interesting. The first thing I have to say is that it is definitely not Sandy.’
‘It’s not?’ he echoed, a little flatly.
‘Absolutely not.’ Cowling pointed at the negatives. ‘Those are Sandy’s – there’s no comparison at all. But the cast provides quite a lot of information that may be helpful.’ He gave Grace a bright smile.
‘Good.’
‘This woman has had implants, which would have been quite expensive when they were done. Screw-type titanium – made by a Swiss company, Straumann. They’re basically a hollow cylinder put over a root, which then grows into them and makes a permanent fixing.’
Grace felt a conflicting surge of emotions as he listened, trying to concentrate but finding it hard suddenly.
‘What is interesting, old boy, is that we can put a rough date on these – which corresponds to an estimate of how long ago this woman died. They started going out of fashion about fifteen years ago. She’s had some other quite costly work done, some restorations and bridge work. If she’s from this area, then I would say there are only about five or six dentists who could have done this work. A good place to start would be Chris Gebbie, who practises in Lewes. I’ll write down the others for you as well. And it means that she’d have been reasonably well off.’
Grace listened, but his thoughts were elsewhere. If this skeleton had been Sandy, however grim, it would have brought some kind of closure. But now the agony of uncertainty continued.
He didn’t know whether he felt disappointed or relieved.
34
SEPTEMBER 2007
The stench that erupted from the car’s boot made everyone on the river bank gag. It was like a blocked drain that had suddenly been cleared and months – maybe years – of trapped gases from decomposition were freed into the air, all at once.
Lisa backed away in shock, pinching her nose shut with her fingers, and closed her eyes for a moment. The searing midday sun and the relentless flies somehow made things even worse. When she opened her eyes and took in a gulp of air just through her mouth, the smell was still as bad. She was really struggling not to vomit.
MJ didn’t look like he was finding this any easier, but both of them were doing better than the panicky cop, who had turned away from the car and was now on his knees, actually throwing up. Holding her breath, ignoring the cautionary pull on her hand from MJ, Lisa took a few steps towards the rear of the car and peered in.
And wished she hadn’t. The ground beneath her feet suddenly felt unsteady. She gripped MJ’s hand tightly.
She saw what looked at first like a shop-window dummy that had melted in a fire, before realizing that it was the body of a woman. She was filling most of the deep boot space, lying partially submerged in slimy, glistening black water that was steadily draining away. Her shoulder-length fair hair was splayed out like matted weed. Her breasts had a soapy colour and texture, and there were large black blotches covering much of her skin.
‘Has she been burned?’ MJ, who was curious about everything, asked the shorter cop.
‘That’s – no – no, mate, that’s not burning. Skin slippage.’
Lisa looked at the cadaver’s face, but it was bloated and shapeless, like the half-melted head of a snowman. Her pubic hair was intact, a thick brown triangle looking so fresh it seemed unreal, as if someone had just stuck it on as a grotesque joke. She felt almost guilty looking at it. Guilty being here, staring at this body, as if death was a private thing and she was intruding.
But she could not tear her eyes away. The same questions kept going round and round in her mind. What happened to you, you poor thing? Who did this to you?
Eventually, the panicky cop recovered his composure and moved them back abruptly, saying this was a crime scene and he would need to tape it off.
They edged back several paces, unable to avert their eyes, as if they were watching some episode from CSI in real time. Shocked, gripped and numb – but curious as the circus grew. MJ produced some water and baseball caps from the car and Lisa drank gratefully, then pulled a cap on to keep the searing heat off her head.
A white crime scene van arrived first. Two men in slacks and T-shirts climbed out and began pulling on white protective suits. Then a smaller, blue van from which a crime scene photographer emerged. A short while later, a blue VW Golf arrived and a young woman climbed out. She was in her twenties, in jeans and a white blouse, with a frizz of fair hair, and stood for some moments observing the scene. She was holding a notebook in one hand and a small tape recorder. Then she walked over to MJ and Lisa.
‘You’re the ones who found the car?’ She had a pleasant but brisk voice.
Lisa pointed at MJ. ‘He did.’
‘I’m Angela Parks,’ she said. ‘From the Age. Could you tell me what happened?’
A dusty gold Holden was now pulling up. As MJ told his story, Lisa watched two men in white shirts and ties climb out. One was stocky, with a serious, boyish face, while the other looked like a bruiser: tall, powerfully built – if a little overweight – with a bald head and a narrow ginger moustache. He had an expression like thunder – probably from being called out on a weekend, Lisa thought, though she rapidly discovered otherwise.
‘You bloody idiot!’ he yelled at the panicky cop, by way of a greeting, standing some distance back from the crime scene tape. ‘What a fuck-up! Didn’t yer ever do any basic fucking training? What have you done to my crime scene? You’ve not just contaminated it, you’ve fucking desecrated it! Who the fuck told you to move the car out of the water?’
The panicky cop seemed lost for words for some moments. ‘Yeah, well, sorry about that, sir. Guess we screwed up a bit.’
‘You’re fucking standing in the middle of it now!’
The stocky one walked over to Lisa and MJ and nodded at the reporter. ‘How you doing, Angela?’
‘Yeah, OK. Nice to see you, Detective Sergeant Burg,’ she said.
Then his colleague, the bruiser, walked across in big sturdy strides, as if he owned the river bank and all around it. He gave a cursory nod to the journalist and then addressed Lisa and MJ. ‘Detective Senior Sergeant George Fletcher,’ he said. His manner was professional and surprisingly gentle. ‘You the couple that found the car?’
MJ nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘I’m going to need a statement from you both. Would you mind coming to Geelong Police Station?’
MJ looked at Lisa, then at the detective. ‘You mean now?’
‘Some time today.’
‘Of course. But I don’t think there’s a lot we can tell you.’
‘Thank you, but I’ll be the judge of that. My sergeant will take your names and addresses and contact phone numbers before we leave.’
The journalist held out her recorder to the detective. ‘Detective Senior Sergeant Fletcher, do you think there is any connection between the Melbourne gangs and this dead woman?’
‘You’ve been here longer than I have, Ms Parks. I don’t have any comment for you at this stage. Let’s find out who she is first.’
‘Was?’ the journalist corrected him.
‘Well, if you want to be that pedantic, let’s wait for the police surgeon to turn up and make sure she is actually dead.’
He gave a challenging grin, but no one smiled.
35
11 SEPTEMBER 2001
Still nobody spoke except the driver, who talked non-stop. He was like a television in a bar, with the volume irritatingly high, that you couldn’t switch off or change channels. Ronnie was trying to listen to the news that was coming out of the pick-up truck’
s radio and to collect his own thoughts, and the driver was preventing him from doing either.
What’s more, the strong Brooklyn accent made it hard for Ronnie to decipher what he actually said. But as the man was being kind and giving him a ride, he could hardly tell him to shut up. So he sat there, half listening, nodding from time to time and occasionally saying, ‘Yep,’ or ‘No shit,’ or ‘You have to be kidding,’ depending on which he deemed the most appropriate.
The man had trashed most of the ethnic minorities of This Great Country and now he was talking about his ladders in the South Tower. He seemed pretty bothered about them. He was pretty bothered about the IRS too, and began trashing the US taxation system.
Then he lapsed back into a few moments of merciful silence and let the radio speak. All the ghosts behind Ronnie in the pickup truck remained silent. Maybe they were listening to the radio, maybe they were in too much shock to absorb anything.
It was a litany. A list of all the stuff that had happened that he already knew. And some time soon George Bush was going to be saying something. Meantime, Mayor Giuliani was on his way downtown. America was under attack. There would be more information as it came in.
Inside Ronnie’s mind, his plan was coming together steadily.
They were gliding along a wide, silent street. To their right was a threadbare grass verge with trees and lampposts. Beyond the grass was a pathway, or a cycleway, and then a railing, and beyond that another street, running parallel, with cars and vans parked along it, and red-brick apartment buildings that were not too tall, nothing like the Manhattan monoliths. After half a mile or so they gave way to big, angular, detached dwellings that might have been single-occupancy or divided into apartments. It looked a prosperous area. Pleasant and tranquil.
They passed a road sign which said ‘Ocean Parkway’.
He watched an elderly couple walking slowly on the sidewalk and wondered if they knew the drama that was unfolding just a short distance away across the river. It didn’t seem like it. If they had heard, they would surely now be glued to their television set. Apart from them, there was not a soul in sight. OK, at this time of day, during the week, a lot of people would ordinarily have been in their offices. But mothers would be out pushing infants in strollers. People would be walking dogs. Youths would be loitering. There was no one. The traffic seemed light too. Much too light.
‘Where are we?’ he said to the driver.
‘Brooklyn.’
‘Ah, right,’ Ronnie said. ‘Still Brooklyn.’
He saw a sign on a building saying YESHIVA CENTER. It seemed like they had been driving for an age. He hadn’t realized Brooklyn was so large. Large enough to get lost in, to disappear in.
Some words came into his head. It was a line from a Marlowe play, The Jew of Malta, that he’d gone to see recently with Lorraine and the Klingers at the Theatre Royal in Brighton.
But that was in another country.
And besides, the wench is dead.
The street continued dead straight ahead. They crossed an intersection, where the elegant red brick gave way to more modern pre-cast concrete blocks. Then, suddenly, they were driving along beneath the dark green steel L-Train overpass.
The driver said, ‘Rushons. This whole fuggin’ area is now Rushon.’
‘Rushon?’ Ronnie queried, not knowing what he meant.
The driver pointed to a row of garish store fronts. A nail studio. The Shostakovich Music, Art and Sport School. There was Russian writing everywhere. He saw a pharmacy sign in Cyrillic. Unless you spoke Russian, you wouldn’t know what half these stores were. And he didn’t speak a word.
Rushon. Now Ronnie understood.
‘Little Odessa,’ the driver said. ‘Yuge fuggin’ colony. Didn’t used to be, not when I was a kid. Perestroika, glasnost, right? They let them travel, waddya know? They all come here! Whole world’s changing – know what I’m saying?’
Ronnie was tempted to shut the man up by telling him that the world had changed once for the Native Americans too, but he didn’t want to get thrown out of the truck.
So he just said another, ‘Yep.’
They made a right turn into a residential cul-de-sac. At the far end was a row of black bollards with a boardwalk beyond, and a beach beyond that. And then the ocean.
‘Brighton Beach. Good place. Be safe here. Safe from the planes,’ the driver said, indicating to Ronnie that this was journey’s end.
The driver turned to the ghosts behind. ‘Coney Island. Brighton Beach. I gotta get back to find my ladders, my harnesses, all my stuff. Expensive stuff, you know.’
Ronnie unclipped his seat belt, thanked the man profusely and shook his big, callused hand.
‘Be safe, buddy.’
‘You too.’
‘You bet.’
Ronnie opened the door and jumped down on to the tarmac. There was a tang of sea salt in the air. And just a faint smell of burning and aviation fuel. Faint enough to make him feel safe here. But not so faint that he felt free of what he had just been through.
Without casting a backwards glance at the ghosts, he walked on to the boardwalk, with almost a spring in his step, and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket to check that it was definitely off.
Then he stopped and stared past the sandy beach at the vast flat expanse of rippling, green-blue ocean and the hazy smudge of land miles in the distance. He took in a deep breath. Followed by another. His plan was still only very vague and needed a lot of work.
But he felt excited.
Elated.
Not many people in New York on the morning of 9/11 punched the air in glee. But Ronnie Wilson did.
36
OCTOBER 2007
Abby sat cradling a cup of tea in her trembling hands, staring through a gap in the blinds down at the street below. Her eyes were raw from three sleepless nights in a row. Fear swirled inside her.
I know where you are.
Her suitcase was by the front door, packed and zipped shut. She looked at her watch: 8.55. In five minutes she would make the call she had been planning to make all yesterday, just as soon as office hours started. It was ironic, she thought, that for most of her life she had disliked Monday mornings. But all of yesterday she had willed it to come.
She felt more scared than she had ever felt in her life.
Unless she was completely mistaken, and panicking needlessly, he was out there somewhere, waiting and watching. Her card marked. Waiting and watching and angry.
Had he done something to the lift? And its alarm? Would he have known what to do? She repeated the questions to herself, over and over.
Yes, he’d been a mechanic once. He could fix mechanical and electrical things. But why would he have done something to the lift?
She tried to get her head around that. If he really knew where she was, why hadn’t he just lain in wait for her? What did he have to gain by getting her stuck in the lift? If he wanted time to try to break in, why hadn’t he just waited until she went out?
Was she, in her panicked state, simply putting two and two together and getting five?
Maybe. Maybe not. She just didn’t know. So most of the day, yesterday, instead of going out, buying the Sunday papers and lounging in front of the television, as she would ordinarily have done, she sat here, in the same spot where she was now, watching the street below, passing the time by listening to one Spanish lesson after another on her headphones, pronouncing, and repeating, words and sentences out aloud.
It had been a foul Sunday, a south-westerly twisting off the English Channel, continuing to blast the rain on the pavement, the puddles, the parked cars, the passers-by.
And it was the cars and the passers-by that she was watching, like a hawk, through the rain that was still pelting down today. She checked all the parked cars and vans first thing, when she woke up. Only a couple had changed from the night before. It was a neighbourhood where there was insufficient street parking, so once people found a space, they tended to leave their ca
rs until they really needed to go somewhere. Otherwise, the moment they drove off, another vehicle took their place, and when they came back they might have to park several streets away.
She’d had two visitors yesterday, a photographer from the Argus, whom she’d told on the entryphone to go away, and the caretaker, Tomasz, who had come to apologize, maybe concerned for his job and hoping she wouldn’t make a complaint about him if he was nice to her. He explained that vandals must have broken into the lift motor-room and tampered with the brake mechanism and electrics. Low-lifes, he said. He had found a couple of syringes in there. But he wasn’t able to explain convincingly to her why the alarm system, which should have rung through to his flat, had failed to do so. He assured her the lift company was working on it, but the damage the firemen had done meant it would be several days before it was working again.
She got rid of him as quickly as she could, in order to return to her vigil of watching the street.
She called her mother, but she said nothing about receiving any phone calls from anyone. Abby continued the lie that she was still in Australia and having a great time.
Sometimes text messages went astray, got sent to wrong numbers by mistake. Could this have been one?
I know where you are.
Possible.
Coming on top of the lift getting stuck, was she jumping to conclusions in her paranoid state? It was comforting to think that. But complacency was the one luxury she could not afford. She had gone into this knowing the risks involved. Knowing that she would only get away with it by living on her wits, 24/7, for however long it took.
The only thing that had made her smile yesterday was another of his lovely texts. This one said:
You don’t love a woman because she is
beautiful, but she is beautiful because you
love her.
She had replied:
It’s beauty that captures your attention –
