by Sarah Hilary
‘Good. I’m going to check in with Ron to see how the house-to-house is going. Then I’m meeting Ashleigh’s parents at the mortuary.’ She paused. ‘Anything on the alibis?’
‘Sean was home alone both afternoons. The day May went missing, and the day she died. Loz got back from school around four o’clock. Unless she’s covering for him, he was in the house. Her mum got home later, around the time Jamie Ledger found May’s body. I’m checking both cars, Sean’s and Katrina’s, in case they were near the power station that afternoon. If anything turns up, you’ll be the first to know … Did the press behave themselves?’
‘More or less. Once we tell them about Ashleigh, that might change.’Adam wouldn’t be the only one to see a link between the killings of two teenage girls within the same square mile. ‘If the killer is panicking, we need to contain the story. Find Traffic’s girl and identify the subway in May’s sketch – see whether anyone else went missing from the same place in the last four months.’
‘You think he’s holding more girls,’ Noah said bleakly. She knew he was seeing the faces from the whiteboard. Sika Khair and Kim Nguyen, sixteen. Sasha Ronson, fourteen.
‘Keep in touch,’ Marnie told him. She ended the call, ringing Ron’s number. ‘Anything?’
‘Apart from earache? Not yet.’ He sounded strung out. ‘It’s getting edgy here, boss. Some shit-stirrers are suggesting a racial motive, stressing that our victim was a white girl, which isn’t making it any easier.’
‘Tell DC Tanner to get in touch with the Community Safety Unit and ask them to be on site with you. I’ll do the same. Keep me posted.’
30
‘Abandoned places are best,’ Dan’s friend told Noah. ‘The ones everyone ignores. Sometimes it’s about spectacle, sure, like those students putting Santa hats on the spires at King’s College, or getting a car on to the roof of the Senate House. Sticking two fingers up because why not? But a lot of us just like the quiet places, seeing a different side of the city, you know?’
Noah handed him a cup of coffee from the stall across the street. ‘Dan told me about King’s College. I hadn’t heard about the car on the Senate House.’
‘They had to cut it into pieces to take it down. So, yeah. Spectacle. But most of us are happier staying out of the papers. It’s about passing under the radar, not lighting the system.’ Riff was in his thirties. Booted and suited, with a middle-management haircut, gold wedding ring, square-toed shoes. A surveyor by day. By night, an urban explorer. ‘I’m telling you this in the past tense, yeah?’ He worked the plastic lid from the coffee. ‘I gave it all up months ago.’
‘Why did you?’ Noah asked.
‘Aged out.’ Riff shrugged. ‘Like Dan.’ The skin around his eyes was tanned and lined. Old scars on his hands, knots in his wrists from climbing. ‘What you’ve got to understand is that most of us had decent jobs, nice homes, money coming in. Finest edgework I ever saw – bravest – came from a call-centre worker. Said his job drove him insane because it was so safe and inconspicuous.’
‘Edgework. Because it’s about finding the edge of the city? What about the security? How did you get inside so many places?’
‘The more sophisticated the security, the more places you can breach it. We didn’t even have to be clever a lot of the time. We wore hi-vis and hard hats; that got us into a ton of places in broad daylight. Sometimes we ninjaed the scaffolding. Otherwise, it’s about finding the cracks in surveillance, vanishing points. Access points.’
‘Vanishing points,’ Noah repeated. Was that what the killer had done? Found the vanishing points at Battersea Power Station and on the Garrett? Harder, surely, with a dead body in tow.
Riff drank more coffee, watching him. ‘So how’s Danny boy?’
‘He’s good.’ Noah smiled. ‘We’re good.’
‘Still climbing?’
‘On holidays, sometimes. Mostly he’s working in galleries, and on installations. Like the one at the power station a while back.’
‘Not the rotten apples?’ Riff grinned when Noah looked blank. ‘They filled a cage with like a hundred thousand apples and let them rot. Whole place stank of cider for months.’
‘Before Dan’s time, I think.’ A trio of kids mooched towards the bus stop on the other side of the street. In uniform, like Abi Gull and her friends, but no more in school than Abi had been earlier in the day. They glanced towards Noah and Riff, then blanked them, busy with their phones. ‘If I was looking for a hiding place, where would I start? Construction sites?’
‘Maybe. But too much of London’s been rinsed now.’
‘By rinsed, you mean hacked. Explored.’
‘Yeah. Sometimes you think you’ve found a place, that you’re the first ones there. Then you see the markers – someone else beat you to it.’
‘Markers like tags? Graffiti?’
Riff nodded. ‘But honestly? You’re asking the wrong person. I’m aged out. When you can’t find the edge any more, or not without taking massive risks, it’s time to call it a day.’
‘I thought it was all about the danger.’ Noah smiled. ‘Dan still says he despises safety.’
‘It’s about connecting. Belonging. To the real city, and to your team, your tribe.’
‘What was your best time? Dan said you had a soft spot for Battersea. I know he does.’
‘For sure.’ Riff shut his eyes, tipping the coffee cup to drain its last mouthful. ‘Can’t stand what they’ve done to her. Those wankers’ mansions.’
‘I saw the show flat. On top of the old boiler house.’
‘Fucking waste. She was a princess. You should’ve been there when the Millennium fireworks were kicking off, should’ve felt her chimneys shake. Best buzz of my life.’
‘How’d you get in? Dan said the security was always pretty tight.’
Riff shot him a glance, then grinned. ‘I’ve got a photo of Danny with one of the chimneys. He fucking loved the princess.’
‘He told me.’ Noah smiled. He waited, not pushing.
‘They got paranoid about security. Searchlights, dogs. It got a lot harder once they decided they could make money out of her. Soon as we heard about the penthouses, we knew we wouldn’t get to see her the same again, maybe ever. That got a few of us wanting a last trip. Goodbyes, you know?’
‘Did you get to say goodbye?’
Riff shook his head, still smiling. ‘That’d be illegal.’
‘Okay, sure. But say someone wanted to make one last trip. With security the way it is right now. It’s illegal, but would it be impossible?’
‘Nothing’s impossible … The show flat’s on top of the old boiler house. That’s where you found her, the girl that was murdered? He took her up there to kill her?’ Riff looked ill. ‘Freak.’
‘He didn’t kill her there. I can’t give you details, but he wanted her found in the power station.’
‘That’s sick. If you’re thinking he was an explorer … None of us would’ve done a thing like that. It’s the opposite of what we’re about.’
‘We don’t think he’s an explorer. But we can’t figure out how he got her into the power station. Past the security. The guards and the dogs.’
‘There’s more than one way in.’
‘He didn’t come by river.’
Riff was quiet for a moment, then he said, ‘The guards with dogs. You’ve checked those out, right? I’ve paid a few bribes in my time.’
‘We’re checking everyone with access to the site in the last four months.’ Noah made a mental note to revisit the security lists. ‘You mentioned taggers. We’re looking for a street artist called Rents.’
Riff shook his head. ‘Don’t know him.’
It was a long shot, but Noah took out his phone, scrolling to May’s subway sketch. ‘And you don’t recognise this place?’
‘Sorry.’ Shaking his head again.
‘If you think of anything, can you give me a call? Via Dan, if you prefer.’
Riff nodded. ‘Good luck.�
��
Dan called as Noah was making his way back to the station.
‘Hey,’ Noah said. ‘Any luck getting hold of Rents?’
‘He’s not called back yet … Have you seen Sol?’
‘Not since the migraine. Why?’
‘He was coming home when I was leaving for work, looking like someone beat him up. He wouldn’t talk about it, told me not to get you involved. I didn’t make any promises.’
Noah picked up his pace. ‘Badly beaten?’
‘Not that I could see. A bloody nose, bruises. He’d brought himself home, so he can’t have been that bad, but I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Yes. I’ll give him a call.’
‘He wasn’t answering the phone to me,’ Dan said. ‘I tried his number just now, and then the flat. If he’s there, he isn’t picking up.’
‘Okay. I’ll see if I can get hold of him. Thanks.’
Noah rang Sol’s number and listened to the voicemail message. Hung up and tried the landline, getting the answerphone. Whatever he was up to, Sol didn’t want to talk. Shit.
Noah felt a familiar pinch of panic. Worrying about Sol had been a part of growing up. He’d trained himself out of it more or less, but the voice he’d heard in the flat two days ago, Sol’s visitor making threats …
Life had been full of people like that back when Sol ran with the crowd on the council estate, getting into every kind of trouble. Knives, pills, even an amateur protection racket. Lately, there’d been signs he was straightening himself out, but that could be wishful thinking on Noah’s part. Or Sol could be finding it hard to shake off the trouble. If he’d been running with the wrong crowd, there’d be no easy exit. Same for the gangs on the Garrett: Abi and her schoolmates setting fires, terrorising old ladies. Once you started down that road, it was impossible to stop without losing face or losing friends. All those hard stares on the estate this morning …
Abi and her friends, who were little more than kids.
Even a dead girl hadn’t moved them, beyond curiosity and a certain morbid hostility.
Any one of them could be next. Did they know that?
Was that why they refused to look scared? Refused to stay indoors?
Standing out in the open, in their school uniforms, pretending to be grown-up.
Daring anyone – even a killer – to take them on.
31
‘She was always such a stranger. Even when she was tiny. I never really … recognised her. I blamed myself, thought I was going mad, post-natal depression maybe, because, “Who is this child? Where did she come from?” She wasn’t like me or my sisters or anyone we knew. Maybe she was like her dad. I didn’t really know him, not the way you’re supposed to know the person you have a child with. And he was off as soon as she was born. I was stuck at home with this stranger, and she … never liked me, cried whenever I went near her, hated being held or cuddled. She hated me … We were such strangers.’ Helen Collier stopped speaking at last, standing dry-eyed by her daughter’s body. Bewildered. As if Ashleigh had done another inexplicable thing by dying. ‘I tried to love her, but she made it impossible. She wouldn’t even let me like her, or look after her. Wouldn’t let me teach her how to lace her shoes when she was little, or how to put on make-up. Everything I did, everything I tried to do, she pushed me away.’
Ashleigh’s stepfather put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. A nice-looking man, fair-haired, his face lined by hope and worry. Helen was a big woman with a once-pretty face, wearing a dark dress sagged and faded at the waist; Marnie could see her holding a child in her lap. Not Ashleigh, but her son Jolyon, the sick little boy who’d been in and out of hospital since Ashleigh ran away.
‘Do you have any idea where she might have been living in the last two months?’
‘None.’ Robin Collier shook his head.
‘Could she have been with other girls, runaways?’
‘She didn’t like other people.’ Helen blinked at her daughter’s body. ‘Especially not other girls.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘Not while she was living at home. She knew some boys, but she didn’t like them, that’s what she always said.’ Her face worked. ‘She wasn’t raped. He didn’t do that to her, at least.’
Marnie waited a moment. ‘The care home said she used her mobile phone a lot before she went missing. Sending texts or chatting to people.’
‘No one we knew. She never called us, never took our calls.’
‘She hadn’t been in touch since before Jolyon was born,’ Robin said.
‘How is he?’
‘Better, just for the moment. We’re counting our blessings, a day at a time.’ He hugged his wife closer. ‘I wish we could’ve helped Ashleigh, but Helen’s right. She wouldn’t let us. As far as we knew, she wouldn’t let anyone help her.’
‘Has her biological father been in touch?’
Helen shook her head. ‘I don’t even know how to get hold of him. We lost contact years ago.’
‘Someone else Ashleigh didn’t want to know.’ Robin looked sad. ‘I suppose she felt rejected by him, but it was more than that. She was fiercely independent, as Helen says. Hated being a child, wanted to grow up and get away. We just couldn’t … connect to her.’
Marnie was quiet for a moment, waiting for one of the Colliers to say something more, but they just stood looking at the stranger who’d died after running from their home.
Eventually Helen said, ‘Can we go? It’s her, we can confirm it’s her. That’s all you needed, isn’t it?’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘We promised my mum we’d be back for Jolyon’s bed time.’
At the entrance to the mortuary, Marnie shook their hands. ‘Thank you again, and I’m sorry.’
‘For our loss,’ Helen said mechanically. ‘I don’t mean … It’s horrible, of course it is. I wish she wasn’t dead. I wish she could’ve been happy.’ She wiped at her dry eyes. ‘I hope you catch whoever did it. Ashleigh didn’t deserve this.’
‘One thing.’ Robin frowned. ‘She was a clever kid, street-smart. She didn’t trust anyone, let alone strangers. Whoever did this, you’re looking for someone very clever or very fast. I can’t believe she’d be taken in by just anyone. She was such a cynical kid, the last person in the world I’d have expected to find like this. But she was just a kid. She didn’t act like it, but she was.’ His eyes clouded and he put an arm around his wife again. ‘Poor kid.’
‘Thank you,’ Helen said to Marnie. ‘For making her look so nice. I was scared to see her. I’d thought she’d look much worse. Her skin was always so … fiery. She used too much make-up, which made it worse. In there, she looked like a little girl again.’ Her mouth made the messy shape of a smile. ‘Thank you for that.’
Marnie nodded, but she thought, That wasn’t us.
It was the killer.
‘So Ashleigh was no May Beswick.’ Ron was studying the new sketches on the whiteboard, the ones Welland had called pornographic. ‘Not that May was such a nice girl as it turns out.’
‘Because she had talent?’ Noah said.
‘It’s not how she drew, it’s what she drew. I wouldn’t want my kids turning out pictures like that. Bet her mum and dad had a fit when they found these.’
‘Her sister found them,’ Noah said shortly. He had his hands in his pockets, shoulders up.
Marnie watched him, wondering what had happened to put him on edge. Or was he thinking about the Beswicks still, as she was? About grief and guilt, and the places in between.
‘Ashleigh had street smarts,’ she told the team. ‘May knew which places to avoid after dark. Neither girl was the kind to be taken in by strangers. So how did they end up with our killer? Fran’s found no evidence of restraint on either girl. All the signs say they went with him. Lived with him, ate his food, slept under his roof. Why? How did he seduce them?’
‘You think he’s good-looking?’ Ron sniffed. ‘Rich, maybe. If he had a flashy car …’
‘
What was it about these girls that attracted him?’ Noah said. ‘They had nothing in common. Different upbringings, different personalities, physically different.’
‘They hung out in the same subway. Maybe it’s as simple as that. He saw them together so he took them together. And because there were two of them, they felt safe going with him … We need to find the subway. If it even exists.’
‘It exists. Rents is a street artist from Stockwell. He’s used that tag all over south London. He’ll know where the subway is. We just need to find him.’
‘How’s that going?’ Marnie asked Noah.
‘Dan gave me a phone number. I’ve left a couple of messages. He hasn’t called back yet. BTP’s Graffiti Unit has him on a list, no name or address. He’s tagged a few of their trains in the last year. They’ve failed to catch him, seemed to think we’d fail too. I said we’d keep them posted.’
Marnie looked at Colin. ‘How soon until we finish with the lists of people with access to the power station?’
‘We’ve eliminated thirteen so far, wrong profile or with an alibi for the day May was killed. A couple look interesting, so we’re following up. One’s on the security crew, a shift worker like Jamie Ledger. Served time for an assault in Lithuania. He wasn’t working that day, but we’re looking at anyone who could’ve been bribed to turn a blind eye to security shortfalls.’
‘Put him on the board.’ Marnie handed him the pen.
Colin wrote, Romek Malis.
‘What kind of assault in Lithuania?’
‘Domestic. We’re getting details.’
‘No sign of restraint on either girl.’ Noah moved closer to the photographs of Ashleigh and May. ‘So this was … what? Capture bonding?’
‘Speak English,’ Ron said. He was tired. They all were.
‘Two bright girls went willingly with a maniac who ended up strangling them. He didn’t tie them up, they didn’t fight back. Why? They trusted him. Maybe they even liked him. Or they were scared of him, they knew they had to do as he said to survive. They went along with whatever he wanted. That’s capture bonding. Living in fear – actually within it – can feel safe. In that state, you reinvent what feels rational and irrational. Even if these girls are completely dominated by the source of their fear, the chances are they feel safe. Fearless, even. He didn’t snatch them, they chose to go with him. They’re in a different reality. It’s only when they step back across the line that it hits them. Maybe that’s why Traffic’s girl was so disorientated. She’d been surviving by submission.’
