by Max Manning
His day went downhill from there. A steady drizzle slowed the traffic to a crawl. He arrived at the station thirty minutes later than he’d intended, and his mood worsened with the news that he had a meeting with a press officer.
It was important to manage media coverage in murder cases, but he resented spending time on it. Fenton found the press officer waiting for him in his office. Ray Partington had joined the Yard’s media team four months ago, and Fenton had heard good things about him from people whose judgment he trusted.
Slipping into his chair, Fenton noticed the other man looking pointedly at his watch. He decided not to apologize for arriving late. “I’ve got a lot to do, so let’s make this quick and painless,” he said. “It’s the usual story. We need to keep the coverage going in the hope that a witness will come forward. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”
Partington slapped a hand on the pile of national newspapers he’d placed on the desk. “There won’t be a problem keeping the press interested. The killer’s Instagram post has gone viral. The papers are all over it, but I guarantee they’ll soon be desperate for a new angle.”
Fenton sat back, crossed his arms, and gazed across at the press officer. Partington wore a dark suit that matched his hair and a blue tie several shades paler than his eyes.
“There’s nothing new I want to give out yet,” Fenton said. “Keep doing what you’re doing, and make sure that the press keeps putting out appeals for anybody who might have seen something.”
Partington tilted his head to one side. “I understand, but if we don’t come up with something new soon, they’ll assume the investigation is floundering.”
“They can assume whatever the hell they want. I don’t give a damn.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that if the papers decide you’re not doing your job properly, things will turn nasty very quickly.”
Fenton tried to smile but failed. “You know your job,” he said. “Keep the press happy while getting the coverage we need to help the investigation.”
Partington had the sense to realize that the meeting was over and headed for the door. Fenton watched him shake his head as he strode down the corridor, then pulled the pile of newspapers across the desk.
Most of the tabloids had put the murder story on the front page, using the headline I, KILLER above the “before” picture. The quality of the image was poor because it had been grabbed off the internet, but the terror on Lauren’s face made Fenton’s chest ache.
He picked up the Express and turned to page two, where an article invited readers to go to the paper’s website and take part in a vote on whether they would view similar posts if the killer struck again. Fenton screwed the paper up and dropped it into the wastepaper basket by his desk.
He pulled one of the so-called quality papers over and found the story on page three. He was relieved to see that the only picture was a press office handout of a younger, smiling Lauren. The story too had been angled away from the gory details of the murder. Under the headline KILLER EXPLOITS SOCIAL MEDIA LINK TO MORAL DECAY, the article condemned the rush to view the I, Killer post and the speed with which it was shared by hundreds of Instagram users and spread to Twitter and Facebook. Fenton read the first few paragraphs, nodded in agreement, and pushed the paper aside. “More like antisocial media,” he muttered.
He turned to his computer, grabbed the keyboard, and Googled I, Killer. 353,437 results in 0.76 seconds. How fucking depressing. He deleted I, Killer and searched for the Express website. The result of the poll flashed at him in a green box at the bottom of the home page. Seventy-eight percent of readers would view pictures of I, Killer’s next victim. Fifteen percent voted no. Seven percent undecided.
Fenton clenched his fists, stifling an urge to punch the screen. Instead, he stood and scooped up the newspapers, hurled them into the trash, and kicked it so hard, it bounced off the wall, spilling its contents across the floor.
Nine
Marta Blagar stared at her reflection in a shop window. Her green eyes were small and watchful. Youth kept her complexion fresh, but if you looked closely, you could see signs of stress. She touched the dry patches of skin on her cheeks and traced the tiny lines radiating from the corners of her mouth. Lying went against her nature, and the thought of being exposed kept her awake most nights.
The prospect of her family losing the roof over their heads scared her more than anything. The money she sent home every month paid the rent. Marta checked her watch. She had ten minutes to get to the school to pick up Tess.
She turned into Upper Street and, as always, couldn’t help but marvel at its opulence. There were stores full of designer clothes, supermarkets crammed with food products from all over the world, and trendy coffee shops buzzing with gossip as customers sipped their skinny lattes while nibbling zucchini carrot cake. Compared to the Bucharest suburb where she’d been brought up, Islington was paradise.
Marta walked with her head held high. She had landed a job and had made such a good impression, she’d been asked to live in after only a couple of days. Her room was small but comfortable and, best of all, rent free. Her employer was an important police officer and always respectful toward her. She hated lying to him.
The agency had checked her passport, and European Union freedom of movement rules meant she didn’t need a work visa. The lying began when she filled in the application form. She claimed to have been registered as a nanny back in Romania. Whether they believed her or not, they didn’t ask any difficult questions. They were happy to add her to their list, find her a position, and take their fee. At the start of the interview with Tess’s father, she had been so scared of rejection, she blurted out that she was from Latvia. Her outburst made Mr. Fenton smile, but he didn’t question her assertion.
During her first few months in London, Marta discovered that opportunities for an unqualified Romanian woman were limited. Romanians had a bad reputation. She’d been advised, by a Polish barman eager to get her into his bed, that her best chance of earning good money was to make the most of her physical attributes in the city’s strip clubs. The club owners, he explained with a smirk, preferred hiring foreign women because they were usually desperate and easy to control. She said no to taking her clothes off for a living and no to taking her clothes off for the barman. Instead, she became a Latvian.
At the end of the street, Marta turned left and increased her pace. She couldn’t afford to be late. By the time she reached the school gates, the pupils were already flooding out. She searched their eager faces, but there was no sign of Tess.
From the first day, the girl had been hostile. No one could replace her mother. Marta understood that. She also understood that Mr. Fenton struggled to handle his daughter’s grief because he was still busy coping with his own. Pushing through a tide of chattering schoolchildren, she crossed the gates, scanning the road. Cars parked bumper to bumper lined the curb. Elegant Georgian terraces crowded in on both sides of the street, which rose sharply for four hundred yards.
On the brow of the hill, contrasting figures caught Marta’s eye. A man wearing black jeans and a dark hooded top stood in front of a young girl in a school uniform. Beneath the hood, the peak of a baseball cap was pulled down over the man’s face. He towered above the girl, his upper body bending forward as they spoke. The girl was facing away, her blazer and matching skirt swamping her slender frame. Breaking into a run, Marta called Tess’s name and waved her right hand above her head. They must have heard her, but neither the man nor girl turned. Marta could hear herself breathing noisily through her mouth, more from panic than exertion. She called out again, and this time, the girl looked back down the hill. The man stooped lower and whispered into the girl’s ear before turning and striding confidently away.
Marta slowed to a walk, forced herself to smile, and stretched out her right arm, inviting Tess to take her hand. The girl kept her hands clasped behind her back, a
triumphant look on her angelic face.
Marta took a deep breath, but her heart still raced. “Your father will not be happy that you wandered off on your own. You must not leave the school grounds without me.”
Tess’s mouth twitched with the beginnings of a smile. “You were late. Dad won’t like it,” she said. Turning with a skip, she walked back down the hill.
Marta followed a pace behind, panic rising in her chest. If she could sort this out between them, maybe Mr. Fenton wouldn’t need to be told anything.
“You must wait for me at the gate if I am delayed. Always, you must wait.”
Tess didn’t bother turning around to answer. “Dad says your job is to look after me, but you weren’t there. Why weren’t you there? He told me he hired you from a top agency because he wanted the best care for me, a professional. Being late isn’t being very professional, is it?”
Marta edged alongside the girl and dropped a hand to touch her shoulder. “A few minutes late. I could not avoid it. Still, you must not wander off on your own. You especially must not go off and speak to strangers. Your father will be cross with you, I think. Perhaps, if you promise not to do such a thing again, it will be better if we don’t tell him this time.”
Tess stopped walking and looked up, wrinkling her freckled nose. “Maybe it would be best, but it’s wrong to tell a lie, isn’t it?” Marta didn’t answer. Tess took the awkward silence as proof she had scored a point.
“Anyway, the man wasn’t a stranger. He was nice to me. He knows Dad.” Tess wrinkled her nose and thought hard. “He said I should tell Dad to take care of the little things. What does that mean?”
Marta gave Tess another reassuring pat on the shoulder. Mr. Fenton was a reasonable man but very protective of his daughter. How would he react to the news she’d been accosted on the street by a creep?
She tried to keep calm, but her bottom lip quivered. “I don’t think it’s worth worrying him, do you? You know how much he worries about you. There’s no need for me to tell him this time. I know you will not do this thing again. What do you say?”
Tess paused for a moment as she considered the pros and cons of getting her nanny, herself, or both of them into trouble. “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “You don’t tell that I left the school gates on my own, and I won’t tell that you were late.”
Marta didn’t hesitate. “It’s a deal.”
Ten
Blake pressed the doorbell and waited nervously, one arm wrapped around a large cardboard box, the other holding a battered suitcase. The apartment was on the second floor of a low-rise complex overlooking the Thames, with a view across the water toward Greenwich.
A riverside property on the Isle of Dogs was way out of Blake’s pay league. The door opened, and for a split second, he thought Lauren had come back from the dead.
Leah Bishop waved him in. The apartment was spacious, open plan, and sparsely furnished. “Put the stuff down, and I’ll sort it out later,” she said.
Blake did as he was told and took a hesitant step back.
Leah let him suffer a long, uncomfortable silence before she spoke. “Is that it then? You’re going to run off now?”
Blake looked down at the watch on his wrist and fidgeted with the strap. “Truth is, I don’t know what to say.”
“I thought you might want to talk about Lauren. Thought it might help both of us.”
Blake closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry she’s dead.”
“It’s not your fault, is it?”
Blake shrugged. Leah’s resemblance to her sister had thrown him off balance. He struggled not to stare. The same short black hair, blue eyes, and open face.
She sensed his confusion. “I’m nearly two years older, but we were always being asked if we were twins. It annoyed the hell out of both of us.”
Blake nodded. He wanted to go, but at the same time, he needed to stay. “Lauren was a beautiful, kind person. It was my fault,” he said. “All my fault.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
Leah shook her head. “Sorry doesn’t fix anything.”
Blake took a tentative step toward the door. “I’d better be getting back.”
“Back to the treadmill? Can you believe Lauren told me she was jealous of your treadmill?”
Blake raised his hands. “I didn’t come here for this.”
“Why did you come?”
“Because you called. Asked me to bring her stuff. Remember?”
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “This is hard.”
Blake nodded. “We both cared for Lauren.”
Leah tilted her head, gave him a curious look, and allowed herself a wistful smile. “I’m coping. I think. I don’t suppose it’ll sink in completely until the funeral.” She paused to blink back tears. “I heard you were questioned by the police.”
“You heard right.”
“I suppose they had to check you out, being the former boyfriend.”
Blake was uncertain where the conversation was going, but he was sure he didn’t want to go there. “I had to answer a few questions. Then they let me go. Like you said, it had to be done. Routine.”
Leah tried to smile again. Instead, her bottom lip quivered, and tears pooled in her eyes. “I keep asking myself, ‘Why Lauren?’ She was a good, caring person. She didn’t deserve it. And all those people desperately searching out those terrible pictures. I don’t understand it.”
Blake took a couple of deep breaths. He remembered the hurt in Lauren’s eyes the day that she left, and his throat tightened. He could have talked her around. Leah sniffed loudly, and he realized she expected him to answer her question.
“It’s down to human nature, I suppose,” he said. “We’ve all got darkness somewhere inside.”
“You really believe that?”
“Why do you think drivers slow down to rubberneck at car crashes? Why are we fascinated by horror movies, TV coverage of disasters? Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. The ghouls following the killer disgust me as much as they do you. It just doesn’t shock me as much.”
Leah frowned and gave him a drawn-out look that was impossible to read. He guessed it meant she thought his answer profound…or incredibly stupid. He’d put money on stupid. He moved to the door and reached for the handle. He was wondering how to say goodbye when she called out, her voice strangely upbeat.
“I’ll let you know when then? Give you a call?”
“Let me know when what?”
“Time and date of the funeral, of course.”
Blake found himself nodding and stopped. “There’s no need. I’ll leave that stuff to friends and family.”
Leah’s back stiffened, and she lifted her chin, something Blake had seen her sister do many times.
“She loved you,” she said, her voice cracking. “You lived together. Don’t you feel anything for her? She might have made excuses for you, but believe me, I won’t.”
Blake dropped his gaze to the floor. “I haven’t got any excuses. Lauren was special to me. She always will be. I never wanted her to leave. She chose to go, and I don’t blame her. But I’ll grieve in my own way. I’ll leave the funeral to family.”
“I’m the only family she has.”
Blake didn’t intend to be cruel, but he didn’t want to leave any room for negotiation. “Like I said, I’ll leave the funeral to the family.”
Leah bit down hard on her bottom lip. The distress on her face almost persuaded Blake to change his mind. Almost. She approached him in silence, pried his fingers off the handle, opened the door, and waited for him to leave.
Eleven
Big Ted they called him. They thought it was hilarious, especially after a couple of cans of extra strong lager. H
e’d always been small for his age and through school had to put up with all the usual, unoriginal insults: short-ass, midget, shrimpy.
One benefit of his size had been that he’d always been able to pass as younger than his real age. Not anymore. Eleven months living on the streets had taken its toll. His boyish face had developed more wrinkles than an elephant’s scrotum, and his graying hair resembled a badger’s ass. That was what his mates said anyway. The crowd he usually crashed with would snigger when he tried to insist he was only twenty-eight.
He needed to teach them a lesson. They’d notice his absence when they gathered around the soup vans at Lincoln’s Inn Fields tonight. Later, they’d start to wonder where he’d gotten to, feel guilty, maybe even worry about him. It would teach them not to take him for granted.
Sleep rough on the streets for a decent length of time, and you soon become skilled at predicting what the weather’s going to do. Big Ted knew the banks of clouds settling over the city would stick around and prevent the temperature from falling more than a few degrees. He placed a couple of flattened cardboard boxes on the concrete, snuggled up between two garbage cans, and covered up with another two bits of cardboard. The spot he’d picked was perfect. Tucked away in a brick archway under Blackfriars Bridge on the north bank of the Thames, he’d be sheltered from the wind and rain if the weather took a turn for the worse.
Without the warmth of the bodies of his mates, Big Ted expected to feel the cold a bit more than usual, but he’d come prepared. He reached into the pocket of his ragged duffle coat and pulled out a large bottle of cider. A third of it had already found its way down his throat, but there was more than enough left to anesthetize his brain, numbing his body against the chill and discomfort.
He unscrewed the top, took a long swig, and tried to remember if he was sleeping on the streets because he drank too much or if he drank too much because he was homeless. The truth was he didn’t give a shit anyway. All he cared about was getting his so-called mates to start showing him the respect he deserved.
