As I clicked my phone shut, I saw a lone young man cycling towards Portsmouth Street.
‘Hey! D’you have a minute?’ I huffed, running to catch up.
But the lad was already pedaling away. I stared after him for a moment.
I started when I heard the click of footsteps again, this time somewhere from Portugal Street on my right. My skin crawled. I remembered there was a pub around St Clement Lane. I hastened towards it, desperate to escape from the clutches of the lonesome pathways.
Alas, the pub was closed. Holy cow, was this a dead-end too? Drawing closer, I found a narrow alleyway running around the back of the pub. The footsteps behind me grew louder. I darted blindly through the murky backside alleyway and found myself back in Portsmouth Street. I exhaled in relief and speed dialed Ritchie as I raced towards the steady whiz of traffic ahead on Kingsway. My call went unanswered.
‘I’m just returning to your place …’ I panted into his voicemail. ‘S-someone is …’
A crushing blow to my shoulder knocked me down. The phone flew from my hand. A plaque that read ‘Sardinia House’ glowered down at me from a massive brick-red building. That caped figure towered over me and pressed a boot-clad foot on my neck. The sharp curve of a folding knife protruded from a gloved hand. I tried to scream, but the assailant clamped a hand on my mouth and shoved the knife against my quivering jaw. The smell of cold hard leather assaulted me. I kicked my legs, struggling to breathe. A police van began wailing behind me.
The figure suddenly leaped up and sprinted away into the darkness of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. From the corner of my eye, I saw a blaze of angry blue lights swish by the main road on Kingsway, its rotating beacons alerting road users of impending police presence. Maybe there was a road emergency around here. Whatever it was, that siren – and my choice to move towards Kingsway – had saved my life. I lay there for a few moments, shivering and gasping.
Then the voice in my head shouted: Run! He might come back and get you any minute.
Wheeler returned my call as I squeezed out of the Kentish Town Underground half an hour later. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.
Dropping my voice to a whisper, I recounted the details of the attack. Wheeler made notes from my vague descriptions of the assailant.
About five-foot ten or eleven. Large, brown sunglasses. A black, three-hole facemask. Black paint smeared on the face. Appeared to be a man, though it wasn’t easy to tell.
Suddenly, I remembered Nimmy’s insistence that he had been followed earlier this month.
‘Sergeant, can the team get a copy of Corney and Barrow’s CCTV footage for the evening of Eighth March?’ I requested.
‘Oh? What’s that story about?’
‘A friend’s drinks were spiked in that pub,’ I reported. ‘Same day I went undercover at Bread Breakers’. I’d left Lambeth North at about four-thirty p.m. and …’
‘… And met Keisha Douglas at the BBC, where she made copies of the video … yes, we know all that,’ Wheeler recalled. ‘What happened with this friend?’
I told him all of it, including Holborn police chief Gary Thompson’s lackadaisical response.
A brief spell of silence followed. Then, Wheeler exhaled sharply. ‘You think this could be related?’
‘There are far too many coincidences for these to be random occurrences.’
‘Very well, then. I’ll follow up with that officer in Holborn. If he hasn’t received a copy of that CCTV footage yet, I’ll have one of our constables contact the pub,’ Wheeler agreed. ‘I’m sorry about the attack this evening. Stay safe, all right?’
‘You look like a ghoul!’ Ritchie remarked. ‘Everything all right? Your voicemail was all mangled and I couldn’t get through to you.’
I slipped out of my windcheater, flopped exhaustedly on to the couch and told him about my narrow escape at LSE.
‘Why the fuck did you have to be out until midnight?’ Ritchie blasted. ‘If you have to stay out late, you should always call a cab!’
‘If you’re so insistent on a cab, why don’t you foot those expenses yourself?’ I snapped.
I regretted my words as soon as I uttered them.
Ritchie had welcomed me into his home and hearth, and I was yapping at him like a daft bloodhound.
‘Let’s figure that out later,’ Ritchie said calmly. ‘I’ve cooked us a delicious meal. C’mon.’ He hauled me up and led me to the kitchen. I saw a small pan bubbling with yoghurt sauce.
‘You haven’t eaten yet?’ I asked, surprised.
Ritchie shook his head. ‘I was holed up with that horrid broadcasting paper.’
His eyes seemed to say otherwise. I dismissed that narcissistic thought at once. Of course, he had his nose in that paper. Why would he wait for me to have dinner?
‘A traditional Nainital dish. My hometown special. Made with hemp seeds, coriander leaves and yoghurt,’ he explained, setting the food on the table. He gestured towards two bowls of semolina and fruit salad on the countertop. ‘And that’s a kind of dessert.’
We piled the rice on our plates. I let the warm chutney slide down my throat, savouring the mellow tingle it left on my palate.
‘You’re a brilliant chef, Ritch, Thanks for having me here and …’ I hesitated, ‘… it was extremely thoughtful to leave a spare set of nightclothes for me last night.’
A cloud of wistfulness settled on Ritchie’s face. Beneath his punk, bad-boy façade was a buoyant, almost childlike peace. That thought strangely mollified me.
‘I had no energy to unpack,’ I went on. ‘I was totally …’
‘Oh, yes – that satin stuff,’ Ritchie mumbled. ‘Used to be Maya’s. I found them among my things after I got to London. She had a habit of leaving her stuff behind whenever she came down from Boston to visit me in LA.’
‘Maya?’
‘My elder sister. She teaches English Lit at Boston University. She’s the quirky, scatterbrained, type.’
Ah, it’s NOT a girlfriend.
‘She wanted to come down here around Easter,’ Ritchie mentioned. ‘But I won’t be around.’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Switzerland. Leaving on the Twenty-eighth. Back on the Fifth of April. Remember that contact I told you about at the ExCEL London career fair? He introduced me to Unilever. They liked my showreel. They’ve requested for a final face-to-face, and they’re flying me in.’
‘That’s a great start for Flamingo Films, Ritch!’ I exclaimed.
‘Now, I have some good and bad news for you,’ Ritchie said as we cleared the table a few minutes later.
‘If it helps, the good news always seems sweeter after the bad news,’ I replied.
Ritchie laughed. ‘So be it. I spoke to a bunch of folks at Orange during my afternoon shift today, about a part-time job for you. No new openings right now, but I put out some feelers anyway.’
‘Oh, that’s very thoughtful, Ritch!’ I said, surprised that he had gratuitously taken the pains to make such an inquiry with the telecommunications company where he worked as a part-time marketing associate. ‘As for the good news,’ he continued. ‘My pal, Jayden’s girlfriend, Kimberly has agreed to take you in for a while at her place in Cranford – near the Hounslow West station. She’s originally from Denver. I think you’ll feel quite at home there. You wouldn’t mind that, would you?’
‘Why, thank you, Ritch.’ I cried. ‘You didn’t have to …’
‘Never mind all that. Give Kim a call right away,’ Ritchie cut in. ‘079 81 696 799.’
I saved the number on my phone.
Suddenly, he broke into guffaws.
I looked up at him, startled. ‘What happened?’
‘Well,’ he chuckled. ‘Your pursuers won’t have a clue where you’ll be living!’
26 March
A throbbing headache festered in the crown of my skull when I awoke on Monday morning. It looked like the thin, hard pillows in my new room at Kimberly Ross’ bedsit in Cranford’s Chaucer Av
enue didn’t suit me. I rose unsteadily and flung open the heavy blackout window drapes. The view, steely and coruscating, was of a row of shingled, semi-attached houses across a yellowing road. I followed my nose to the kitchenette, where I found the remnants of a freshly made brew in a coffee pot. There was no sign of Kimberly. She was a cruise consultant with a tour operator. Or so she had said – she had been quite muzzy when she received me last night. Perhaps, she had already left for work. I poured some coffee into a cup and took a sip. Something that tasted like espresso but it wasn’t too bad. Minutes later, I was on a bus to the Hounslow West station, thinking about how I could block the Sawants’ attempts to sterilise Asha. As I hopped on the Piccadilly line for Holborn, a plan began to take shape in my head.
Later that morning, I found some time to call Craig Davenport between classes at LSE.
‘Wheeler told me about the attack on Friday,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re okay. We’ve requested Corney and Barrow for a copy of their CCTV footage for the evening of Eighth March. The pub is trying to be as cooperative as possible. I understand the person who spiked your friend’s drinks could be involved in this case.’
‘I believe so.’
‘Well, any lead that can help us pin down Keisha’s murderer will be a shot in the arm,’ Davenport conceded.
‘Isn’t Dario in cust—’ I began, but Davenport cut in.
‘Dario De Luca isn’t the perpetrator of Keisha’s death or Charlotte’s car crash – at least, not directly. There’s no DNA match in either case.’
‘No DNA match?’ I spluttered.
‘Nope,’ the inspector reiterated. ‘We have the doorman’s testimony too. It’s the same story Dario played out to Tim Herbert and Ben Reynolds. The doorman swears he saw Dario pop out at a quarter past eight.’
‘What about fingerprints?’
Davenport snorted. ‘Our perp is not that daft, right? He or she wore leather gloves. And the few random fingerprints we found weren’t clear enough for our testers to make any assessment whatsoever.’
‘Is Dario talking?’
‘Oh, he is! Chap claims he had an emergency in Tunbridge Wells. A sibling fallen ill, he said. He was rushing to New York to pursue medical treatment for his brother. Why was he traveling alone then? Well, he just was. The brother was due to fly out later. A whole load of tosh, if you ask me.’
I didn’t know what to say. After all, the investigation team didn’t have much evidence against him yet.
‘We think Charlotte’s hit-and-run man is from somewhere around Europe,’ Davenport added. ‘Wheeler has reached out to Interpol with a request to access the INDIS.’
‘INDIS?’
‘The International DNA Index System,’ he said. ‘We’re hoping to hit a jackpot with the DNA sample we have from that cigarette butt in the Wrangler. We haven’t located a match in the UK. They’re going through the Bosnian, Serbian and German databases now.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know there was an international DNA database like this,’ I mused, surprised.
‘There is, now. Launched just last year. Interpol connects individual databases across member countries. At the moment, all EU regions are in. Interpol is trying to rope in other countries, too. Comes in handy for Gordian knots like this one,’ he grunted. ‘It’s no cakewalk though. A boatload of procedures involved in getting Interpol’s rubberstamp to nose around another country’s database.’
‘If we have strong reason to believe this person is a foreign national …’
‘That cigarette brand is our only trump card for now. You do sound like a stellar detective yourself, don’t you?’
I took his blandishments as an opportunity to share my little plan for thwarting Asha’s surgery.
‘Investigating Ms Douglas’ murder is our top priority right now. We don’t have the bandwidth to take on a different case,’ Davenport said exasperatedly.
‘That is the point, Inspector,’ I replied, equally irritated. ‘Both cases are related. In this case, a young, mentally challenged woman is having a hysterectomy without a court approval in an abusive care home that has a surgery clinic run by a bunch of quacks.’
The chief detective inspector exhaled in deliberation. ‘Ms Raman, there’s no conclusive evidence to prove these events are related unless we get hold of that film.’
Dammit. We were just moving around in circles. But I desperately needed the backing of the squad to prevent Asha’s surgery. ‘If you can send someone from undercover to go along with me to Bread Breakers’, we can tape what is going on at the operation theatre and deploy it as a source of evidence,’ I explained categorically.
‘All right, you win. We’ll send a constable over,’ Davenport relented with a sigh.
‘Thanks.’ I provided him the care home’s address and rang off.
Then I called Alfred Maynard at the BBC. ‘The show’s on hold right now,’ Alfred informed me gruffly, assuming that I desired to replace Charlotte on Streetsmart.
‘Oh!’ I said, a little surprised despite myself.
‘Well, the investigation …’ Alfred said, trailing off as if that premise were self-explanatory.
‘I hope you’ve got room for a potential breaking-news commentary,’ I announced before launching into a pithy of what I had in mind.
‘Where the devil did you get that information from?’ Alfred marveled.
‘I have my sources,’ I quipped. ‘It’s happening at three p.m. on Thursday. Twenty-ninth March.’
‘Are you saying you want to be commissioned to do it right away?’ Alfred asked incredulously.
‘There’s no time for that. We believe this event is linked to Keisha’s murder. I’m just requesting you to download the material I send you. We can decide what to do with it later.’
‘You want me to download a crock of bollocks when we aren’t even certain we’ll broadcast it?’ Alfred retorted.
‘For my friend’s sake,’ I beseeched. ‘The squad is in on this, too.’
‘Hey, she’s my friend too!’ Alfred protested. ‘Was,’ he amended sadly. ‘You said three o’ clock, didn’t you?’
27 March
I was on the train returning to LSE from an interpretation engagement I had undertaken for a translation agency that was paying me fifty pounds for the gig. Small money, but it was something.
Inspector Davenport’s name flashed on my phone.
‘We have a suspect down,’ Daveport reported grimly when I answered. ‘Jeffrey Stuart is dead.’
‘What?’
‘We found Jeff dead in his office last night. With, uh …’ he hesitated briefly, ‘… a knife through his heart.’
Blood rushed to my ears. I glanced outside the train window. Patches of countryside flitted past me. With any luck, I’d be in Farringdon in half an hour. From there, I could get to Liverpool Street on the Met and hop on to the Central Line to Bethnal Green.
‘I’ll be there soon,’ I said tightly.
‘A doll lay next to Jeff Stuart with a pin in its torso. Set up to look like a black magic murder,’ Davenport informed me in his office, an hour later.
I looked up at the inspector slowly.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked me gently.
I nodded weakly. ‘I think the voodoo style is a ruse to mislead us.’
‘Well, Jeff’s post-mortem says he died of strangulation around half-past six yesterday. He was gone long before that knife was plunged into him. Looks like the killer is disabled in some way.’
I squirmed in my chair. ‘How do you know that?’
‘A wheel in the corner of his cabin. It belongs to a walker or a wheelchair.’
‘Could it be an employee or a representative of a SIGNAL member firm?’ I mused.
‘We don’t know yet. SIGNAL employees say Stuart was in meetings all afternoon with different groups of delegates,’ Davenport replied.
‘In his office?’
‘In a conference room upstairs. He returned to his office around six. We’re talking to ev
eryone who signed in for a meeting with Stuart that afternoon.’
I remembered that Jeff had lied about a proposal to British Telecom, the night of Keisha’s death. What was the name of the manager Jeff claimed had worked on that fictitious proposal? Greta? Gracelyn? Frieda? Gretchen?
Ah, that was it. Gretchen Friedland. Had Gretchen covered up for him? Maybe she knew something.
I jumped up hastily. ‘Inspector. I have to go.’
Gretchen Friedland arrived at the lobby of SIGNAL’s offices, looking like she hadn’t slept in days.
‘I understand you’re here about Jeff,’ she said curtly, ushering me into an elevator. As we rode up the carriage, I noticed a coffee stain on her silk blouse. Wisps of auburn hair clung to a disheveled bun at the nape of her neck. She led me into an empty conference room on the fifth floor and sank into a swivel chair.
‘I’m on my way out. You’d better make it fast,’ she warned.
I launched into a brief history of Lionheart, my relationship with Jeff Stuart, Keisha’s death and Jeff’s explanations when he was questioned. ‘Since he mentioned you were in charge of a non-existent proposal, I need to know where he was on the Fourteenth of March,’ I finished.
Gretchen scowled at me. ‘My boss was murdered yesterday and you’re digging for information to find out whether he killed someone?’ she burst out angrily.
‘It’s not the way you put it,’ I said gently. ‘I think Jeff didn’t tell the truth because someone was threatening him. We’re trying to find out who murdered him.’
Gretchen’s face crumpled. ‘Jeff had a good heart,’ she blurted, staring unseeingly at a video conferencing screen ahead of her. ‘I don’t know if anyone was threatening him.’
‘Were you aware that Jeff told the police you worked on that proposal?’ I inquired.
Gretchen nodded slowly and buried her face in her hands. I patted her shoulder as her muffled sobs spilled over the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ I consoled. ‘I’m here to help. You have to believe me.’
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