by A J Waines
‘I’m not there at the moment,’ I muttered, holding the phone towards me so I could check the time. Nine am.
‘Not at home?’
‘No.’ I spotted my slippers beside the bunk, my opened suitcase on the unfamiliar rug, spilling out the clothes and toiletries I’d grabbed from my flat late last night.
‘Shit, Sam – have you gone to Greece without me, after all?’
I laughed. ‘No. I’m at Limehouse.’ I was still sleepy and it came out before I realised a barrage of further questions were bound to follow.
‘Why?’
‘I’m working with the police...’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything else.’
‘That’s where that witness lives, isn’t it? Oh God, this is connected to Kora’s attack!’
Miranda wasn’t stupid. She’d spoken to the police. My silence confirmed her assumption.
‘You’re involved aren’t you? Why are you involved?’
‘I can’t tell you anything more, I’m sorry.’ I winced, recoiling from the frustration wheezing through Miranda’s gasps, aching to slide back under the covers.
‘Sponge said an artist guy saw the whole thing. Is that what this is about?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Oh, I get it,’ she said, a smug edge to her voice. ‘Sponge said the witness has got PTSD and won’t say anything. You’re treating him, aren’t you?’ Miranda often put two and two together and got five, only this time she was spot on. ‘Did he do it?’
‘What? No, he’s a key witness. It isn’t him. We just want him to tell us… what he saw.’
I could hear her brain tracking from one question to the next. ‘Are you at a police station?’
My mind wasn’t sufficiently in gear to make up lies. ‘No. At the marina. On a boat.’
‘Why are you on a boat?’
Another silence.
‘Sam – are you mad?! You’re with him? What’s going on?’
‘Miranda, listen to me. You know this is confidential, okay? Completely confidential. I can’t say anything else and nor must you. Not to Sponge, not to anyone, you hear me? I’ve said too much already.’
‘But, he might be this crazy maniac who beheads people.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘He’s in a really bad way, poor guy.’ I was touched by her rare display of concern for me.
‘You had the chance for a week off and you’re still working. I don’t understand it.’
‘I was asked to help.’
‘You can’t say no, can you? Not when it’s work. You say no to everything else, though. When did you last go on a date? When did you last sleep with a bloke? Or even have a spontaneous snog in a back alley somewhere?’
I laughed. ‘I’m not sure the last one is on my “must do before I’m forty” list.’
‘You know what I mean. You’ve got to loosen up, Sammie. You should be letting go. Putting yourself out there.’
She hadn’t called me Sammie for months. ‘Thanks for… caring. I’ve got to go,’ I said wearily. ‘I’ll ring you later.’
‘Do your best, Sam. Sorry, I know you will. Kora deserves…’ Her voice crumbled away into nothing.
‘I will. I promise.’
I slipped the phone under my pillow and thought about what she’d said – especially the part about me saying no to everything except work. Her words had stung, but she was absolutely right. It was career all the way for me, it always had been; the value of ‘achievement’ had been ingrained in me since before I could walk. It wasn’t difficult to see why. I was pushed by both parents, both established pillars of the community; my father a respectable barrister, my mother a senior lecturer in architecture. For them, academic success and status meant everything. My mother, for certain, always saw the job before the person, ‘David Smith is a window cleaner,’ she’d say distastefully. ‘He can’t possibly know what I’m talking about.’ Or conversely, ‘David Smith is a professor of cultural anthropology; he’ll be the perfect person to invite to our garden party.’
You pick up bad habits from your parents and, before you know it, those habits become trusted codes to live by, unexamined and deep-seated until it’s too late and they’re embedded into your psyche for life. For me, this has played out in my constant struggle to feel good enough; the dread of failure looming at my shoulder with more terror than the Grim Reaper. As a result, the idea of ‘letting go’ as Miranda suggested, was about as unnatural for me as it was for the Queen to be seen eating chewing gum.
I curled onto my side and stayed in that seductive wilderness halfway between sleep and waking. But not for long. My phone buzzed again, like a bluebottle trapped under my pillow.
‘Who is it?’ I said through a yawn.
‘DI Fenway… Jeremy… are you okay?’
‘Sorry, long day, long night.’ I hitched myself to the edge of the bed. There was nothing for it, I was going to have to face the day.
‘Spenser told me you stayed with Aiden. That he wouldn’t let you leave.’
‘Something like that. It’s probably not a bad idea. The second cabin is comfortable, and–’
‘Yeah, I know,’ he interrupted, ‘you’ll have more opportunity to get to know him and find out what he saw.’
‘That’s the idea.’
He cleared his throat. ‘We’ve got a meeting this morning to discuss the case in more detail. Can you be here? Eleven?’
‘Absolutely.’
I slid into my dressing gown and wandered out of the cabin with the sole aim of finding the kettle. Aiden’s cabin door was closed and when I couldn’t find him elsewhere, I assumed he must be still in bed. Mornings were often tough for people with depression, clearly another of his trauma-related symptoms. I made a strong coffee and had a quick look in his fridge. There was cheese, leeks, mushrooms, an opened jar of pesto and soya milk. In the cupboards there was plenty to eat; peanut butter, baked beans, cereals and several packages, many unopened, which was understandable given Aiden’s poor appetite.
I cut two chunky slices of bread from the crusty cob, dropped them in the toaster and once they’d popped out, spread thick layers of vegan margarine and blackcurrant jam over them. The bright sunlight was bursting to get inside, so I slid aside the curtains to invite it in. Eager rays splashed instantly over the interior, scattering gold geometric shapes across the rugs. I unlocked the door at the bow of the boat and sat on the step with my dripping toast, listening to the ripple of water, the chirrup of birds. It was a rare moment of bliss.
Aiden still hadn’t stirred by the time I left, so I stood outside his door to listen, not wanting to leave without knowing he was safe. I waited and waited, until finally there was a creak and a huffing sound, the noise when you exhale after a yawn. I wrote a note telling him I had a meeting at the police station and would be back as soon as I could – and pushed it under his door.
DCI Keith Wilde stood at the entrance to the same meeting room as last time, waving people in as though he was directing traffic. Jeremy was already seated, with DI Karen Foxton, who I’d met in passing when I first visited the station. With silky blonde hair plaited into intricate thin braids, she looked a fraction too dainty to be a police officer.
‘I gather you haven’t got anywhere,’ said Wilde bluntly, before he’d even offered me a seat.
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
Jeremy pulled out a chair and poured me coffee from a stainless steel jug, as everyone settled.
‘Where’s Dr Herts?’ I asked, noticing his absence.
‘Too busy,’ came Jeremy’s hushed reply, with a curl of the lip.
DCI Wilde closed the door, but stayed standing. I sat back, assuming he was going to say something until I realised all eyes were on me, waiting for me to declare there’d been some sort of breakthrough.
I stared at my twitchy fingers, then took a shallow breath. ‘Aiden has indicated he wants me to stay with him. It’s a good start.’
‘Has he said anything? Has he communicated?’ pressed Wilde. He was pacing around with his shirtsleeves rolled up, dark rings already mushrooming under his armpits. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of state his shirt would be in if he was really under pressure.
‘Yes,’ I said definitively. ‘He’s started to communicate through a sand tray, but… er, not about the attack, as yet. We’re just establishing a connection, although I’m expecting him to communicate visually before he actually speaks. I think that will be the way forward. Images are second nature to him. I hope he might be able to draw–’
‘A sand tray?’ He spat the words out. ‘What use is that?’ He wandered behind my chair out of sight then took hold of the back of it. I could feel him pulling against it and fought the urge to snap round to tell him how irritating it was.
‘Okay, let’s look at what else has come to light,’ suggested Jeremy. His soft, calm voice came as a welcome respite; a lullaby in a storm. He pressed the remote in his hand and the TV screen on the wall came to life, showing shots of the crime scene; the towpath, the wire fence, the bicycle cast to one side, the puddle of blood beside it. I averted my eyes and focused on what I recognised of Aiden’s boat.
‘If we had a motive, we might be closer to finding who did it or at least know where to start looking,’ said Wilde.
Edwin Hall, the crime scene manager, spoke. ‘From what we’ve got so far, the assailant set everything up, like he knew Kora was on her way and about to come whizzing along the towpath. Everyone at CCAP knew she rode a bicycle.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t about Kora,’ said Wilde, still behind me. ‘Maybe he was just hoping some random person would head that way.’
‘But, in that case, there was no guarantee it would be a cyclist,’ said Jeremy. ‘It could have been a group of pedestrians, or one of the boat owners. They would have walked into the tripwire, for sure, but most likely not been injured by it at all.’
‘Presumably timing was key?’ I suggested.
‘I’d say so,’ agreed Jeremy. ‘Someone knew exactly when and where to rig the wire, exactly when she’d be coming under the bridge. That person knew she would be there. They were expecting her.’
I nodded. It made sense.
‘What about the method, what does that tell us?’ Wilde asked. I could feel him right behind me, heat from his breath in my hair. I turned round sharply with a frown, so he’d get the message. He let go of my chair and straightened up.
‘There was no rape, no sexual interference, no disturbance to her clothes, no theft,’ said Jeremy. ‘No contact at all between the attacker and the victim at the scene itself.’
‘Almost like it was meant to be an execution,’ I muttered, hardly aware that it had slipped out of my mouth.
Jeremy nodded, looking over at me with a collaborative glance. ‘He… let’s call the attacker he, for now… most likely got there by car.’ He flicked forward to scenes inside the car park. ‘Except the CCTV wasn’t working…’ He tailed off mumbling something I couldn’t catch.
Wilde finally stopped pacing around and took a seat near the door, his forehead sticky.
‘It was extremely well planned,’ said DI Karen Foxton, addressing us for the first time. I’d noticed she’d been looking over at Jeremy several times, even when he wasn’t speaking, fixing her gaze on him a fraction too long each time. It was in my nature to notice these things. Are they having an affair? There was certainly something, although it was hard to tell at this stage if it was a one-way street or not. ‘The wire was set up for a specific time,’ she said, ‘perhaps for less than five minutes, at the perfect height for garrotting a cyclist. Clean across her throat, like he’d measured it. Without her helmet the attacker knew she’d suffer maximum injury.’
‘Kora was pedalling fast, right?’ I said. ‘The damage caused depended on that. But how could he know she was going hell for leather? I mean, if that was me on a pushbike, I’d be going at a steady pace. It was a narrow path, getting dark. The wire might have knocked me off for sure, but I doubt it would have... done the damage it did to Kora.’
‘It’s a good point,’ said Jeremy.
‘Maybe she thought she was being chased.’ Karen Foxton’s cheeks had gone a blotchy pink since she’d started sharing her opinions.
‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Or else she was in her own rush to get somewhere.’ I rubbed my lip. ‘The method itself is extremely impersonal, don’t you think. Almost as if it was about getting a job done and getting away as quickly as possible. No hanging around, no interference, not even touching the body.’
‘No pleasure in it. Just expedience,’ said Jeremy.
‘It could indicate he had no emotional attachment to Kora. It wasn’t an emotional outburst, it was pure logistics,’ I concluded.
‘And why was Kora there in the first place?’ said DS Joanne Hoyland, speaking for the first time. ‘At nine thirty at night, along a lonely towpath? She had a little kid and a partner waiting for her at home.’
‘Was she dressed differently to usual?’ I asked.
‘Her colleagues said not.’
‘And any calls to or from her phone?’ I asked.
‘We couldn’t find her phone. She didn’t have it with her,’ said Edwin.
‘That’s odd,’ I said. ‘So the attacker could have picked it up. Can you trace the last calls made or received on it?’
‘Kora’s phone has been switched off,’ said Jeremy, ‘so we can’t locate it, but we’ve been able to trace the calls made to it through the service provider. We’re looking into the last number, to a mobile, made at nine twenty-two. The calls before that were to her partner’s mobile and her home landline.’
‘That call at nine twenty-two could give us the answer, then,’ I said. ‘It must have been just before she set off.’
‘It’s our best hope, so far,’ agreed Jeremy.
Why Kora was there was a big question, but there was an even bigger one staring us all in the face, as far as I was concerned. I spread my fingers out flat on the desk. ‘Is Aiden in danger because of what he saw?’
No one answered at first, then Jeremy spoke. ‘Limehouse Basin is twelve locks away from Camden, but if the attacker saw the name of the boat and went looking for it, it could be a problem.’
‘The attacker must have known he’d been seen. Aiden wasn’t hidden when whoever it was made a grab for the wire. He was standing out in the open.’
Jeremy digested my concerns. ‘I think something would have happened by now. The assailant wouldn’t want to risk Aiden blabbing to the police. I think he would have done something.’
‘Unless there have been so many police officers around, that he’s waiting for it all to calm down,’ I said uneasily, knowing that there was no police presence at the boat any more.
He didn’t reply. I knew Jeremy couldn’t give me an answer – certainly not one that would set my mind at rest. The update appeared to have ground to a halt. Jeremy fiddled with the remote, DI Foxton examined her nails and Edwin took his glasses off to give them a clean. Just as I was getting twitchy, there was a knock on the door and a female officer came in. She headed straight for the DCI and whispered something in his ear. He shot to his feet as though a wild dog had been let in.
‘Right… Kora Washington died in hospital a few minutes ago.’ Everyone in the room froze.
He prodded his finger into the air. ‘Fenway, my office, two minutes.’
DCI Wilde’s shoulders stiffened and his fists clenched into tight balls. I waited for his final words, briefly closing my eyes, because I knew what was coming.
‘This is now a murder investigation.’
Chapter 12
I scurried out of the police station with only one destination in mind. I wanted to get to Miranda’s flat to break the news before she heard it from someone else. I had to be there to deal with the backlash; I had no idea how she was going to handle it.
I broke into a run on the high street; it wasn’t far.
My phon
e buzzed on the way and I slowed to a brisk walk to see who it was. Miranda. I swiped the screen to answer.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she shrieked.
‘I’ve just heard. I’m on my way to you right now.’ I was already at the bottom of her road. ‘Are you at home?’
She was sobbing and incoherent. I heard a moan that sounded closer to a yes than no, so I bolted to her front door. It was already ajar.
She fell into my arms as I pushed it open. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, practically holding her up. ‘The news came through. I was at the police station.’
‘Sponge just rang. I can’t believe it,’ she blubbered into my jacket.
I guided her inside, let her sink onto the sofa.
For the next hour I made her hot drinks and let her rant and wail about the shock, the loss, the unfairness of it all. The doorbell rang and one of her friends from the project, a tall and spindly-thin woman I’d never met, arrived ready to take her over to Sponge’s place.
‘He doesn’t want to be on his own,’ she explained. ‘We’re all going to do shifts to look after him… and babysit Raven.’
Miranda clung to me in a prolonged hug as though she was about to fly off to Australia for six months. ‘Thank you for being there,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I was–’
‘Shhh,’ I said, wiping a stray tear from under her eye.
My phone pinged with a calendar reminder. I’d completely forgotten. Since joining Aiden on the boat, I’d arranged an emergency session with my supervisor. I was supposed to be at Tower Bridge.
‘You’ll help them get the bastard, won’t you?’ she said, as I left her. ‘Promise me…’
‘I’ll do everything I can,’ I said and meant it.
Dr Petra Hall had insisted we meet at a hotel near St Katherine’s Dock. She was never one to use an office if she could get away with a more comfortable setting, especially if it happened to be at lunch time.
Supervision is non-negotiable for all NHS psychologists, no matter how experienced. Working with the fragile minds of patients requires regular meetings to discuss cases, debrief – and ask for help. For months I’d been stuck with a crusty old-school analyst, Dr Rosen, and we were like chalk and cheese. Not long after he was assigned to me, I discovered his core philosophy was: ‘Follow the rules no matter what and don’t ever rely on your own instinct’. The total opposite to me. Putting us together was a disastrous match and led to all kinds of problems, although I’d had to wait nearly two years before I could finally make the swap. Thankfully, Petra was entirely different. She believed in paying attention to gut feelings, going with the flow and trusting professional instinct.
