Stenning didn’t argue. ‘Sure?’ he said, but he was already turning to leave.
‘Pete.’ I stopped him just before the door closed. ‘The second victim, Amanda Weston – she used to live in London, didn’t she?’
Stenning gave a quick, impatient nod. ‘When she was married to her first husband,’ he replied. ‘Sure you’re OK?’
I forced a smile. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go on, you can fill me in later.’
I gave Stenning a few seconds to get back to the incident room before running my hands over my face, telling myself firmly I had to focus, and then switching on my desktop computer.
HOLMES – or Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – records and tracks the progress of all serious inquiries carried out by the UK police. Whilst I was still in uniform, my knack of finding and processing information had been spotted and I’d been sent on a four-week inputter course. I knew the system very well, but after coming back on light duties, I’d been inputting the endless detail that tying up a major investigation demanded. There was a lot on here I just hadn’t got round to reading.
The first file I opened up was that of the Jones family. Geraldine Jones, the first victim, had been married to David, a fund manager in Leadenhall Street. He was believed to earn in the region of half a million a year, including bonuses, and they’d lived in a very nice house on the river in Chiswick. They had two sons, Jacob, who was twenty-six and a junior doctor, and Joshua, who was at university.
Jones. Such a common name.
With unusual efficiency, someone had started a file for the latest victim and her family. Charlotte Benn had been forty-nine and hadn’t worked since her eldest child was born. She and Nick had two sons, Felix, aged twenty-six, and Harry, aged twenty-two. Their daughter, Madeleine, was seventeen and still at St Joseph’s.
Knowing I couldn’t avoid it, I opened up the file on the Westons. As Stenning had just told me, Amanda Weston, whom Joesbury and I had found in the Victoria Park boat shed, had been married before. Daryl was her second husband and she’d moved out to Hampshire when they married. Previously, she and her children had lived in London, not too far from the Jones family. Her children, Daniel, now aged twenty-five, and her daughter, Abigail, aged sixteen, had gone to St Joseph’s School in Chiswick. Their name, in those days, had been Briggs.
Geraldine Jones. Amanda Briggs. Charlotte Benn.
Next door, in the incident room, the focus of the investigation would have switched to the connection between the three families. Tulloch would be ordering a trace on the money situation in each family on the off-chance the husbands had got involved in some dodgy investment and tried to pull out, resulting in the wives being killed as a warning or punishment. That would be a complete waste of effort.
Any time now, almost certainly within the next twenty-four hours, the families themselves would realize what was going on. They would tell Tulloch and her team exactly why the three women had been killed. They would tell her who was next on the list, who victims four and five were intended to be. It would become blindingly obvious who had killed Geraldine Jones, Amanda Weston and Charlotte Benn. My colleagues would know that Joesbury had been right all along.
They would know that the killer was me.
53
I LEFT THE STATION TWENTY MINUTES LATER. NO ONE SAW ME go. Before slipping out, I’d done everything I could think of, which hadn’t been much. I’d also left a note saying I wasn’t feeling great and would take the following day off. It would buy me a bit of time.
On top of my wardrobe at home is a bag I keep packed with things I’ll need if I have to leave in a hurry. The few important papers I have are in there, and so is some money. I keep a safety deposit box at a private-security company. I change companies every year but the contents stay the same. Cash. Enough to be able to disappear very quickly.
I changed into jeans, a warm sweatshirt and trainers before grabbing a jacket. I hadn’t eaten for a while but didn’t want to spare the time. I would get something on the way.
I switched off the lights and left the flat. It was starting to rain and, judging from the cloud cover, it was going to continue for some time. I considered taking my bike, but only for a second. It would make me a lot harder to trace, but I just wouldn’t be able to move fast enough. I planned to be in Portsmouth in a couple of hours, ditch the car and become a foot passenger on the next available ferry to France. Once on the continent, I’d take a fast train south. In a couple of days, there’d be no trace of me left. Lacey Flint would cease to exist.
As I locked the door, I could feel tears stinging behind my eyes. I’d always known that one day it would come to this; that I would take off, leaving everything behind. I just hadn’t considered how much it would hurt.
I climbed the steps on legs that felt too heavy and beeped open my car.
‘Going somewhere, Flint?’
I should have known it couldn’t be that easy.
I turned round slowly. My nemesis had parked illegally on double yellows. He was pulling a jacket round his shoulders as his eyes went from my face to the rucksack slung over my left shoulder.
Hold it together, girl.
‘Local leisure centre,’ I said, stretching the corners of my mouth into what, under the dim light of a streetlamp, might pass for a smile. ‘Every part of me aches and I plan to spend the next hour in the steam room. Want to come?’
Joesbury didn’t look convinced. ‘Tempting,’ he said. ‘But I already made plans.’
‘Have fun,’ I replied, turning back to my car, flicking my eyes across the road and back again. No one else in sight. He and I seemed to be alone in the street. ‘And by the way,’ I went on, ‘if keeping an eye on me like this is supposed to be a covert operation, you suck at it.’
I reached for the door of my car, hardly knowing what I was going to do once I got inside. Joesbury was no fool. If he was allowing himself to be seen, he wasn’t alone. There would be someone else, just out of sight. I was trapped. I looked up the street again. Still just the two of us. There was a Swiss army knife in my bag. It might not kill him, but it would slow him down, give me chance to get away.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and almost screamed out loud I was so pent up.
‘Actually, my plans include you,’ he said. ‘I’m under orders to make sure you’re OK.’
Tiny drops of rainwater had collected on his eyebrows. I watched one fall on to his lashes and shimmer there for a moment before he blinked it away. ‘I’m OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you. But space would be good right now. And I really do feel like shit.’
‘I’ll give you a neck rub,’ he said, taking the keys from my hand and locking the car again. ‘Come on.’ He was guiding me towards his own car, holding the passenger door open. I climbed in, telling myself I could not panic. If Joesbury got suspicious and wanted to see what was inside my bag, it was all over.
So I’d go later. I’d take the bike, after all, ride through the night. Or catch a bus or a train to Portsmouth in the morning. I could still do it. I just had to stay calm.
The inside of the car smelled of damp hair and clothes. At the junction with the Wandsworth Road, Joesbury switched on the car stereo and I braced myself for the usual rush of rhythmic club sound. Instead, a soft male voice started singing about flying.
‘This is Westlife,’ I said, after a few seconds.
Joesbury didn’t look at me, but the crease at the corner of his mouth deepened. ‘Borrowed it from Dana,’ he said.
In spite of everything, I almost laughed.
‘What did I miss back at HQ?’ I asked, as we headed east, close to the South Bank.
‘The headmaster of St Joseph’s was at the station when I left,’ Joesbury told me. ‘Chap called Edward Seaton. Cooperative enough. He and Gayle have been using the school’s telephone tree. That’s a sort of list—’
‘I know what a telephone tree is,’ I said. ‘You ring the name at the top of the list, she rings the next one and so on.’
; ‘Right,’ said Joesbury. ‘They’re going back ten years, contacting every family who sent kids to the school, first checking the mothers are still OK and then warning them to be extra careful in the next few days.’
‘Isn’t that going to cause a panic?’ I asked, realizing Joesbury was driving faster than was strictly legal and had twice looked at his watch.
‘Yeah, I suggested that myself,’ Joesbury said as we approached some lights. He picked up speed and then braked hard when they changed. I lurched forward against the seat belt and my bruised ribs didn’t enjoy the experience.
‘And?’ I said.
‘And Tully drew herself up to her full five feet four inches, pressed her screech button and demanded to know if she was the only person in the room who understood the meaning of the phrase “double event”. At which point I decided I was taking the night off.’
You had to admire the man’s nerve. ‘She was OK with that?’
Joesbury turned quickly and grinned at me. ‘She knows I’m crap at admin, which is basically all they can do for now,’ he said. ‘And they’re calling a meeting. Tomorrow morning at the school, for all past and present mothers.’
‘What do you imagine the press will make of that?’ I asked after a second.
‘She’s inviting them as well,’ said Joesbury. ‘It’s looking like the school is the key to whatever’s going on. She wants every woman connected with it on full alert.’
I thought about it for a moment. It was a good idea. It would also mean that some time tomorrow morning, the game would definitely be up. I had no choice but to leave tonight. Just one big problem in my way. The one in the driver’s seat.
My rucksack was on my lap. Relying on the music to drown any sound, I unzipped the front pocket and found my knife. Then I slipped my hand into my coat pocket. As I was doing that, my big problem turned into a short, no-through road and pulled over. He switched off the engine and, with an exaggerated look of relief, the stereo system. ‘I want double brownie points for that,’ he said. ‘I brought you a coat.’
He was out of the car before I had time to ask where we were, and why I would need another coat. Knowing I didn’t have much choice but to play along, I tucked my bag under the seat and climbed out too.
We were in Southwark, not far from where I’d worked up until a few weeks ago, and practically on the riverbank. Directly across from us were the lights and buildings of the city. Joesbury handed over a large oilskin coat, pulled a baseball cap on to his own head and set off towards the water. I raised the coat hood and followed, very slowly.
The river was metres away, the safety barrier nothing but two iron bars held by vertical struts, and Joesbury was waiting for me at the top of some narrow stone steps that I had a bad feeling led to the beach below. As I drew close, he pulled a torch out of his coat pocket and set off down them. On the fourth step, his left foot slipped sideways.
‘You need to watch it,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘They’re skanky. Hold on to the rope.’
A weed-encrusted rope had been nailed into the embankment wall. It looked just like the one I’d clung to on the night Sam Cooper had drowned. The night I almost had. I didn’t want to touch it. And I certainly wasn’t going down to that beach.
I still hadn’t looked at the river, but I could hear it, had heard it the moment I got out of the car, even above the rain. The soft play of water against wooden pier struts, the insistent, rushing hum that always seems to hover around moving water.
‘I’ll wait in the car,’ I called, but the wind had picked up and I wasn’t sure he’d heard.
‘That would defeat the object.’ He’d turned on the last step and was looking back up at me.
‘I’m not comfortable near the river,’ I said. I still hadn’t looked at it but I had a sense of it creeping closer. The tide was about to turn. If you spend enough time near a tidal watercourse like the Thames, you learn to hear the particular dip in sound it makes at low water. The whisper that says, I’m coming back.Jesus, I was getting in the car now.
‘I know that,’ said Joesbury, who’d taken a step back up. ‘Who would be? But you can’t work for the Met and be potamophobic. Come on.’
He climbed another couple of steps and grabbed my hand. Then he was pulling me down. This was the moment. The knife was in my pocket. Straight into his stomach and pull hard upwards. He’d fall to the beach and within a couple of hours the river would take him.
‘Potoma-what?’ I said, as I stepped on to the crunching, litterstrewn surface of the beach. I could feel my trainers sinking into what I hoped was damp sand but had a feeling probably wasn’t.
‘Fear of rivers,’ said Joesbury, who was dragging me towards some dark shapes a few metres away. Directly ahead and soaring above us were the protruding, futuristic spikes of the Millennium Bridge. It glowed like beaten silver in the darkness. Down on the beach we’d moved out of the reach of the streetlamp and had just the thin, moonbeam trail of Joesbury’s torch to light the way. ‘Looked it up an hour ago,’ he went on.
The dark shapes ahead had taken the form of a low pier. It looked wet, half-rotten and far from stable, and there was no way on this earth I was stepping on to it. Joesbury leaped up and I tugged my hand free. He turned back to face me.
‘My grandfather worked for the Marine Unit,’ he said. ‘Back in the early fifties when health and safety wasn’t anything like what it is now. Officers got dunked on a regular basis.’
I folded my arms. Wherever this was going, I wasn’t interested.
‘They had to be pretty good swimmers,’ Joesbury went on, ‘but even so, when they were pulled out, nearly all of them got a serious case of the potamowhatsits. So they took ’em out again, in a small, low-slung boat, just as soon as they could. Sort of like putting someone back on a horse after they’ve fallen off.’
So this was about doing me a favour? ‘I appreciate the thought,’ I said. ‘But I’d rather do it some other time.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ said Joesbury, with what I was beginning to think of as his nasty smile.
‘Please can we go back to the car?’ I tried one last time.
Joesbury inclined his head at me. ‘Do I strike you as someone who gives up easily?’
Just get it over with. I kept close to him as we set off along the pier. Across the water, the ghostly dome of St Paul’s soared above the surrounding buildings.
‘This pier disappears completely when the tide’s up,’ said Joesbury, as I realized we were walking over water. ‘The Marine Unit use it for accessing the South Bank at low tide.’
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t decide whether it was better to focus on the lights of the opposite bank and have the glimmer of the river at the edge of my vision, or keep them firmly on my feet and see the swirl of the scum through the slats of the pier. Frankly, eyes tight shut and clinging to Joesbury felt like the best idea, but I rather doubted I’d get away with it.
We’d got to within two metres of the pier’s end when Joesbury stopped. The tide was coming in fast by this stage and the wind blowing up the length of the river was helping it along. Every tiny wave seemed to creep a little closer to our feet. Joesbury put his hands on my shoulders and moved me to his left side, effectively screening me from most of the wind. A gallant enough gesture, I suppose, but I really didn’t like the way the pier rocked.
‘I’ve suggested to Dana that you interview the children tomorrow,’ he said.
As clouds crossed the sky the river shimmered from black to purple, and bright circles of ruby-red light danced across it. I glanced up. The ruby lights were being reflected from a crane just by St Paul’s.
‘What?’ I said, as his last words sunk in.
He was looking downstream towards Southwark Bridge. ‘You’re the youngest on the team,’ he said. ‘You’ll be the least threatening.’
‘Actually I wasn’t planning to go in tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I left DI Tulloch a note.’
Joesbury glanced back at me, then down
at his feet. ‘Yeah, it’s in my pocket,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t seen it yet.’
I stared at him until he made eye contact again. Only for a second though. Then his eyes were back on Southwark Bridge.
‘This is no time to get an attack of the vapours, Flint,’ he said. ‘You’re needed on the team.’
He was lying. Knowing that our killer was still at large, all his old suspicions about me had come back. He’d found my note, guessed I was planning to run and was deliberately getting in the way. All this talk of getting me back in the saddle had been so much crap. He’d be watching me non-stop from now on.
I turned from him to the beach. It was covered with rocks of various sizes. All I had to do was distract him, pick one up, hold it high and then bring it down very fast. In his car, I could be in Portsmouth before midnight.
‘Here comes our lift,’ he said.
54
A POLICE MOTOR LAUNCH WAS HEADING TOWARDS US, THE waves from its bow already sweeping over the low pier. It drew up alongside us and a middle-aged, uniformed sergeant threw a rope.
‘Tide’s fast,’ he muttered to Joesbury, who’d wrapped the rope around a rusty iron cleat. The sergeant held out a large, wrinkled hand to me. ‘Up you come, love.’
I’d run out of arguments. I gave the officer my hand, looked into eyes that seemed familiar and got pulled aboard. As well as the sergeant, there were two other officers on the boat, both in a sort of raised cockpit. The boat went into reverse and, at the last moment, Joesbury slipped the line off the cleat, reached for the boat rail and swung himself on board as though he’d been doing it all his life.
We were off, heading for the centre of the river, the engine loud and the rain battling spray to see which could wet us the most. A stray wave came bouncing over the bow and its tail end caught me full in the face. I could taste salt and something bitter and oily.
‘DC Flint, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Wilson of the Marine Policing Unit,’ said Joesbury. ‘Uncle Fred, this is Lacey.’
Now You See Me Page 20
