London Noir: A gripping crime suspense thriller (Kal Medi Book 2)

by Ann Girdharry

  It took a few moments for the woman to realise what Kal was talking about. ‘Oh t-that – it was nothing.’

  Kal leaned closer. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I saw the body.’

  ‘You what!’

  The woman gave Kal such a look of horror, Kal thought she was about to scream.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong – I was trying to help. In my last job, I did a first aid course and I didn’t realise exactly what had happened and I thought I might be able to…’ Kal shook her head and let the sentence trail off.

  ‘That was brave of you. Only it was too late for anything. From what they say she looked like, no one could save her.’

  ‘I did a runner, and I know that was really stupid and then I thought about it and made myself come back.’

  ‘That was brave too. I stayed because I couldn’t bear to think of her lying up there alone. I know that’s dumb, isn’t it? Penny was so kind and you only realised if you knew her well. She didn’t deserve to die, and not like that.’

  Purple-streak started sobbing again and Kal put her arm around the woman’s shoulders. Over the other side of the room, Candice suddenly spotted Kal and, as soon as she did, Kal knew something was wrong – she could see it in the micro-freeze in Candice’s posture. Kal registered Candice’s dismay, closely followed by anger. How strange. Candice did a sweep of the auditorium, then did another one, then her focus came back to Kal like a poisoned arrow. She looked accusing. Why? What was Candice looking for? Or rather, who? Kal didn’t know what was going on but whatever it was, it was good, because where you find emotion, you glean information. And the stronger the emotions, the more suppressed messages seep through the cracks. Best to let Candice come to her.

  Seated in the middle, two police officers, a man and woman, were questioning the women one by one. Candice skirted the huddle and made a direct line for Kal. Perhaps the woman tried to keep it casual, but to Kal’s trained eye, Candice’s steps were hurried and clumsy.

  ‘Get lost, Marcie,’ Candice said.

  Purple-streak didn’t need to be told twice.

  ‘Candice, are you okay? The last time I saw you, it looked like your ankle was busted,’ Kal said.

  Kal angled her body into the correct position, so that Candice’s back would be towards the officers. Whatever was chewing up Candice, Kal wanted it for her attention only.

  ‘Busted? I’ll bust you for coming back. Can’t you get anything right, you annoying little bitch.’

  Kal’s scalp prickled. Why was Candice acting this way? What did she believe Kal had done? Kal noticed Candice had subliminally attracted the attention of one of the officers because the officer had paused in her questioning to look in their direction. She must be good at her job, Kal thought, to have picked up a signal like that in the periphery. Except the signal hadn’t been quite strong enough to make her come over.

  ‘Keep it down,’ Kal said. ‘What’s got you riled up?’

  Candice all but gritted her teeth. In another situation, Kal felt sure Candice would’ve given her a cracking slap.

  ‘If you brought her back here, Sugar G won’t need to string you up, I’ll do it myself.’

  So, news must have travelled that Kal had left the venue with Sophie. Candice was all chewed up about the girl. Interesting.

  Candice hadn’t taken it down much of a notch and, this time, both officers glanced in their direction. Kal dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. Falling sobbing onto Candice’s shoulder would have been a more effective decoy, only she couldn’t bring herself to do that and goodness knows how Candice would’ve reacted. The male officer turned slowly to resume his questioning and Kal blew her nose again. So, Candice had scanned the room because she feared Kal had come back here with Sophie. But why the malice? Why the accusation? Why didn’t Candice want Sophie here?

  ‘If you want to be discreet, you’d better get a grip,’ Kal said. With a nuance of her head she indicated the officers.

  Kal could almost see ripples of anger on Candice’s face as she struggled for control. And underneath all of that, hidden in and around Candice’s eyes, Kal read something very different. Fear. Candice was afraid Kal had brought Sophie back with her.

  ‘She’s not here, Candice. What are you frightened of?’

  ‘Keep her away. Keep her away or you’ll…’

  ‘Or I’ll what? She’s safe, she’s-’

  Candice interrupted. ‘Shut up, you idiot. I don’t want to fucking know.’

  ‘Why not, what’s going on? I don’t get it.’

  ‘You don’t need to. Keep her far away from here and never, ever, mention her name. She doesn’t exist. Understand?’

  ‘No, I don’t understand, aren’t you going to tell me why?’

  ‘Shut it – I don’t even want to be talking to you and I’m warning you, do as I say or Sugar G will make you regret it.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

  Candice gripped Kal’s arm, her nails digging in and Kal let her, locking eyes with the woman and making sure that the only thing that showed was her confusion. But it didn’t do any good, Candice wasn’t ready to let anything slip.

  ‘Something tells me you’re much smarter than you make out, and let’s hope so, for your sake. Take a left turn out of the auditorium,’ Candice said, ‘once you’ve passed the toilet, there’s a cleaning closet and it’s got a small window. The key’s kept in the cabinet and that window leads to the side alley. Get out. Disappear and don’t ever come back. If Sugar G sees you again, he’ll rip your arms off.’

  Kal took a long stare at Candice. The threat didn’t bother her. What troubled her were the hidden reasons behind it. There was no point in digging further here because she’d get nothing more from Candice. Kal needed to move further up the food chain. Which meant her next target should be Sugar G.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Inside the closet, Kal found all the cleaning supplies including several containers of bleach. Like the rest, all the bleach bottles were lined up neatly. When Kal examined them closely, she saw one bottle had a recent drip trail running down the side. It told her the killer knew the premises and therefore knew where to find the materials to wipe away a murderer’s traces.

  With a fastening that allowed it to open all the way, the small window proved no obstacle, and Kal dropped down at the back of the house. Even before her feet hit the ground, she realised someone else was there and she kicked out with her good leg. Too late. Someone pinned Kal against the wall and from the smell of musk and coffee and the feel of him, even in the pitch black, Kal knew it was Sugar G. The sly bastard. He’d been lying in wait for her. Candice must have tipped him off. He pushed her against the wall and the rough brickwork scraped skin off the side of her face. Should she fight back and pummel him to pulp? Or should she stick with her cover story? Kal calculated most traction would come from sticking with her story, so she made as if she tried to throw him off and couldn’t.

  Sugar G had his hand over Kal’s mouth. ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  His voice sounded tight and brittle. She gave a little nod.

  ‘What the hell are you doing coming back? What the hell were you doing in Penny’s room? Answer me.’

  Sugar G hadn’t got his knife out yet. Kal knew it was close by, nestled in the small of his back. Sugar G had seen her in Penny’s room. He must know Kal had left the club with Sophie. So what was his interest in Kal now? Or with Sophie?

  ‘I know first aid. I went up there to help.’ Kal kept her voice shaky.

  ‘What a fucking liar you are. I didn’t believe you from the beginning and you’re going to tell me what your game is.’

  Sugar G squeezed his fingers into the flesh of her shoulders to hurt her and Kal let her breath come jagged to deal with the pain. She knew it would sound as if she were afraid.

  ‘It’s the truth. I know first aid.’

  ‘What about little Sophie, what’s your interest in her?’

  What’s your interest in her yourself, you cree
p?

  ‘Nothing. I wanted to help her out.’

  ‘Another fucking lie! Think I’m some kind of idiot, do you?’ Sugar G shook Kal’s shoulders. ‘That girl can’t come back here, you understand? Ever.’

  He pushed his weight onto her. A few lights from neighbouring houses lit the far end of the garden and didn’t penetrate as far as the two of them. All Kal could see was Sugar G’s outline as he leaned on her chest. She concentrated on the tone of his voice. It had changed when he said “little Sophie” and she needed to know why.

  ‘Sophie? What is it about her?’

  This was risky. She wasn’t behaving the right way. Sugar G was used to scared, obedient women. Women who needed him for work and for protection on the streets. Even this slightest of resistance from her put him on edge. Kal could sense it in him. Sense how he couldn’t stand her asking even this one simple question. Danger sparked off him like electricity. Kal saw Sugar G’s hand go behind his back and, in preparation to strike back, she took a slow breath-in. He reached slowly towards his belt and she felt the calm that trickled into him as soon as he had his hand on the hilt of his weapon. Now he felt in control. Kal readied herself to fight. She wasn’t afraid, though she knew he’d be fast and deadly, that he’d think later, once it was all over. Kung fu couldn’t save her from everything, but it gave her a huge advantage, and one which most opponents had no idea was coming their way.

  At that moment, a light flashed on inside the closet. A shout rang from inside and someone, most likely a police officer, poked their head out of the window. Sugar G didn’t wait for more. He dropped Kal and he sprinted in one direction and Kal in the other. When she got to the fence, Kal ducked down and crawled on her belly to the corner, then vaulted into the neighbouring garden.

  Kal vaulted a couple more fences and slid into the road running parallel to Montgomery. There, she brushed herself down and crouched, listening. A radio sounded from an open window and a dog barked several streets away. She waited, touching her face where it felt sore. No sign of Sugar G and she certainly didn’t want to run into him again. Not yet anyway. Not before she’d spoken to Sophie. This girl was an enigma, and Candice and Sugar G had information about Sophie that Kal didn’t yet have. A car drove past, and when all was quiet, Kal made her way to the end of the street and then back to 701 as quickly as she could.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At Lilac Mansions

  Keeping the pepper spray tight in one hand, Sophie opened the door to her childhood bedroom.

  The room smelled faintly of herbs. Or was that her imagination? Everything seemed untouched – frozen in time – a snapshot of her life as a child. Of the moment before everything fell apart.

  Sophie ran her hand along the familiar titles on the bookshelf. Since her breakdown, there had only been a few visits back to the family house. Each time she came, it reminded her of her previous life.

  Her fingers ran along the books, caressing the covers; the bright colours of a famous author, then a row of much-loved titles with tattered dustcovers, then slimmer books, then fatter ones. Sophie lingered on her childhood favourites. She loved reading. After the night both her parents died, losing herself in stories became her escape and her lifeline. These shelves contained the books she couldn’t bear to part with, except they hadn’t been enough to sustain her, and they’d certainly not been enough to stem the pain.

  After her parents were killed, there had been a mourning period and then they expected Sophie to go back to school. Often, she pretended to have tummy aches and took to bed for days on end. It had been easy with the string of au pairs and with everyone in a mess and walking around Sophie like she was made of egg-shells. No one spoke to her about the deaths, or the bodies, or the funerals, or the emptiness and dread she felt inside. Nor about the police investigation, and the questions and the suspicions. Raymond, her legal guardian at age twenty-one, had been ill-equipped to bring up a young child on his own. Sophie remembered how he spent most of his time elsewhere. When he was home, Raymond avoided her in the big house. They never ate together and on the rare occasions they crossed paths he didn’t meet her eyes. Sophie spent her time trailing behind the au pairs and that’s how life continued without her mother and father.

  There’d been plenty of trips to the doctor to fathom the reasons for her feigned sicknesses. Then Raymond sent her to boarding school until, age eleven, she’d had a panic attack in the assembly hall. It came right in the middle of a presentation for the parents where Sophie was supposed to be reciting a poem. She remembered Raymond’s eyes watching her as she walked to the lectern and the next thing she knew, she was on her knees and fighting to breathe and was hurried to sick bay by a teacher and the school nurse.

  With the stands packed with adults it had been her ultimate humiliation. Though, in truth, it was the end result of many episodes locking herself in the toilets and bouts of sobbing to which no one paid much attention. When she reflected on it now, Sophie wondered how she’d held out so long.

  She’d already been going to see Dr Kaufman for outpatient sessions and after the meltdown she became a permanent resident at Melrose clinic. Dr Kaufman was a good friend of her father, and Raymond had grasped at his offer of help with both hands.

  Sophie pulled “The Diary of Anne Frank” from the shelf and stared at the black and white photograph of Frank. It was the last book she read before her breakdown. Since then, she’d been schooled by a private tutor.

  Lilac Mansions lay silent, waiting, Sophie thought, for the final instalment – for the closing of the circle and her coming of age all in one blow. Bending to smooth the covers of the bed, Sophie fancied she caught a faint scent of rosemary. She’d so loved to pick handfuls from the garden and keep jars of drying herbs in her room – mint, thyme and rosemary. That dark and terrible night, the scent of rosemary had been strong because Charlotte had tucked a sprig under Sophie’s pillow.

  Sophie took a deep breath and breathed in the smell of rosemary. Yes, she’d been woken by voices downstairs. There had been shouting. She recognised her father’s voice and how he sounded angry in a way she’d never known before. The violence frightened her and though part of her wanted to keep away, she’d been drawn to the sounds of her mother in the background, talking calmly as if to soothe her father.

  Why she’d got out of bed, Sophie couldn’t say. Curiosity probably. The need to know more. The need to find out about the adult world and discover what secrets they kept tucked away. Being light on her feet, Sophie thought she could sneak closer without being seen and then run back to bed. That had been her first mistake.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Growing up hiding my secret wasn’t as difficult as you might imagine. My parents, rich and self-obsessed, spent their vacations in exotic places – Greece, Italy, Canada, the Bahamas. When they weren’t doing that, they “went back to nature”. This was a peculiar interest of my mother’s and for some unknown reason she fixed on Wales as her target area.

  In this phase, she insisted on spending weekends in the middle of nowhere, aided, of course, by the most expensive camping equipment money could buy. She liked the notion of camping, rather than the actual experience of lack of luxuries. My father tolerated this and I was dragged along as a child. That’s how I got to know the wild areas of Wales. So that when I pondered the difficulty of disposing of body parts, I knew the isolated, cold waters that would welcome them with open arms.

  As I said, it’s the only thing I can thank my parents for. Other than that, I was of no interest to them except to show off my academic talents and progression up the achievement ladder. I grew up cold and alone in a house full of riches. Now isn’t that an irony?

  I didn’t muse on the origins of love until I became a student. The normal emotions of the world meant nothing to me and so I considered “love” to be amongst those items to be discarded for me in this lifetime. In fact, I felt nothing but pity for my peers who lolled on their beds or moped around the dormitories struck down by wo
nder for some rather ordinary person, usually, but not restrictively, of the opposite gender.

  Charlie changed all that. She had a grace that stopped me in my tracks. And she had that wonderful wistfulness in abundance – a woman who believed all her dreams would come true.

  I knew I wanted it all fixated on me. I imagined her blonde hair tumbling onto the bed and her eyes staring up into mine, filled with awe and desperation and terror. Charlie would be my third victim and I realised she’d be more of a challenge than my previous targets. She had confidence and no lack of admirers and so I set about planning how I would make her mine.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Kal tiptoed into the darkened lounge, she found everything calm. Sophie seemed to have rearranged the furniture to construct a barricade in the corner. By pushing together several of the chairs and hanging a blanket over them, Sophie had cordoned off a corner and reinforced the cordon with the settee. Kal peered in to find the girl asleep, curled up on the floor with the cat. So, she shouldn’t have worried, nothing bad had happened. Sophie had coped and that was a relief.

  Kal was about to step into the kitchen when she retracted her bare foot and jumped back. Her hand flew to clamp over her mouth. Oh no! What the-

  Broken glass and chinaware littered the floor. Glittering, shattered objects covered every surface. She didn’t flip the light, relying instead on the filtering street lights to tell the story. The cupboards hung open. Every item of crockery and glassware had been systematically dragged down and smashed on the floor. It didn’t look wild – for frantic, you’d break a couple of things and leave it at that. No, this was thorough. Meticulous. Kal imagined Sophie standing there and opening door after door and throwing the items down, maybe sweeping them off the shelves with her arm. The sound of breaking objects must have filled the air. Destruction and smashing must have given the perpetrator some relief, some release. Thank goodness she’d packed away her mother’s things and it was her own possessions Sophie destroyed. Kal’s eyes settled on the remains of a blue and gold teapot given to her by Marty, and she swallowed the lump in her throat. For a few moments, she leant against the door frame.