Cassie couldn’t find Copernicus at the spot in the undergrowth Gaz had described, but then she heard a raised voice nearby that sounded familiar. She headed for its source and found him sat on a bench, one leg neatly crossed over the other.
‘No, you listen,’ he was saying in an accent unmistakably forged in the crucible of public school and Oxbridge. ‘Dark matter is assuredly not a WIMP or an axion, or indeed any other kind of particle.’ He jabbed a finger at his imagined opponent. ‘It isn’t even matter!’ Leaning back, he nodded to himself triumphantly.
Then, lowering his voice, he replied to himself in an elaborately courteous tone, ‘I’m afraid I must disagree – and I’m hardly alone in this – lightest supersymmetric particles are by far the most compelling candidate—’
Seeing Cassie, he fell suddenly silent, a wary look closing his face.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said, sitting down at the other end of the bench and offering him the open pack of fags. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and took three, putting two in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and accepted her proffered lighter to light the one between his lips. ‘I live on a narrowboat five minutes’ walk down there.’
‘Dreamcatcher,’ he said with a smile, as if remembering an old joke.
‘Mmm. That’s right,’ she said, hoping Gaz was right about him being harmless. ‘I know you sometimes hang out round that bit of the towpath and I was just wondering, have you ever seen anyone going onto my boat when I’m not home?’
‘No, no, no, no,’ he said, shaking his head, his eyes widening in alarm.
‘You’re not in any trouble,’ she said, breaking eye contact and leaning back on the bench. ‘It’s just between you and me, I promise.’ Telling herself that it wasn’t really lying since no way would this guy ever make a witness in a court of law. She held out the pack of Camels. ‘Here, would you like the rest of these?’
A look of calculation, so childlike it made her want to smile, came over his face. ‘He gave me a ten-pound note,’ he said pointedly, taking the pack anyway and disappearing it conjuror-style into the folds of his tweed greatcoat.
‘Did he?’ She fished in the inside pocket of her leather jacket, pulled out the folded twenty she kept there for emergencies and smoothed it out on her lap. ‘Who was this then?’
‘It was all perfectly above board,’ he said in a haughty tone.
‘Is that what he told you, when he realised you’d seen him?’ Keeping her voice matter-of-fact, unexcited.
‘I had good reason to believe he wasn’t a common thief or vagabond,’ he said, eyeing the twenty.
‘Oh, yes? Why was that?’
‘He was an officer of the law,’ said Copernicus, plucking the twenty from her hand.
*
Squinting through the gloom at the white outline of the freezer in the recesses of the undercroft, Flyte navigated her way through piles of trash and old furniture. Wrinkling her nose at the smell of old urine – and worse – she pushed an old foam mattress out of the way with her foot. A lithe furry shape shot across her path. Flaming focaccia! Realising she’d gasped out loud in shock, she ducked behind an old wardrobe, listening out for any sign that somebody had heard her. Nothing.
What was she scared of? Did she seriously think Dean Willets murdered Sean Kavanagh? And Luke Lawless, too? Of course not, she told herself. But if Sean’s body had been kept in one of the lock-ups then the real murderer could be close by.
Having kept vigil for a few moments without seeing or hearing any movement, she carried on towards her goal, scanning the floor with her phone torch to head off any further encounters with Camden wildlife.
The freezer was an old-school monster of the kind she recalled from the family garage when she was little: six feet long and more than three feet deep – large enough to hold three bodies, let alone one. Pointing her beam down on the litter-strewn floor and back towards the roadway outside, she thought she could make out an indistinct pathway through the detritus – as if someone had pushed the freezer here to hide it deeper in the undercroft and then attempted to cover their tracks.
Feeling breathless with excitement, she scrabbled in her pocket for a nitrile glove and wrapped it round the freezer handle. The lid wouldn’t open but finally the rubber seals parted with a sticky tock! and a bad smell wafted out. She played her phone torch into the interior and leaned in as far as she could, one foot off the ground. It looked grubby but empty – except for some scraps of plastic packaging. She was struck by an illogical feeling of disappointment. What had she expected to find? Another body?
She heard a noise behind her. Before she could react, strong hands had gripped her by the knees and upended her into the freezer. Her nose and forehead crashed into the plastic side of the freezer, a hand pushing her legs in behind her. Good job I’m not wearing a skirt, she thought, absurdly. Before she had time to cry out the lid slammed shut, leaving her in the foul-smelling darkness.
*
Cassie jogged across the bridge towards the derelict estate, wishing she was wearing her Doc Martens instead of plimsolls. Having had her own run-ins with the police during her squatting days, she hadn’t been surprised by the recent press stories about the behaviour of some male cops, but to find out that a cop had broken into her boat properly spooked her. It suggested someone with something serious to hide. Something that had to be tied up with Sean Kavanagh’s murder.
Whatever it was, Flyte needed to know sharpish that one of her colleagues was not to be trusted.
*
Flyte had been left in a heap, face down on the floor of the freezer.
Scrabbling to get onto her knees, she tried to turn her body in order to reach the lid. There was barely any room to manoeuvre and her hands and feet couldn’t get any purchase on the slippery plastic walls. Then she heard a metallic clunk echoing through the cabinet like the crack of doom. Somebody had put something good and heavy on the lid.
Twisting herself onto her back she bent her knees to set both feet on the underside of the lid and pushed. Nothing, not even a smidge of movement. Cocking an ear, she heard the sounds of someone retreating through the rubbish-filled undercroft. Whoever had tipped her in here had gone – for now.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
In some situations, only full-fat swearing would do.
She started shouting, hammering her fist on the inside of the lid. Stupid. As if her assailant would change his – or her – mind and let her out.
More likely, whoever it was would come back and finish her off. Immediately followed by another thought.
What if he never came back?
A musty, faintly meaty smell invaded her nostrils sending a chill slithering up her spine as she remembered that Sean’s body had lain here for eight years. Don’t panic. She’d had her phone in her hand when her attacker tipped her inside. Scrabbling on the floor, her fingers found its reassuring outline and she drew it towards her.
The sight of the lit screen and a single bar of signal lifted her spirits.
Huzzah!
Then the single bar disappeared.
Her forehead and right cheekbone had started to throb where they’d struck the side of the freezer. She had tried to manoeuvre herself into a sitting position but her head hit the underside of the lid, so she had to stay half bent, her neck muscles complaining at the stress position.
She concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth to calm herself and viewed her situation logically. Her attacker might not come back and she remembered something else that lifted her spirits: Cassie had said she’d seen workmen on-site prepping the place for demolition. When they arrived, probably first thing the next day, she would shout her lungs out and they’d rescue her.
A memory elbowed its way to the surface of her thoughts. When she was little, no more than six or seven, her mother had caught her standing on a chair leaning over the open chest freezer, spooning ice cream straight into her mouth. The sting of a slap on the leg. ‘You must never do that again, Phyllida! If you fell in and the lid closed you would suffocate.’
Freezers were airtight.