I had been away for four nights by the time I came back to my flat – not even a week – but I felt as if I’d been gone for months as I walked through the courtyard in the quiet mid-morning. I had collected a handful of post that included the SIM card I’d posted to myself after my police interview. Everything looked strange to me, even the fairy lights Helen had strung in her window. The flat was exactly as I’d left it with John Webster. The place smelled wrong, though, and I went through the kitchen cupboards and the fridge, throwing out bread that had taken the opportunity to sprout green fluff and a sad pair of bananas that were too far gone even for baking. Four nights: I lived my domestic life close to the edge when it came to shopping and use-by dates. A load of laundry was still sitting in the washing machine so I threw in another dose of detergent and put it on again, hoping that the dank smell would dissipate.
Once I was quite ready, I put the SIM card back into my phone and switched it on. Instantly the handset began to vibrate with messages. Notifications flashed up on the screen faster than I could read them: voicemails, texts, emails, most of them concerned with one thing only.
Where are you.
Where are you.
Where are you.
I replied to the work ones first, easing into it. Friends next. My mother after that (with an actual phone call because I wasn’t stupid enough to think a text message would be enough). I found her surprisingly easy to placate but that was thanks to Diana, who had called her the same day she texted me.
‘Julius told her to tell me that you had business to attend to, and not to worry about you.’
‘So you didn’t?’
‘Well, of course I worried, darling. I worry all the time. That’s what mothers do.’
‘Of course.’
‘It was very nice of you to go and check on Mark.’
‘The wedding’s still not happening, Mother. Put your hat back in its box.’
‘I did just wonder.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Diana thought—’
‘That sounds unlikely.’
We both laughed. Then she turned serious. ‘I trust Julius, but look after yourself, Ingrid.’
‘I will.’
‘Promise me.’
‘I promise,’ I said, and meant it, although we probably had different ideas of what that entailed.
London was the sort of place where you could be completely unfamiliar with a whole area, even if it was close to where you lived. I walked across the canal and into Camden. My destination was a grubby little townhouse on a side street near Camden Town Tube station, an office building carved out of a Victorian home. Three small businesses operated out of it: a wedding-dress designer in the basement, an architect’s firm on the ground and first floor, and a small logistics company on the top floor. I had timed my arrival for the close of business and discovered that the architect had moved premises since I’d researched the address. The office was empty, with whitewashed windows. The wedding-dress designer was closed to customers except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, which left the top of the building as the only place where people were actually working. The lights were on, I could see from my position on the street. I leaned against a wall and did my best to look unobtrusive.
About ten minutes after I arrived, at half past five on the dot, a middle-aged man in a bike helmet emerged from the building carrying his bike. He spent some time fussing over the bike and adjusting the bag he wore across his torso before he set off, wobbling alarmingly, to join the traffic on the main road. A woman in a gorgeous red coat was the next to leave, walking away quickly in flat ballet shoes that didn’t make a sound on the pavement. Finally, a youngish guy in trainers skipped down the steps. He was wearing giant headphones and a Doctor Who T-shirt and might as well have had IT SUPPORT tattooed across his forehead. I waited for him to go, then crossed the road and pressed the buzzer for RTW Logistics Enterprises. It was an old-fashioned intercom with no video camera, which was a help.
There was a crackle. ‘Yeah?’
‘Hi, is Martin there?’
‘You just missed him.’
‘Damn,’ I said. Martin was the name of the IT expert, I knew from trawling the company website. ‘Look, I told him I would drop something off for him. It’s too big to go through the letterbox and I don’t want to leave it on the step. Is there any way you could buzz me in?’
Silence. Then the door hummed and I pushed it open. I found myself in a bare hallway, in the area outside the architect’s office. There wasn’t a sound in the building as I walked up the stairs except for the drone of fluorescent bulbs overhead. The doors were all closed on the tiny first-floor landing. I went up the next flight of stairs, wary now. On the second floor, both doors stood ajar. One was labelled RECEPTION, so I went and tapped on it lightly.
‘You can just leave whatever it is on the desk near the door. I’ll make sure he gets it.’ Her voice was light but metallic and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck: I recognised it. I pushed open the door slowly and peered into the room, to see that she was sitting at a desk on the other side of it, her back to me. It wasn’t a large room but there were two other desks crammed into it, both stacked with box files and folders. The computers looked antique and the carpet was ripped. RTW Logistics (Specialists in Office Moves and International Shipping) didn’t waste any glamour on the back office.
‘Thanks so much for this.’
She half-turned but didn’t make eye contact. ‘It’s fine. Really. I’ll tell him you came by.’
I put the box down on the desk, as directed. ‘Tess, isn’t it?’
Most people would have looked around if someone said their name. She didn’t. She looked straight ahead at the greying, dented plaster in front of her and said nothing.
‘I’m not here to leave something for Martin. I’m here to see you.’
She put her hands flat on the desk, on either side of the keyboard. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I don’t think I know you and I would like you to leave.’
‘You do know me.’ I perched on the edge of the desk near me and folded my arms. ‘You have some quite strong opinions about me, in fact. I’m Ingrid Lewis.’
Her fingernails went white as she pressed them into the desk. ‘You need to go.’
‘Can you look at me, Tess?’
She turned slowly, dragging her eyes up to meet mine with an obvious effort. I saw a small, thin woman, her hair scraped back into a ponytail. Her skin was colourless, from shock or because that was how she looked most of the time. A motorbike roared up the street outside, the sound of its engine bouncing off the buildings, loud thanks to the single glazing in the old windows. I waited until it was gone to speak.
‘You were at the self-defence class in the parish hall.’
‘Well done.’
I called her to mind, smiling timidly, wearing pink lipstick on that occasion in a shade too blue to suit her. Her hair had hung down around her face.
I’m here to get more confidence.
‘You said your name was Laura.’
‘I lied.’ She said it flatly.
‘You followed me there.’
‘I’ve been following you for weeks.’
‘Why?’ I tilted my head. ‘And why risk being caught? You must have known it was dangerous.’
A shrug. ‘I wanted to see you, I suppose. To test you.’
‘You wanted to look me in the eye and see if I remembered cross-examining you during Guy Lanesbury’s trial.’
She flinched. ‘I’d have known you anywhere but you didn’t remember me at all. I was shaking in case you recognised me. But I didn’t ring any bells.’
‘In fairness, you’ve changed,’ I said. ‘You had glasses then, and you were …’
‘Fat. You can say fat.’
Nowadays she was so skinny she looked ill. I had to outweigh her, I thought, and I was taller than her. Plus I was closer to the door. There was no reason to feel scared even though Tess Ivors was looking at me with absolute loathing.
Her emotion was a weapon I could use, in the same way I often provoked a defendant’s temper in cross-examination. People gave themselves away when they forgot to be on their guard. I looked sympathetic.
‘You must have been so disappointed that I didn’t know you.’
‘I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d have known you anywhere. I suppose you’re used to destroying people. One more here or there wouldn’t stand out.’
‘I don’t make a habit of it.’
‘No, you make a career out of it. Do you remember what you did when I was on the stand? What you implied? You suggested that I was in love with Lisa.’
‘I never actually said that.’
‘Oh no. You were too clever for that. You made me look like a fool. You implied I was jealous of Guy. You made the jury think I’d made the whole thing up to get back at him.’
‘I’m sorry about that. It must have been hard to take. I was tough on you.’
‘Lisa deserved to be listened to in court. She deserved to be believed.’
‘Lisa lied about what happened. The jury couldn’t find Guy guilty when she had lied.’
‘You twisted her words. She was drunk and he took advantage of her. She didn’t know what she was doing.’
‘She didn’t think it was rape until you told her it was.’
‘Fuck you,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to listen to you justifying yourself.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Justice.’ She said it simply. ‘Lisa never got it.’
‘Is that why you started posting on the Justice Is Blind forum?’
She stared at me. ‘I— what?’
‘Durbs, isn’t it? I like that nickname. I’m guessing you studied Thomas Hardy at some stage. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Grim book, but hey, that fits.’
‘It wasn’t – I didn’t study it.’
‘Did Lisa? Was that her nickname for you?’ I knew I’d hit on the right answer from the expression on her face. ‘Okay. I see now why you chose it.’
‘Don’t say her name. Don’t even say it.’ Tess jumped off her chair and stood with her hands balled at her sides. She was shaking. ‘You don’t get to talk about her. Not after what you did.’
‘What happened to Lisa was a tragedy,’ I said slowly. ‘But I wasn’t the reason she died.’
‘Oh, of course not. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just doing your job.’
‘I didn’t even know she was dead,’ I protested. ‘It happened months later.’
‘You didn’t bother to find out, though, did you? You never thought about her again. Or me.’ Her eyes were full of unshed tears and her face was quivering with the effort of holding them back. ‘Look, what do you want?’
‘I’m not here to threaten you with anything. I just want to understand what you’ve been doing and why. And I want to know who IAmTheLaw is, and what they wanted with you.’
She caught her breath. ‘You shouldn’t ask about him.’
‘Him? Have you met him? What’s his real name?’
She shifted her weight and almost overbalanced. Without looking, she reached out to steady herself on the desk, or so I thought. Instead, her hand went unerringly to the stationery-holder on her desk, and she grabbed something: a box cutter with a sharp, sharp blade.
‘What are you doing?’ It was a stupid question, I thought; I could see very well what she was doing.
‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
It felt very unfair that I should be held to account for something I’d done at the start of my career, I thought, with a wave of utter exhaustion. ‘We all make mistakes, Tess. I’m sorry for mine. Don’t make this into another one of yours. If you hurt or kill me in your actual office what do you think is going to happen to you? How are you going to explain that away? Where are you going to go if you have to run away?’
‘Fuck you.’ She looked past me and smiled. ‘Well, look who it is.’
My heart thumped painfully as I turned to look at the doorway, because if she was happy that couldn’t be good news for me.
I hadn’t expected it, but I probably should have, given what I knew and what I feared.
It was John Webster who was standing there, tall and lean with his hands in the pockets of his long overcoat. His expression was utterly blank.
‘You wanted to know who IAmTheLaw is,’ Tess said. ‘Now you can see for yourself.’
And that was the point when I began to despair.