The terminal was like a moving maze, with trolleys instead of hedges. The place was rammed. I was early, especially as the arrivals board told me that flight BA 97 was slated to come in twenty minutes late. I made my way to a coffee bar near arrivals and managed to find a seat at a small round table. I took out a notebook and pen and looked at the notes I’d made on the Heathrow Express. I’d taken the train instead of my car so that I could do that. And take less than three hours to get there.
There was no way I was going to miss Sharon. I know she would have understood if I hadn’t gone but I wanted to see her, to spend every second I could with her. The gesture too was important but there was something else as well. I didn’t want her to see a newspaper. I didn’t want her doing that on her own.
I did feel guilty, though. What would Mike have thought: instead of finding out what had happened to Ally I’d gone to meet Sharon, my girlfriend? The girl I still had. For this reason I took my daybook and my phone, calling Andy from the train just after nine. This time he did pick up, saying, ‘Just a minute,’ before walking into a different room. I was relieved. Andy told me that the car from the tunnel had been traced. It was a Mondeo, four years old. Though the kid had found it in Lewisham it had originally been taken from a street in Bethnal Green last week. I asked him about the girl in the boot and he said they’d found a possible print match but were waiting for it to come back with an ID. She’d been about six months pregnant but no one with any link to the Lindauer seemed to be missing. Andy told me that he wanted to speak to Mike again, to go through CCTV stills, which were being pulled off the tape, and he asked me if I’d seen him. I told him that I hadn’t.
I thought about what Andy had said about the car, but I couldn’t really focus on it. All I could think about was Sharon. As Andy had reminded me at the station the other night, Sharon was my brother Luke’s girlfriend when I first met her. Luke had served her in the bar where he was working and fell in love with her right there. They were planning to marry when Luke had the accident that left, and leaves, him in a PVS. A coma. Sharon and I had been almost inseparable after that, the only people who seemed to have any relevance to each other. We’d been friends for nearly four years before it had gone any further and we’d fallen in love ourselves. It was an amazing, wrenching time, but I thought we’d managed to deal with all the guilt and the weirdness of it. I thought we’d last for ever. Sharon had thought that too, but after a year and a half she realized that she couldn’t do it any more, she couldn’t stand to be reminded daily about what had happened. I saw her again, sitting on my futon, and felt my stomach plummeting down through me at the words she’d said.
‘I’m seeing someone else, Billy.’
I hadn’t seen it coming and the pain, and betrayal, took me months to come to terms with. I had a brief relationship and some meaningless encounters and managed to function, though I couldn’t stop my mind turning towards Sharon. I heard she’d dumped the guy she’d got together with and I thought about calling her on several occasions but I never quite did. More than a year later, out of the blue, she called me. I was instantly defensive and I asked her what she wanted. She told me that she was going away to work and wanted to know if I fancied dinner before she left. That was all. Actually, she laughed, she wanted to know if I fancied cooking it for her.
‘Those lamb shanks,’ she said, ‘in white wine. I can never get them the same as you do them.’
I must have spent three hours cooking that night but I needn’t have bothered. We’d been so nervous we’d hardly been able to eat. Eventually we gave up and without saying much just walked into the bedroom. We made love in a kind of sickened, terrified daze, just wanting to get it done. To get past it. In the morning I couldn’t believe she was there. Sharon and I spent every night together after that until she left for Afghanistan. Only nine days, but I knew. I’d imagined the nerves I’d feel seeing her again, but they were nothing compared to what I was feeling now.
I sipped an espresso but instantly regretted it, the caffeine soon playing chase with the adrenalin in my veins. I was weak, my throat dry at the thought of seeing Sharon. There was a different fear in my head now. Not that she’d met someone else, but that it might go wrong again. If, like last time, she couldn’t handle seeing her ex-lover in the face of his brother every day. I wasn’t sure I could deal with losing her again. I told myself to calm down and not crowd her. I’d put off asking Sharon to move in. I’d be a little cool, let her drive it forward if she wanted to. The news I had to give her would blow it all away anyway.
BA 97 – Landed.
It was ten forty-five. The airport was even busier now if that was possible, waves of bodies moving out of the arrivals’ hall, riptides of single people cutting against them. I tapped my feet and turned to my notebook, knowing that Landed could mean another thirty minutes. I tried to concentrate on the list I’d made. The bus driver, the one who’d driven Josephine. The police would have spoken to him at least twice but it wouldn’t hurt if I gave it a shot. I wrote a list of questions for him but my eyes kept flicking from the page to the screen up above me.
BA 97 – Baggage in Hall.
My table was on a platform and I looked down over the heads of the people at the barrier, all facing one way. A pickpocket’s wet dream. An endless shoal of weary faces streamed through them, the odd individual fished out with shrieks and hugs. I pictured Sharon at passport control, then at the baggage carousel. She was only yards away now but she’d still be another ten minutes at least. I couldn’t stay seated, though. I walked down to the gate, making sure I didn’t miss anyone coming through. I stood to the side where I’d see her first, before she could see me. I wouldn’t shout out straight away. I’d just watch her. I was trying to peer into the baggage hall when my phone rang. The display said private number and I answered, thinking it might be Sharon, calling from a payphone on the other side. Instead it was Andy and he sounded urgent.
Andy told me that the girl had been identified. I told him that was great. I asked him if I could call him back but he pushed on. He said there was something else.
‘The pathologist found a note,’ Andy said.
‘A note? Where?’
‘It was in the girl’s mouth. Well, I say her mouth, that was where Burg thinks it was most likely stuffed before her head hit the wall of the Rotherhithe. Either that or it was just left with her. Anyway, the note was a mess, a real mess, but Burg’s good. He’s the best. He put it under a lamp and he thinks he can just about make out what it says.’
‘And? What was on it?’
‘Just three words,’ Andy said. ‘But what I was thinking. You went down to the alley the Thomas girl died in, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ I turned my head. Was that her? No. Not blonde enough. ‘I looked through the cards that came with the flowers.’
‘Good man. We didn’t find anything but figured that might have been where he left it, if he did. Do you remember any of the messages?’
‘No, but I wrote them down, the ones I could read. It had been raining. I’ll check later.’ Her? Another guy was kissing her so I hoped to hell it wasn’t. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘“It Was You”,’ Andy said. ‘Nothing else. They’re pretty sure. It didn’t mean anything but then I remembered I’d seen the phrase before. In Ally and Mike’s cafe, written on the bottom of a shopping list. I read it at the time but took no notice. But we have to remember, the perp didn’t know the girl in the Mondeo’s head would get mashed. He expected us to find the note. When Burg told me about it I remembered the shopping list. You seeing the same thing in Dalston would prove Josephine Thomas was the first victim. Billy? Billy?’
I nearly laughed.
‘“It Was You.”’
‘What about it?’
‘Are you sure that’s what it said?’
‘It. Was. You. Well, did any of the cards say that?’
‘No.’ I shook my head.
‘Damn.’
‘But…’
‘But what?’
‘But I’ve seen them.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve seen them as well. “It Was You”. Written.’
‘What the hell do you mean? Written? Written where?’
‘Outside. They…they were outside my house. All over Fred’s.’
‘The cafe? On the corner? All over it? I don’t understand.’
Neither did I. I was there, talking to Max again.
‘In graffiti,’ I said. ‘Sprayed on the windows. The owner was trying to get it off.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last week.’
‘Bloody hell. But Exmouth Market is still Islington, right? Same as the Lindauer. Maybe it’s wider than we thought. Why don’t you meet me there, tell me what you saw?’
‘The girl,’ I said. ‘Andy, tell me about the girl.’
‘No connection,’ he said. ‘None. This isn’t the Lindauer, Billy. The girl in the car wasn’t even from London, though we’ll check on any Islington connection. She was from Birmingham.’
‘What was her name?’
‘It’s here somewhere. She had a few minor priors, that’s how we ID’d her. Prints on the central database. Here. Husband reported her missing about a month ago. Came to the Smoke to seek her fortune by the looks of her. Type of girl you waste your time looking for…’
‘What was her fucking name?’
‘Hey, calm down. We haven’t found her husband to tell him yet so keep shtum. This makes today’s Standard you’re in shit.’
‘Andy…’
‘It was Denton. Denise Denton. Why?’ Andy laughed. ‘Know her, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Good. For a minute there I thought…’
‘But I know her husband.’
‘What?’
‘His name’s Jared.’
‘Yes. Yes. It fucking is. How the hell do you know that?’
‘He hired me to find her,’ I said.
My voice was no more than a whisper.
‘He came to my office. He gave me a picture of her. I went down to Brixton. I’ve been looking for Denise Denton for the last two weeks.’
‘Well, you found her, Billy. In the boot of that car. You found her.’