‘Tyler? I’ve never heard the name before in my life.’
‘Think, Billy.’
‘I am thinking. I don’t know her. I don’t know the name, I don’t know anyone in Clapham. I haven’t been there for, Christ, I don’t know how long.’
‘Then why is she dead, Billy? And her baby? Why did someone break into her house this afternoon and kill them both? In Clapham? Her husband found them twenty minutes ago.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t. Maybe she’s just started killing any pregnant women. She’s crazy enough.’
‘But you said she told you it was to be “another one of your girls”.’
‘Then she made a mistake. I don’t know a Jenny Tyler. I don’t know any other pregnant women. Just Sharon. This one, there’s no connection to me.’
‘Sir?’ It was Chamberlain. ‘CID in Clapham have given a description of the victim. Will that help?’
‘Go on.’
‘She was a redhead, thirty-five years old. Five-seven, blue eyes. Wore glasses. She was an optician, actually, had two kids already.’
‘Billy?’
‘No. And she’s not my optician because I don’t have one.’
‘Married to a solicitor. David Roger Tyler.’
‘I don’t know him either.’
‘Jenny Tyler, née Ballard sir. Maiden name was Ballard.’
’Ballard?’
‘Billy?’
Andy turned to me. Everyone in the room turned to me.
‘Jen,’ I said. ‘Jen Ballard.’
We were upstairs in Sharon’s flat. Andy Gold was there with three other detectives. Sharon was sitting in the corner, by the window. She was very quiet, sipping a mug of tea. Halfway through our phone conversation she’d answered the door to a man from a disabled charity who wanted to sell her some kitchen products. She’d been happy to buy some from him and had gone outside to do so. The man suffered from a mild form of cerebral palsy and it took him a while to get the products ready for her and to take her payment. So Sharon had witnessed the first of the patrol cars arriving. She’d seen the way the police had dealt with the man they thought might be a serial killer. He was terrified, Sharon had told me. He couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong.
It was almost seven p.m. Through the window behind Sharon the dying autumn sun had thrown a can of oil across the canal, setting it alight. I’d been unconscious in the bedsit on the Camden Road for an hour, at least. It had given the girl time to get out of there and to do what she had.
I stole glances at Sharon while Andy spoke to me, trying to gauge her feelings, but I couldn’t really tell what she was thinking. Andy and the other four detectives in the room talked about her as if she were a commodity not a person. Just someone with a baby inside them, someone to be managed, sorted. Or used. I could see them thinking it even if no one was saying it. Sharon had her legs crossed and her arms folded, her mug in front of her face while she listened to us.
I told Andy what had happened that afternoon. I even remembered the girl’s name. How could I forget it? She’d changed my life once, and now she’d done it again. It wasn’t Cherie. It was Carolyn. Carolyn Oliver. Her father’s name was Brian. They were from Chester, in the north-west. I still had their file at my office. I kept all my files. Even as we spoke the police in Chester were hunting stuff out about the family, trying to find the father. I saw him again, sitting at my desk. Then I saw a thin, terrified young girl walking out to the car her father had come to fetch her in. I couldn’t match her up to the person I’d just been attacked by, to the killer of Ally and now three other women. But it was her. Life had twisted her, changed her, made her into something she was never meant to be. And while going back into the girl’s past and putting that right would have been my preferred option, it wasn’t one that was available to me.
When Chamberlain said the word Ballard, however, it was just as if I had gone back in time. Shy, quiet Jennifer Ballard. Clever Jen, prettier than she thought she was, scarlet as a stop sign whenever you went near her at a party. Awkward, good, normal. Someone I hadn’t seen for so long I might well have lived the rest of my life without thinking of her again. Someone I hadn’t spoken to for, what, seventeen years? And yet she was dead because she’d known me. And what was even more unbelievable was how the girl had got to her. I wouldn’t have known where to start looking for her myself.
Everyone in the room was still staring at me.
‘I was at school with her,’ I said finally.
Andy sat up. ‘With Jenny Tyler?’
‘Ballard,’ I said. ‘And we called her Jen. Everybody did. Jen Ballard.’
‘You sure it’s the same one?’
‘Ginger hair? Glasses?’
‘That’s right,’ the kid said.
‘Then yes. She was in my form. At King Edward’s. From the fourth form to the upper sixth, when we left.’
‘And this was in Lincolnshire, Billy, where you grew up?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Chamberlain, make sure this woman was from Louth, Lincolnshire, OK? If she was, then it’s a definite.’
‘Sir.’
‘But I think we can assume it’s the same woman. It has to be. Right, when did you last see her, Billy?’
‘I haven’t,’ I said.
‘You haven’t recently?’
‘No. I mean I haven’t, not ever.’
‘What?’
‘Not since school. Not once. I don’t go back to Louth much and when I have gone I’ve never seen Jen.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You haven’t been to a reunion, anything like that?’
‘No.’
‘Then what about down here? You run into her on Oxford Street? In the supermarket?’
‘I didn’t even know she lived in London. Or that she was married, had kids, was pregnant. Anything.’
‘Then how the hell has this happened?’ Andy turned his palm upside down. ‘How did she find her?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I have no idea.’
There was silence in the room for a long minute while we all thought about it. I asked Sharon if the name meant anything to her but she just shook her head. Andy said he’d check the Lindauer listings, see if she showed up. It wasn’t likely that she attended any antenatal classes there, though, not if she was from south London. I couldn’t figure it. It had to be some sort of mistake.
‘Sharon? Ms Dean?’
It was Chamberlain again. He’d come off the telephone and was now looking serious, his face pinched through lack of sleep. He looked to be about twenty-three, only six months or so out of uniform. A permanent furrow had already cut a path, though, down from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. I had an image of myself at his age, that quiet, unbreakable focus powered by the belief that the world might actually become a better place if only I could break the case I was working.
Chamberlain asked Sharon if she had a PC he could use and she fetched him her laptop. I’d noticed Chamberlain before, at the station, spending all his time looking at his screen. Andy told me that he was the resident computer whiz, but I didn’t know what he was doing now. While Chamberlain tapped away at the keyboard Andy told the other two detectives to head back to the station. Then he turned to me, asking if there was any way in which the girl, Cherie, or Carolyn, could have followed me there that afternoon.
‘Not if she was in Clapham,’ I said. ‘She won’t have had time to come back afterwards. So no.’
‘In that case it looks like you’re OK. Now then.’ Andy nodded and turned to Sharon. ‘If it’s all right by you, I’m going to set up twenty-four-hour protection. But it’s going to be covert. People will be watching your flat but you won’t necessarily know that they’re there.’
‘Wait a minute.’
‘What is it, Billy?’
I looked at Andy. He knew what it was.
‘You’re not going to let her stay here?’ I said. ‘In London? You can’t mean you’re going to let her stay here.’
‘As you said, Billy, no one knows she’s here.’
‘Only four detectives and the same number of uniforms. And soon their wives and boyfriends and then some guy down the pub and…’
‘Which is why I want to put the protection on Ms Dean. It’s probably not necessary but…’
‘Not necessary!? After the girl somehow found some woman I was at school with, who I myself had forgotten even existed.’
‘Billy, calm down. No harm will come to Sharon as long as she’s being observed. How could it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No way. She has to get out of here. Go away. I know what you’re doing and I’m not having her staying here.’
‘Oh, you’re not? You’re not, are you?’ It was Sharon. She hadn’t said a word since all of this had happened but now she’d cracked. She was looking at me, her hands on her hips. ‘What about me? Do I get a say? Or do you just get to push me out of the way, to make life easier for you?’
‘Sharon,’ I said, ‘relax. Please. He just wants to use you. As bait. I know him.’
‘Does he?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if I agree with him? What if I think that’s a good idea?’
‘What?’
‘Well, if I can help, why not? Women are being killed. Our friend was killed. If that girl comes here, the killer, and they catch her, surely that would be great, wouldn’t it?’
‘If they catch her. If. They’ve done fuck all so far, haven’t they? No, I’m simply not going to take a risk like that.’
‘You’re not?’
‘Oh, shit, we’re not then. However you want me to say it. But you’re leaving.’
‘I am? And where shall I go?’
‘Anywhere.’
‘As long as it’s away from you! You don’t need to tell me why you’re doing this.’
‘Sir. Sir! Ms Dean. Mr Rucker! Please. Hey! Everybody!’
He’d shouted loudly enough to get us all to shut up and take notice of him. Chamberlain was looking up from Sharon’s laptop, his eyes open wide. When he had our attention, he stared down again at the screen in front of him.
‘What is it?’
‘I think I’ve got something. I think I know how the killer found her. Jen Ballard.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. And how the girl found out she was pregnant.’
‘How? How the hell do you know that?’
‘Because I’ve just found her myself,’ Chamberlain said.