It Was You. It Was You. All of London’s buildings, the churches and the skyscrapers, the museums and the townhouses, all of them arranged to form the words. It Was You. In my dreams a whole city telling me what I’d done. And in the buildings people pointing from the windows, pointing their fingers at me. All of them saying it, over and over and over.
It Was You.
Sharon woke me up just before seven. Or rather the sound of her vomiting did. She thought she’d gotten over that but the morning sickness had returned since she’d come back. She put it down to change of diet. She asked me to make her some very strong, sweet coffee and I said I would. I was heading out of the door for croissants from the local bakery but the policeman I met out in the hall offered to go for me. Andy had put plainclothes officers in there and it would have looked as if the guy just lived in the building. I made coffee for him as well, and for his colleague, and Sharon put a small table outside on the landing for them.
I hadn’t slept very well. After making love with Sharon I’d drifted off but had come back after a couple of hours. One reason was my mind, it just couldn’t turn away from this. The other thing was the pain. My ribs were still sticky and my balls ached, but it was the inside of my thigh that was the worst. There was a patch of skin there about the size of a fifty-pence piece that was dark brown with an edge of scarlet, like a bite mark. It was so tender I could barely touch it. I don’t know what the girl had done to me, what she’d found there, but she’d known what she was doing. The pain at the time was almost matched by the after-effects.
Thinking of Cherie, the scars she’d left on me, I tried once again to match her up with the little girl I’d seen seven and a half years ago. Carolyn. I’d managed to convince myself that I was just an excuse, someone to take the run-off of hate that had spilled over from her father. Now the guilt came back, fast and accurate, right into my stomach. There were two images side by side: a little girl I’d wronged and a crazy woman, cold and deadly. Could I have prevented one from turning into the other? Could I have stopped her father taking her, once I’d realized? No. She was only fourteen. I had actually phoned the police, in Chester, and told them what had happened, what I thought was going on at the Olivers’ home. They’d put me on to social services, who’d promised to investigate. When I called back a week later, the woman I spoke to didn’t even remember my name. When I asked if anything had been done about Carolyn Oliver she said that individual cases were strictly confidential.
And after that? I’d let it go. And if I hadn’t? If I’d gone up there, tried to help her? If I’d apologized for my part in her pain? If I’d made someone see what was happening to her, something I could tell in a second?
If, if, if.
I also thought about him, the father, and wondered why I’d been so ready to believe his story. He’d been convincing but was there more to it? He was well spoken. He was a teacher. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, looked like a man desperately trying to hold his family together after his wife had died. He’d told me she’d had MS. It was probably a lie; everything else was. Once again I couldn’t believe how he’d suckered me.
I called Sal, knowing she’d still be sleeping, and left a long message, telling her about Cherie. How we’d both been conned. I didn’t for a second think that Cherie would go down to the gym again but I told Sal to call me right away if she saw her. Not to do anything, but call me. I also called the station. Andy Gold had already been at his desk an hour.
‘He’s dead,’ Andy said as soon as he picked up the phone.
I nodded to myself. ‘The father? When?’
‘Nearly six years ago. A year and a half after you found his daughter.’
‘How?’
‘House fire. The report says he’d been smoking in bed. The daughter wasn’t there, she was staying with her uncle apparently. But you think she did it?’
‘She practically told me she did.’
‘I don’t know how, though.’
‘She’s resourceful. Anyway, did you get anything from the bedsit, where she went for me?’
‘Not much. She cleaned it out. No sign of any bloody clothing, no blood traces on the walls or the floor.’
‘None?’
‘Not a speck. She must have taken the Denton girl somewhere else. I think she’s using another place, or at least if she wasn’t she must be now. There were lots of her prints in the bedsit but we know who she is anyway. A couple of other sets too.’
‘Guys from the gym,’ I said, remembering the smell of aftershave there. ‘She was pretending to be a masseur.’
‘Thanks, we’ll check them out. She might have said something to one of them, you never know. In the meantime, we don’t have a photo of her.’
‘There’s one in my office but she doesn’t look anything like that now.’
‘I still want it, but I also want you to come in and do another Mac-Fit. ASAP. You think that’s why she left you so long? So it would be harder for us to find her?’
‘Maybe, but it could be more than that. She’s strong, Andy, and she knows stuff about the body. How to hurt it. She’s had training. Her father would have been easy if she knew his habits but she might have thought she needed to train up for me. Tell your officers to be careful, if they find her.’
‘They’ve had training too, Billy, you needn’t worry about them.’
‘Just tell them to be careful,’ I said.
I left Sharon at eight. I wanted once again to run through the list of precautions I’d made for her but I bit my lip. She knew. I took a cab to my office and it took me just twenty minutes to find the photograph. The answer had been there all along. I hadn’t needed a massage to get it out, just a bit of filing. I tipped the photo out onto my desktop, pushing aside an invoice marked paid. No, this wouldn’t be of any use. A girl in school uniform smiling for the camera. Smiling not because she was happy, I could see that now. Smiling to please. Smiling for the mantelpiece. I put everything back into the folder and tucked it beneath my arm.
Out in the corridor I stopped. Something was different. The smell of fresh coffee; it was gone. I stood for a second. Next door I could hear the stutter of light machinery and I bit my lip. I’d completely forgotten about Jemma. Jemma had started me in on this. She’d wanted to know what had happened to her friend. I hesitated, then knocked on the door, holding the file tight against my side as the machine stopped. I’d tell her. I’d tell her why Josephine was dead, and Ally too, and Denise Denton. And Jennifer Tyler. Jemma had wanted to have more information at the very least, and I’d certainly be able to give her that.
‘No,’ Cass said, folding her arms. ‘She’s not here. She hasn’t been in for days.’ Cass looked right at me. ‘Jemma’s not going to work here any more actually. She told me yesterday. I’ll have to find someone else. It’s a pain in the arse, if you really want to know. She really should have given me a bit more notice.’
‘Oh. Will you tell her that I stopped in to see her, though? When you speak to her?’
‘If I speak to her,’ Cass said.
Cass shut the door and I walked towards the lift. The Lindauer Building seemed quiet and it wasn’t just the time of day. I wondered if other tenants had decided to leave, scared or spooked or both. I passed the cafe and wondered if someone else would open it up and, if they did, would I get along with them? Would they save me cakes to take home at the end of the day and give me stupid presents when they came back from holiday? Would I even be able to step through the door? In an instant I knew that I’d never find out. I’d never meet the new owners of the cafe. Whatever else happened, I had to leave. Like Jemma. I knew that. The place was dead. It was over. I pressed my palm against the smooth, cold paintwork of the cafe door and walked off down the hall.
The lift took me down to the car park and another cab took me to the station, where I handed Andy the file. The incident room was only a third full, detectives either yet to come on shift or else out on the street chasing up leads, running down possible eyewitnesses in the various locations where bodies had been found. The Mac artist was there, though, waiting for me. I sat next to him again and it didn’t take long for us to fit together a decent likeness of Carolyn Oliver, the girl who’d called herself Cherie. I put her in her tracksuit, the postman’s bag slung over her shoulder. Every policeman in London would receive a copy within twenty-four hours, from traffic cops and beat bobbies to the organized crime team and the fraud squad.
But would it help? I hoped so, yet I couldn’t help wondering what the girl was up to. I knew why she hadn’t killed me. I hadn’t suffered enough. But why had she revealed herself to me? She was bright enough to realize that as soon as she did the police would be onto her. I suppose she needed me to know who it was that was hurting me like this. She couldn’t see the point of revenge if the person she was aiming it at didn’t know who was firing. Still, I couldn’t shift a nagging feeling that while Andy was happy, full of the belief that the girl would be picked up within hours, she knew exactly what she was doing.
When I was done I went back over to Andy and asked him if there was any news on the hooker from Loughborough Junction. He said no, and he didn’t seem too bothered.
‘We’re doing everything we can to locate her but we know what she’s going to tell us, don’t we? We know who picked the Denton girl up.’
I said we did and I was a little relieved; I didn’t have to go begging favours from the 22 Crew any more. Andy needed the girl to tie up loose ends, but I didn’t. I asked Andy about my car and he told me that it had been brought over from Clapham that morning to the Calshot Street pound. Forensics were done and I was free to take it. I asked him if they’d found anything.
‘Something strange,’ he said.
‘Strange?’
‘Kind of. There were no prints in it. Except some latents of yours in the engine.’
‘No others?’
‘None. The car was wiped. It’s obvious.’
‘So? Oh, I see what you mean. Why should she wipe the prints in my car when she’s already told me who she is? When I’ve seen her.’
‘Exactly. It’s weird but it’s probably just habit, she was being extra cautious. She wiped all the crime scenes down including the kitchen in Clapham. She just got into the habit, after she didn’t need to any more.’
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘She still needed to.’
Andy frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Why? Because it means that you don’t have any evidence. Doesn’t it? You don’t have anything to place her with the victims. All you have is what I’ve told you. You can charge her with assault, but murder, what have you really got?’
‘We’ll worry about that when we find her,’ Andy insisted. ‘The girl from Loughborough Junction can finger her for a start.’
‘Evidence from a smack whore?’
‘OK, but it won’t be everything. We’ll blitz everywhere with her picture, see if anyone remembers seeing her in Clapham, under the Westway, in Dalston. That or we’ll find blood on some clothes, or some hair samples. She’s been in contact with a lot of the stuff, don’t forget. No, this is too big, she’s been to too many places. Once we’ve got her, we’ve got her. Trust me. And with the amount of people we’ve got on this, we’ll get her.’
‘But what if she walks, Andy? What if that’s her plan? The final insult; to laugh at me from the witness box? Or afterwards, going free, my testimony not enough to nail her, thanking her lawyer, telling the press she’s innocent? I can’t bear to think of Mike watching her do that. Or David Tyler, Mrs Thomas. Jared Denton. All of them.’
‘They won’t have to, Billy.’
No, I promised myself. They won’t. I’m going to make damn sure of that.
In the pound round the back I discovered that Cherie had thoughtfully left the keys in the ignition and that’s where they were now. I got in the car and looked around to see if anyone walked out of the building after me. No one did but that didn’t mean I wasn’t being tailed. They’d do it well if they were doing it. Andy had told me they weren’t but that didn’t mean anything. Now that it was likely that the girl had killed her father and was probably not going to stick with women, he’d actually offered me protection, the same that Sharon had. I’d turned him down and we both knew why. I needed room. He hadn’t pushed it, and that’s what made me sure he had someone on me anyway, someone far better than I would have imagined. Andy did, however, ask me what I planned to do for the rest of the day and I told him.
I pushed my seat back, started the engine and looked in the mirror. And stopped. There it was. On the roof of my car.
It Was You.
I hadn’t even bothered to think about the message. I turned round and the letters were all backwards. It only worked if you looked in the mirror. I reached into the ignition and pulled out my keys. I jammed them into the fabric covering the inside of the roof until I’d made a hole. I got a finger in and ripped the yellowing plastic off in a long strip. I threw the strip out of the window and pulled out onto Calshot Street.
I parked at home and then walked quickly down to Euston, trying to ignore the newspaper boards I passed. When I got there I didn’t hand out any photos, or ask any questions of the people who spend their time in or around the station, for whatever purpose. I wasn’t there to look for a missing kid. I was there to do something that, strangely, I very rarely did at any of London’s mainline stations. Get on a train. I walked up to the ticket office and waited until the woman behind the glass looked up at me.
‘Chester,’ I said.