Jessica Lyle’s bedroom was large and full of light, a spacious room with views on two sides across Hampstead Heath. A good address in an expensive area. There was a cot at the end of the bed, and wardrobes stuffed full of clothes for a woman and a fast-growing baby boy. The bookcase was jammed with bestselling paperbacks for her and first books for baby Michael. Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, Lisa Jewell and Audrey Niffenegger shared space with The Noisy Farm Sound Book, The Wipe Clean Work Book, Cars! Cars! Cars!, I like Bugs and All the Things I Wish for You.
And as I read the titles of the books, I felt her life surround me.
This is who we are, the room seemed to whisper.
The baby boy and his dancing mother.
Jessica Lyle was not a crime statistic in this room.
On the bedside table there was a single silver-framed photograph of a good-looking, rugby-fit young man with his arms wrapped tight around Jessica, grinning for the camera as if he was the happiest man who ever lived.
Lawrence, the dead fiancé, who got knocked off his bike and left for dead by someone who was never stopped and never caught. But this did not feel like the room of a woman who was still in mourning for the man she had planned to spend her life with.
Apart from the one bedside photograph, which looked as though it had been taken by the boating lake in Hyde Park, there was no other evidence of Jessica Lyle’s dead fiancé in this room.
No clothes, no books, no reminders of that other life.
This room belonged exclusively to Jessica Lyle and her son.
There were dance trophies, books and electronic devices. Stuffed toys that looked faded with age, passed on from mother to child. I peered at a plastic pink-and-purple My First Laptop and recalled it from when Scout was a few years younger.
This felt like someone’s home.
And it felt like the room of a woman who had been desperately, horrifically unlucky.
I went to the windows and stared down at Eden Hill Park. The security guard who had called the abduction in was making his rounds in his van.
DCI Pat Whitestone entered the room and came and stood beside me.
She stared down at the security guard. ‘That useless piece of trash,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘A woman is dragged from her car and this guy – this plastic policeman – he doesn’t lift a finger. He didn’t even get a registration plate or ID.’
‘Because they smeared the plates with mud,’ I said. ‘And because they wore masks.’
‘And because he froze, Max. Because the worm didn’t do his job.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That too.’
In an interview room at West End Central, the guard had broken down and confessed. The two men, those men with the skull faces, those men made of darkness, had told him not to get involved. And he followed their advice.
But in those moments, you do not choose, I thought. There’s no time to choose. You don’t think. There’s no space for thinking. You act or you don’t act. The security guard had not acted. In the terrifying moment, when there was no time to decide what was right or brave, he could not put himself in harm’s way for a stranger. The decision was made for him.
‘The job’s not for everyone,’ I said.
Whitestone laughed bitterly and again I smelled the vodka on her breath. It was early morning. The excuse for her that I had come up with last time – we had been called out in the middle of the night – didn’t work today.
‘Did you go to the Black Museum?’ she said, still staring down at the security van patrolling the private estate.
‘Yes.’
‘And is Edie up there?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Edie’s there.’
‘Good,’ Whitestone said, her voice thick with emotion. ‘I’m glad they’ve got her name in there.’
We turned away from the window and the young man in the silver-framed photograph by the bed seemed to be smiling at us.
We all mourn in our own ways, I thought.
Snezia Jones was waiting for us in the living room.
‘Any idea when I’ll get my car back?’ she said.
Whitestone settled herself in the sofa opposite, studying Snezia as she took her time to reply.
‘You’ll get your car back when the police have finished with it, sweetheart,’ Whitestone said. ‘Right now we’re keeping it while our forensic people look for evidence.’
Snezia squirmed with embarrassment, as if we might think that her major concern was getting back her brand-new motor.
‘I was just thinking that if you’ve finished with it …’
Whitestone shut her up with a lift of her chin.
‘Would you like to tell us about someone who wants to hurt you, Snezia?’
She shook her head, and again I was struck by the paleness of her.
The hair just this side of snow white, the milky skin. She was undoubtedly beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that looks like it has never been anywhere near sunshine.
‘Snezia Jones,’ I said. ‘Where does the Jones come from?’
‘My ex-husband,’ she said. ‘An English boy.’ She examined her elaborately painted fingernails. ‘We separated many years ago. Irreconcilable differences.’
‘Does your ex-husband want to hurt you?’ I asked.
She laughed at the thought. ‘He is happily remarried. An English girl who keeps his house clean and doesn’t ask questions about where he has been and cooks him bangers and chips.’
Whitestone and I exchanged a look.
‘I’ve been looking for someone like that,’ Whitestone said. ‘Bangers and chips? Sounds good.’
‘When was the last time you saw Harry Flowers?’ I said.
I had remained standing. Snezia looked up at me and then back at Whitestone.
‘Should I have a lawyer or something?’ she said.
Whitestone smiled gently.
‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Snezia,’ she said. You are not under arrest. Of course not. So you don’t need a lawyer.’ The smile faded. ‘But you are in a relationship that we believe is directly relevant to the abduction of Jessica Lyle. So you have to be completely honest with us. OK?’
‘Harry came into my place of work three nights ago. I saw him then. We spoke briefly but he had business that night.’
‘And where do you work?’
‘The Western World.’
Whitestone glanced at me.
The Western World is a club in Mayfair. Table dancing, pole dancing, all kinds of dancing. A high-end strip joint for the black card set. A gentlemen’s club for rich men on shore leave who are possibly not gentlemen.
‘Did you have an argument with Mr Flowers?’ Whitestone said.
‘What? No!’
‘Did you see anyone else have a falling out with him?’ I said.
She shook her head.
On the coffee table between us, Snezia’s phone began to play a melody from one of Abba’s greatest hits. She picked it up and frowned at it, pulling at her plump lower lip.
‘Turn that thing off,’ Whitestone said, her voice flat and hard.
Snezia did as she was told.
I sat down next to Whitestone.
‘Snezia,’ I said. ‘We believe that the men who abducted Jessica were planning to kidnap you. We think that they were planning to take you because in some way that we have yet to figure out, they wanted something from Harry Flowers. Even if it was just to hurt him. Do you understand?’
Snezia began to cry.
Real tears of shock and regret.
She picked up something from the corner of the sofa and clutched it to her chest. A pair of pink ballet shoes made of satin and leather, old and worn by a lot of serious dancing. Snezia Jones tapped the shoes against the pale skin of her forehead.
‘I’m so sorry about Jess,’ she sobbed. ‘I want her to come home. And I can’t sleep for thinking about her and what might be happening to her. But it’s not my fault and it’s not Harry’s fault. It’s not!’
‘You know Flowers is married with two grown-up children, right?’ Whitestone said.
‘His childhood sweetheart,’ Snezia sniffed, as if that explained everything and perhaps called his current marital status into question.
‘This is an expensive apartment for two young single women,’ I said, looking around. ‘Does Flowers pay the rent?’
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I make my own money,’ she said. ‘I was making my own money when I met Harry and I’m making my own money now.’
We waited.
‘Harry doesn’t pay the rent on this place,’ she said. ‘He owns it.’
There was a Rolex on her wrist and a chain from Tiffany around her neck. There must be a lot of money in recycling cars, I thought.
‘I just think you’re wrong,’ she said, calmer now. ‘I don’t think Jess being taken is anything to do with Harry.’
‘Then what do you think happened?’ I said.
‘These men saw Jess and they wanted her,’ she said. ‘They saw her and they wanted her and so they took her. Maybe they were drunk or stoned or just a pair of evil bastards who like hurting women. God knows there are enough of them around. But that’s what I think happened.’
She inhaled deeply, gaining control of herself. For the first time, she looked at Whitestone with defiance.
‘Some women are young and beautiful and hot,’ she said.
Whitestone smiled and took off her spectacles for a quick clean. She peered owlishly at the smeared John Lennon lenses.
‘And Jess – our beautiful Jess – was one of those women,’ Snezia continued. ‘If you saw her, you would understand.’
‘Understand what?’ Whitestone said, squinting blindly across the coffee table.
‘Why everyone loves her,’ Snezia said.
We were walking to my car.
‘I think Snezia is exactly what she seems to be,’ Whitestone said. ‘A basic pleasure model. She met some old guy while she was doing the fandango upside down in a pair of pants like dental floss – except this old guy wasn’t something big in the City or on the run from Russia. He was Harry Flowers. The only strange thing to my mind – why is she still working? She is the long-term mistress of Harry Flowers and yet she’s still strutting her funky stuff in a tiny pair of pants at the Western World. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’
‘Maybe she likes having a career,’ I said.
Whitestone laughed.
‘Shaking her tail feather in the face of drunken fat cats,’ Whitestone said. ‘Some vocation.’ She paused. ‘Give me a minute, Max.’
She veered off towards the security guard parked in his van at the entrance to Eden Hill Park estate. The police tape was gone. She tapped on the window and he buzzed it down.
‘You sleep all right last night, chicken shit?’ she said.
The guard was so young there was still a smattering of acne on his smooth cheeks.
He was a skinny white boy from the outer suburbs. This job – the toy soldier uniform, the car with its big-cock slogan Spartan Security, the responsibility of looking over all these rich folk – must have made him feel all grown up. Today he looked as though he wished he was back in school.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Because I was just wondering how Jessica Lyle slept last night,’ Whitestone said. ‘And I wonder if she’s dead in a ditch or chained to a radiator or locked in someone’s cell.’ She slammed her hands against the side of the van and the boy jumped. ‘And I wonder how many men she has had to have sex with since they took her away. And I wonder if they beat her. And I wonder how scared she is and I wonder if anyone hears her screams.’
The security guard’s face clouded with fear and shame.
Whitestone took a step back.
‘Get out of your little van,’ she said.
‘Boss,’ I said. ‘Pat.’
This was not a good idea. Not with vodka in the mix.
The security guard looked to me for help.
Whitestone took another step back, giving him plenty of room.
‘Come on,’ she said, beckoning with the fingers of her left hand, the right hand balled as a fist by her side.
‘Boss,’ I repeated.
The security guard slowly got out of his car.
‘What’s your name?’ Whitestone demanded.
‘Modric,’ he said. ‘Ian Modric.’
Whitestone looked him up and down and smiled.
Then she gave him her card.
‘You see those men again, you give me a call, day or night, you understand, Mr Modric?’
The young security guard stared dumbly at her card, as if he had never seen one before.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But they were – you know – wearing masks.’
‘So you said in your statement,’ Whitestone said patiently. ‘But sometimes a witness remembers something that they didn’t even know they knew. The shape of a face. The way a man carries himself. Something comes back to them – something important, something valuable that a real policeman can use. And they spoke to you, didn’t they?’
‘They said, Don’t,’ Modric said.
‘Don’t,’ she repeated, deadpan.
Whitestone and the security guard looked at each other.
My phone rang.
Joy Adams was calling from West End Central.
When I hung up I stepped between DCI Pat Whitestone and Modric. ‘Someone sent us Jessica Lyle’s clothes,’ I said.