On the other side of London, Maud was sitting at her desk with Kira’s fully charged mobile. She took off her oversized suit jacket, tied her hair more firmly back, then checked the PIN that Connie Mullan had given her yesterday: 140999. Kira’s birthday: she’d been only twenty-three. Maud ran her forefinger thoughtfully across the crack on the screen, then entered the number. The phone came to life, pings and beeps coming from it, messages appearing.
Later, Forrester could go through everything, the WhatsApps, Kira’s Instagram account, her photos. Now, Maud was interested in the last moments of the young woman’s life.
She scrolled past the messages that had been sent after Kira was dead – What are you doing tonight? Where are you? How was the party? Give me a call – until she got to the one that Kira had sent to her mother at 3.47. You’re the best mother – love you lots.
Maud chewed her lower lip thoughtfully: the police had read this as corroborative evidence that Kira had taken her own life.
Before that message was notification of a missed call at 3.16 from Viv Melville, from The Cornerstone where Kira used to work. Kira hadn’t called her back.
Maud scrolled through the phone calls that day, then the different messages. She scrolled forward, past the day of death, and saw that there were multiple calls and messages from someone called Ollie. She jotted the number down on her notepad, promising herself she would call him later.
She looked briefly at the photographs. There were none from that Sunday. The last one was from Saturday late afternoon, a selfie of Kira in her sequined sheath dress. She looked young and glowing with health, with a peachy complexion and a soft, dimpled smile. Twenty-four hours later, she was dead.
The little message sent at 3.47 was the last record of Kira being alive. Three-quarters of an hour before that, Nancy had collided with her at the entrance of the house. Maud considered those forty-five minutes, almost feeling the cogs in her brain as they turned and clicked into place.
She opened Settings on the phone and then the Privacy option. For people like Kira, who didn’t worry about things like that, it was really the lack-of-privacy option. As she tapped the phone, Maud felt like she was entering room after room until she reached the one that Kira had never visited. She probably didn’t know it existed, but it said a lot about her.
At a quarter to four that Sunday afternoon, Kira had been at Mill Gate Road. Maud could see the exact spot on the map from where the message had been sent. She stood up, slid on her jacket and then her long quilted coat and woollen hat. She left the station without anyone noticing her go and walked rapidly along the streets. In the distance she could hear the rumble of freight trains. The cold wind made her eyes water and her skin sore.
Soon she was standing in a cul-de-sac, the criss-crossing expanse of tracks just beyond her behind a high metal fence. It was already starting to get dark. A train rattled past, wagon after rusty wagon, the shriek of metal. At last it was gone. She took her own phone and tapped in 99 Fielding Road as a destination. It was sixteen minutes’ walk from where she was standing.
‘So,’ she said to Forrester, perching herself on her desk, holding a mug of coffee with both hands. ‘That three forty-seven message.’
‘Yes?’ He looked eager.
‘A misdirection.’
‘I don’t get it.’
She smiled at him, almost dreamily, and he furrowed his brow, waiting for an explanation.
‘Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking?’ he asked at last.
While she was starting to answer, she felt a presence beside her and looked round. A young officer was hovering.
‘There’s someone who wants to talk to you.’ he said.
Maud shook her head impatiently.
‘I’m in the middle of something. There must be someone else who’s free.’
‘She asked for you by name,’ said the officer. ‘She seems in a bit of a bad way. But I can tell her to go away, if you want?’ He grinned. ‘If you hear a bit of wailing from downstairs, don’t pay any attention.’
‘No,’ said Maud sharply. ‘Bring her up.’
Nancy picked up the mug of tea she had been given with both hands. She tried to raise it to her lips but had to put it back down because her hands were shaking.
‘It’s all right,’ Maud said. ‘Take your time.’
‘He found me,’ Nancy said. ‘Felix came to my work – he came to my work – and he threatened me.’
‘Tell us exactly what happened.’
With stumbling and repetitions and questions from Maud and Forrester, Nancy described what had taken place at the restaurant.
‘It’s doing my head in,’ Nancy said, when she had finished. ‘First he got to Megan. She didn’t admit it but I know that he must have. Why else would she suddenly have made me leave?’ She tapped Maud’s desk with her forefinger. ‘I was careful not to leave any hint of where I was going. I chose Megan because she was a friend from a time before I met Felix. They didn’t know each other. But he managed to find her and get to her in some way. And then there’s my job. London’s the size of a bloody country. I thought I’d disappeared and that there was no way he could find me but there he was, sitting at a table with his smile and saying he’d tell my boss.’ She raised her hands and gripped her head. ‘It’s like he’s got inside my skull. He knows where I am, he knows everything about me. I don’t know what to do. I came here, but I don’t know why. There’s probably nothing you can do either.’
Maud looked at Nancy with concern. She hadn’t seen her quite like this before.
‘That’s not right,’ she said.
‘The one thing I wanted to say is that if Felix is the person you want for Kira’s murder, then you’d bloody well better get a move on because if he’s going down, I think he’d like to take me down with him.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Felix? At work, I guess.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘In Shepherd’s Bush. I don’t know the exact address. The company’s called Court7. You can Google it.’
‘I’m going to leave you here with my colleague,’ Maud said.
Forrester looked puzzled and a little irritated.
‘Are you going to make an arrest?’
‘I can’t talk about that right now,’ said Maud. ‘While you wait, you can do something for me.’
‘Yes?’
‘Go through Nancy’s phone. Take it to a techie if there’s any difficulty.’
‘Why?’ Nancy asked.
‘I might be wrong, but I believe Felix has tampered with it.’
‘Oh,’ said Nancy faintly. Then: ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? The bastard. The fucking bastard.’
‘Could you open it for me and let me have a look?’ Forrester said.
Nancy tapped her passcode in to her phone and passed it to him.
‘I’ll call you soon,’ Maud said to Forrester .
He was tapping at the phone and didn’t seem to hear what she was saying.
‘I know how he did it,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Maud. ‘Already?’
‘You know the Find My iPhone feature?’ he said to Nancy.
‘Kind of. I think I’ve heard of it.’
‘Did you share it with Felix?’
‘Of course not. I barely knew it existed myself.’
‘Well, he’s been added to the contacts. You and him.’
‘Does that mean he’d know where I was?’
‘He’d know where your phone was.’
‘Can you disable it?’ said Maud.
Forrester smiled.
‘Yes, I can disable it. I’ll need to do some more checks, though. There may be some hidden stalkerware.’
‘Stalkerware?’ said Maud. ‘I hate that that word even needs to exist.’
She looked around and saw a young uniformed officer she’d worked with recently.
‘Hattie?’ The woman looked round. ‘Can you come with me? It’ll only be about an hour.’
‘Where are you going?’ Nancy asked.
‘I’ll call you.’