Tell Me Your Secret

by Dorothy Koomson

  The press down here haven’t caught on, yet.

  ‘What have we got?’ I ask the PC who stands guarding this outer part of the cordoned-off area.

  She tips her head back slightly to look at me because her too-big helmet sits below her eyebrows. I should probably pull her up on that – remind her of the importance of looking neat, especially when you’re out here where the public can see you. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t important, though.

  ‘Ma’am?’ she replies. What she means is, Who are you?

  I flash my warrant card and say, ‘I’m down from London on secondment.’ Kind of. ‘I received a call asking me to attend this scene.’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘What have we got?’ I repeat when it’s obvious she’s not intending to say anything else.

  It’s likely she won’t know, which is why she isn’t speaking, but I want to give myself a moment before I find out if this one is one of them. If this one is body number six. She will be, they wouldn’t have called me if she wasn’t, but I can hope, can’t I?

  ‘Dog walker found her,’ the officer says, realising that I want something, no matter how inane. ‘Up near the centre.’

  Never get a dog, my friend Sharon used to say. You’ll either get murdered while walking it or find a dead body. It’s quite disturbing how right she was. (I often wonder if that’s why she named her dog Lucky.)

  ‘I don’t know much else,’ she admits. She doesn’t know much, I’d bet, because she is incurious. She won’t have asked, she won’t have looked, she will have been told to stand here and so she is going to stand here and do nothing beyond that. She’s the perfect PC for this job, really, because no one – press or member of the public – will be able to pry, bribe or trick any information out of her. Hopefully the other officers stationed at different points will keep a better eye on who is watching us, who is taking a keen interest in what is going on, who is – potentially – the killer sticking around to watch his handiwork be uncovered.

  I take another look around at the park, its shapes and nuances, its colours and its shades coming slowly alive, into fuller focus, as the light arrives with the continued rise of the sun. What a place to meet your end, I think. What a place to have this happen to you.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to the PC, as I negotiate my way under the tape.

  I hate this. I hate the ‘off the telly’ feeling, but the ‘about to be real’ moment really gets to me, churns me up like a plough through soil. It never gets easier, it only ever gets worse. Statistics tell me that someday, it’ll be someone I know. Possibly someone I love. Someone I can’t bear to be without.

  I’ve been in Brighton three days. It’s unusual for someone who doesn’t know the terrain to be assigned as Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) on multiple murders, but after I’d linked the London and Brighton murders, after I campaigned hard at every level to not allow them to dismiss this as simply ‘drug related’, after I persuaded and cajoled, showing all the evidence I’d amassed on my own, I think they gave me the assignment just to get rid of me. I could not let this go. Could not let anyone else take charge of this. Not when I had been there at the very beginning.

  I shake my head to stop that line of thought. I’m here now, I’m doing this. I will make things right.

  The path has obviously been cleared from the outer cordon through to the tent where the body is. In other words, the ground had been searched for evidence before the small metal footplates had been laid down for us all to step on to get to the murder site.

  ‘What have we got?’ I ask the plain-clothes officer who is approaching me via the footplates with the speed of someone who is desperate to cut off an intruder into their realm, and certainly before I make it into the inner cordoned-off area.

  ‘And you are?’ he asks.

  ‘Detective Inspector Jody Foster,’ I say.

  He double-takes either at my name or my position, or maybe both. ‘Jody Foster?’ he asks, questioning the name over the position.

  ‘She spells her name differently and you need to get over it, really quickly,’ I say. I pull out my warrant card and his back stiffens, his demeanour formalises. ‘What have we got?’

  My eyes focus on his face – jowly, sagging, sallow. He’s done his time, but he isn’t ready to wind things down yet. He is small, wiry, his hair white and black at the same time. I’m studying him because I do not want to look over at the people in white overalls, I do not want this to be real. If I focus on this man, maybe I can delay the inevitability of what is coming just that bit longer, so that when we reach the time when I have to look, maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to cope.

  ‘Black woman. Mid-to-late thirties. They’re guessing strangulation right now, but no one’s hanging their career on that because the bruising hasn’t appeared yet. Not sure if she’s been sexually assaulted. Looking likely.’

  ‘Any unusual marks?’ I ask as casually as I can.

  He nods. ‘I’ll say.’

  My heartbeat quickens. It still might not be. It could be some other sicko. ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’ll be easier if I show you,’ he replies.

  Easier for who? Not for me, certainly.

  We cross the distance to the white forensics tent and I pull on the white overclothes, tuck my hair inside the hood, and then snap the face mask into place. Once I am suitably attired, we walk towards the inner cordon with him in front. I have to force myself to keep eyes forward, to not show any weakness or fear, to not give in to the little white creature of terror that sits hunched on my shoulder, dribbling its ‘this is all your fault’ poison into my ear.

  Will this one have been deliberately placed, like the others, laid face down, displayed so we’ll instantly know? So I’ll instantly know. It does feel personal. It feels like all of this is being done to get at me, to remind me how fallible I am.

  The sergeant crouches down, and I watch his rubber-covered fingers reach for the edge of the sheet, slip it back over the shape of her body. He does this more respectfully than I’ve seen others in his position do.

  Definitely placed; absolutely displayed.

  And there it is. That mark, that brand.

  Breathe, Jody. Breathe.

  Pretend, Jody. Pretend.

  You are a police officer. An inspector. You are hardened and wise, experienced and knowing. You do this day in, day out, you’ve seen so many bodies, so many permutations of people being dead that it doesn’t touch the sides. It’s the crime that bothers you, the audacity of those who think they can get away with it.

  Come on, Jody, I cajole myself. This shouldn’t bother you. You shouldn’t be standing here, hoping she was unconscious when it happened. No, when it was done to her. You shouldn’t be allowing yourself to slip into the vortex by imagining the hell of the pain she went through first time around and then the terror she went through again right before the end.

  I stare at the woman, knowing she should be full of life.

  She should be walking, running around, reclining on a sofa scrolling through her phone, running a bath, washing up, cleaning her toilet, or not tidying up her living room. She should be doing a million other inconsequential and more vitally important things than lying here.

  Stop it, Jody. Stop this! I tell myself fiercely. You can’t be a SIO if you’re going to do this, be like this. Focus, concentrate, be a police officer and take down the particulars of this scene.

  Around this woman’s head is a blindfold. Silk, expensive, stretched over her eyes and tied with a single knot at the back of her head.

  Her body is doughy, like she didn’t work out but kept herself slim. Her back is bare and the skin is a soft, chestnut brown that is blemish-free and clear down to where it disappears under the sheet. Her back. It was a perfect, untouched canvas. Until the weekend that changed her life. Until his calling card was cruelly pressed into her back.

  I want to tear my eyes away. I want to stop imagining the agony, the fear, the horror. But I can�
��t. Won’t. This is part of the job. This is part of the process of stepping out of the surreal into the reality. This is my life.

  And this is him.

  What I am looking at right now is him.

  The Blindfolder. This is all him.

  Pieta

  Monday, 10 June

  Well, that was a bit of a disaster.

  That could be me catastrophising – making something huge out of something not so huge – but it’s put a dent in my morning, which will impact what time I can leave work. And that is a bit of a disaster as far as I’m concerned.

  Lillian, my boss and the editor of BN Sussex, the weekly news and lifestyle magazine and part of the Brighton newspaper group I work for, has (probably unintentionally) stitched me up this morning.

  I’d got Sazz over early so I could drive the twenty minutes out to Stanmer Park for the breakfast launch of a new beauty product that was going to revolutionise skin care and put Brighton on the map (I thought Brighton was already on the map but clearly, according to the press release, I was wrong).

  I’d approached the stately home and noticed the lack of cars, the paucity of people milling around, and the absence of attendants with clipboards. The launch, as it turned out, had been cancelled at the end of last week and Lillian, who controlled all launches with the iron grip of a woman whose whole existence seemed to be one long stream of Fear of Missing Out, had neglected to tell me. I wasn’t sure if she’d genuinely forgotten or had seized on another opportunity to bawl me out on a Monday morning.

  It’d taken twenty minutes – twenty – to find someone who knew vaguely what planet we were living on and what day it was, to find someone else who could find out whether the launch was going to be later than billed or had been cancelled. The person who sent the press release and invite obviously didn’t bother to answer their phone and there was no answer at the offices of the beauty company.

  At one point, I’d stood in the plush café area of Stanmer Park House, and wondered if some elaborate joke was being played on me.

  And now, the post-punchline punchline, is being stuck in traffic around Preston Park as I try to get back to work.

  I stare powerlessly at the line of cars waiting to get around the park; they stretch out in front of me like multi-coloured beads on a necklace.

  Preston Park is shaped like a segment of pie, with a little corner eaten out of the widest bit at the top. Earlier, when I’d driven past, there’d been something going on near that nibbled bit by Surrenden Avenue – I’d seen blue flashing lights, flickering like Christmas tree lights, and I thought . . . maybe a mugging? Car jacking? Actually, I hadn’t even really thought that. I’d seen the lights, noted them, and driven on, keen to get to where I was meant to be.

  Now it’s impacting traffic, pushing all of us to a standstill, I’m paying more attention. Even from where I am, not quite at that bit of the pie, I can see the police cars are still there, but there are a few more of them now. Vans, too. There are more people as well – some in high-vis jackets, others in white jumpsuits, most of them congregated just out of sight. Police tape, which I didn’t notice before, is wound around trees near the area, and flutters like bunting in the breeze.

  This isn’t a small crime, something that will barely make it on to the pages of our newspaper or will fill out a few lines on our website. This is something serious. Something big.

  Every single one of my journalistic nerves has been stroked to attention. This is what I loved when I lived and worked in London. I used to thrive on getting the first hints of a story, would be gagging to be in the early scramble to gather as much information as possible; to be RIGHT THERE as the tale unfolded and I got to know the people involved and had the chance to relay their story.

  That was also what made me a rubbish journalist in the end. I was always far more interested in the people behind the crime than the actual crime. I always focused on what the crime did to the victim’s lives and the lives of those around them, instead of trying to explain how the crime was going to damage, shape or influence society. ‘Society’ being the lives of the readers, of course. Eventually, after one too many stories where I explained the victim’s personal devastation, I was ‘promoted’ – to the editing department. In other words, I was taken away from the news and put somewhere I could inject the human element into the harder-edged stories, but wouldn’t sully anything important with talk of emotions.

  I watch another couple of people, I assume plain-clothes police officers, head towards the line of tape, lift it to go under and then move towards the area that is just out of sight.

  Murder. It’ll be a murder, of course. A body found in Preston Park. Probably alone, definitely ended. My stomach falls away.

  That could have been me. The thought bolts across my mind before I can stop it. That could have been me being looked at, wondered about, examined for clues. That almost was me: a dead body left in a park, alone, ended.

  I hit the button on my car stereo to take it off mute and bring the music, summon the noise – something that will take my mind away from there.

  The discordant, siren-like notes and the heavy beat of ‘Opps’ rise up from the speakers and instantly fill the car. Don’t go there, I warn myself as the music starts to throb through me. Just don’t go there.

  I watch the police move around their cordoned-off area, observe members of the public pausing to see if they can get a glimpse of what is going on. Some have mobile phones up, others stand and stare. Everything is slowing down, winding down into slow motion. Slow-motion world, slow-motion life, slow-motion slide back into the past.

  I am still here.

  I am still here.

  I am still here.

  I am still here.

  I remind myself of that all the time.

  I am still here.

  My fingers grope for the stereo knob and I turn it up, try to connect with the beat, try to hook myself into the present. These thoughts about what could have been, they lurk around my head, wanting to be thought through; desperate to be explored. And I need to stop it.

  A person in a white jumpsuit moves back away from the site. He carries a camera, and he pauses at the top of the slight rise, lifts the camera to his face and starts to take pictures.

  That was almost me.

  I wrench the volume as high as I can get it. It’s too loud, pounding at the nerves in my ears, smacking the cells in my brain, but fighting off the flashes of my memory, too.

  That was almost me.

  That was almost me.

  That was almost me.

  Jody

  Monday, 10 June

  Have you ever done anything really bad?

  You, yes, you, reading this. I’m talking to you because there is no one else I can share stuff with. I’m not using you, I simply need someone to listen who won’t go and blab and probably won’t judge me as harshly as people in my real life.

  Have you ever done anything really bad?

  Not mean, or snarky, or even unpleasant, I mean, really heinous? The type of thing that you could technically be locked up for? I have.

  Like most people, when I did it, I didn’t actually realise how terrible it was. It was an act born of frustration and irritation and . . . oh, I don’t know, of not wanting to be the responsible one for once in my life. And then . . . argh. I didn’t know. I simply didn’t know. I didn’t realise I was going to end up here.

  I’m standing in front of a large board of smiling faces. All of them have had their lives extinguished because of me. Because of this terrible, actually evil thing I did. I’m not trying to keep you in the dark, it’s just really very difficult to talk about it. To even think about it.

  This investigation has been given a room right at the back of Central Brighton Police Station. We’ve only got a room and not that many bodies because of budget cuts and because it started in London and the victims have, so far, it seems, been from London and brought down here after they were killed, so nobody’s really sure wh
en I’ll be heading back there. Not any time soon, since this morning.

  There are desks in here, telephones, computers, and at the end, a small glass-walled office for me. I’ve been SIO on murder investigations before, but never officially on a serial killer. And never on my own. There have always been people overseeing me. This is all a little irregular and I’m sure the usual Brighton CID/MIT (Murder Investigation Team) will have their noses put slightly out of joint. Officially, they are in charge of this investigation, unofficially, I am because of my connection to the London cases.

  I’d wanted to get into the office earlier, to get the place properly straight, to pin up the pictures of the women we would be talking about, before everyone arrived. Unfortunately, the latest face for the board had changed that. Her photo will be magicked up from somewhere soon and tacked next to the others.

  I stare at the photos of the other five again.

  The five of them have been killed over the last seven months. One every sixth Monday.

  They all look so real, so vital, so alive. It ignites a dull ache inside to see them. Seeing victims like this always does.

  How can you not exist any more ? I ask them as I stare at their photos.

  Each of them has a smile, one that says she was part of the world. That she had a place, that she fit and that there is a shape missing from the world now that she is not there. Harlow Gravett: cute, bantu knots, liked to watch television and read books. She wrote real letters and drank tea made in one of the many teapots she collected. Shania Devenish: cropped, straightened hair, liked to dance. She loved clubbing and started her own dance troupe for the non-waif-like women she knew. Freya Occhino: cheek-length twists, was into cars. She was fixing up a classic Mini, replacing its worn parts piece by piece. She liked shoes, and owned so many they had their own wardrobe. Gisele Monte-Brown: long, long dreadlocks, loved the earth. She grew her own vegetables in her allotment, and herbs in her window boxes, she visited her family almost every weekend. Bess Straker: pretty, short, halo-like Afro, didn’t do much. She went to work, she saw friends, she liked the odd cigarette and drink, but she did nothing remarkable.