Tell Me Your Secret

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Let’s see.’ Avril is out of her seat and over by my desk in seconds. ‘Wow,’ she breathes when she sees them. ‘He’s captured you really, really well. You look incredible.’

  ‘Oh, go on then, let me see,’ Connie concedes and she is by my desk. She whistles. ‘Bloody hell. I didn’t realise you were such a beauty.’

  ‘All right, you lot,’ I say as they pass the photos around each other. ‘A girl could get offended, you know. You are basically saying in everyday life I’m nothing special. Cut it out.’

  ‘We’re not saying that,’ Tiffany admonishes. ‘It’s just, have you seen these? He’s got such a great eye. You’re only smiling in one of them and you still look . . . I want him to take my photo.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Avril.

  ‘Me three,’ adds Connie.

  They are nice photos, but I’m not sure why he sent them to me.

  ‘Have you seen these, Reggie?’ Tiffany calls. I think she secretly wants him and me to get together. ‘Pieta is looking pretty gorgeous in these photos, just saying.’

  Reggie comes over to our bank of desks. ‘They are good photos,’ Reggie agrees. ‘May I?’ He takes the bundle from me and starts to shuffle through them. I watch his professional, art director’s eye look them over, carefully scrutinise each one. ‘Is this the guy who came with you to photograph Miss X?’

  ‘Yes,’ I mumble. I don’t think I’ve been the centre of so much attention before. Not like this.

  ‘He’s good, he’s really good. He’s completely brought out “you” in these. I look forward to seeing his other photos.’ He hands them back to me and smiles.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, completely bashful. ‘And thank you everyone for invading my desk. Can I get some space now?’

  Ten minutes later my email pings with a message from Reggie:

  That photographer was right in his note –

  you are beautiful. X

  Jody

  Thursday, 20 June

  Nothing. We have nothing.

  The team have come up with so much stuff, have worked methodically through these women’s lives, and there is nothing to connect them except they were all taken by this man, abused by him, branded by him and eventually, years later, murdered by him.

  The records of their phone usage showed nothing out of the ordinary. They all had minimal social media presence. They had jobs, a couple of them had partners. They had ordinary lives that hadn’t been disrupted at all in the weeks leading up to their deaths.

  Each member of the team takes it in turns to explain what they have found, and we all listen, some ask questions, others make notes. The frantic energy that had started this, had captured them when this was hours old, is waning. Most of them are used to working on more than one case at the same time, most of them are used to us finding something tangible by now. We usually have something to build something else on. The clock is ticking, the sixth Monday is counting down above our heads and we have nothing.

  He’s good, The Blindfolder, that’s what it comes down to, I suppose. The lack of forensic evidence. The branding. The terrifying of the surviving victims so effectively that few of them go to the police for fear of retribution. He is very proficient at what he does.

  A profile had been written up about him a few weeks ago, after the second Brighton murder. When I’d first read the report, anger and frustration flamed inside. It spoke in generalities, maybes, possible considerations. Nothing firm, nothing that would help us move forward. We are no closer to finding out who he is now than I was back then.

  The conversation in our investigation room moves on to Sux and how difficult it is to get hold of.

  ‘Has anyone thought to trace where he might be getting it from?’ Laura asks.

  I almost give myself away by saying yes, I’d spent years tracking Sux and ketamine and other anaesthetic drugs, but had got nowhere. ‘Not to any great degree,’ I reply. ‘Can you get on to that? You’re looking for any suppliers who have shipped to private individuals, any suppliers who have had shipments going missing or which have been stolen. Not just doctors, vets, too.’

  Laura nods as she notes this down. ‘Maybe I’ll try dentists, as well?’

  ‘Maybe, yes, good idea.’ I turn to look at the pictures again. ‘Have we been through all their social media profiles with a fine-tooth comb?’ I ask no one in particular.

  ‘Yes,’ says Ralph, one of the tech guys. He’s only here part-time because he has to work with other departments, and does the best he can to give us time. ‘I have done all manner of searches and they don’t have a connection.’

  ‘Not even the same followers?’

  ‘A couple of them followed The Black Girls’ Bookclub on Twitter, but that was it as far as I could see. They had a few similar followers, but I have run checks on all of them and nothing.’

  ‘Tell me about this book club,’ I say.

  ‘They have events, get authors in, but as far as I could find from checking the women’s bank accounts, credit and debit cards, neither of them went to events. They just followed them.’

  ‘Which two?’

  ‘Freya and Bess.’

  ‘The clock is ticking, counting down to the next murder – we can hear it, but we can’t see it to turn it off. There’s a woman out there, with a number on her back, who is going to be murdered on 22nd July, the sixth Monday.’ Judging from the silence in the room, I’ve said all that out loud. I probably shouldn’t have.

  I turn to my team. ‘I’m sorry. I sounded bleak then. He seems so meticulous. The way the bodies – both living and dead – are cleaned, the way there’s no trace of evidence, the way the victims aren’t connected. It shouldn’t be technically possible. He should have made a mistake by now. We all make mistakes. That’s what makes me worry for the next woman.’

  ‘Maybe they work in forensics or they’re a copper?’ Laura says.

  This silence is so heavy it clunks loudly on the ground.

  ‘Oh, what? Everyone’s been thinking it, no one wants to say it. It’s true. They could be someone who is right here in this room for all we know.’

  ‘True, Laura,’ I say. ‘And it could also be the man who makes really delicious coffee near where I’m staying but has watched one too many episodes of CSI and thinks he knows how to get away with murder.’

  A few people smirk loudly. ‘Oh, grow up,’ I say with a laugh.

  ‘Maybe I should check the location of most of their followers,’ Ralph says. ‘See if I can get a more comprehensive geographical profile of the victims going.’

  ‘Yes, that would be helpful,’ I say. I tap my pen on my teeth. ‘What I’m about to say needs to stay in this room. My problem is this one.’ I tap my pen onto Callie’s photo. She’s smiling, her hair wound up in a chignon. Below that is the image of the scar on her back – the prominent number 26.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asks Karin Logan. Detective Constable.

  I sigh as I look at Callie. ‘She’s a wild card. Unpredictable. Prone to temper, which loosens her lips. And . . .’ And she’s hiding something. I’ve got this unshakeable feeling that she has something huge that she is not telling us; that if she told me, I’d be able to help her while at the same time helping us. I sigh again. ‘I don’t especially trust her and, I don’t know, there’s a piece of her jigsaw missing.’

  I can’t tell them she’s hiding something until I know what that is.

  ‘I think that’s a bit out of order, actually,’ Karin says, voicing what a lot of them are thinking.

  ‘Why’s that? We’re always suspicious of people in an investigation.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s been through hell. We’ve seen the scars, we’ve heard her story, we’ve seen the video statements. It’s not rehearsed, it’s not constantly changing, everything is as it should be with this woman, I feel it.’ She looks around at the other people in the room who are carefully avoiding eye contact with me. ‘We all feel it.’

  ‘You know what, Karin, you’re probably righ
t. What I’m seeing is most likely her survival tactic.’ I have to concede here, until I know what it is that Callie is hiding, I have to give in to everyone else’s gut instinct. ‘But hopefully,’ I continue, ‘when Pieta Rawlings has written her article, we will have other women coming forward. Hopefully they’ll lead us to something.’

  And hopefully, I won’t need to get the DNA from Pieta Rawlings’s son. Because if this carries on, I’ll have no other choice.

  Part 5

  Pieta

  Saturday, 22 June

  Ned is staying down at Brighton Marina, a twenty-minute drive from my house to the other side of Brighton. There are white cliffs over there, and from the road an amazing view out to sea. Kobi and I often come down here to go to the multiplex cinema, the bowling and crazy golf. When Kobi decided for three months he wanted to be a street dancer back in 2017, this was where I used to bring him.

  From the boardwalk where there are several restaurants, I make my way down a metal walkway to the gates to where the moored boats and yachts of different sizes ring the Marina like bared teeth. The thick, mesh-like cladding clangs underneath my feet. It’s late, and even though there are people around and the Marina doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near ready for bed, I’ve walked here from the car park with my heart in my throat.

  The moonlight seems to bounce off the shiny surfaces and the moon’s watery reflection shimmers and glitters out in the middle of the water. Ned told me which boat he was on and its whereabouts. I type the code he gave me in to the metal keypad at the gate and the metallic whoosh of the door releasing is magnified in the hush down here at the water’s edge.

  Lights are on in some of the yachts I pass; laughter and chatter escape from others; and on a few of the upper decks, people sit outside, wrapped in blankets, sipping from mugs and wine glasses.

  Ned’s boat has a dark-grey bottom, a ring of dark, racing-car green around the middle and a cream top. The boat’s name – The Louis Lynn Evans – is stencilled in cream handwriting script on the green part of the boat. On the upper deck is a large wooden and glass square with a slightly domed roof. Carefully, I step off the walkway onto the wood-and-tile steps that lead up a small curve onto the upper deck of the boat. I don’t get a chance to knock on the wooden door with its huge glass pane because Ned is suddenly on the other side, opening it.

  ‘Hi,’ we both say at the same time, awkwardly, shyly. I hadn’t known what to say to him about the photos he sent, nor his note, so when I’d arranged to come and pick up pictures of Callie, I didn’t mention them.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he welcomes as he steps back into the upper deck.

  I’m surprised to be greeted with a built-in terracotta-coloured padded seating area. It is arranged as a square and there’s a small, low table there, too.

  ‘The photos are this way,’ he replies, nodding towards the large, mottled, wooden steering wheel. I’m confused for a moment then realise he means the full-length wooden swing doors beside the steering wheel. He leads the way down the stairs beyond the doors into the belly of the boat.

  As usual, dread, terror, the urge to run away whip through me.

  It’s fine, you’re fine, it’ll be fine, I tell myself. Everything is fine.

  The stairs are steep and I hold on to the handle as I follow him below deck. Behind the white door at the bottom of the stairs, I feel as though I have stepped into a designer’s wonderland.

  The upper walls are studded with silver portholes. In front of me is a brown leather easy chair, a couple of blankets slung over it. Beyond that is a circular dining table, covered in the photos I’ve come to collect.

  To my right, next to where I stand, is the entrance to the three-sided kitchen area. There’s a modern-looking butler’s sink, a shiny silver cooker and oven, a microwave on the maple-coloured wooden worktops. A plate and a glass sit unwashed in the sink, but everything else from, I presume, cooking has been washed up and is draining on the metal rack. The walls have shelves where everything is lined up and organised. On the other side of the kitchen area is a large, squashy, terracotta-coloured sofa adorned with several lifeboat-ring-shaped cushions.

  Beyond the sofa area and the dining table area is a doorway, which, I’m guessing, leads to the sleeping cabins.

  ‘This is really nice,’ I say.

  He stops on his way to the dining table, squeezes a quizzical look in my direction. ‘You sound surprised. What did you think it’d be like?’

  I shrug. ‘I’ve never been on a boat before so I don’t know, really, but not this. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to ask permission to come aboard or something.’

  ‘Technically, I suppose you should have, but I’ll let you off, because I’m nice like that.’

  ‘Have you always lived on boats?’

  ‘No, just when I’m near the water. So while I’m down here. When I was up near Bath, I lived on a boat then. I like being on the water.’

  ‘I moved to Brighton to be near the water. I didn’t know that till I got here, though. I was kind of drawn here and then I realised it was because it’s near the sea. I could stand and watch the sea for hours. It changes and changes, but always stays constant. Sometimes I used to stand with my back to the sea so I could just smell it and listen to it, and feel how it displaced the air.’ I’m surprised at myself, saying that to him of all people. His face moves as if to speak and continue the conversation, but I interject, ‘Sorry, I should get the photos and get going.’ No need to start talking to him like we could be anything other than acquaintances.

  ‘OK. I was hoping though . . . I was hoping you could have a look at them. There are so many and I started to choose the best ones, then I realised you need to do it. You’re writing the article, you should decide what will go with the words.’

  ‘That’s a nice thought, but to be honest, it really doesn’t matter what I think. It’ll come down to what the art director, picture editor and Lillian want. I’m being nosey, really, asking for them now. I wanted to put them up while I was writing so I could constantly look at her while I hear her voice in my head, if that makes sense?’

  ‘Yes, perfect sense. But have a look anyway, see what you think.’

  He wants me to see what he has done, to see if he has captured the essence of Callie, her vulnerability and determination, her anger and sorrow.

  They take my breath away. They are Callie. Her talking. Her staring into the distance. Her with her head bowed because it’s all too much. Tears brimming in dark-green eyes. Short nails on the hand she uses to move her hair from her forehead. Mouth askew as it shapes the words to describe difficult moments.

  ‘These are amazing. I mean, truly incredible.’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ he says with a shy laugh, but it’s clear that he’s pleased I like them.

  ‘I’m not. I mean, I’ve seen your stuff and the ones you sent me, I know you’re good, but wow, I wasn’t expecting anything as touching and honest as this.’

  ‘I’ve got some other ones, of her . . . of her scars. But I doubt the police officer will let us use them.’

  He starts to put the pictures together like he is restacking a pack of cards.

  ‘I doubt she’ll let us use them, either,’ I reply. I’m glad he hasn’t got the branding scar pictures out, I couldn’t stand to look at them. I take the envelope he’s put the photos in with two hands. ‘Detective Foster will probably have a fit again about Callie being identified when there’s . . . when . . .’

  ‘When he’s going back and killing his previous victims,’ Ned supplies. He shakes his head, scratches his ear. ‘I’ve got to say, I’m struggling with this, Pieta. Kidnapping women, torturing them, branding them, and then coming back years later to kill them. It’s all stuff you see on TV, in the movies, not something that happens in my real life. And to be this close to it . . . It’s messing with my mind a bit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply. I do not want to talk about this. It’s taking a lot for me to be able to write this, I ca
n’t talk about it, analyse it too. ‘I’d better be going.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d want to stick around for a bit? Sit upstairs and have a couple of drinks?’ He’s back in his kitchen area, reaching down into the fridge and retrieving a beer. He twists the cap off, flicks it into a pint glass, half-full with other beer lids that sits beside the draining rack. I head for the stairs, needing to get back to the car park before it gets much later and I start to try to work out how I can get a taxi from here to my car.

  ‘No. Thank you, but no, I’ve got to drive home. My mother’s staying for the next three days so I can pull a couple of all-nighters to write the article. And I don’t tend to drink anything when I drive.’ I smile but not at him. ‘I’ll see ya.’

  ‘Do you believe in redemption?’ he asks me before my foot makes contact with the bottom step. I lower my foot and turn towards him. He stands in his kitchen, looking smaller than I remember.

  ‘Depends what you mean by redemption. For yourself, yes, I do believe in that. I believe you can become a better version of the person you were when you did whatever it is that needs forgiving.’

  ‘But you don’t believe in forgiveness for other people?’

  I force myself to look at him, properly, totally. I blink in shock, when I take in the full composition of him. He’s not a boy, he’s not a young man, he’s a fully formed adult. His blond hair is streaked with grey, his skin has been pressed and creased with emotion, his body is neat and strong.

  This is what Ned Wellst looks like now. I’ve not really looked at him since that first day in the office, I’ve kept him at the periphery of my vision because that’s what I do. In The After, I thought I would look at everything, I would want to see as much as I could. But in reality, I can’t. I am cautious about what I let in through my eyes, about how I fill my line of sight. And I’m terrified. I’m constantly terrified I’ll look at someone, catch their eye, and recognise in them the features my son got from his father.