by Ali Gunn
‘Black, blue, navy, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not a car man per se living in London with the tube on my doorstep. What difference does it make anyway?’
Blue or black. Just like that first witness had told Stryker.
Elsie couldn’t resist mocking his over the top patter. ‘A great deal of difference, a great deal indeed. If I need anything else, I’ll be in touch. I know where you live. Good day to you, sir.’ And then she smiled at the kids as she stood up. ‘Bye, little ones.’
Chapter 45: Regrets and Recriminations
The tears had dried up and now Knox was desperately trying to remove her smudged mascara with a tissue and some saliva.
‘It’s my fault, Seb,’ Knox said. ‘I told her to go out with him.’
‘Last night’s date?’ Stryker said. ‘You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. We can’t even say for sure that her date was involved. For all we know, they had dinner and she was attacked on the way home.’
‘Get real,’ Knox said. ‘This has “jilted lover” written all over it. Three dead women, three identical MOs. She was prevaricating over her date and I encouraged her to go. If I hadn’t ...’
‘No,’ Stryker said firmly. ‘She made her own choice. It isn’t on you.’
‘Yes, it is. She wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t told her to give it a try. This was her second date with the guy – James I think his name was – and she wasn’t exactly feeling it. She said he was nice but there was no spark.’
‘You thought the spark might come later,’ Stryker said.
‘Exactly!’
‘It happens. I’m sorry but you need to focus on what you can do right now, not what you did or didn’t do yesterday. What exactly did she tell you about this James guy? Where did they plan on going?’
Knox closed her eyes as if trying to replay the conversation in her head. Her forehead scrunched up as she failed to pull anything concrete from her memory.
‘Relax, Knox. Was it a dinner date?’
‘Yes, somewhere posh, somewhere around here. French, I think? She said she’d probably never been anywhere that nice before.’
Virtually everywhere around here was posh, thought Stryker. It would have been much more useful if she’d gone to one of the handful of budget places.
‘Okay, was she planning to dress up?’ There was no sign of whatever Matthews had been wearing when she’d gone out. The killer must have taken her clothing with him. A trophy?
‘She’d ordered something online. I’m not sure what.’
‘Okay, we can check her credit card for that. What else? Did she say where they met?’
Knox’s eyes opened. ‘Review My Ex.’
‘Of course,’ Stryker said. ‘Don’t suppose you know her PIN number and Review My Ex password?’
Not only would they need to crack her phone, but they’d also need to get into her account. Even the company behind it couldn’t see what messages she’d exchanged as everything on the app was so heavily encrypted. Trying to break Layla’s phone had landed him in hot water and it didn’t look like Nelly’s would bear much fruit either. Perhaps this time would be different.
‘Nope,’ Knox said. ‘There was one other thing – he wasn’t as attractive as his photos. It was why she almost didn’t go on the second date.’
Stryker rolled his eyes. ‘We’ve all been there. Ten-year-old photos, Photoshop jobs. I once turned up to a blind date expecting this tiny blonde woman and it turned out she was the whale hiding in the background of the shot.’
The anecdote elicited a weak smile. ‘So what does Mabey want me to do?’
‘Talk to the guy who owns this house,’ Stryker said. ‘There’s no sign of forced entry and that’s a Shi-He Chi-Me U-lock on the front door.’
In other words, it was an exceptionally good lock. ‘Nobody picked that then,’ Knox said. ‘You think our killer is known to the landlord?’
‘It makes sense to me.’
‘Alright. Any idea where he is?’
‘Nah, ’fraid not. You’re on your own there, Knox.’
Chapter 46: The Sketch Artist
The clock read ten past ten when the man from Richmond made it to New Scotland Yard. He thundered through the revolving door and skidded to a stop at the reception. He was breathing heavily as he leant on the counter.
‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘I’m Harry Graham. Detective Inspector Stryker asked me to come in. So sorry I’m late. There was a one-under on the District line.’
The receptionist seemed totally nonplussed. She checked the diary, found the entry, and waved at the communal seating. ‘Someone will be with you shortly.’
Shortly turned out to be three-quarters of an hour. During that time, Harry saw detectives coming and going at a frenetic pace. There was no sign of Stryker.
At just gone eleven, a woman emerged. She bore no resemblance to Harry’s idea of a policewoman. She was short, had neon-pink hair that was about as long as his, and so many piercings that she jingled when she walked. Sod being behind her at an airport’s walk through metal detector, he thought.
‘Hi, Mr Graham?’
‘That’s me. Where’s Mr Stryker?’
‘No idea, I’m afraid. I’m Flick. According to my notes, Mr Stryker wanted us to draw up a composite image of a man who frequented your charity shop. Does that sound about right?’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ Harry said. ‘I thought he’d be here.’
‘You’re stuck with me,’ Flick said. ‘But fear not. I rarely bite. Come on, we’ve got a meeting room to cadge before someone else does.’
The meeting room in question was a conference suite on the first floor. It seemed it had recently been vacated by a large team as there were empty coffee cups everywhere.
Flick made a beeline for the hot water dispenser. She placed a cup underneath and plunged the handle. ‘Excellent, plenty left for us. What’s your poison, Mr Graham? We’ve got crap tea, crap coffee or hot water.’
‘I’ll take the coffee.’
‘Good choice.’ She poured a second cup and handed it to him. It was thick almost to the point of being sludge. ‘The Met’s speciality, coffee with enough caffeine in it to see you through a night shift. Brass are pretty good about keeping it stocked. Help yourself to milk, sugar and a biscuit, and grab a seat when you’re ready.’
Under Flick’s watchful eye, Harry nabbed a couple of packets of digestives to go with his coffee and then took a seat. She’d already pulled a tablet out of her bag and now took out a stylus.
‘I want you to close your eyes,’ Flick said. ‘From my notes, you’ve met this guy a few times so I’m confident we can get a good profile out of this. Before we start, I want you to clear your mind as much as you can. Today isn’t about getting a perfect image down. It’s not a painting of our man. All we’re trying to do is get down an impression that resembles him. A good impression does no more than jog people’s memory. Take a deep breath and then, whenever you’re ready, tell me about the first time you saw him.’
‘It was a few months ago. I’m not sure when exactly...’ Harry paused to think. ‘The weather was still warm so maybe September. We’d just had a big pile of summer clothing come in – cocktail dresses, short-sleeved shirts, shorts and the like – which happens every year as people get ready for winter. Yeah, September would be ma best guess. Mebbe at the end. I was sorting donations out the back when I heard the bell jingle. Normally I don’t pay attention to customers.’
He stopped for a while forcing Flick to prompt him again. ‘Why’d you pay attention to this one?’
‘It was this big, blond dude. Really muscle-bound. It was weird. He was rifling through the womenswear section.’
‘And that was new?’
‘Well... nah. I’ve seen a few of them crossdressers coming in. They’re usually furtive, looking around like they’re about to nick something, and they always shuffle up to the counter like a teenager buying their first condoms. It’s hard not to laugh at ’em, bless �
�em.’
‘Not this guy?’
‘Naw, he was bold as brass. He looked through the racks, seemed to spend an age feeling ’em as if he could magically divine how nice the stuff was by touch, and then he came up to the counter with a couple of fancy frocks and paid cash.’
Flick scribbled notes as he spoke, though what relevance it had to the sketch Harry didn’t know. ‘Was there anything that really stood out about him?’
‘His eyes. Blue. One looked at you, the other stared off to the side. I’m damned if I can remember which though.’
He must have said something right because she started sketching immediately. She turned the tablet to show him a pair of oval eyes. ‘Like that?’
‘Nah,’ Harry said. ‘Squintier like. He had proper black bags under ’em too.’
‘Could you see the whites of his eyes above and below the pupil?’
‘Yeah, think so... With little red squiggles in the corner too. I remember he didn’t blink too much.’
‘Dry eyes,’ Flick said. She tried sketching the eyes again and turned the tablet to Harry once more.
‘Better...’
‘But not perfect. It’s okay to say so, I won’t be offended. What’s wrong with them?’
‘His eyelids were a wee bit droopier.’
The third time was the charm. The moment that Flick showed him the latest sketch, his jaw dropped at just how accurate it was.
She repeated the process for the other features: jawline, eyes, wrinkles, eyebrows, even the places where the face was asymmetrical.
‘How far were his lips from his nose?’
‘No idea,’ Harry said.
Flick held up a hand. ‘Give me a few minutes.’
She pulled tracing paper out of her bag and sketched out half a dozen pairs of lips. ‘Do any of these lips look close?’
‘The second row in the middle.’
She cut around them and pinched her tablet so the size of the sketch was about right. With a delicate touch, Flick put the hand-drawn lips in place between the jaw (square, hairy and dimpled) and the nose (crooked, greasy and ridden with blackheads) and then moved the tracing paper up and down slowly.
‘There!’
His upper lip perched just below his nose. Next, Flick ran through each section again, offering up dozens of similar photos to narrow down which the mystery man resembled the most.
‘Can I pick a blend of two?’
‘Of course,’ Flick said. As if by magic, she combined the two photos on screen and overlaid them onto her existing sketch.
‘Bigger crow’s feet and they arched upwards.’
A dozen more adjustments – a quick look at clothing to match – and Flick was done.
Overall, it was almost a handsome face. It clearly belonged to a man in his mid to late thirties. A little bit more care and attention would have evened up the unruly beard and dealt with the proliferation of blackheads. The fatal flaw was the lazy eye. It unbalanced the face dreadfully.
‘That’s him, that’s absolutely him,’ Harry said.
‘Sort of face only a mother could love, eh?’ Flick joked. ‘Thanks for coming in. If you think of anything else, give DI Stryker a bell, and my apologies again for the delay this morning. Things have been a bit manic around here – one of our own got murdered last night.’
Chapter 47: Mistakes were Made
Retracing Matthews’ steps meant knowing everything about her schedule in the days leading up to her death. Unlike the first two victims, they had a good handle on where Matthews had been. The most immediate concern was finding the restaurant.
Stryker ticked off the criteria. First, it was posh. That wasn’t massively helpful. Second, it was French. Third, it was probably nearby. Matthews had used her Oyster card the night before, tapping out at Holland Park underground at ten to seven. Stryker decided to start there. He parked haphazardly next to the Boris Bikes opposite the station entrance.
The station was typical of London Underground stations. There were cameras everywhere, thirty-eight of them to be precise, a mere fraction of the four hundred and eight at King’s Cross that Ian had gleefully told him was the record for any London station. It was ample for such a small station. The feeds ran to a central CCTV room hidden in the staff area at the back of the station. Stryker had radioed ahead to let them know that he was on his way so, after a cursory examination of his warrant card, he was shown through to the cramped control room. Here dozens of monitors were mounted in a semi-circle around a single desk. It was hot, cramped, and smelled of sweat.
‘I need to trace the movements of Georgia Matthews. Her Oyster card number is 427848927. She tapped out at ten to seven according to the TFL logs. Can you get her up on the screen?
‘Is the Pope Catholic?’
It took a while for the screen to spring to life.
‘We’ve only just gone digital,’ the tech said by way of apology. ‘If ya had come last year, I’d be knee-deep in the old tape right now.’
Judging from the resolution of the feed, the cameras were older than Stryker. He could see Matthews’ likeness when it popped up on the screen but if he hadn’t known her then the footage would have been of little use. There was no way the quality was enough for a computer to trace her movement. The timestamp read 18:50 which lined up perfectly with the Oyster card log. Stryker watched as she passed through the barriers alone.
‘Work backwards to her arrival at the platform.’
The CCTV tech did as he was told and easily found Matthews arriving on the west-bound platform. Judging by the Oyster records, she had gone from New Scotland Yard to her bedsit off Tottenham Court Road before heading west on the Central line from nearby Oxford Circus.
The tech put her first appearance on the top left screen. She disembarked alone, walking quickly but with a certain bounce to her step. She looked happy. Another camera caught her coming up the stairs and another still saw her weave through the crowds towards the barrier. Before he could blink, Stryker was watching Matthews across five screens. Nothing untoward had happened within the station.
‘Outside... which exit did she take and are there cameras out there?’
A few clicks more, a few more agonising moments waiting while time ticked away, and Matthews’ likeness popped up on two more screens. The first feed showed her walking across the foyer and past the Oyster machine. The second showed her outside walking towards the park. In every shot she was alone.
‘Play it all again.’
He did. Stryker watched frame by frame for any hint of someone following her, someone watching her, or even just someone acting suspiciously. There was no sign of a killer on the tapes.
‘She left alone...’ Stryker mumbled to himself. He turned to the tech. ‘Can you email me a copy of this lot? Sebastian dot Stryker at Met Police dot co dot UK.’
‘Sure.’
‘Thanks.’ Matthews hadn’t met her date here in the station. He jogged back to the pavement. They must have met at the restaurant itself and now he knew which direction Matthews had walked. She’d crossed the road on Holland Park Avenue and gone out of the reach of the CCTV.
Stryker retraced her steps until he was standing on the pavement just beyond where Matthews had disappeared. She could have turned left to head north along the A402 towards Notting Hill or turned right to head in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush.
Almost straight away, Stryker’s gut said left. It looked markedly more upmarket and he could see signs for restaurants. He doubled checked with Google. There were a surprising number of French restaurants nearby.
It couldn’t be anything that wasn’t exceedingly posh. Matthews had boasted to Knox that she’d never been invited anywhere that posh before, and Matthews herself obviously came from a wealthy family. That took out chain restaurants like Côte Brasserie which were undeniably good quality but not the sort of once-in-a-lifetime dining experience that Stryker was imagining.
Next, he struck off all the restaurants that were closer to a di
fferent tube station than Holland Park. Matthews wouldn’t have surfaced at Holland Park if either of the adjoining stations on the Central line – Shepherd’s Bush to the west, Notting Hill Gate to the east – were closer. That knocked off the likes of Aubaine in Kensington and Le Gavroche near Marble Arch even further east.
Twelve remained. Google had a “£££” rating against three of them, one of which was in the park itself. It seemed as good a place as any to start so Stryker turned left to head for the park entrance which was guarded by the statue of St. Volodymyr. He turned right as soon as he saw the statute, marvelling at the number of cranes in the area. It seemed even west London was now subject to the onslaught of high-rise shoebox flats springing up across the capital.
Numerous cars were parked on the crescent-shaped road leading into the park. There were so many that he almost missed the tiny stone archway on his left that led into the park proper. Once he was inside, he could walk the narrow footpaths that joined up the various gardens. He passed by a large fountain – and another statue – before the path opened out into a more formal garden. A large sign welcomed him to the Holland Park Tulip Garden. He couldn’t see any signs of life. In front of him was just a brown, icy mess and Stryker supposed that it would remain that way until spring. On the other side of the garden, he found the restaurant.
It was gorgeous. The building itself was centuries old and it was tastefully lit by chandeliers. Live piano music echoed softly from within. The menu outside was equally impressive with everything from the classic foie gras, pear chutney on brioche to the thoroughly indulgent cèpe consommé with roast chicken and truffle espuma. Google hadn’t been kidding about their £££ price rating either. Even with his recent raise for transferring to the Met, Stryker would be out almost his entire disposable income for the month if he bought just a main course.
The maître d’ was on the phone when Stryker entered. He seemed to be talking in an over-the-top Parisian accent that Stryker felt certain was put on. The maître d’ eyed him with disdain, his lip curling upwards at the sight of Stryker’s mud-stained Loake’s and a thread-worn old jacket. The sneer didn’t entirely disappear when he got off the phone.