Forward Slash

by Louise Voss

  Gary stood up, shuffling slightly to adjust his jeans. He looked smart – his shirt was crisply ironed, he was wearing shoes instead of his usual flip-flops or trainers, and he was very clean-shaven. ‘Seeya, Boris, mate, be good,’ he said, and Boris narrowed his eyes at them both before flopping down on the tulip-shaped rug in the centre of the room.

  ‘Where do we start?’ Gary asked as they emerged from Leicester Square Tube station into the bedlam of a hot summer evening in the city, the air redolent of fried vegetables and exhaust fumes.

  ‘Let’s head for Greek Street and Old Compton Street, that area. Whatever that road is closest to Shaftesbury Avenue; then we can work up and down and back. Hope you’ve got comfy shoes on.’

  Amy had always loved these sorts of evenings. Throngs of people on foot, spilling out on the pavements, annoying cab drivers, or smug in rickshaws. Tipsy and besuited, straight from work, or all dressed up for the theatre or a dinner date. Teenagers showing far too much flesh, tourists with their cameras and bumbags strapped to them like bondage, people thrusting leaflets at them for cheap pizza and comedy. Someone in a gorilla suit sauntered past on big, fake, furry claws. Amy wouldn’t have been surprised to see people in wetsuits or wedding dresses, or naked. Anything went.

  But it was what was under the surface that she really wanted to discover.

  They started in Dean Street, and by the tenth pub and bar they had honed their interrogation down to a set of basic questions:

  ‘Hi – have you got a minute? Were you working on Sunday night?’

  ‘Is there anyone here tonight who was?’

  ‘Did you happen to see this woman?’ Pointing at the picture of Katherine and the giraffe. ‘She had a date in Soho last Sunday.’

  ‘If you see either of them, please can you call that number? They’re both missing.’

  ‘Yeah. She’s my sister.’

  It got harder and harder as the number of streets they covered crept up. The looks of sympathy were worse than the frustration of those bar staff who just turned away, or pubs where none of the staff would admit to being there on Sunday. As the spiel became more and more automatic, Amy kept imagining she saw Becky burst in through the door of one of the pubs, laughing and talking loudly with her hands as much as her voice …

  In Old Compton Street, Amy was haunted by the memory of the Admiral Duncan bombing in 1999, imagining the horror of a huge deadly shower of nails, like thousands of bullets raining down on people drinking and relaxing after work … Was that guy regretting doing it, almost a quarter of a century on, as he languished forgotten in jail, serving out his six life sentences?

  Did someone somewhere have regrets about killing Becky? Suddenly the street noises, the car horns and shouts, the music blaring from open windows all blended into a cacophonous sheet of white noise that made her want to curl up into a ball.

  She stopped on the pavement and stared up at Gary.

  ‘I can’t do this any more. I’m starting to feel like I’m hallucinating, and every bar person who says they haven’t seen her is like a stab in the heart … Sorry, that sounds really melodramatic, but …’

  She tailed off and turned away, her lip trembling like a toddler’s. Gary gave her a hug. ‘It’s OK. It’s hot and packed, and stressful. Let’s stop and have a drink. This place looks a bit quieter, come on.’

  He took her hand and led her into a bar whose dark interior and lack of blaring music implied that it was the sort of place that didn’t come to life till a lot later. It was almost empty inside, just two Japanese girls at the bar in knee socks and kilts, sipping fruity cocktails and giggling.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The barman was polishing highball glasses. Amy and Gary sat down on stools at the opposite end of the bar to the girls. ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ said Amy, and Gary ordered a pint, at least half of which he drank in three gulps. Amy slid a Xerox of the photos of Katherine and Becky across the top of the bar.

  ‘I don’t suppose you recognize either of these girls, do you? This one might have been in here on Sunday.’

  The barman scratched his facial hair, squinted through the gloom at it and then shook his head. ‘Nah, sorry. I’ll ask Geoff when he comes in, he was here on Sunday, too.’

  ‘Thanks. Please can you keep it and show it to the other staff as well?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He put the Xerox under the bar, walked away and started cutting up lemons. Gary saw the expression on Amy’s face and squeezed her knee.

  ‘Did you try and talk to that Clive guy again?’

  She nodded. ‘He doesn’t want to know. I’ve sent him messages on LinkedIn and Facebook, but he’s ignoring them. I don’t know his mobile number, and the venue wouldn’t tell me – I think he told them not to because they sounded shifty when I asked for it. I gave the promoter my number and asked him to pass it on – nothing. I don’t know what Becky did to Clive, but he’s not going to forgive her for it.’ She stared into her drink. ‘I’ve rarely seen such a look of hatred as the one on Clive’s face when I mentioned her.’

  ‘Hmm. Weird, isn’t it? Well, we’re doing all we can.’

  ‘Unlike the police.’

  ‘We’ve just got to keep on at them, Amy.’

  She smiled faintly at the way he said ‘we’. ‘By the way,’ he added.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like your skirt. Where did you get it – is it vintage? You look so cute.’

  Her smile broadened a little more. There was something so ingenuous about Gary. She wondered fleetingly if he was gay – that wasn’t the sort of thing a macho guy would ask – but then she realized that he had just been trying to find something to say that might cheer her up. The skirt was black and full, with a pattern of cherries and daisies scattered across it, and she wore it with a thick red patent-leather belt, and a black vest top.

  ‘Thank you. I made it from some curtains I bought at a vintage fair.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said, showing his dimples, and Amy felt very slightly better.

  ‘Right, come on then,’ she said, draining her G&T through the straw. ‘I feel sufficiently revived. Let’s do Berwick Street next.’

  ‘Sure you can face it?’ he asked, tilting his head back to finish his pint. Amy watched his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. She nodded and gathered up the envelope and her handbag from the stool next to her. Just as they were walking out, a slim black man walked in, wearing the same uniform as the hirsute barman who’d served them. She stopped him.

  ‘Excuse me, do you work here?’

  When he said yes, she handed him a Xerox of the photos. ‘I don’t suppose you saw that girl with the giraffe on Sunday? I mean – not actually with the giraffe …’

  He laughed, and then his smile faded and he tilted his head to one side to get a better look.

  ‘Her!’ He jabbed angrily at the paper with his forefinger, and Amy and Gary stared at each other with anticipation and dread.

  ‘She was in here, and yeah, it was last Sunday, quite late. She was off her face, they both were.’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘She was with this absolute …’ The guy stopped, presumably worried that they might be offended.

  ‘No, it’s fine, tell us, um, Olly,’ Amy urged, spotting his name badge. All her fatigue had vanished and adrenaline streamed around her system.

  ‘Twat,’ he concluded. ‘Loud, obnoxious, offensive. Big guy in an expensive suit, ordered Cristal.’

  ‘Age? Appearance? Did you catch his name?’

  Olly thought. ‘In his thirties. White. Quite fat – I mean, not fat-fat, but bit of a gut on him. Broad shoulders. Losing his hair. I had to kick him out, he was off his tits – I mean, he was clearly high on drugs. I’m sure she was, too. You can just tell. And one of the customers had seen them go into the toilets together. No, I didn’t get his name. I threatened to call the police and have them arrested for doing drugs, and he started shouting the odds. Luckily, they left before anything else happened. I got worried he was going
to deck me.’

  Amy didn’t think it was lucky they’d left before the police could be involved. It would have made life a lot easier had there been an incident report on record.

  ‘Wow. Thanks, Olly, you have no idea how helpful that is. But you’ve never seen this woman, have you?’ She pointed at Becky, but Olly shook his head. He read the sheet and looked concerned.

  ‘How long have they been missing?’

  ‘Only a few days. But the police aren’t taking it seriously because someone – at least, I think – has been posting on her – Becky’s – Twitter account. And putting photos on her Facebook page, too.’

  Olly looked slightly embarrassed, as if he wished he hadn’t asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ Amy said. ‘Listen, if you think of anything else, will you call me? That’s my number. My name’s Amy. That one’s my sister; the one you saw is her best friend, Katherine. If she comes in again, please will you let me know?’

  ‘Sure,’ Olly said awkwardly. ‘Anyway, I’d better get going …’ He gestured towards the bar, and Amy put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  19

  Declan

  Thursday, 18 July

  Declan stood on the beach, the pier to his left, bandstand to the right. There were noisy people all around him: families, tourists and EFL students, eating ice cream and candyfloss, rubbing suntan lotion onto pink skin, playing too-loud music out of too-small speakers or phones. A large woman sat reading a paperback, batting away a wasp that repeatedly made a beeline for her ice lolly. Can wasps make beelines, Declan wondered? He’d have to remember to tell Bob that one.

  He had driven down to the seafront because he’d needed to get out of the office. More importantly, he’d needed to be surrounded by the living. His pallid colleagues didn’t count – they were as starved of sunlight as Declan. But down here, in the first week of the school holidays, it was hard to imagine a more lively display of humanity.

  Declan crunched across the pebbles and walked up the steps to the promenade, leaning on the railings and looking out to sea. Eastbourne was known as a place where people came to die, a haven for octogenarians. Compared to London, it was a sleepy town, especially in winter, when the whole place went into a kind of suspended animation, the sands of time frozen on the beach. But, right now, with the sun shining on his upturned face and the smell of the burger van that was parked just behind wafting into his nostrils, it seemed a better place than the city he had loved and left.

  Declan’s days in the Met had ended two years ago, while he was still a DC, working out of Camberwell nick.

  It had been a day similar to this – scorching hot, but sticky and oppressive. It was only a week after the riots had turned the city into a battleground, days when it felt as if the thin veneer of civilization that Londoners lived behind had been ripped away, exposing the true, ugly heart of the city, an ugliness that Declan saw every day. Now, the police had been instructed to arrest looters, the papers full of stories about teens being shopped by their mums and jailed for thieving a bottle of water. Grim days.

  One such looter had been identified as a young woman called Jade Hucknall, who lived with her two kids in Marie Curie House, a tower block on the Sceaux Gardens estate, not far from the station, the kind of place where hope goes to die. Jade had been caught on camera thieving a pair of Adidas from JD Sports. An utterly typical case.

  On that sticky August afternoon two years ago, Declan had gone along with a PC, Sam Collins, to arrest Jade.

  As the two of them had walked across the estate, aware of hostile eyes watching them from every direction, Sam had said, ‘Do you know anything about this Jade Hucknall?’

  ‘Yeah, a little. Been done for soliciting once or twice. The father of her youngest kid put her on the game for a while.’

  ‘Nice. Who’s the father?’

  ‘Terry Munson.’

  ‘Terry Munster himself?’

  ‘The very same.’

  The Munsons – known to the police and the very few people who weren’t terrified of them as the Munsters – were one of those families. The dad, Pat – or Herman, as he was known – had spent half his adult life inside, but every time he got out he spawned a new kid or two, all of whom were grown up now, all of them following in their father’s size-eleven footsteps.

  ‘He’s not going to be there, is he?’ Sam asked, the apprehension clear in his voice.

  ‘No one has seen Terry for months. Rumour has it he’s fucked off up north after getting on the wrong side of someone even bigger and scarier than him.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s paying his child support like a good boy, though.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I’m sure.’

  The lift was out of order, they were always out of order in places like this, so they tramped up the stairs, fourteen flights, Declan’s heart rapping against his ribcage in protest. Sam, who did 10k runs in his spare time, wasn’t even sweating when they got to Jade Hucknall’s door.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked, as Declan knocked.

  He didn’t get a chance to answer. The door was flung open and Jade was there, screaming at them, her words barely audible but Declan made out the name Terry as he exhorted Jade to calm down. A toddler was yelling in the background and Declan could hear the CBeebies music pumping out at the kind of volume usually only heard in nightclubs. Declan was trying to get Jade to be quiet, his blood pressure rising so he could feel the blood thrumming in his ears, when a man appeared before them in the flat’s hallway. Terry Munster.

  Declan didn’t even see the gun. All he remembered was a searing pain in his shoulder, a flash of white as he hit the ground and smacked his head against the doorframe, Jade still yelling, the toddler still screeching, and footsteps running over and past him. That, he discovered later in hospital, was Terry legging it. PC Collins was rooted to the spot, wanting to look after Declan, he said, but more likely not wanting to face down an armed psycho with his baton. Terry was found a day later, drinking in a pub close to the estate, boasting about the filth he’d offed.

  The bullet had shattered Declan’s rotator cuff. Surgery had been quick and successful. Doctors kept telling him how lucky he was. But the real injury had not been to his shoulder – the shot had affected his psyche far more. For the past year or so, he had been slowly falling out of love with the job – the constant hostility, the same sad faces and cases all the time, his growing belief that there was a cancer eating away at society, and the new government’s response was to cut police funding and salaries. He was sick of it. Getting shot by a piece of shit like Terry Munster – a shot that, had it been a few inches to the left would have struck him in the neck or face – sent Declan into a spiral of depression. He went to see two therapists, a physio and a counsellor, but, while the former helped him to feel better, the latter made him assess his life and what he wanted from it.

  He had given everything to the job. He’d never married, had no children, few friends. He was tired. When he’d joined the police he’d thought he would be working interesting cases, solving crimes, making a difference. But the truth was, he hadn’t made any difference at all. The people round here despised the police. The riots had brought that into full view. The underclass saw them as the enemy, the middle class thought they were useless and blamed them for the fear they’d experienced this summer for probably the first time.

  But he didn’t know what else he could do. When he tried to think of something else, he drew a blank. So he took a sidestep instead. He asked for, and got, a transfer. Shortly after that, he was promoted.

  Declan breathed in a lungful of sea air. No, when he remembered that awful summer, and stood on this beach, he didn’t miss London at all.

  He’d only been a DI for a few months now, and the body in the cesspit was his first really interesting case. But since the apparent early breakthrough that Melinda Moore, the forensic anthropologist, had given them, he and Bob had made very little progress.


  Bob had been looking into former employees of JWF, the property-development company that owned the farmhouse where the body had been found. But as JWF had been defunct for almost two decades, tracking down its staff was proving to be a painful business. The former MD of the company had died a couple of years back and his partner had retired to Spain. The guv, DCI Anthony Fremantle, who was SIO on the case, didn’t think this route of enquiry was worth pursuing and had instructed them to stop, though Bob had already sent a message to the partner in Spain, to which there had been no reply as yet.

  ‘Wait and see what comes back on the DNA,’ Fremantle had said.

  But that could be days. As DCI Fremantle had made clear, ‘This case is ice cold. We’ve missed the chance to be hot on the perpetrator’s tail by about fifteen years. A few days’ wait isn’t going to make much difference.’

  But Declan was impatient, and persuaded Fremantle that pursuing the scoliosis angle had to be worthwhile.

  ‘All right,’ he’d said. ‘But don’t spend too much time on it. Let’s see what the DNA tells us.’

  Despite his annoyance at Fremantle’s reliance on the great god DNA, Declan was now beginning to think he might be right. Trying to get information out of the NHS was like trying to get through to his mobile-phone company – an exercise in diversion and frustration that had him muttering darkly about red tape and fucking bureaucrats. And after his experiences following getting shot, he was normally the first to praise the NHS.

  The main problem was that there was no easy way to get the information, and the clerical staff he encountered didn’t know the answers, so they kept passing him to someone else. As he hung on the phone while he was transferred to yet another department, he squeezed the stress putty his niece had bought him for Christmas. It was supposed to have therapeutic properties. Declan found it helpful as a tool for imagining he was squeezing a bureaucrat’s throat.

  The Spine, which was the central database that held records of all of the patients in the system – pretty much everyone in the UK – had only come into being a few years ago. It was controversial, with everyone from civil-liberties campaigners to conspiracy nuts speaking out against it. But if this system had existed in the late eighties, when the victim would have been receiving treatment, and if the police had had access to it, Declan probably would have found her by now. He could have got a list of all the girls with scoliosis and cross-referenced that against COMPACT, the missing-persons database.