by Alison James
Rachel sighed. ‘Okay.’
They sat in silence for another two hours, then took it in turns to use the toilet in a local café, then ate the sandwiches Rachel had bought on her earlier visit. Buggy-pushing mothers returned from collecting their children from school. By now both Rachel and Brickall were both fighting cramp, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
‘Oh, go on then, you know you’re dying to,’ he said eventually.
‘What?’
‘Tell me all about what you got up to in Hollywood.’
‘Blimey, you must be bored.’
Brickall found some chewing gum and offered her a piece. ‘Well, go on then.’
She gave him a potted version, despite them not being short of time.
‘So they found evidence on the boyfriend and charged him. Sweet: job done.’
Rachel sighed. ‘Yes, but it’s not that simple. The evidence against the boyfriend is at best weak, at worst suspicious. And then there’s this other case that was strikingly similar.’
‘Yeah, but you weren’t assigned to the other case, were you?’
‘But if this is a serial killer and the two are linked—’
‘Prince, you know bloody well homicides only rate the term “serial” if there are three or more, each separated by a significant period of time.’
‘We don’t know there aren’t more.’
The afternoon was fading into evening. A light went on in one of the upstairs rooms, then, as Rachel instinctively leaned forward for a better view, it was switched off again.
‘“We”?’ scoffed Brickall. ‘There is no “we”. It’s not your case any longer. You need to get over yourself Prince, and move on. Case closed: forget about it.’
Chapter Eighteen
It seems to take forever this time. Nowhere is just right, nowhere fits the bill. From time to time I take out my keepsakes and look at them for inspiration: the baseball cap and the cutesy keyring.
Time is ticking on, and pressure is mounting. People are starting to ask questions.
‘Why haven’t we seen you around?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘What’s going on at work right now?’
‘How are things with you?’
And finally, there it is. So I have to move quickly. I have to show flexibility over dates, otherwise it can’t happen.
‘There is one thing,’ she writes. ‘I will be there to meet you, but after that I have to be out of town for a while. Sorry!!’
She adds a kitsch little sorry face emoji. Whatever.
‘But my boyfriend is around and he will be on hand to help you with any problems or issues you might have! I’ll make sure and leave a note of his details for you!!’
She really likes exclamations marks. And emojis. They always do. They’re always that kind of girl.
‘Perfect,’ I message her back, and I’m being genuine. This could not be more perfect.
Chapter Nineteen
‘I reckon this tip-off is bullshit.’
Rachel and Brickall were still in the car. It had long since gone dark, and lights in windows were being extinguished one by one as people went to bed. A steady drizzle was falling, so they were forced to keep the ignition switched on to intermittently clear the windscreen.
‘If there’s any movement it’s going to be after dark.’ Rachel reminded him.
‘It went dark hours ago.’
Rachel checked her watch. ‘Let’s give it another hour and then head for bed.’
Brickall managed a faint grin. ‘Best suggestion I’ve heard all day.’
‘Don’t be a twat.’
As the wipers cleared the screen, Rachel caught sight of a figure walking purposefully towards the house in question. Florence Obatola.
‘That’s her.’
Brickall reached instinctively for his radio handset and it bleeped into life. A light went on and there were figures glimpsed moving around behind the makeshift curtains. Then the sound of an unmistakable female scream, high-pitched and distressed.
‘We should go in,’ Rachel said, her hand on the car door.
‘Don’t be an idiot, Prince; we don’t know who’s in there or if they’re armed. I’m calling for a PSU.’
Three minutes later an armed response vehicle roared into the street and four officers in full tactical gear jumped out, the letters NCA in large letters across the back of their jackets. Rachel and Brickall stood in the doorway as the door was broken down.
‘Armed police!’
They emerged a few minutes later with Obatola and two men in handcuffs. ‘There are five girls up there, three of them chained to the walls,’ one of the officers told them. ‘We’re going to need more backup.’
Rachel and Brickall ran into the building and up the stairs. Two terrified girls crouched on the floor of one room, the door of which had been broken down by the armed officers. The other three were in a larger room, their wrists chained to a metal rings on the wall. A bucket in each room acted as a makeshift toilet.
Rachel crouched down next to one of the girls. ‘My name’s Rachel? What’s yours?’
No response.
‘Do you speak English?’
They stared at her dumbly.
‘It’s okay,’ Rachel told them gently. ‘She pointed to the chains and mimicked a cutting action. ‘Someone’s coming to take this off. You’ll be okay now.’
* * *
An hour later, after the Nigerian girls had been taken to hospital and Obatola and her associates had been remanded in the cells in Wood Lane police station, Rachel was at home, under a hot shower. She stood there for a long time, trying to unknot her stiff joints and aching muscles. Nearly twelve hours sitting still in the front of a mid-sized saloon car would do that to you. She thought about going for a run through the deserted Bermondsey streets – along the Thames Path perhaps, but decided she was simply too tired.
And finally, there it was. A watched phone never rings was the adage, and the moment sheer exhaustion prevented her checking, there was an email from Rob. She made herself a cup of tea and climbed into bed with her laptop to read it.
* * *
From: Robert J. McConnell
To: Rachel Prince
Miss Tenacity,
Sorry not to have gotten back to you sooner: I’ve been waiting on various pieces of information to come in, and I figured feeding it to you piecemeal would get kind of annoying.
So, here goes…
First, the DNA evidence from the dress, shoes and the lipstick. The dress gave two different samples of female DNA. (You mentioned that someone else could have worn it before or after our mystery girl.) Only ONE of those samples matches material found on both the lipstick and the shoes, which narrows it down neatly to one suspect. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this DNA sample was not a match for anything held on any criminal databases here in the USA. I cross-matched it with every agency available. So we’re not looking for someone with a long rap sheet. Or any rap sheet.
We received images from the security cameras at Valley Plaza mall from 21–23 February. There is indeed a female wearing a Padres baseball cap but her face is mostly obscured by the peak of the cap and large sunglasses, so we don’t really know anything other than that this person purporting to be Ms Stiles is young and with slim build. I’ve attached a copy of the images.
The images of Tiffany Kovak’s Toyota SUV are similar – there appears to be a young, long-haired female at the wheel but she’s wearing sunglasses and the face shots are blurry. As you know, photos of a driver at the wheel are rarely distinct enough to stand up in court.
Last, there’s the match with the CasaMia profile picture used by both ‘Heather Kennedy’ and ‘Stacey Gunnarson’. This was identified by your co-worker at LAPD as belonging to Jennifer Van der Wieke, from the photo on a driver’s licence issued by the state of Pennsylvania. I arranged for Van der Wieke to be questioned but she claims that the photo was lifted from her Facebook account. Her story and backgrou
nd check out, and there is no discernible link with Tiffany Kovak or Phoebe Stiles. It seems to be a straightforward case of cyber catfishing.
Rachel already knew this much. Jennifer Van der Wieke had been named by Perez in his final debrief email. Once she had arrived home, she had googled Van der Wieke and trawled doggedly through the girl’s entire social media footprint, but this seemed to be no more than a pretty young blonde girl whose pouting selfie suited the suspect’s purposes. A face that fitted. And a girl who was away travelling in Europe for three months.
She admitted that she favoured lipstick in a shade similar to the one we tested, and readily provided a DNA sample, which was not a match. So that bit seems to be a case of life imitating art. (Or maybe it’s the other way around).
Of course it did occur that Van der Wieke herself could be a target, in addition to her image having been targeted, so her local police department have been informed and she’s been advised on extra security in her home. She does not currently list her home on CasaMia and has never done so.
That’s about all I have for now. Catch you later, Rob.
Rachel wanted to re-read the information and absorb it before replying, but was painfully aware that tomorrow would be a long, fractious day of dealing with Social Services and interpreters.
From: Rachel Prince
To: Robert J. McConnell
Rob, thanks for this – I’m very grateful for all your efforts. Please do contact me if you find out more. Rachel x
She deleted the kiss, then reinstated it. As she was about to close her laptop, it pinged at her. The alert she had set up for mentions of Phoebe Stiles had been updated with a fresh result.
It was an article from the Daily Mirror.
TRAGIC PHOEBE’S DARK SIDE
A former classmate of tragically murdered actress turned reality star Phoebe Stiles, Lauren Mitchell, 25, has revealed that she has a mean girl past. ‘Phoebe was a proper bully at school,’ she told the Mirror. She thought she was popular, but people didn’t like her, they were scared of her.
Some details about Phoebe’s death followed, including the fact that her boyfriend had been charged. There was a paparazzi shot of Phoebe in her spray-tanned glory next to a picture of Lauren with arms folded and an indignant expression on her face. She was a plain girl with stringy hair, hoop earrings and a jailhouse tattoo on her upper arm. A meagre anecdote about Phoebe cutting off someone’s ponytail and laughing about it was then padded to take up 200 words.
Rachel reached for her notebook and wrote ‘Lauren Mitchell?’ before switching off the light and falling instantly asleep.
Chapter Twenty
So much for the smooth check-in process. This time it doesn’t exactly go to plan.
It has to be the swift, clean blow from behind. I don’t want to look them in the eyes, see their reaction. That’s not the point. I just want them gone, out of the way, so I can feel what it’s like to be them. It also needs to be executed with something that belongs in that place; an object that’s suitably blunt and heavy. And since I’m no bigger or stronger than they are – how could I be, right? – I have to rely on the element of surprise.
Only this time, as she opens the door, she says: ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve literally only got a couple of seconds and then I’ve got to run.’ She has her purse and her keys in her hand, her suitcase at her feet to show she means this. ‘The instruction book is in the living room, along with a set of keys and the contact details for my boyfriend.’
I spot a heavy brass jardinière on the hall stand, and I pick it up as though admiring it.
‘Oh, careful with that; my gramma gave it to me. It’s kind of precious.’ To make her point she wrests it out of my hand and puts it on a high shelf in the kitchen, out of reach. ‘All righty then, I really hope you enjoy your stay.’ She moves past me to the door.
I am now behind her and I take the only course of action available to me. I remove my fabric scarf and lasso her with it, looping it tight round her neck and twisting the ends around my hands. She’s strong and somehow turns so she’s facing me. I can see the panic in her reddening face, the slight bulge in her eyeballs. No, no, no, I’m screaming in my head, this is all wrong. What if she manages to get free?
I slide my hands down the scarf so that they’re closer to her neck as I tighten it, but the flimsy fabric isn’t giving me enough traction. In a split-second decision, I let go of the scarf and put my hands directly round the throat, feeling for the hyoid bone. Crushing it. It takes what feels like a very long time, but then it’s done. I can let her fall.
Her face is an ugly purple, which is really not what I wanted. I like them to be tidy, to look as though they’re just sleeping. She’d dropped the purse, but her fingers still cling onto the car keys. I put on latex gloves before prising them away and tossing them on the hall stand. Then I consult the instruction manual. ‘Clean linen supplies are in the closet in the bathroom.’ I find a sheet and cover her with it. Disposal can wait; for now I want to explore.
Her closet is organised in a rather prissy fashion by garment length and colour, but she has good taste, and there are lots of things I want to try on. Not too many though, because everything will need to be cleaned. At the end of the dress section there is a plastic garment bag containing an almond-green prom dress. It’s long and elegant with thin shoulder straps and a small train. On the shelf above the rails there are some hats, including a glittery beauty queen’s crown. Of course she would have been prom queen. I put on the dress and crown, removing the latex gloves long enough to admire my reflection in the closet’s full-length mirror.
In the bathroom, I pick through the well-organised trays and baskets of make-up. I add some blush, try a lipstick (taking care to set it aside to dispose of later), spray some of her perfume. It’s a cloying, sickly scent; the kind that’s packaged in a flower-shaped bottle and marketed to sixteen-year-old girls.
In the living room there’s a handwritten note with the cell phone number of her boyfriend. Clayton Hill. It sounds like a place. There are framed photos on the shelf of the storage unit showing her in the arms of a muscular young man. He was almost certainly prom king. A jock. He looks a bit of a brute, but he’s a handsome brute.
‘Anything, you need,’ the note says, ‘just call Clayton!!’ I remove the new phone from its packaging and add his number to Contacts.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Nigerian girls made a heart-wrenching sight. They were huddled in one corner of the room that had been allocated to them at a north London women’s refuge, like a flock of bedraggled birds. Flightless birds. They stayed closed to the wall, as though still chained.
After checking on them, Rachel went to speak to the refuge manager. It had been agreed that they would be interviewed there, rather than being taken to a police station, which could traumatise and frighten them.
‘How are they doing?’ Rachel asked the manager, a kindly but rather brisk woman in her fifties.
‘Well,’ she shrugged slightly. ‘Obviously you’ve just seen for yourself: they’re not great. But they have eaten and drunk a little.’
‘Okay, that’s something.’
‘There is a problem though,’ the manager went on. ‘The interpreter that was sent speaks Hausa. That’s the most prevalent Nigerian language apparently. But he said that these girls are Igbo speakers.’
Rachel sighed. ‘I’ll have to make some phone calls – I expect I can find an Igbo interpreter; the question is how long that’s going to take. We need to start the interviews as soon as possible.’
‘The Hausa interpreter knew some basic Igbo; enough to get their names and ages. Although you’ll have to get Social Services to do a Merton age assessment to check they’re telling the truth.’ She handed Rachel a piece of paper. One thirteen year old, two fourteen year olds, a sixteen year old and an eighteen year old. Thirteen. Christ.
Brickall was already on his way to the refuge, but Rachel phoned the Crime Support Unit and after a game of te
lephonic pass-the-parcel, spoke to someone who had two Igbo interpreters on their books. Both interpreters would be with them in around an hour.
Brickall arrived, accompanied by a video operator. He was in a bad mood, which usually indicated a hangover. When Rachel told him they were waiting for the correct language speaker, he swore colourfully.
‘We can get the interview room set up in the meantime,’ Rachel told him.
‘But this is going to take forever as it is; we don’t need delays on top. Not with the bloody headache I’ve got.’
Rachel reached into her bag and handed him paracetamol tablets. ‘Tell you what; we’ve got two interpreters, why don’t we request a second video operator and then we can do two sets of interviews simultaneously.’
‘Fine,’ said Brickall gruffly. ‘You phone them while I’m finding a coffee.’
* * *
The interviews were laborious. Rachel started with the youngest girl, Ifeoma, who was so pathologically fearful that she would not even raise her head at first, let alone speak. It did not help matters that the interpreter was male, but Rachel thought it was more important for Brickall to use the female interpreter to temper his very masculine aura. Piece by halting piece, she and the interpreter coaxed her story out of her.
Someone had come to Ifeoma’s village, spoken to her father, promising that she could go to London and study English, then get a well-paid job. She was not asked if she wanted to go. Did she want to, Rachel asked via the interpreter? No, she did not. She wanted to stay at home with her parents and her brothers and her grandmother. She had cried when they told her about it.
Then one night she was woken and put in the back of a large van. It drove through the darkness for many hours. A lady was with her who said she was called Auntie Florence, but she was not a real aunt. They went to a huge building with many aeroplanes and she was taken onto the plane with Auntie Florence and another girl called Essie. When the plane reached England they were not taken to a school or college, they were taken to a house. She kept asking why they were there, until Auntie Florence beat her. So then she shut up. She and the four others were kept chained to the wall most of the time, but sometimes they would be freed long enough to clean themselves up and be taken to another house, where strange men would do terrible things to her.