It Was You

by It Was You (retail) (epub)

  I tried Mike’s mobile again but didn’t get anything. I started the car and backed up, thinking where he might have gone. If it was me I wouldn’t have cared, I’d have just walked around, collapsed on a park bench somewhere. I figured that Mike would be completely thrown, to be suddenly out in the world that used to contain Ally and didn’t any more. I drove round for half an hour, stopping to peer into Coram’s Fields, where you can only go if you have a child with you. I drove round Mecklenburg Square, past the American college, and then along Lamb’s Conduit Street and the cafe Mike went to, the one with the Portugese pudim cakes that Ally liked. I couldn’t see him. It was a useless task, really. I thought about going home, waiting for him to call back, but I wanted to find him. I wanted him to know I’d tried to find him and that I hadn’t stopped until I had.

  I considered trying the Lindauer but the Sanctuary would be sealed and surely it was the last place he’d want to go anyway. I tried him at home again but just got his machine. After asking myself if I’d pick the phone up if I was in his place, I drove down there, to Borough, just the other side of London Bridge. Mike and Ally’s flat is on an estate much like Josephine Thomas’s: red-brick public housing turned private. Theirs was built in the Thirties, however, and so sports curved art deco balconies and glass bricks around the entrance door. When I first went to visit them the area hummed with old south London villainy. Today I was met by a plummy estate agent showing a young couple out, using the words ‘sought’ and ‘after’ as though he’d only that second thought of putting them in a sentence together.

  I leaned on the bell for five minutes and then walked up the stairs and peered through the letter box. Mike wasn’t there. Back in the Mazda I sat, wondering where to try next. Several places suggested themselves but I knocked them all down until I was left with only one. I nodded. I’d been kidding myself before. The Lindauer Building was the most obvious place to look. I’d just wanted to avoid it, that was all. The Lindauer had been at the centre of my mind ever since I’d seen Ally’s body. I’d tried to turn away from it, telling myself there was nothing I could do there. I’d gone round and round it, tied to the place with a piece of string that had got shorter and shorter until it had run right out.

  When I pulled in towards the barrier I was glad that it wasn’t Ron I saw in the booth, setting aside a copy of the Sun to reach for the lever. It was someone I didn’t recognize, a younger man. I didn’t want to see Ron. I didn’t blame him for what had happened: anyone is allowed in the Lindauer Building and CCTV seemed to show that Ron hadn’t missed anyone anyway. But the image of him, fast asleep, was still strong. He’d probably been asleep when Ally was being murdered. Had the cafe window been open? I couldn’t remember. Had she screamed, and if she had, would Ron have heard her if he’d been awake? Would he have been able to get to her in time? I didn’t know. I just didn’t want to look at him and I was glad I didn’t have to.

  I parked in my usual spot and locked up. The building in front of me looked impassive, taciturn, as if it knew the reason two or perhaps three women with connections to it had died. As if the answer was written in the bricks, the mortar, under the roof tiles. I walked across the car park. In the lift it all came back and then down the corridor. All the time I stared straight ahead, walking through the pictures and images that were jumping out on me with every step I took. I walked past the cafe, hardly even looking at the closed door crossed with tape, and then stopped outside my office.

  I stood for a second, listening. I couldn’t hear anything. I’d half expected Mike to have let himself into my office with the spare key he keeps but the place was empty except for another small hill of mail. I picked it up but there was nothing in it apart from a Visa bill and two application forms from newly opened fitness centres. It seemed to me that I was getting one of these a week now, at least. How many fitness centres did London need? Surely there had to be a limit to the world’s already depleted supply of Lycra. I dumped them in the bin on top of the last pile and shut the door. I was disappointed not to see Mike but relieved too. I walked round my desk. Sunlight was gushing through the wooden slats of my blinds. I thought I’d left them closed but I couldn’t have. Before I could get to the window to turn them the light dimmed on its own, as though someone had killed a switch. I pulled the blind up to see that the sun had made its last appearance that day, ranks of grey-bottomed cloud were marching in from the east.

  The last time I’d looked out of the window I’d then gone down to the cafe and joked about football with Ally and Mike. I would never do that again. I saw the smile Ally had given Mike, her hand curling under her belly. The irony not quite strong enough to hide the genuine love. I blinked it away. Instead I stared through the stark branches of the oak tree at a bird scurrying off through the bare branches. I hadn’t pulled the blinds carefully, not like I usually did. The bird was about as big as a thrush, but the wrong colour. The shrike, the rare bird that had visited me last year? I didn’t know. I thought so but it was too far away, gliding down to sit on the fence of one of the gardens backing onto the building.

  Out of habit I kept my eye on the bird and reached into my desk drawer for my binoculars. I lifted them to my face but as soon as I’d got them to my eyes I stopped. I discarded the bird. I moved the glasses instead to a man, standing in the garden beyond the fence the bird had perched on. I rolled my finger over the focus wheel until he was clear. Yes. As I thought, the man had something in his hand. He was standing at the side of his house, looking at the door that led out of the garden to the front, to the street. The man dropped whatever it was that he’d found before walking towards his back door and disappearing inside. I frowned. I refocused and studied the fence, a good five feet lower than the ones bordering the gardens on either side of it.

  Ten seconds later I was running back down the hall.

  ‘You were quick.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Quick. I only just called. Five minutes ago. Just passing, were you? Anyway, come round this way. You can see the damage. Nothing taken as far as I can tell, they probably got frightened off. You fancy a cup of tea? I’ll get the wife to put the kettle on.’

  He was in his fifties, small, with a deep, winter tan. He’d opened the front door of his house on Aberdeen Park, the road the Lindauer Building backs onto. His name was Stephen Sprake and he’d just got back from Tenerife, barely an hour ago he said, to find a note from the police asking him to give them a call. He’d assumed it was about the door to his back garden, which had been forced in his absence.

  ‘Though how you lot knew about it I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Only noticed myself when I tried to open it. The door was still shut but there was no lock in it. They just unscrewed the whole thing, you can see. Found the lock on the other side of the door.’

  ‘You touched it, right?’

  ‘Yes, how do you know that? Police instinct, I suppose. Anyway, why shouldn’t I have? You’re not going to fingerprint it, are you? I didn’t think you’d bother for just a break-in, especially when they didn’t even get into the house. Thought you’d just give me a note for the insurance. I’m impressed, I have to say.’

  When I told Mr Sprake the reason the police would be fingerprinting the lock that had been removed from his garden door, as well as everything else on the outside of his house, his two-week tan faded in less than a second. He told me that he’d seen the story in the Standard, on his way back from Gatwick, but hadn’t thought that it had happened next door to him. His mention of the paper pulled me up. I hadn’t seen one since Saturday, even though I knew they’d all have run something. I hadn’t been able to face it. I didn’t want to think about what they might have written. Mr Sprake asked me if what the paper was saying was true. I said I didn’t know. I used my phone to call the station and then followed Mr Sprake into his garden, looking up at the Lindauer over his shoulder.

  At the bottom of the thin green swathe my eyes rested on a compost heap piled up against a brown slatted fence. The fence was
topped by three rows of barbed wire, not enough to cause much of a problem to anyone who was determined. Especially going that way: the wire was slanted backwards, Mr Sprake had been far more worried about people trying to get into his garden than out of it.

  ‘You haven’t touched anything else, anything down here?’

  ‘Only been back an hour. Grass needs raking but I guess it’ll have to wait, won’t it?’ I nodded. ‘You reckon they got over here then? And killed the woman in the building?’

  ‘Got in the back door, to avoid the cameras.’ I was talking to myself as much as to Mr Sprake. ‘Must have come back this way too. Might even have used that, pulled it over with them.’ I pointed at an old wooden ladder lying against the bottom of the fence. ‘That must be why they didn’t just jemmy your garden door open, why they took the lock out. Someone might have noticed if they’d just busted it, called the police while they were still in the building. They’d have been caught coming out.’

  ‘Sounds well planned. So who was she, this girl? The victim?’

  ‘She worked in the building.’

  ‘Tragic,’ Mr Sprake said, ‘just awful. I hope they catch the bugger. What’s the motive? Why would someone do something like that? To a pregnant lady?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘How are you involved then? If you’re not a policeman?’

  ‘I used to be one. Some old colleagues are on the case. I work in the building there.’

  ‘So you must have known her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. Knew her well, did you?’

  ‘That tea, Mr Sprake. If you really were offering.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Shall I get Norma to make a pot, with the police coming?’

  ‘I’m sure they’d appreciate that,’ I said.

  As Mr Sprake made his way inside, I looked up towards my office window. I could see the outline of a bird sitting on a branch right outside, and thought I caught a flash of white. The bird wasn’t round enough to be a pigeon. A little small for a magpie or a jay. Had the shrike flown back up there? I strained to hear its song above the traffic but almost immediately it was lost among the sirens cutting through the streets towards me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  While the police were combing the garden I waited in the kitchen, drinking tea, watching them through the window. The Standard lay folded in front of me and it didn’t take long for curiosity to win. I picked it up, opened it out and saw that the front page was split in two. The left side showed a brightly coloured picture of Ally, from two or three years ago, her smile leaping right off the page. Next to her was Mike, but he wasn’t smiling. His head was bowed, his hands cuffed. If you’ve ever wondered why photographers chase after prison vans on the news, jumping up at the seemingly impenetrable black windows with their boosted flashes, this is why. One in ten gets lucky. Mike was a grey thing, turning away from the flash a fraction too late. As is the case with all these pictures, his face had stone-cold guilty written all over it. In case you didn’t get it, though, the banner made it perfectly clear.

  DID THIS MAN MURDER HIS PREGNANT WIFE?

  When Clay had got everything going outside to his satisfaction, he came in and thanked me. I took his thanks but I knew the police would have found out about the lock soon enough. They had in fact already checked the garden for clues, going in from next door after being told the owner was away. They’d found nothing, no footprints or torn remnants of clothing, and didn’t expect to now. The mystery was explained, though. The killer had come in the back to avoid both Ron and the cameras. The last thing tying Mike to the murder was brushed away.

  Clay told me what he thought it all meant, and I nodded. The killer must have deliberately entered the building for the commission of the crime. He hadn’t seen Ally and just decided to kill her on the spur of the moment, waiting until he was alone in the cafe with her. He’d been watching her, watching her and the building too. He’d known that the building was quiet on a Saturday. He’d staked it out, first latching on to Josephine Thomas. Then Ally’s pregnancy drew her to him. That time, he’d been right.

  Clay insisted that the killer must have been inside the Lindauer Building prior to the murder, and I agreed. He can’t have just watched Ally going in or coming out. That would have been enough for Josephine, who he had followed home, but not Ally. How would he have known where to find her once he was inside if he hadn’t been inside himself? It was a break. He must have been caught on film. He must have gone in during the day, during working hours. How long ago? I didn’t have a clue, I just hoped they didn’t wipe their tapes. While Clay told an officer to get round to the security booth straight away I had a thought that sickened me. He’d been in the cafe. He must have been. Ally had probably made him a coffee. A sandwich even, passing the plate to him, her eyes smiling at him. And he’d killed her.

  She’d smiled and called out goodbye and he’d come back and killed her.

  Clay saw the look on my face. As he walked me through to the back door, he took my arm.

  ‘Thanks again, Billy,’ he said. As usual, his tiny eyes seemed to say something different from the words coming out of his mouth. ‘You know what, it’s a shame we lost you. I’ve always said that. And I’ve always said, if you ever reconsider. Maybe even put you back with Andy.’

  ‘I’d rather be a fireman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Well, the offer’s there. But what I want to say is, I need this guy.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In court,’ Clay said. ‘For the families. You’ve helped and I’m grateful. We need to find out what link this one in the tunnel had to the Lindauer and I know you’re going to try find out. I won’t tell you not to. I know this is close to you. But you understand me, what I mean about court?’

  ‘You’d better find him then.’

  ‘Before you do? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘You’d just better find him.’

  ‘I’ll go after you for it, Billy. I will, you’d better understand that. Evil fuck or not, I’ll put you away. I want him. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, Billy?’

  I brushed past Clay. His voice jumped after me like a tethered Dobermann as I walked up Aberdeen Park and back round to the Lindauer Building.

  * * *

  I cranked up the Mazda and drove back to Exmouth Market. I’d done everything I could think of to find Mike and now I was going home. Clay had told me that Mike’s mobile had been taken from him and hadn’t been returned. That meant that he hadn’t got my messages but also that he wouldn’t have had my mobile number, which was in his phone. So, obviously, he wouldn’t have been able to call me except at home. He could have left ten messages on my home machine without my knowing it. I cursed myself. It was almost as if something in my mind was trying to trip me up, as if I didn’t really want to find Mike at all.

  Knowing that I would never get a space outside my flat at that time of day, I parked in a delivery bay at the other end of the Market. I walked down the street quickly. If there was a message from Mike, I’d call him. If not, I’d go down to his apartment again and just wait for him to show up. I saw Max talking to the manager of Cafe Kick. He waved at me but I pretended not to see him. I wasn’t going to get sidetracked again. I was determined to get to my answerphone, determined not to let anything else keep me from my flat. I saw Mike when I was three-quarters of the way down the street. He was sitting on one of the tree-covered benches outside Fred’s, next to a bank of payphones. He was staring in the general direction of my street door, but his gaze wasn’t taking anything in. I stopped, then carried on towards him.

  Like blind people can, Mike didn’t look present. The cold and the traffic and the people meant nothing to him. Christ knew what present hell or gone paradise he was visiting. I felt stupid, like a man who tips his flat upside down, only to find his glasses in the case he put them in. Of course. Mike had had two days for reality
to hit him. He wouldn’t have been wandering around in shock. Nor would he have instantly hunted down comfort from a friend or his family. What comfort could he get? I knew what he’d want. Who else would he come to but his friend the investigator? Who else could offer him anything? I swore at myself, wondering how long Mike had been sitting there while I was fucking around.

  Mike looked dishevelled, worse off than the old tramp sitting next to him, the one who screams abuse at you only after you’ve given him a quid. As I walked up, the tramp pushed himself to his feet and stalked off up the Market, the way I’d come. I stood in front of Mike, waiting for him to look at me, not knowing what I was going to say. When he did look at me I didn’t say anything. I just began to cry. I couldn’t help it. Mike had changed. There were no marks on him but he looked grotesque, worse than a fighter announcing his retirement. It was all there, on the skin hanging from his cheekbones, in his eyes, on his lips most of all for some reason. His face was dried up, it was dead. It killed me to look at him and I suddenly realized where I’d seen the look he wore. Too late, too late. Where the hell were you?

  My legs buckled and I couldn’t stand. I reached out and I held Mike, clinging on to him, burying my head in his neck. I desperately wanted him to but he didn’t respond. I couldn’t keep myself from sobbing, my chest almost exploding, trying to connect with him. But Mike was still. Then I felt his hands, gripping the tops of my arms, pushing me away. I gulped for air, hardly able to breathe. I had to get myself together, tell Mike what had happened and what I was going to do for him. He didn’t realize it but I had access to a lot of money and to a lot of people, the kind of people who heard things. I also needed to ask him to think: who had he seen in the cafe in the last weeks? Anyone different or unusual? I wanted to tell him that I was going to sort this for him, the way he’d want it sorted. We’d get to him before Clay did.