It Was You

by It Was You (retail) (epub)

  I told Sharon that I wasn’t going to be able to come back to her flat with her, that I had to go straight to Calshot Street. She nodded, said she understood. Sharon still looked shell-shocked but I wasn’t surprised by how calmly she was taking this. She was thinking about me, about Mike, not wanting her own feelings to confuse things, to get in our way. As a barrister, working in the most challenging field, she’d made a living out of keeping her feelings to one side. I told myself not to be fooled, though, not to ignore her just because she looked like she was coping. Right then I saw a flicker of doubt rather than fear in her eyes, and it was directed towards me. I tried to reassure her.

  ‘I’m sorry but it’s best,’ I said. ‘Go home. I’ll call you from the station, OK?’

  ‘And you’ll come round, though, after?’

  ‘I’ll try. I will, but I don’t know how late I’ll be.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just come.’

  ‘Sharon, you have to understand what’s happening here. All these women are dead because they were pregnant and connected to me, or at least someone thought they were. And so…’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ’but I need to be with you. Can’t you see that? No one knows about this except me, you and the doctor at the British embassy in Islamabad. And he won’t tell. I don’t look pregnant either except in my pants and then only a bit and I’m not going to walk round in my pants, am I? So, you’ll come round? I need you at the moment.’

  ’And I need you. But you understand? The graffiti outside my house. They know where I live.’

  ‘Just come round,’ Sharon said again.

  I took Sharon’s hand again and said that I would come. Once again I thought about how this could have played itself out. I’d hoped we’d just fling ourselves into each other’s arms and live happily ever after but I’d been prepared for a strangeness, a need to adjust. Nothing like any of this. And I had so many questions to ask her, about Afghanistan, Pakistan, her work, none of which seemed even slightly relevant now. Instead I returned to my own thoughts, trying to keep a lid on the waves of panic that rose and fell within me. Jo’s mother flashed into my mind, asking me if I’d killed her daughter. Then Denise came in. I’d never even met her. Her husband had asked me to find her. I’d looked for her and for some reason that was why she was dead. What could I possibly say to him?

  We were in that long gap between Turnham Green and Hammersmith, the carriage swaying from side to side like a battleship. A gang of fifteen-year-old lads had piled on, hormones spilling out of them like drool from a bulldog’s mouth. They were gangly, loud, intimidating, stripping away the muted calm of the carriage like a swarm of locusts. The other passengers shrank back in their seats, an old lady visibly afraid, wincing at the vocab. The only white kid was trying to pick up a pair of girls opposite. Another lad, wearing a yellow bandanna, was swinging on the straps, flipping himself over backwards.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, after he’d righted himself one more time. ‘What did the pregnant bird say to the man who was strangling her?’

  The white kid turned. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Cut it out!’

  They all howled.

  ‘My sister’s knocked up,’ another one said. ‘I keep telling her the cutty man’s going to get her. She won’t even go out the house. I say he’s watching, that she’s like a loaf of bread and when she’s baked enough he’s going to get the knife to her. She cries and everything, you should see her.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it if he did get her, though, man.’

  ‘Yeah! Thing’s only like gonna cry all night innit, keep me awake? Serve her right for being a slag.’

  ‘Your sister’s a slag?’

  ‘Yeah, man.’

  ‘When we coming round?’

  ‘She pregnant, man, that’s sick.’

  ‘That’s best, means I won’t have to worry. Tell you one thing, though. Cutty man should come round my estate, plenty of pregnant birds for him there. You think it’s the fellas, they payin’ him? Cheaper than child support innit?’

  They all laughed again.

  ‘We better shut up guys,’ the gymnast said. ‘That man don’t look happy. Think we offended him. Tell you what, though, it’s a free country and I’ll say what I like. Less he’s got a problem with that, which case he knows what to do.’

  All five kids were looking at me. I hadn’t been aware that there was any sort of expression on my face. It made me feel old. Sharon’s hand pressed down on my arm.

  ‘They’re just kids. Please, Billy.’

  The kid in the bandanna was looking at me with lazy, insolent eyes, his long legs stretching out across the carriage. I saw him in class, dealing out that look, knowing the teacher couldn’t touch him.

  ‘Billy. Stay with me. OK?’

  ‘Looks like his bitch has saved him a kicking. Lucky fella. Hey, darling, what you doing with that loser for, hey? Pretty girl like you might stand a chance with me.’

  Sharon’s grip on my arm grew tighter. It stayed there until the kids got off at Piccadilly Circus, the gymnast flipping me a lazy finger as he stepped down onto the platform, another tossing a half-empty can of Dr Pepper back into the carriage, the contents glugging out over the floor.

  ‘The cutty man,’ Sharon said, when the doors had closed. ‘Nice.’

  We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The incident room was flat out when I got there. It was jamming with the sound of phones ringing, printers running and detectives shouting to be heard above the racket. The new equipment had been installed and the room was full, junior detectives sharing phones and desks. Andy led me through to his workspace, which was right in the middle of the mayhem, partitioned on three sides.

  It was two hours since Andy had called me at the airport and he was apoplectic at the delay, that I’d left him hanging. He himself had just got back from Exmouth Market, where he’d been talking to Max about the graffiti his cafe had been daubed with. Forensics were still there. I tried to stay calm. I tried not to give way to the cold sickness sitting inside me that still made me want to vomit. Andy pushed a seat towards me and I sat next to him, a rash of Post-its saluting from his desktop, fag burns already lining the edges like dead fingernails. Andy was brisk, decisive, his eyes alive, the sluggish aura that usually surrounded him gone. This was a break. Someone had been linked to all three killings. The random element that made catching serial killers such a problem was removed. Andy made no reference to what I might be feeling about it, but though I was pissed off at that I tried to match him. To stay cool, to realize that he was right, that having something to go on meant that we had a greater chance of preventing any more deaths. But when I thought of Sharon it all dissolved.

  Andy pointed out a few of the key people to me, told me what they were doing, and then turned me towards the board. A picture of Ally smiled out at me and I looked away. Next to it was a shot of Josephine Thomas. I handed Andy a copy of the shot of Denise Denton that her husband had given me and he stuck it up there too. I looked at the girl with the spiky black hair and shook my head. Jared hadn’t told me she was pregnant. Maybe he hadn’t known. That was probably why she’d left him.

  I felt helpless, confused, my mind churning with all that had been shoved into it. I kept reaching out in every direction for some kind of meaning. Raising his voice against the racket surrounding us, Andy immediately told me to think back.

  ‘Some old case, someone with a reason to come back at you like this. You must have some ideas.’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘You think. In case you’ve forgotten, you were on most of my cases. So which of the fucks we sent down would want to do this? None of them? All of them? I don’t know. Practically nine out of ten promised to come back at us but you used to laugh, you used to say it was bollocks, something to impress the missus. None of them ever did anything.’

  ‘Until now.’

  ‘OK. But how am I supposed to know who it is any more than you are? What do
you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brains and I’m nowhere. I could understand either of us getting a bullet in the kneecap one dark night, but this? This is specific, particular, and I can’t think of anything.’

  I took a few deep breaths and relaxed my arms. I wasn’t proud of my eagerness to pull Andy into it. Maybe it was about him too, but if it was, why had the killer only gone after women I knew? Not even knew, had some sort of connection with. I still couldn’t believe someone had done what they had to Denise just because I’d passed her picture round. I asked if Denise’s identity was a hundred per cent and Andy told me that it was. I nodded but then shook my head and then I had another thought. When Andy and I had worked together he’d pushed the envelope far further than I ever had. If this was about something he’d done without telling me, I’d kill him for it. I would. Andy flipped a page of his daybook.

  ’Listen. If you haven’t got any definite ideas, we’ll leave it, we’ll go over who the bastard might be in a minute. In the meantime, I need to ask you. Do you know any other pregnant women?’

  I hesitated. I had to decide. Instinctively, I knew. I couldn’t trust Andy. Sharon was right: it was still a secret. The fewer people who knew the better.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because, if you do, they are in serious danger.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Good. But what about women you might have just spoken to, not friends as such but in your local pub? The bookie you use, stuff like that. Bumped into. Anyone.’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d better send a squad out to check. Places near my flat, near the Lindauer.’

  ‘OK. Let’s start with them. Whoever’s doing this needs only the slightest connection. That Denise girl, you weren’t shtuping her or anything?’

  ‘I told you. I never even met her.’

  ‘Right,’ Andy said. ‘Let’s concentrate, OK? Women you might have any sort of link with.’

  ‘And women you know, too.’

  ‘Of course,’ Andy said. ‘Them as well.’

  When I’d run out of places where I hung out, where I’d been in the last few months, Andy wrote his own list. He handed both to a DC and told him to get some uniforms out. I then gave Andy a detailed rundown of my hour spent in Brixton, finishing with the skeletal hooker I’d tussled with. We agreed that the killer must have followed me, must have picked up Denise there. I hadn’t handed out pictures of her anywhere else. I gave a description of the girl who’d tried to knife me and he took it down, nodding like what I was telling him was his favourite tune. I could see the connections knitting together inside Andy and I felt them too, but it didn’t stop me feeling that my whole life had fallen apart.

  After I’d told Andy what I could about the apparition I’d seen on the street corner that afternoon, he made me go through it again with a police artist, sitting next to him at his Mac. I rejoined Andy and told him that, as well as the hooker, a woman in the traffic had seen me too. She’d given me the evil eye. She might have noticed something. Andy asked me if I’d pegged anyone following me but I said I hadn’t. I’d been in my own little world, preoccupied with thoughts of Sharon and how wonderful my life was going to be.

  Andy and I hit it back and forth for another exhausting, frustrating hour. It was more French Open than Wimbledon, each point taking a hell of a long time to get made. Apart from finding the girl, the other route in was CCTV from the Lindauer. I needed to go through it for the last six months. See if anyone stood out. I wanted to get to that straight away but Andy said that all the clear facial images from it were being isolated by a team of officers. It would be far quicker for me to go through the stills than sit through hours of tape, my finger on the pause button. It was frustrating but he was right, six months was a hell of a long time. Andy said he’d have most of them for me by tomorrow lunchtime at the latest.

  When we came to a natural pause Andy asked a DC to get us some coffee and we didn’t speak for a while, letting our thoughts sink to the bottom of our minds to see what we were left with. The rest of the room still hummed. This was what you prayed for on the Met. This was what got you through the interviews with teenage car thieves, helped you take the abuse as you led single mothers out of Tesco for slipping jars of baby food into their bags. I breathed in the activity, the concentration, also noticing how I was being eyed up furtively, a room full of detectives all wondering what the hell I’d done to bring this on. Rucker. One of us, wasn’t he? Left when his brother got put in a coma. Couldn’t hack it after that. Tell you what, I’m glad I’m not him. Someone slicing up women he knows, some twat those two put away on a plant, something dodgy? I bet he hopes we catch the fucker pretty quick. He won’t get laid again until we do, will he? Birds’ll run a bleeding mile from him.

  When the coffee came Andy took a sip and then ran his fingernails hard across his scalp. He told me that he’d ordered copies of the files on every case we’d ever worked. Some had already come up and we started to go through them, looking for any sign of someone whose grudge against me might have taken this particular form. It took us another two and a half hours and we couldn’t find anything, though Andy did order a couple of cross references, wanting to know release dates, things like that. He said that he was going to give the rest of the files to his team to look at.

  ‘What about the profiler?’ I asked. ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘On the M4 by now, I should think.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Heading back to Oxford. He wanted his own office and secretary, and five detectives to chase up his leads. Watches too much Channel 5, I think. Condor sent him packing.’

  ‘Psychiatrists?’

  ‘We’re putting the word out, hoping that any quack treating a nutcase who’s expressed a desire to cut up pregnant women will call us on the QT. I think it’s a dead end, though. If our boy was going to seek help, I just don’t see him doing this, do you?’

  Flipping the last file closed, Andy put a foot up on his desk and I sat back in my chair. We were finished. We couldn’t do any more. Andy folded his arms and yawned.

  ‘New bird then?’ he said.

  I hesitated. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You. New bird? Well? Have you got a new girlfriend?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You were at the airport when I called. I could tell. You weren’t going anywhere so I assume you were meeting someone.’

  I could have thought of any number of reasons to be there but Andy had thrown me. When he saw me hesitate he smiled and went on.

  ‘You don’t meet people at the airport unless you’re shafting them. And then only if it’s a recent acquisition you want to hang on to. So, Watson, I surmise there’s a woman involved.’

  ‘You should be a detective.’

  ‘I know. Instead of someone who sits at a desk filling forms in.’

  ‘That hasn’t changed then?’

  ‘It’s got worse.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed that was possible.’

  ‘Believe it.’ Andy yawned again, wider this time. Then he laughed. ‘So?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The airport. Who were you meeting?’

  ‘Just an old friend.’

  ‘Why didn’t you get back to me then? Old friend would have understood, something as big as this.’

  ‘I needed to think. I was freaked out. Anyway, am I done?’

  ‘It’s OK, Billy, you don’t have to tell me. Scared I’ll steal her away, I know. But, yes, you’re done for now. Just don’t go far. And keep your eyes open. You’re at the centre of this. This nutter has killed women only so far but that’s not to say he won’t want to get to you. We’ve put a van outside your flat but Clay says you can have a safe house if you want one. How about it?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Good. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the perp decided to knock on your door, would it? Just be very careful, as I say.’

  ‘They armed? In the van?’

 
‘Tooled like Tarantino. He comes, they’ll get him.’

  ‘And you’ve given them a photo, right? So they don’t just open up on me when I get home?’

  ‘No need,’ Andy laughed. ‘Carpenter said he remembered you well enough. He’s on the first shift with three others, poor bastards. Imagine being cooped up twelve hours straight with that smelly twat.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I left Andy in the incident room and walked through the station to the main entrance. Outside the sun was holding on by its fingertips to the rooftops of King’s Cross, as if a giant beast was trying to drag it down into the bowels of the capital. I took a deep breath, squinting into the sinking orange slice, and tried to focus. When the sun was gone I waited, listening, almost expecting to hear it scream.

  One thing at a time. It was the only way through this. Sharon came first. She’d be at home, in her flat in Hackney. She’d bought it last year and had thought about letting it while she was abroad. I was glad she hadn’t. She’d be safe there. We hadn’t been followed. No way. Also, no one knew she was coming home because it had all been last minute, not her friends or anyone, so how could the person doing this know? A small measure of calm spread through me. I called her but only got a message, so I figured she was asleep. At least, I hoped she was. After the elation of seeing me had gone she’d looked tired. I shook my head, thinking how hard it must have been for her. Her job was demanding enough, but then finding out she was pregnant. Thinking about it, wondering what to do. As much as I’d been scared that she wouldn’t want me, how much worse would it have been for her? And then she’d come back to this.