“Do your best to describe her. Think back to that moment.”
Kerry closed her eyes, then took Bull’s arm and stood up, dragging him to his feet. “Face me,” she said, “and bend over a bit. There, that’s about right for Wallace.” She stared over Bull’s shoulder. “She was blonde, and she had on a long coat—tan or maybe light green. She was in the shadows, so I couldn’t tell.”
“Is there anything else you recall?”
“There was one other odd thing I noticed about her.” Kerry squinted her eyes in thought.
“What’s that?”
“It was pretty cold that night. I could see my breath. And she was walking funny. Careful, like her feet were hurting. Or like she was barefoot, but…”
“Thanks, Kerry. One last thing. Did you hear any loud noises after you came outside?”
“No. I don’t remember hearing anything like a gun.”
Bull pondered. “Do you think Wallace might have heard something?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything.”
“We’ll want to talk with him to see if he remembers something. How can we contact him?”
After Kerry pencilled Wallace’s name and address in his notebook, Bull took his leave and walked to the street.
The murder house stood fifty yards away, still cordoned with blue and white police tape. A scenario coalesced in Bull’s mind. He imagined that some minutes after the murder, at least three people left the house—the woman and perhaps two men. The woman was scared, possibly panicked. Was she screaming “Coward” because she was being left behind? That might fit with the car roaring away. Given Kerry’s description, was the woman hurt or barefoot? Was she carrying her shoes—an odd thing to do on a cold night—or had she lost them? If so, where? Not in the house, and the uniforms hadn’t seen any during their street search.
Bull pulled out his mobile and dialled Costello. Skipper, I think we may have something to follow up. A witness at the pub says she and her boyfriend heard a woman screaming and saw a black Jag speeding off. Just after that, a woman walked north on Selwood towards Old Brompton Road. The time fits.”
Costello was quick. “So the officers reviewing the CCTV need to be looking for a black Jag in a hurry. I’ll note it. Where will you be?”
“Going to get the CCTV from local shops along Brompton Road. They might have caught either the woman or the Jag. Then, if you don’t have anything else, I’m going to see if I can interview the boyfriend.”
“Good work. Stop back at the nick once you’re done.”
Bull ended the call and decided to trace the possible steps of the unknown woman. If the woman had been left at the scene by the cowardly Jack, then she would have been on her way to somewhere she considered safe—either a nearby residence or a place where she could catch a cab. That meant the hotels on Queen’s Gate and the restaurants along Old Brompton Road.
The day was sunny and mild for early January. Bull unbuttoned his overcoat and started walking north up the concrete pavement. The colonnaded houses scrolled past, almost identical in their cream brick and white marble, differing only by their black-, red-, or green-painted doors and the plants in the pots on their front stoops. Every few yards, a plane tree shaded the walk. At night, the overhanging trees would have shadowed someone keeping close to the houses and their black railings.
As he passed, Kerry waved from the terrace of the pub, where she was serving tea to a grey-haired couple dressed in warm tweeds. Bull raised his hand in acknowledgement, and continued.
A half-block further on, he passed two workmen loading a skip in a white fog of plaster dust. Their shovels rasped the pavement. Paper masks shielded their noses and mouths from the fine powder that ghosted their boots and clothing. Bull remembered the months he’d spent working in the building trade before he joined the Royal Marines, and how his two tours in Afghanistan had altered his professional ambitions. After that experience, he’d seen more rewards in policing than plastering.
He stopped. The crime scene had shown evidence of heavy blowback from the shot striking the victim. The woman’s coat would have been stained, probably quite noticeably, with blood and body matter. She had been wearing the coat as she hurried along past the pub. Kerry hadn’t noticed any blood, so it wasn’t apparent from a distance. But the woman must have worried someone would notice when she reached an exposed, lighted area.
Up to now, no witnesses had come forward with a story about a blood-soaked woman limping along the side of the street, nor had any taxi driver reported a blonde in a bloody overcoat. So she’d either taken it off and folded it to hide the stains, or dumped it somewhere. There was no way to know which she would have done in a panic. The CCTV might confirm whether she had it or not.
Bull gauged the street ahead of him. Old Brompton Road was still a long block and a half away. Houses lined the side where he stood. On the other side, an iron railing and a tall hedge enclosed what looked to be a grassy park. A sign on a gate warned “Private Garden for Use by Residents Only.”
He turned back and flashed his warrant card at the workmen loading the skip. “Did either of you find a coat, a nice one maybe, in your skip?”
The older of the two pulled his paper mask to the side. “When would that have been?”
“Yesterday morning. Were you here then?”
“Yep, but didn’t see nowt like no coat in there.” He looked at his younger mate, who shrugged and shook his head. “Lorry brought this one yesterday morning and carried away t’other.” He readjusted his mask and resumed scraping up the debris.
Eight or nine businesses remained that Bull still needed to contact. He pulled out his mobile and texted Costello to assign uniforms to search the private garden.
TEN
Wednesday afternoon, Mortlake
Fiona looked at the two Aran knit jumpers lying on the bed and wondered why there was never enough room in one suitcase. No hard luggage, she decided. Just the large carpetbag. She stuffed the jumpers into the bag, along with two pairs of jeans, a sports bra, knickers, thick woolly socks, and some warm flannel pyjamas. Her bedroom at Waleham House was eternally cold.
She had remained in bed until she was sure Jonny had left, unwilling to chance an accidental meeting in the kitchen or hallway. There was no sense coolly pretending nothing had happened.
She stood in her bathrobe, cosmetic bag in hand, and considered the image in the mirror. This is what damn near fifty looks like. The array of bottles and potions lined the vanity like a regiment of expensive French commandos, steady and determined, courageously battling the inevitable in a doomed suicide mission. With a sigh she decided she would give them a reprieve this weekend. She would be home, answerable to only Peg and Fritz. She stuffed her cosmetic bag into a drawer just as her mobile sang.
Peg’s deep country voice boomed across the miles. “Fee! I got your message. Of course I would love to see you this weekend, and for as long as you like, dear. It’s your house, after all.”
Fiona held the mobile a few inches from her ear. Peg always bellowed on the phone like she was calling across a pasture, trying to be heard above her pack of baying hounds. She was nearing seventy years old and had spent most of those years outdoors. It was lifelong habit.
“It’s so good to hear you, Peg. I’ve just finished stuffing my bag, and I’ll be off in a few minutes. Do you need anything from town?”
“Just you, dear girl. I took Trooper out yesterday. He still enjoys a good gallop now and then, but not for long, and I’m afraid he and I aren’t much for fences anymore—just low hurdles. I give him a little bute with his feed. Arthritis, you know—the plague of us all—and it makes him so cranky, but he’s always been good for you, so there. I’m glad you’ll be here. Fritz and I always look forward to it.”
“We need to have a talk. I miss you.”
Peg hesitated before replying. “It’s been what—two months? Since the beginning of the school term, I suppose. Will Jonny be with you?”
Fion
a cringed. “He said he would try to join us Saturday. He has some work thing or other going.”
“Mmm. You sound—I don’t know—sad. What’s wrong, pet? You can’t fool your old auntie, and it’s wicked to even try.”
“I’m leaving in about a half hour.” Fiona glanced at her phone. “I’ll be there around five-ish if the M3 isn’t rammed. We can talk then.”
“The kettle will be on, and I’ll lay out your jodhpurs and boots. Fritz gave them a good polish after you left last. They were in such a state after you long-reined Trooper in that muddy paddock. I’ll ask him to look at Andy and Stella’s kit. They may want to ride this weekend.”
“They’re in Italy, luv. A school trip to study Renaissance art. Tell Fritz ta, and I love you, Peg.”
A brief call to the gallery reassured her that Siobhan and Oliver had everything under control. She shook her head. She should sell that bloody albatross. She had lost interest in it months ago.
Her mobile weighed in her hand like a pistol. Call Jacko again? He’d probably let it roll over to voicemail as he had the last four times she had called. No point right now. What more could she add?
Her large detached house was in a tight enclave of similar Italianate homes that overlooked the Thames south bank. She exited through the electronic gate at the end of the narrow access lane and turned west down Mortlake High Street, past the brewery, towards the A316. As usual, construction clogged the highway and reduced progress to a crawl. She tried not to think about the looming Mortlake Crematorium across the carriageway on the right. She needed no more reminders of mortality. Two blokes on the radio yammered about the latest Brexit controversy, so she turned it off. She needed to think.
After a few miles she passed the exit for Kempton Park Race Course. Her father had bet regularly on the horses. When she was young, she had asked why they always went to Kempton races and not Ascot. He had replied, “Not as many overbred twats and gits,” conveniently forgetting that the title of Viscount Waleham was seven hundred years old, and the proper breeding of people, horses and dogs had been a preoccupation of his ancestors for most of that time.
A mile later she drove under the welcome blue sign announcing, “The SOUTH WEST M3.” Traffic thinned, and the road opened out into the motorway proper. The Range Rover’s big diesel strummed along, the climate control kept the temperature steady. Fiona lapsed into the tedium of the highway.
The exit to Kempton had summoned memories. Donald, the Viscount Waleham, had taken her and her older brother, Andrew, to the races often, until their mother’s early death from cancer. Four years later Fee had returned home at the end of a school term to learn that Andrew had left abruptly for somewhere far away—Donald wouldn’t say, but she had heard both Capetown and New Zealand rumoured. The last time she had seen Andrew was nearly twenty-five years ago, shortly after their father’s death. Andrew had returned home to deal with the cremation and the inheritance legalities, and then had disappeared again. Because her father had opted for primogeniture, Andrew inherited the title and the estates. She had received an annuity worth about a hundred thousand pounds a year, but under her father’s stipulation that she marry and remain married. Since then, her only contact with her brother had been through letters delivered via his solicitors, and a few telephone calls a year. Perhaps Andrew was still running from their father and, for all she knew, from her as well. Fee had no idea why he had exiled himself. She was fairly certain she had done nothing to harm him, but he had pushed her out to the very periphery of his life, and she missed him tremendously.
Ahead of her a shiny black Jaguar saloon trundled along a good ten miles an hour under the speed limit. It was too new to be Jacko’s. She moved to the right to pass.
Why couldn’t she be strong about Jacko? Or more to the point, why hadn’t she been strong for herself and Jonny two years ago? If only they had thrown Jacko out on his ear and taken their lumps. Now the bastard had his claws in both of them.
She rolled under the A320 that led to the amusement park at Thorpe. She and David, her first husband, had spent many happy hours there with their children, Andy and Stella. She smiled—the visits were happy for David except for the roller coaster. He had tried to ride the monstrous steel serpent twice but had “lost his biscuits” both times he had encountered its famous inverted loop. The kids had never let him forget it. Ahead of her, flashing blue and yellow lights and a row of orange traffic cones indicated a road collision. She slowed and moved into line with the other motorists. Police in fluorescent yellow vests waved them past crumpled vehicles as paramedics tended to injured motorists. David had died at such a place, when a drunken sod rammed his police vehicle.
She always thought of David when she drove to Hampshire.
Jonny was kind and consoling in the aftermath, and a few considerate months later offered her marriage, saving her the ignominy of putting herself on the market. Or so she felt then—he’d never said a word about being gay.
She would always resent that he’d married her under false pretences. How could she not? She’d been angry at Jonny’s duplicity and had struggled to comprehend how life with a gay husband—who was in love with a man she knew—could be at all fulfilling. She had thought the affair with Jacko would be the escape she needed. Of course Jonny knew—he had given his blessing at the beginning. She didn’t believe Jonny was complicit in the videotape Jacko had shot.
Fiona opened her window and breathed deeply. The cold air sliced into her chest. Pieces of paper swirled in a miniature whirlwind around the cabin of the Range Rover, but she paid no mind. She was almost home.
The brief jolt of oxygen cleared her head. A blue sign ahead announced, “Fleet services.” She moved to the left and took the exit road that snaked through fragrant rows of pines. She stopped at the edge of the large parking lot.
Quiet. She pressed the speed dial on her mobile. Peg’s voicemail answered. “It’s me, Aunt Peg. I’ve stopped at Fleet for a pee and a coffee. Be home soon.”
Half a large latte later, she decided. She didn’t know why she and Jacko had been allowed to run away, but fear had immobilized her for two days. Something had to give, and she was damned if she was going to wait for the twisted bastard to call her.
After two warbles his voicemail kicked in. She kept her tone even.
“Jacko. Listen to me, you bastard toerag. You got me into this godawful mess, and you’re going to damn well help me get out of it. Tell me by Monday when you can meet next week”—she ran out of breath and gasped, filling her lungs—“or I’m bloody well going to come straight with Jonny about it, and you can deal with your own bloody consequences.”
She felt better now.
Fifteen minutes later, Fiona exited the motorway. In the village of Overton, she turned on a narrow, sunken byway bounded by hedgerows. A mile later, she turned right at the drive that would take her through a pine wood to Waleham House’s brilliant Capability Brown landscape. She gave a double blast on the horn as she passed Uncle Fritz’s lodge. He was probably out mending fences or managing a work crew, but Fiona found comfort in the established ritual.
Just beyond, at the top of a small rise, Fiona pulled onto the verge. A short scramble through a copse of scented pines led her to the observation point that had been her favourite since she was a young girl. She stood on a round, flat stone, which looked natural but most likely had been situated there by Brown when he had sculpted the gardens in 1762. Expanses of lawn, yellow with winter, undulated before her, gracefully sloping down to several small dales, in which nestled cosy ponds enclosed by stands of leaf-bare plane trees and deep green conifers. On her right, the three-story red-brick and limestone edifice of Waleham House peered around a stand of larch, reflected in the glass of its artificial lake.
Fiona inhaled the woody scents and let her gaze drift over the scene once more. She was home. Why had she ever left?
ELEVEN
Wednesday afternoon, Camberwell
Joanna Christie lifted her bag to he
r chest, a defensive gesture. “Why are you here?”
Elaine stepped away from the black wrought-iron columns that marked the entrance to Datchelor House on Camberwell Grove. “Please, can we talk? Since I saw you Monday, I came across some information I’d like you to see.”
Joanna looked both ways along the pavement. “I’m on my way home. I’m not sure I should be talking to you.”
“I won’t take much of your time, and this isn’t about what happened to me.” The statement contained a grain of truth. “We could go to your flat.”
Joanna again scanned the street. “No, not my flat. There.” She pointed to a Greek taverna two doors down.
Inside, Joanna embraced a smiling middle-aged woman. After a brief conversation in Greek, during which the woman assessed Elaine with a disapproving look, Joanna led the way to a small alcove off the back of the dining room. Old photos dotted the walls—a wedding group arrayed in front of a whitewashed church; a line of stern, black-dressed women under an olive tree; two young men with shotguns, each grasping a clutch of dead rabbits by the hind legs.
A waiter set a carafe of white wine and a plate of olives and dolmanthes on the blue-checked tablecloth. Joanna poured, then said, “My brother-in-law will join us in a moment.” She forked an olive into her mouth and sat back.
“Your family owns this place?”
Joanna spit the olive pit into her hand and placed it on a plate. “My husband’s family.”
Elaine asked, “It looked like she didn’t approve of me. What did you tell her?”
“That you’re a nosy bitch of a cop my sister doesn’t want to talk to.” A burly, dark-haired man of about forty took a chair across the table from Elaine. “Is Joanna in trouble?”
“No, but I think she can help me with an enquiry. I’m DCI Hope.” She flashed her warrant card. “What’s your name?”
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