Thursday morning, Highgate
Another shift in Accident and Emergency had taken its toll. Peter Willend leaned on the front of his locker, staring into the mirror fastened to the inner side of the door. A haggard, two day’s growth of salt-and-pepper stubble accentuated his January pale skin. Not much to look at, he thought, especially in the white fluorescent light of the hospital locker room.
He turned from the mirror and peeled his scrub shirt over his head. He always faced the room when he changed clothes. The puckered, raised shrapnel slashes lining his upper arms and legs and the mosaic of burn scars on his back usually provoked quick turns of the head and downcast glances, even from people who knew him well. He wasn’t ashamed; turning as he did was simply good manners. He had been away from the nose-clogging dust for over eight years, had moved to a new home on a lush green island, but still he carried Iraq everywhere.
Peter didn’t face the locker again until he had pulled on his trainers, athletic pants, and San Antonio Spurs jersey. A dark hoodie completed his transition from trauma surgeon to anonymous London commuter. He contemplated the two pictures taped next to the mirror. One was of Diana and Liza, taken a decade ago, when they were all he had ever wanted. Diana’s copper hair blazed in the Texas sun. Their daughter, Liza, grinning gap-toothed with eight-year-old pride, held up a frog she had caught in Bull Creek back home in Austin. They had been gone eight years now.
The other photo was one of Elaine he had taken at Nelson’s Glory. She had just beaten him at a game of darts, and her huge brown eyes assessed him over a half-full glass of stout. At least she was still alive, but was she gone from his life too? He didn’t know. So much love, so little time to give it.
Peter lifted the hood over his head and pushed through the exit door. It had become colder overnight, and the wind bit into the exposed skin at his throat. He shivered and pulled the hoodie’s drawstring tighter. His breath gathered and hung in a cold cloud as he hunched his shoulders against the chill and waited under the bus shelter. He usually rode the bus to and from work. At this time of day, the bus ride to Crouch End took about a half hour. From there, it was a half-hour jog to his home in Highgate. It wasn’t the most direct route, but it gave him exercise. He moved to the kerb as a bus sighed to a stop.
Peter’s older sister, Kate, was in the kitchen when he arrived home. They had grown up on an army base in Texas, the children of an American soldier and a British mother. After their father died, Kate and Helen, their mother, had moved to the UK. Peter had gone to medical school in the States. The American army had taken him to Iraq.
“Morning.” Kate’s deep blue eyes inspected him as he picked up the coffee press. “Rough night?”
“Yeah. Thought you’d be gone by now.”
“Working at home today. His BoJo-ness is still in Kent. New York on Wednesday.” Kate worked for the Foreign Office.
She smiled at him around a mouthful of toast. “I ate your leftover chicken korma when I got in last night. It was delicious. You’ll have to scavenge.”
“No worry. I’ll stop by the Khoury’s shop and pick up a couple of kebabs and some falafel.” He gave her a sidelong grin. “Or if you feel penitent, you could rustle something up for me to eat.”
She chuckled. “Not a chance, Petey luv. You’re the cook in the house. I made coffee and toast, and you don’t want me to get any more ambitious than that, do you?”
He laughed and scrabbled his knife across a piece of charred bread, scattering fine black crumbs on his plate. “The coffee was excellent.” He soothed the excoriated toast with a layer of jam.
“You’re eating it, so your snide remark rings hollow.” Kate took a sip of coffee. “I saw the envelope from the med school in Austin. Did you leave it lying around for me to see?”
“Yep. You know they’re getting serious when they skip the email and start using university letterhead. They’ve offered me an assistant professorship in the new emergency medicine department. Tenure track. I wanted to bounce it off you, and maybe Helen.”
“Faculty pay might not be what you make now. But there’s the lower cost of living and better hours.” She hesitated. “You told them about the arrest, right?”
“Yeah. A couple of the committee members had concerns about hiring a doctor who’d been jailed for murder. You know how tetchy the university is about its image.”
“Elaine could write a letter for you,” Kate suggested. “Have you asked her?”
“No, I want to think about it. Whether I want the job, I mean.”
Kate set down her toast and studied his face. “And whether you want to open up to her again.”
Peter walked to the counter to refill his coffee cup. Two days’ worth of Kate’s dirty dishes were still in the sink. “I have never seen anyone as averse to domestic duties as you seem to be. Is it some kind of ideological imperative?” He set down his cup and turned on the hot water.
“Some things never change, little brother. Helen and I think you need to find a new focus. After what happened, your career won’t go anywhere in London. Elaine isn’t ready to start over with you. She’s only been back from that cottage in Devon for what—two months?”
“Nine weeks.”
“But who’s counting, right? She’s not ready. Look, you’re forty-three years old, and you’ve fallen in love with two women in your life. Diana died. Elaine is only alive through your medical skill. Wherever you are, you’ll wait for her. She’ll let you know when she’s ready.”
“And you’re sure of that, are you?” Peter was elbow-deep in suds, his eyes focused on a casserole dish.
Kate stood beside him at the kitchen sink. “I’ve always thought kitchen appliances are one of the great joys of the modern world. Stuff those things into this one here.” She opened the dishwasher door and stepped back. “Then turn around and look at me.”
Thank heaven for big sisters. Peter loaded the dishwasher and turned to Kate, smiling. “And now it’s time for Sister Kate’s Advice for the Lovelorn.”
Kate leaned on the counter, her blonde hair obscuring her face. “It’s time for a confession. I met Elaine at the cottage in Devon. We’ve spoken a couple of times since. You’re a damn lucky man, Petey Willend.”
Peter flopped in a kitchen chair, stunned. “You never said…” He felt his face flush with anger.
Kate held up her hand. “I had to play big sister. It was either Helen or me. You wouldn’t talk about Elaine. One of us had to find out who she was, and we felt that a sister would be less intimidating than a mother.”
“How the hell did you find her? It took me three months!” Understanding dawned. “Oh…”
“Right. It cost me four phone calls and a lunch at Le Gavroche. Lots of important people owe me favours. Or want them.”
“Forever the diplomat spy, aren’t you? Even with me.” Peter closed his eyes and took three measured breaths. “I never thought it could happen again, but it did. We had so little time, before—” His throat closed. He took a gulp of coffee. “I love her. I have to wait for her. Mostly she pushes me away. Sometimes she agrees to meet, but she cancels.”
“So you want to meet. You need to talk.”
He exhaled. “Yeah. That night was hard on me too. I was covered in her blood. She flatlined. You think she doesn’t understand what it did to me?”
She slid her chair closer and took his hand. “Her world has shattered. The rape ripped apart her core identity. Many women collapse into a shell after rape. It’s anger and isolation, all mixed up. Elaine needs to rebuild her life, but she thinks the Met won’t let her go back to investigation. So her professional persona is gone too. She has nothing to hang on to.”
“You sound like a psychologist, not a diplomat.”
Kate let his hand drop, and sat back in her chair. “There are more levels to what she’s endured than you can begin to know. She’s deeply scarred.”
They sat silent, Kate sipping her coffee, Peter staring out the window.
Finally,
Peter spoke. “Until Elaine, I’d always dealt with rape intellectually. I’d seen it as a doctor too many times. I saw the grief and fear, felt horrified, but I had to stay—not aloof, but clinical. My duty to patient care meant I had to follow the protocols, then hand off the deeper damage to a different professional. At least, I hoped someone professional was there to help.”
Kate rose and set her coffee cup in the sink. “Elaine has nothing aside from the rage.”
“I haven’t told her about the job offer.”
“You need to—the sooner, the better. She needs to know.”
“She never talks to me about what happened. I tried a couple of times, but she closed up and rejected everything I said.”
“She’s not ready to open up yet. She will.”
Peter shook his head. “In Devon she let me kiss her, hold her for a few minutes, and then she shut down. Pushed me away. It was like some invisible wall dropped down, and I can’t break through it. We’ve only met once since then. Just a pint and darts at the pub. She started to loosen up, looked at me like she used to when … but she tensed up. I tried to hold her hand.”
“And?”
“She went ballistic. Like I’d burn her if I touched her.”
“It might be best if you took the job.”
“Perhaps.” He studied Kate’s face. “I’m not sure I want to go back to Texas. It would take me away from her. And it’s a long way from you and Helen.”
“Helen and I will survive.” Kate took his hand again. “Elaine will come to you. She told you that, right?”
“At the cottage. She said she would, after she’s free.”
“She told me the same. She’s the kind of woman who keeps her promises.”
FOURTEEN
Thursday morning, Kensington
“Here’s the Jag.” Bull reversed the video, then ran it forward in slow motion. The video was from the camera mounted high on the outer wall of the pub, angled downward to cover the benches and side entrance. Kerry and Wallace could be seen embracing outside the door. The frames caught the side of a dark car, but neither the number plates nor the driver were visible. The time stamp on the screen read 21:43.
Costello leaned over Bull’s shoulder. “So that’s your witness and her boyfriend?”
“Yeah, Kerry Pleasant, age nineteen, and Wallace Shaw, age twenty. The time fits with what she told me. Uniform interviewed him last night at the Sainsbury’s where he works. They said he seemed a bit slow, but a nice, honest lad. He said he heard a loud bang, like a gunshot, when he was walking to meet Kerry. He doesn’t have a watch, but if you take the time he clocked off work and how long it takes to walk from the supermarket, it fits. About 9:35 PM.”
“So we have a time within what? Three or four minutes either way. I suppose we could have someone walk it with him, try to recreate it.”
“If we catch him when he clocks off work, it might bring up something Kerry forgot to mention.”
“I’ll assign someone. Get a screen grab of the kids standing, then switch to the camera at the front entrance.”
In moments the grainy, black-and-white view on the screen changed to the area on the terrace, between the front door and the street. At 21:43, the Jaguar moved across the frame, and although the entire side of the car was now visible, the number plates weren’t. The inside of the car was too dark to determine anything about the driver, but Costello asked for a screen grab.
They kept watching, and just before 21:46, a woman entered the camera’s field of view from the right side of the frame. She was blonde, medium height, slender, wore an overcoat. She appeared to be carrying an object in her right hand, but the dim light and poor resolution prevented a clear image of the object or her face. She stepped delicately, as if she were trying to keep each foot in contact with the cold concrete for the minimal time possible. She was only visible for about twelve seconds before she passed from view.
When the woman reached the middle of the frame, Costello ordered, “Freeze it, and zoom in on her, slowly.” Bull stopped when the screen started to pixelate. Together, they inspected the frame. She had no shoes on. Her head was turned away from the camera. Bull pointed to what appeared to be a pattern of smudges, or mottling, across the front of the woman’s coat. They tracked her until she moved out of frame, but never got a good look at her face.
Costello nodded. “Make a few prints of Barefoot Woman and the car. Is that as sharp as you can get it?”
“To get it any clearer, we’ll need to let the forensic boffins work their magic. I’ll send them the link.”
Costello pulled up a chair and sat. “What about the intersection cameras. Any joy there?”
“No sign of the Jag at either Old Brompton Road or Fulham Road. There are a couple of side streets he could have turned on.” He opened a map of South Kensington on the screen, and moved the mouse to a yellow dot. “This is the Onslow Arms. The Jag could have proceeded north and turned on Onslow Square before it reached Old Brompton Road. Then it could have come out most anywhere, blocks away.”
“Or gone to ground in the neighbourhood. Black Jag. Just like the white Transit we had to track in the Srecko case. Loads of ’em in London.”
“Especially in Kensington and Chelsea.” Bull shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “Hundreds, maybe. They made that body style for ten years. I looked it up. Guess what the favourite colours were.”
Costello sniffed. “Black, dark blue, and dark green. Is it the murderer who’s driving, or the other man? It could be someone visiting the neighbourhood or taking a shortcut.”
“Then there’s Barefoot Woman. Why is she walking?”
“If it’s the murderer or the other man in the car, or both, there’ll be blood in the carpets or on the seat. If she was the woman in the flat, why abandon her?”
Bull curled his lip. “If that’s the case, somebody panicked. Makes no sense to leave her.” He clicked the mouse, selecting the camera covering the intersection at Old Brompton Road, and began stepping the frames in fast-forward. At 21:51, he pointed at the screen. “And there she is.”
Costello leaned forward. “Barefoot, without her coat. She hurries across the street, nearly flattened by that hatchback. Waves, gets into the taxi—there’s the number plate. Contact that driver.”
Bull jotted down the taxi’s number plate. “Is DI Novak here?”
Costello shook his head. “Left after he warned us to keep schtum. Said he was going to Victoria Street. Something about the bean counters in financial. Haven’t seen him since this morning, but I reckon this is worth a call. What about that other car? The second one your girl heard.”
“Got it earlier. Blue Peugeot with French number plates. Turned east on Fulham Road about 22:19. We’re chasing it down.”
“Any more CCTV?” Costello asked.
“The Fulham Road camera would have seen the house and cars, but the images were all snowy. The forensic techs are trying to clean it up.”
Costello dialled a number on his mobile and switched it to speaker mode. Novak’s voicemail answered immediately. “DS Costello and DC Bull. We’ve seen the Jag saloon and the woman on CCTV. Nothing yet on the car. We tracked the woman to Old Brompton Road and identified the taxi she took. We’re contacting the driver.” He rang off.
Bull exchanged glances with Costello. “Not exactly hands-on, is he? Not like Elaine—DCI Hope, I mean. She was always upfront with us. With Novak, it seems like he’s holding something back. Like he doesn’t trust us.”
Costello shrugged. “Different styles. I haven’t quite sussed him, but it’s early days.”
Thursday afternoon, Kensington
“Crossed Old Brompton in a hurry. She looked a mess, shivering, and no wonder—she was barefoot and had no coat, just a thin black dress. I handed her a fleece blanket, and she wrapped up in it.”
Costello sat silent at the interview table. Across from him, the tall, thin taxi driver fidgeted with East London energy and impatience. His bald head reflected t
he harsh lights of the room. Costello consulted the notes a uniformed officer had sent him. “You told the PC that you took her to Mortlake. Was that to the station?”
“Yes. I told that to PC Wots-his-name. Biggs. He asked me all these questions, and now you have me all the way over here at Kensington nick, missing fares while you ask the same bloody things. Don’t you rozzers talk to each other?”
“We asked you here to corroborate what PC Biggs passed on to us and to comment on what we’ve seen on the CCTV.” Wright scoffed, so Costello adopted an even more conciliatory tone. “Doing so can often raise new questions and lines of enquiry. Or perhaps help you remember something new.” He smiled at the taxi driver. “We don’t want to have to call you back here some other time. Did you drop her at Mortlake Station?”
Wright huffed. “It’s a waste of my time and yours, if you ask me, but—yes, at Mortlake Station, the eastbound platform.”
“Thank you. How did she pay you?”
“A fifty. From a little purse she took out from her bra. There weren’t much change from that, so she gave me another tenner and said that’s for the blanket.”
“And did you see if she boarded a train?”
Wright shook his head. “No. Can’t see that from the street at Mortlake, can you? Not ’less you stop on the tracks. She were up the stairs to the platform as soon as she paid me.”
“And you didn’t see her again?”
“Didn’t stick, did I? Had to go find another fare, or it was all the way back to town on me own. I turned right ’round and headed back to Hammersmith.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I need to be going. Let me have a butcher’s at this CCTV of yours, then I’m off.”
Wright studied the grainy images on the computer monitor. “That’s her. At first I thought she was a slapper and a bit rat-arsed. But she talked like a nob—educated-like. And she weren’t drunk, just scared.”
“Why did you think that, Mr. Wright?”
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