The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  Glad the hair got an outing.

  ‘Ha,’ I said aloud, ‘so you did notice.’ I turned to go and get dressed with smile on my face. I still felt like death, but indefinably better. Death after a weekend at a spa. Death following a successful shoe-shopping expedition. Death in love? I shelved that particular line of thought in favour of trying to make myself look like a responsible member of society rather than someone who had been out drinking until the small hours.

  There was nothing glamorous about my outfit today: black trousers, a plain black top, a grey jacket. Sober. Professional. In the mirror I was ashen, the bruise on my forehead standing out starkly. I shook my hair over it, glad for once that it was back to its naturally untidy state, and gave up on attempting to improve my appearance otherwise. I would get through the day. I would work hard so I forgot how I was feeling. And I would, eventually, recover.

  The one good thing about waking up so early was that I was getting a badly needed head start on the day that would hopefully make up for skiving off work the night before. As I gave the flat one last look and picked up my bag, I reflected that there was one other tiny advantage to being hung-over. I couldn’t face breakfast, so there was no need to hang around for that either.

  I shut the door behind me gingerly, hoping to get out of the house without encountering anyone. I wasn’t ready for conversation. I felt as fragile as hand-blown glass, as brittle as a desiccated leaf. A loud noise could shatter me into a thousand tiny pieces. The house was thankfully still, as silent as the old building ever got. I was growing accustomed at last to its sighs, its knocking pipes and creaking boards, but I still didn’t like it. Maybe a new-build next time …

  It was purely because I was on autopilot that I went to check the mailbox as I left – on a Sunday morning it should have been empty. I recalled collecting my post the previous night, getting my key in the lock at the third attempt. Dignified, it wasn’t. I made a better job of opening it this time and stared at the contents, confused. I was sure I had emptied it the night before. I might have missed something as inconspicuous as a postcard, but not a padded envelope, even it was a small one. And it shouldn’t have been there.

  Something – training, possibly – kicked in. I rooted in my bag to find my phone, then took a couple of pictures of the envelope before I moved it, feeling faintly ludicrous. In a side pocket, I found a pair of latex gloves that I hadn’t used at the warehouse. I draped one over my hand to prevent my skin from coming in contact with the envelope as I lifted it out. It was light but not empty: something slid around inside it. The white sticky label had my name and address printed on it in unhelpfully bland Times New Roman, and I stared at it, increasingly unsettled. My name was given as ‘Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan – Serious Crimes Squad’. No return address. No stamp. No postmark. Hand-delivered. To my home address.

  Nine times out of ten, I would just have opened it then and there, but something was making me nervous. I couldn’t seem to see past the thought that John Skinner had a history of targeting officers he disliked, that he was more than capable of finding out where I lived, and that he was far from defeated even if he was in custody. And, of course, the kicker: that I was the one who had put him there.

  I retreated to my flat, still holding the envelope by the corner, and laid it on the coffee table with extreme care. It sat there, buff-brown and uninformative, as I walked around the room wondering what to do. Ridiculous to think the envelope was booby-trapped. It was too small to be an incendiary device. Gingerly, I felt the edges of the envelope, working out that the object inside was narrower than a matchbox but about the same length. I was not going to call the bomb squad for something so puny. I would just open it myself. Carefully.

  I laid out a couple of clean sheets of copy paper to catch any trace evidence that came off or out of the envelope. With gloved hands, I peeled away the edge of the flap, working slowly. It was a self-adhesive envelope and the strip separated with surprising ease, hardly ripping at all, as if it had only been lightly sealed. I pulled enough of it apart to be able to peer in at the contents with the help of my small Maglite. It was empty, apart from down at the bottom where a silvery metallic gleam that caught the light. I tilted the envelope so the object slid onto the paper. It was something so familiar, so unthreatening that I almost laughed despite my concern: a memory stick for a computer. Cheap and easily acquired, they could hold vast amounts of information. This one wasn’t telling me much at the moment, but all I needed was a computer with a USB port to unlock its secrets. I checked the envelope to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and parcelled up both it and the data stick for further investigation when I got to work. I had an extra measure of urgency in my step as I left for the second time. I didn’t like that I had it; I didn’t like that it had been sent to my home. I wanted to know what was on it and I wanted to spend some time looking at lettings ads. I had a feeling it was getting to be time to move again.

  If I had taken the envelope seriously, that was nothing to how the news was received by Godley and Derwent, both of whom were already at work when I arrived.

  ‘This bothers me a lot.’ The envelope was lying on Godley’s desk, the data stick beside it. The superintendent was tapping a pen against his mouth, considering them both.

  ‘Should we have a look to see what’s on it?’ Derwent was vibrating with curiosity, yearning like a dog on a short lead presented with a tantalising smell.

  ‘Has it been given the once-over by a forensic technician?’ Godley checked. I shook my head. ‘Right, well, no one touches it until it’s been checked for prints and swabbed for DNA.’

  ‘I’ll give them a call.’ Derwent sprang into action just for the sake of having something to do. Godley’s office was stuffy and I was feeling slightly faint; I was more than happy to let him make the calls and do the running around. Sluggishly, my brain lumbered into action.

  ‘We should get someone from the IT branch to help, in case it’s got a virus on it or something. I don’t think we should just shove it into one of the computers out there and hope for the best.’

  ‘Bringing down the entire Met computer system would be unpopular,’ Godley agreed gravely. ‘Josh, sort that out too.’

  ‘Anything else? Coffee? Croissants?’

  ‘If you’re offering.’

  ‘I was being sarcastic.’

  ‘I know,’ the superintendent said blandly. ‘Still a good idea. Pop out while we’re waiting for reinforcements. You look as if you need something to keep you busy while you’re waiting.’

  With a black look, Derwent finished his phone calls and prepared to go out. I took great pleasure in ordering my breakfast roll and coffee even if he wrote it down with extreme bad grace. Godley asked for fruit salad, which earned him a snarl. But with one of his rare flashes of likeability Derwent worked his way around the squad room, getting requests from the early birds who were in already. I saw Liv on the other side of the room. She shook her head, pointing at the super-sized coffee that was steaming on her desk. She looked better than I felt, but that wasn’t saying much.

  I turned back to Godley and grinned. ‘He’d make a good waitress, surprisingly.’

  ‘Hold off on forming an opinion about that until you see what you get. I’m expecting anything but fruit salad.’

  ‘It must be fun being able to boss DI Derwent around.’

  ‘At times. Not that he listens to me much.’ The superintendent stood up and stretched. ‘I should really be giving you a bollocking for opening the envelope. You could have been seriously hurt if it had been booby-trapped.’

  ‘I was careful.’

  ‘You were lucky.’ He went over the window and stared out. ‘Did it occur to you that it might be Skinner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you still opened it.’

  ‘I wanted to know what was inside.’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Of course you did.’ Still looking away from me, he said, quite calmly, ‘If John Skinner comes afte
r you, I want you to know that I will do everything in my power to protect you. I will not let him harm you.’

  ‘It’s a possibility, though, isn’t it?’ The effort of keeping my voice level made me clench my hands. ‘He’s that sort of person. Vindictive.’

  ‘He believes in making people pay for what they’ve done. But at the moment, he’s more focused on finding out what happened to his daughter and punishing the people responsible. I had thought that when he’d worked through that, he might turn around and start thinking about how he ended up where he is.’

  ‘Are you worried he’ll come after you?’

  ‘Always.’ His tone was so matter-of-fact that I couldn’t quite match it up with what he’d said.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Talk to my wife about it. Discuss the options. Move again, maybe.’ He leaned his head against the glass. ‘It’s not what she signed up for.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault. It’s not what you signed up for either.’ He glanced at me. ‘Hopefully he won’t have noticed you and this is nothing to do with him.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ I lied. Godley’s response was not reassuring.

  ‘Be wary, even if you’re not scared now. Listen to your instincts and don’t take unnecessary risks. And if anyone sends you a mysterious package again, don’t just open it, for God’s sake.’ He came back to his desk. ‘I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make.’

  Recognising it as the dismissal it was, I slipped out of his office. It was useless to try to settle down to anything else while I was waiting to find out what was on the data stick. I caught Liv’s eye as I wandered towards my desk, and she met me there to discuss, in the faintest of whispers, how much her head hurt and how much exactly we had had to drink and who should have called a halt before we got ourselves into that sort of state.

  Derwent interrupted us to deliver breakfast, with a scowl, and not long after that the superintendent reappeared.

  ‘Someone from forensics is just looking at the data stick but bad news on the computer support. No one will be available until tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you want to wait that long?’

  ‘I do not.’ He put his laptop down on my desk. ‘We can use this so if it is a virus it won’t contaminate anyone else. I’ve disconnected it from the Met’s intranet. I see Colin is in. He’s probably as qualified as any of us to take the lead.’

  I was glad Godley’s eye had fallen on nice, gentle Colin rather than the team’s other resident tech-head, Belcott, who was at the end of the room.

  ‘What is it?’

  I explained to Liv what I had found in my mailbox that morning, conscious that the story was attracting attention from my other colleagues. Colin had come over to join us, having heard his name mentioned by the boss. DI Bryce wheeled his chair over, openly interested.

  ‘So where did it come from?’ Liv asked.

  ‘Not a clue. I just found it there this morning.’

  ‘Yesterday was Saturday. There would have been a delivery of post. It could have come in then.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t in the box last night. I checked.’

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, if you were tired, say, you might not have noticed …’

  Or if I was smashed. I shook my head. ‘I picked up my post on my way in. I couldn’t have missed the envelope. It’s too big.’

  ‘And it was in your mailbox in the hall. So whoever put it there had to have access to your house.’ Without my noticing, Rob had arrived.

  ‘No, not necessarily. If someone put a letter through the front door, anyone who saw it would pick it up and put it in the right mailbox. Chris is really keen on keeping the hall tidy.’

  ‘Bet he is. What time did you get back?’

  ‘It was after midnight.’

  ‘And what time did you check this morning?’

  ‘Around half past seven. There wasn’t anyone else up, as far as I could tell. It must have been put there last night.’

  ‘Well, we’re looking for a night owl,’ Liv commented.

  ‘They’re all like that. The girl upstairs stays out clubbing until all hours at weekends. Chris always seems to be working whenever I walk past his window, whatever time of day or night it is.’ I could never help looking through the gap in the curtains, and I usually saw him sitting at his desk, his face shining a ghastly blue-white in the light from his screen. ‘I have no idea about Brody, but I’m guessing he comes and goes when he likes, and my landlord is basically nocturnal. But as I say, I’m sure they just picked up the envelope and stuffed it in the right box.’

  ‘Well, find out which of them did it so we can ask them if they saw anyone deliver it,’ Derwent ordered.

  ‘That’s what I was planning to do,’ I said sweetly. ‘It seemed to be the obvious place to start.’

  Rob had moved around to stand on the other side of the group and now he looked up, his eyes full of amusement. I recalled his message and wished I could talk to him about the inspector now, to hear what had happened the previous day and what Rob made of him.

  The superintendent’s return prevented Derwent from replying, which was probably just as well.

  ‘Right. We’ve got the all-clear to handle this.’ He put the data stick in Colin’s outstretched hand. ‘No prints, unsurprisingly. She’ll send the swabs off for analysis. I wouldn’t count on getting anything off it though.’

  ‘Well, let’s have a look at the files, assuming there are any.’ Colin stuck it into the USB port and the machine whirred obediently. ‘Huh. Okay. That’s interesting. There’s a Word file called “Dear Maeve”.’ He looked up at me. ‘That’s you, presumably.’

  ‘You’d think,’ I agreed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then there’s a folder of picture files. It’s called “Album One”. And the last thing, in a folder called “Present” is a video file called … well, called that.’ He pointed. The title of the video file was a meaningless collection of letters and numbers jumbled together. ‘That suggests it was copied off a website. You’d never name a file that, but a website might host it with that tag.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not that I can see.’

  ‘Okay,’ Godley said. ‘A picture paints a thousand words, but give us “Dear Maeve” first so we know what we’re supposed to be looking at.’

  ‘What if it’s private?’ I was trying to sound amused, but my heart was thumping.

  ‘We’ll forget we read it. Come on. Open it.’

  It seemed to take an age for the file to open. I leaned in, aware that all of us were doing the same thing. Rob and Liv had to crane to see from where they were standing, but I had a grandstand view from behind Colin’s shoulder.

  Dear Maeve,

  I hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue. I’m afraid you don’t know me, but I know you. I hope that doesn’t scare you.

  I wanted to give you a present to say thank you for all the entertainment. You wouldn’t believe how long it’s taken me to find something special. What do you get the policewoman who has everything?

  I found this and I thought of you. I think you’ll like it. I hope it’s what you’ve been looking for.

  You need to smile more, Maeve. You’re so pretty when you smile. Do you see what I mean?

  Maybe not yet. But you will.

  With love,

  Your admirer.

  ‘What the fuck is he on about?’ Derwent said.

  I had a deep feeling of foreboding. ‘Open the images.’ Colin selected them and opened them all, so the screen filled with picture after picture, layered on top of one another. As they flashed up in turn, I felt the blood drain from my face. I shouldn’t have been surprised –I had seen what was in the letter – but I couldn’t quite believe that the images were of me. All of them. Me outside my house, talking to a passing window-cleaner who had nearly taken me out with his ladder. Me in the corner shop chatting to the guy behind the till while I paid. Walking along in the sunshine on the
phone, laughing, in jeans and a cotton top. Through my living-room window, me sitting on the sofa, my head turned to say something to someone out of sight. Walking against the wind, my hair flying behind me as I hurried down the street. On the last leg of a run around the park, laughing, and I recalled it had been because ‘Eye of the Tiger’ had just started playing randomly on my iPod and it seemed altogether too appropriate. Not smiling in the rain. And then, suddenly, not in my neighbourhood any more. Not smiling talking to DI Derwent in the street outside the nick. Laughing hysterically with Liv as we left the previous night.

  ‘That was yesterday.’ Liv pointed.

  ‘Bang up to date,’ I made myself say. I felt as if my feet weren’t properly on the ground. That was shock, I thought. That and feeling ice cold.

  Dimly, I was aware of someone taking my hand, putting their arm around me, supporting me as I wobbled. I expected it to be Rob, but when I looked it was Derwent who was staring into my face intently, concern in his eyes. I felt even more unsettled.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘N-no. I’m fine.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Instead of answering, I looked across the circle to where Rob was standing, and took reassurance from the fact that he looked as calm as ever. Interested, certainly, but not unsettled. I dislodged Derwent’s hand from my arm gently and with one small part of my mind wondered how a simple look from Rob could be more effective than all of Derwent’s patting and fussing.

  ‘This doesn’t sound like John Skinner.’ There was a note in Godley’s voice that I identified as relief.

  ‘Yeah. Just your common-or-garden nutcase. Nothing to worry about.’ I laughed shakily. No one else joined in.

  ‘He said he’d got her a present. What’s the present?’ Liv asked.