by A J Waines
Silence.
‘Is he drawing the victim or the killer?’ asked Wilde. ‘Have you made it clear that he has to draw the killer?’
‘It looks like a woman,’ said Karen Foxton. ‘The shoulder-length hair, the shape of the coat.’
‘In that case, it looks nothing like the victim,’ snapped Wilde. ‘Why is she on her feet? She was knocked off her bicycle.’
Aiden had drawn the crime scene several times from different angles, but the woman he’d sketched was alive, standing on her own by the fence, her face in the shadows, but otherwise shown in considerable detail. She had a short fringe and delicate features. Kora had longer hair and a broad nose and chin. It definitely wasn’t her.
‘I don’t think it’s meant to be the victim,’ I said.
‘Is he saying this woman is the killer?’ Edwin Hall offered tentatively.
I held out my palms. ‘I don’t know. He can’t tell us that. He’s doing his best.’
Edwin and Karen flopped into their seats.
‘What exactly is the point of this exercise?’ growled Wilde. He was on his feet, dallying behind my chair again. ‘Does he have a photographic memory?’ I wondered if the DCI ever spoke without a snarling undertone in his voice.
‘His drawings are extremely accurate,’ I said.
‘It’s true. Just look at the crime scene,’ added Joanne Hoyland. ‘It could be an exact copy of one of the SOCO photographs.’
I slid a self-portrait Aiden had let me bring onto the table. Alongside it I placed a recent photograph of him. ‘You see? The likeness is incredible. If anyone can provide a realistic representation of the killer, it’s going to be him.’
‘So the killer is a woman,’ said the DCI, scathingly, hands on hips.
Dr Herts spoke up. ‘We must bear in mind that eyewitness testimony can be highly unreliable. Creating a self-portrait is one thing, but when a bystander is in danger they’re more interested in fight or flight, than if the killer has curly or straight hair.’
‘So, this guy is not only mentally disturbed, but was too freaked out to notice anything, anyway,’ snapped Wilde. ‘This has been a complete waste of time.’
I fought to keep the exasperation from my voice. ‘You have to remember that we all memorise events in a way that makes the most sense to us. These may not be literal.’
‘Are you saying that what Aiden has drawn is symbolic in some way?’ asked Jeremy. ‘Are we meant to read something into it and figure out what he’s trying to say?’
He looked at Dr Herts who shrugged and held out his hand inviting me to answer.
‘That’s a difficult one,’ I admitted.
Joanne stood leaning on the table, her palms either side of one of the sketches. ‘Aren’t his portraits accurate representations? His other work might be symbolic, but not these, surely. The self-portrait is remarkable.’
I didn’t know how to respond. I had no inkling as to what Aiden meant by the repeated sketches of the unknown woman.
Jeremy tried to drag a positive out of the proceedings. ‘I think we’ve got to stick with this. Mr Blake is our only witness and so far we haven’t got much evidence from anywhere else. What we really need is for him to regain his speech and Dr Willerby is helping him take crucial steps in that direction. He might have more useful information about the crime, such as which direction the attacker came from, how tall he… she was, mannerisms, whether anything was said and so on. Let’s carry on.’ He glanced over in my direction and I nodded a silent thank you.
‘Right, well, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Wilde and brusquely left the room. Edwin’s shoulders dropped by at least an inch.
‘We’re still waiting for details on the last call from Kora’s phone, but it shouldn’t be long,’ said Jeremy, standing his notes on end by way of rounding things up.
The room cleared and I picked up Aiden’s drawings. As I did so, I spotted something I hadn’t seen before. None of us had. It threw an entirely different light on the situation. I caught up with Jeremy before he disappeared through the doorway.
‘Look…’ I said, ‘I’ve only just noticed. Aiden has put a series of dates on the back of the last sketch he did.’
I showed him.
‘July tenth, eleventh, twelfth… What does that mean?’ he muttered.
I thought about it. ‘The sketch isn’t of Kora – he’s drawn a different woman, we can all see that.’ I rapped my finger against the sheet. ‘In the same spot as the tripwire attack, with dates from tomorrow onwards.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Jeremy went on. ‘Why doesn’t Mr Blake just write down what happened? I know he can’t speak, but if he can make a note of these dates, why can’t he jot down information about the crime?’
‘Because writing down a date is purely factual. It poses no emotional threat to him. But speaking, drawing, explaining – that means allowing himself to re-experience the trauma in a way that he can’t right now.’
He looked nonplussed. ‘Okay, so he’s written down a few dates…’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘We’re asking him about the past – but he’s referring to the future.’ I bit my lip, thinking. ‘He’s used three dots to indicate his list of dates is unfinished. It has to be significant, like he doesn’t know exactly when…’
I pictured the moment before I left the boat, when Aiden put these pictures in his carry-case for me. There was concern on his face when he did so. Grave concern. I’d put it down to reliving the attack, but now I had second thoughts.
‘He was worried when he gave me them,’ I muttered, holding the sheets against my chest.
Jeremy stared at me, as puzzled as ever.
‘What if these aren’t memories?’ I said, holding them out again. ‘What if this is Aiden showing he’s concerned about something else… something to come?’
Jeremy took a step back. ‘Something to come? And what might that be? How are we supposed to know?’
I stared at him. ‘I’m starting to learn how he thinks, how he does things. I’ve been observing him very closely. These are the only recognisable sketches he’s done and they’re not about Kora. They’re not about the attack at all.’
He waits for me to get to the point.
‘This is about the future,’ I said, my tone emphatic with a spur of the moment flash of certainty. ‘Someone else is in danger.’
Chapter 21
‘So what are we looking at? Who is Aiden referring to?’ Jeremy asked, dismayed. He ushered me back inside the meeting room and closed the door.
‘Have any women gone missing in the area recently?’
He sighed heavily, throwing me a ferocious glare. ‘You’re kidding me…’
‘Okay, stupid question. But this is a different woman,’ I insisted, flapping the sheets at him, trying to get him to understand. ‘It’s someone Aiden’s worried about. He knew I was bringing the sketches to you. This has to be significant.’
He shook his head. ‘Over ten thousand people go missing in London every year. Who are we looking for?’
I traced my finger around the outline of the drawing. ‘She looks smart, maybe mid-twenties, classy.’
He stared up at the ceiling, sucking his teeth. ‘It’s too broad.’
‘You’ve got a missing persons’ database, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you can apply different filters, I assume?’
He nodded, his eyebrows wavering in disbelief.
‘Well, can we check women who’ve gone missing in respectable jobs – not runaways from hostels? Can we narrow it down to women matching that profile in London?’
He sighed. ‘Hold on a minute and I’ll get the files up. See how many we’re looking at first.’
He came back. ‘A hundred and twenty-seven women between the ages of twenty and thirty have been reported missing so far this year,’ he said. ‘And that’s just in Camden.’
I clenched my teeth. ‘Right…’ I leant against the desk. ‘How about in the last thirty days?’
‘Let’s go and see…’ He beckoned me through to his office, an all-glass affair that looked out over a buzzing open-plan space. He drew me alongside him at the computer and brought up a series of missing persons’ files. ‘Twenty-one women in the Borough of Camden,’ he said, his palms flat either side of the keyboard. ‘Now let’s add the other thirty-one boroughs to get the whole of London...’ He made a clucking sound and straightened up. ‘Over five hundred.’
‘Okay, I get the picture.’ I fiddled with my lip, refusing to be defeated. ‘What about ethnic background? Would you say the woman Aiden’s drawn is white?’
‘Could be mixed-race,’ he said, scrutinising the sketch as I held it out for him.
‘True. How about cutting out certain definite categories? Not black, not Asian?’
He huffed, but punched the keys.
‘And women holding down respectable jobs?’ I added. ‘She certainly doesn’t look like she’s on the streets. Look at the coat Aiden’s drawn, her boots…’
‘Okay. That narrows it down to…’ he pressed enter, ‘eighty-one.’ He turned to me and folded his arms. ‘We don’t even know if this is what Aiden means. You’re basing this on a few dates, a pretty portrait and a huge assumption.’
‘I know,’ I admitted, fully aware I was testing his patience. ‘Do you have the photos of these eighty-one missing women?’
‘To look for a match, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
He cleared his throat. ‘You won’t be able to take them away – you’ll have to go through them here.’
‘No problem. Thank you.’
That seemed to remind him of something else. He rummaged through his intray and handed me a brown envelope.
‘This is a set of Kora’s scene of crime photographs,’ he said. ‘I think you should have them. It might move things along if you showed them to Aiden… when you think he’s ready. Might jog his memory.’
I drew my chin back with a jerk. ‘And re-traumatise him in an instant?’
What was he thinking of? In that instant, the DI plummeted in my estimation. I couldn’t expect every police officer to be psychologically aware, but I thought I’d seen signs of more solicitude than this from Jeremy Fenway.
‘It’s not his memory that’s holding him back, it’s abject terror. Of facing the reality of the situation, of reliving the gruesome nature of it.’
‘Well, just in case,’ he said, his tone insistent.
I took them reluctantly. They might be useful in some other way, but certainly not for jogging Aiden’s memory. In my view, Aiden could remember everything perfectly well already. I quickly flicked through the shots; most were of the crime scene from different angles; Kora’s twisted bicycle, her bag cast aside, her sandal near the water’s edge. The scarf from around her neck lying in a clump, soaked in blood. It must have been yanked off her neck by the tripwire. The caretaker had remembered her wearing it before she left CCAP, that evening.
But that wasn’t all. There were further photos of her injuries, taken when she was admitted to the hospital, showing the gaping wound slicing her throat. There were more after her death. I tried to pretend they were stills from a film, but found my stomach flipping over in a fierce lurch nevertheless. The DI must have seen my face change colour and rushed for a glass of water.
‘Sorry…’ he muttered as he put it in my hand and eased me into a chair.
‘You forget I’m not used to this,’ I said, patting my chest.
I carefully placed the envelope in my bag, out of sight.
After a few deep breaths I was ready to take a look at the missing person’s photos. Jeremy showed me to a small empty office, barely bigger than a cupboard and flicked on the light. He opened the laptop, the only item on the table, and set up the database for me.
‘Twenty minutes max,’ he instructed waving his finger at me. ‘Someone else needs this room at half past.’
‘While I do this, can you see if you can refine the search?’
He slumped his body weight to one hip. ‘How exactly?’
I chewed the inside of my cheek, thinking. ‘Art is Aiden’s entire world by the looks of things, so that’s the obvious connection to check out first.’
‘You think his drawing could be of another artist?’
I shrugged. ‘It could be someone who met Aiden through his art, don’t you think? It’s worth trying. A fellow student, maybe. Or someone at Chelsea College. Or from one of the other art colleges in London.’
He huffed and backed out of the door.
By the time he came back twenty minutes later, I’d found something.
‘Look,’ I exclaimed. I held the sketch Aiden had drawn next to the photograph on the screen. ‘It’s her, isn’t it?’
He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Jeez… you could be right.’
‘Can you find out any more details about her?’ I asked, scribbling the police file number from her photo on a scrap of paper and handing it to him.
He straddled the chair beside me and angled the laptop so I couldn’t see. ‘Sorry, this is strictly confidential.’
I nodded and waited as he punched in an authorisation code for further access. Seconds later he began reading from a missing person’s report.
‘Okay, she’s a journalist,’ he said. ‘Pippa French… aged twenty-eight, disappeared in Blackfriars. Journalist at The Bulletin. Went missing after work on Friday, June fifteenth.’
‘The Bulletin, what’s that?’
‘Looks like they cover London culture: trends and fashion, contemporary art, cinema and theatre.’
‘Art…’ I mused. ‘Sorry, go on.’
He reached into his back pocket. ‘While you were looking at the photos I ran various art establishments through the database as you suggested, but no missing women came up, so I widened the age range to forty and came up with this.’ He pulled out a small notebook and flipped it open. ‘A gallery owner. She was last seen getting into a cab in Chelsea at lunchtime on Monday, June fourth.’
‘Eleven days before Pippa?’
He nodded. ‘Name of Honoré Craig-Doyle, thirty-seven, owner of the Craig-Doyle Gallery in SW3.’ He tapped his chin with his finger. ‘But neither of these missing women are under our jurisdiction – different London boroughs.’
I took a deep breath.
‘But you’re right,’ he concluded, straightening up. ‘We should look into these. It’s possible there’s a link. We need to talk to Aiden.’
‘Let me do it,’ I said. ‘He’ll be less intimidated by me. I’ll ask him about it and keep you posted. I promise.’
I left him striding purposefully towards his team and hurried back to the boat.
I found Aiden dozing on the sofa and waited for him to stir. As he sat up and stretched, I knelt on the carpet beside him.
‘I’ve come from the police station. We’ve been looking at women who have gone missing recently. Are you okay for me to ask you something?’
He blinked hard, but didn’t flinch or make any move to escape.
I handed him a sheet Jeremy had authorised showing Pippa’s photo and details of her disappearance. He sat forward with a jolt and clasped it to his chest, swallowing hard.
Next, I held out the sketch he’d made of the woman at the fence at the crime scene. ‘Is this her?’ I said, keeping my voice steady. ‘Is this Pippa French? Is that who you’ve drawn?’
He nodded. A single movement. Firm. Unmistakable. The first clear reaction I’d seen from him, a genuine breakthrough. I forced my voice to stay steady, bubbling inside with elation.
‘The police say she’s missing. Do you know what’s happened to her? Do you know where she is?’
He was breathing hard. A frown and a shake of the head.
‘Are you worried about her?’
Another nod. Inwardly my heart was cheering with joy. We really did have a quantum leap forward. Aiden was communicating!
Jeremy had let me have a copy of Honoré’s photograph and I studied Aiden’s f
ace closely as I showed him. She was older than the other two women; glamorous Latin-looks with frothy bed-head hair and dangly earrings. There was no flicker of recognition, before he turned away.
I called Jeremy, but was put through to voicemail.
‘I don’t think Aiden knows the other woman, Honoré Craig-Doyle,’ I said, ‘but he gave a positive response about Pippa. Aiden’s definitely worried about her…’ I didn’t know what else to say, so I ended the message.
I realised it didn’t change anything, except that Aiden appeared to know a woman who had gone missing. But, surely lots of people knew her. He wasn’t indicating he knew where she was or what had happened to her. He was worried about her, that’s all – like all her friends and family would be.
‘The City of London Police already have her details,’ I told Aiden, ‘but the Camden team will be involved now. To see if it links up in any way with what happened.’
I watched his face, but there wasn’t a flicker.
There were no more sketches of Pippa after that. I took that as a sign that there was nothing more to explore right now – that I’d got the correct message and passed it on to the right people. Nevertheless, Aiden kept drawing from memory: the staircase on the towpath, the side of the boat, the bridge under which Kora rode, the fence beside the car park. Images were coming thick and fast now. But none of the maniac behind her death.
It was frustrating. I wanted him to shift the lens of his internal camera a few degrees to the left, to focus on the wire attached to his outside lamp. I wanted him to freeze frame right there and show us what he’d seen. The figure who must have reached out directly in front of him.
As he drew, I mulled over this new information. I jotted down the names of the three women on a sheet of paper:
Kora Washington (sculptor at CCAP, Camden, dead)
Pippa French (drawn by Aiden, journalist, Blackfriars, missing)
Honoré Craig-Doyle (art gallery owner, Chelsea, also missing)
I added a few details; all were slight, pretty, with dark hair. I looked up The Bulletin magazine and took down the address. That was about all I could piece together.