by A J Waines
‘In theory. As it happens, Ms Tyler hasn’t been able to produce an alibi for the two nights in question. Said she was on her own at home sketching and watching television.’
‘Any link between Kurtis or Tyler and Henry Dodd?’
‘No – not a sausage. Kurtis had certainly met Pippa for a magazine interview, Kora at CCAP and Honoré, through the gallery – but there’s still the question of Katarina.’
‘And Monica?’
‘She knew Kora, of course; really good mates, according to statements we got from other users and no history of any public clashes between them. She hasn’t done an interview with Pippa, but some photos on Pippa’s Facebook page show Monica with her arm around her, although Monica claims it was at a party and she doesn’t remember her. Again, no apparent link to Katarina at all.’
The Polish PA. She kept being the odd one out.
I took a sip of coffee, but it was cold. We kept taking two steps forward and one step back. I pulled a notebook from my bag and drew what I could remember of the scene Aiden had left in the sand; the glove with the pattern in teeth over the top. As I sketched, I realised that the glove he’d left was palm up. Was that important? A pattern of teeth…
Where do you find teeth? Interlocking teeth?
In a flash it struck me. A zip. Was this what Aiden had been trying to tell me? Was there a zip on the inside cuff of the killer’s glove?
I sat back, unconvinced. Surely Aiden wasn’t trying to say the killer wore gloves with a zip – it was hardly a vital piece of evidence. There must be lots of styles of gloves made with a zip and besides, the killer would probably have destroyed the gloves he or she had used days ago. I was missing something.
I ordered another coffee, looking around at the people in the café, preoccupied all the while with zips. They were everywhere; on the woman’s purse at the till, on the jacket of the man by the window, on my handbag. I thought about the people who frequented CCAP – almost everyone had a zip somewhere; Monica had a big zip printed on one of her T-shirts, Kurtis had been wearing a zip-up top, the other day, Simon had zips on his trainers. What, exactly, was Aiden getting at?
I was heading towards the Tube when my phone buzzed. I answered thinking it might be Miranda, but there was only silence.
‘Hello?’ I said. Nothing. I ended the call, not recognising the number. It rang again. ‘Who is this?’ I snarled.
This time I heard sounds coming from the other end. The tinkling melody from a musical box.
Chapter 45
The strains of ‘Love Me Tender’ jangled in my ear.
‘Aiden? Aiden?’ I bellowed.
Oh, God. Something had happened. Either he’d found something or he was in danger. Where was Didier – wasn’t he supposed to be looking after him?
I called his number straight away. Didier sounded so flummoxed when he answered, he was having trouble sticking to one language.
‘Aiden? Oui,’ he said. ‘It’s true – il est parti. Just now.’
‘Didier in English, please.’
‘Ah. Pardonnez-moi. Aiden – he left just one minute ago.’
‘He left the boat?’
‘I know he’s been – how you say… agoraphobe lately, but suddenly he looked purposeful, like he had somewhere he wanted to go.’
‘Was he upset?’ I demanded, ‘distressed?’
‘Mon Dieu. He was in a rush, certainly,’ he said. ‘It was hard to tell – he took his jacket and ran. Did not speak, of course.’
I was jogging now. ‘What had he been doing just before he left?’
‘Er… he was looking at printed sheets from the computer, I think.’
‘Okay, if you think of anything else or he comes back, please ring me straight away.’
I didn’t like this one bit. Aiden had never left the boat of his own free will since the incident. My mind flooded with dread.
I tried DI Fenway once more to tell him Aiden had gone, but the call was diverted to the desk sergeant who told me there was nothing they could do.
‘But, he’s agoraphobic, he can’t speak and he’s not well,’ I protested.
He asked me to hold the line and I heard the mutterings of voices in the background. ‘I’ve spoken to one of the officers on the case,’ he wouldn’t tell me who, ‘we know the situation, but the thing is Mr Blake left of his own free will, you said it yourself. Sit tight. He’ll be back before you know it.’
He promised to pass the message on to DI Fenway in person, but I didn’t like the lack of conviction in his voice.
Aiden had certainly left the boat in a hurry. A bundle of A4 sheets were scattered on the table with a pair of scissors left to one side. He’d found something. He’d tried to alert me, but must have decided it was too urgent to wait. Then I spotted the knife drawer was open.
The sand tray looked the same as when I’d left, he’d not altered or added to it from what I could make out. The sheets beside it looked like they’d come fresh from his printer. He must have made some new connection.
I skimmed through the first sheet, from an arts page of The Independent, dated February of that year, but there didn’t seem to be anything that hit a nerve. Picking up the sheet next to it from another website, I read about a new artist from Norfolk and there was a short piece about Aiden’s latest prize. The next minor heading read: Promising Artist Dies, but it stopped there. An L-shape was missing from that page. Aiden had cut something out.
I went back to the glove in the sand with what I now thought to be a zip at the cuff. I closed my eyes. Think! I visualised everyone I’d met from CCAP, then remembered Rachel had emailed me a batch of photos on Monday, from our gathering at Miranda’s. I flicked from one to the next; Monica retying her headscarf then throwing her arms around Kurtis, Miranda making Mark dance, Kurtis topping up our drinks, Mark and Miranda turning to laugh at something I must have said.
Then it hit me. How stupid… how could it have taken me this long?
I sprang to my feet so quickly the chair toppled backwards. I left it where it was and made a dash for the door. As soon as I got outside I called DI Fenway’s number again. It went to voicemail. I tried DI Foxton. Same thing. Then I tried Camden police station, explaining who I was and insisting I speak to someone – anyone – involved in Kora Washington’s murder case. After a series of clicks that threatened to cut me off, I was put through to the crime scene manager, DS Edwin Hall. The new guy with rosy cheeks who’d looked out of his depth in the case meetings.
‘Ah, Dr Willerby.’
‘Where is everybody? Where’s DI Fenway?’
‘You’ll be pleased to know that the team are out searching Dodd’s mortuary again – looks like that undertaker is in a lot of trouble,’ he said, sounding animated.
‘No, no!’ I shouted. ‘They need to be looking for someone else. You must let me get through to them,’ I pleaded.
‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid,’ he said politely, ‘but you can leave a message.’
‘No. Forget it.’ I cut the connection. I didn’t trust Edwin with what I had to say.
There was only one way forward. I had a journey to make.
Chapter 46
Wednesday, July 11 – eight days earlier
Katarina pressed open the tall gate and slipped inside. No security light came on, but there was a faint glow inside the funeral parlour. It was hours after the place had closed, nevertheless someone was in there.
A van was parked by the open back door and a lone figure was going back and forth into the building, carrying cloths and blankets. She braced herself and made a rush for the entrance, catching the person who was at work completely off guard.
‘My name is Katarina Bartek,’ she said, out of breath, ‘and my husband is here. I need to see him.’ She was already inside the door, rapping her fingers on the edge of an aluminium sink.
She was calm at first, giving her name, insisting on telling the whole story; about how the police had come to her office with news that Lubor wa
s dead, how she’d been to the hospital and then had to wait for the post-mortem.
‘You’ve no right to be in here.’
No one would have been best pleased at such an untimely interruption.
‘I was here this afternoon, but they wouldn’t let me see him. I need to find him… don’t you see? Check one last time. I don’t believe this has happened. I won’t rest until I know he’s really–’ She dropped her head.
‘Get out of there, you hear me? I’m busy and I can’t help you. You’ll need to come back tomorrow morning when the place is open for business. I’ve got work to do.’
But she wasn’t listening and paced further inside. She stared down at the gurgling machine, staggered past the trailing tubes, holding on to the empty casket beside it. She started whimpering, poking about, randomly lifting plastic sheets on a mission to find her husband.
How was it possible to maintain a sterile environment with this stupid creature flailing around? She was ruining everything. The only way to handle it was to play along and look for her husband. Maybe direct her over to the stacked fridges where they could check them together. Once she’d got a good look at his corpse, she’d see sense and be on her way.
But Katarina didn’t move when invited to keep walking towards the back of the room.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she gasped. ‘This isn’t right…’
She’d been warned. She’d been told not to look at what was on the trolley. There hadn’t been enough time to grab a sheet.
Bereavement should have blinded her to what was going on, but Katarina took a long hard look at the sight before her on the stainless steel trolley and screamed. It was a piercing and extended shriek from deep within her. She howled something in a foreign language, then spun round and jabbed her finger in the air.
‘Where’s my husband? What have you done with him?’ Her legs gave way and she grabbed the rim of a nearby sluice.
She was verging on hysterical now, making far too much noise. To be fair, from an outsider’s point of view, the whole set up probably didn’t look too good. It’s not every day you see the body of a naked woman with her arms stretched out above her head. Stiff as a board and not such a good colour. It wasn’t a scene for the faint-hearted, but the job wasn’t finished, that’s why.
She kept on wailing, partly from her own personal grief, partly because of what she’d seen on the trolley. Katarina was in the company of death and she didn’t know how to cope with it. She wouldn’t shut up. What else was there to do? The alternative was to risk this crazy woman alerting a bunch of local busybodies, having them burst in to see what all the fuss was about.
The surgical gloves were already in place.
It wouldn’t take much.
It was the only way to keep her quiet and it didn’t last long. She flopped in a heap in under twenty seconds.
The surfaces she’d touched were wiped, everything tidied up, before she was bundled into the van. All back to normal, but she’d taken up valuable time. It would mean having to come back later to finish what had been started.
Just one final touch, in case someone got a good look or there were CCTV cameras on the way – so easy to alter one’s appearance these days and vital when people were already jumpy around here.
Now behind the wheel, the driver took the van to the canal. It was the obvious place. Best to go past the first car park; the police might have sealed off sections of the fence after what happened. Try the second parking area. Different vehicle this time, the Mazda was too risky; the transit van came courtesy of an old chum and was plain white with muddy number plates. Like thousands of others. Inconspicuous.
With a fresh pair of gloves on, the killer dragged Katarina’s body from the van and, using the wire cutters from the toolbox, clipped upwards from the bottom of the chain-link fence. She was too heavy to hoist over the top, but she could be pushed through at ground level. The aim was to get the body into the water, it would play havoc with forensics. It was a good spot; better than the last one. Darker with no boats moored nearby. No need for a boat. No need to tie up a tripwire, not this time. Just bend back the small section of ragged wire and squash Katarina’s limp body through. Easy.
About to squeeze through after her, the killer spotted a shape moving in the distance. Time to go. Better to back away – leave her where she was, on the path. To risk coming face to face with a passer-by was too dangerous, even though the disguise was pretty good.
Chapter 47
Present Day – Thursday, July 19
‘Nineteen’ was written in large white numbers in paint which had dripped down the brickwork. Next to it hung roll-down security shutters, the ones you find on shop fronts in the high street, only this was no row of enticing boutiques. This ugly cul-de-sac in Kentish Town was home to a row of storage spaces and garages. It was the sort of dubious area you’d stumble upon if you’d taken several wrong turns. There was a soggy sleeping bag discarded in a doorway and a wheelie bin on its side disgorging litter at the kerb. Beside it was a sideboard, the top curling up after repeated soakings in the rain. It wasn’t a place to loiter.
On the far side of the shutter a door stood slightly ajar. By now, I’d left a message on Fenway’s voicemail to tell him where I was, but I couldn’t afford to stand out here and wait. In any case, it didn’t feel safe on the street and I wanted to make sure I’d got the right place.
I stepped inside where a narrow corridor led to a huge, concrete, echoey space lined with trestle tables. There were fresh art materials everywhere; tins of paint, brushes, rollers, ladders, boards and empty barrels. A bright overhead light at the back drew me towards many items I didn’t recognise; machines with tubes and pumps next to vats containing caked on substances. The toxic odour – a dense mix of paint solvents and some sort of adhesive – was so strong I could taste it, each inhalation making me more light-headed.
At the far side, directly under the light, was a huge silver cauldron sending up rising steam. I stepped gingerly towards it, making sure my heels didn’t make a noise, and stood in the cone of heat that surrounded it. The substance inside was a gloopy green liquid on the verge of bubbling; the smell reminding me of children’s crayons. I backed away.
Behind it, several coats hung on hooks on the wall, there was an unplugged electric fire, and mugs and a kettle on a bench. I touched the side of the kettle. It was warm. Beside it stood a pair of sunglasses. My stomach lurched as I recognised the silver design on the side. Aiden was here.
There was a tall hardboard partition behind the bench, the sort that folds up in a zigzag. I crept to the edge, holding my breath and poked my head round.
She was lying flat out on a beaten up old sofa, covered in a sheet, her arms stretched out above her head. I recognised her spikey blonde hair and I nearly laughed out loud – Miranda taking an afternoon nap. What was she doing here? I was about to call out her name, but stopped myself. Something wasn’t right. Her arms continued to reach up, locked in an odd, stiff posture. As I moved round into the light, reality hit me. She was too still.
I staggered back making a whimpering sound, trying not to scream. Every sinew in my body was yelling at me to get out of there as fast as possible, but I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t leave her like this. With my hand over my mouth, I took a step closer to the body, then another. I eased back the sheet. That’s when I realised her hair looked too dry, too yellow. This wasn’t Miranda.
The figure was naked, with skin below the neck the colour of mahogany, the texture not like skin at all. It was taut and crisp with a glossy finish. The hair was a wig. The body had been elongated so that her arms stretched above her head, her feet pointed. It looked like an exquisitely detailed mannequin. I stared at the gruesome form and couldn’t work it out. Her face looked like it was made of plastic. So human and yet not right at all.
The overpowering smell of formaldehyde forced me to back off, but I couldn’t take my eyes away, I was both mystified and horrified. What was thi
s? A very clever model – a perfect replica, like you’d find at Madame Tussauds? For some reason, I wasn’t convinced. Perhaps it was the smell, perhaps it was the fact that it was too realistic, too good. And then, when I looked down, I saw her nails were black.
At that point, I forced myself to look properly at her face. The vision sent bile, burning into my throat. Her gunmetal grey eyes were staring back at me, but they were covered in a cloudy film and were flaccid as though punctured at the back. I knew then, without a doubt. This was no waxwork figure.
Strands of dark hair trailed down from under the blonde wig and by then, I knew the face. I threw a hand over my mouth as my stomach clenched, but there was no stopping myself from throwing up.
Chapter 48
I had to get out.
No sooner had I hurriedly begun to retrace my steps, when I heard movement behind me. I stepped behind a tall board propped up against the wall. Miranda appeared wearing her painting overalls. Someone was behind her holding his hands over her eyes. I froze to the spot hoping they couldn’t see me.
‘Keep them shut,’ he said jovially to Miranda, letting go of her. ‘But stay where you are.’ He adjusted the partition a fraction so that she couldn’t see the body of Pippa French on the sofa.
‘This is so exciting,’ she squealed. ‘Urgh, it stinks, though. What is it?’
‘You can open them, now.’
She looked around expectantly. ‘What am I looking for?’
His hands were in the pockets of his overalls, flapping the sides around.
‘Be patient,’ he said chuckling. ‘I’ll show you in a minute.’
I was craning my neck out of the shadows desperate to see what was going on and Miranda, her eyes on the lookout for some promised surprise, looked straight at me. I shook my head in an urgent signal not to give me away, but she moved forward, squinting, trying to see beyond the bright light above her. There was nowhere for me to go.