by Stav Sherez
‘But you saw each other less and less?’ Geneva watched the girl’s reaction closely. She flashed back to what Cummings had said about Grace changing over the last year.
Cecilia picked up a HobNob and nibbled at the edges, her teeth white and very small. ‘You know how it is, work gets more and more important. There’s always a deadline.’
‘But it wasn’t just that, was it?’ Geneva prompted.
‘Grace changed.’ Cecilia bit off a chunk of biscuit. She chewed slowly and with what seemed like great concentration. ‘She got really involved in her studies; I wasn’t lying. She was always working somewhere, either in the library or in local archives, but it became something more than just work to her. Like a mission or something.’
Geneva gently put down her tea. ‘When did you first notice this change?’
‘Over the Christmas holidays. I’d call her up, say look there’s sunshine, let’s go to Battersea Park or the river and she’d say no, she was busy, couldn’t spare the time. I only saw her a few times over the whole break. She’d changed in other ways too. She’d been so carefree and light and now there was this terrible heaviness to her. She began to lecture me on politics and human rights. I grew up with that stuff. My father teaches at the university in Kampala; I’d come to London to get away from all that. She would read something and then get all worked up about it. Obsessed. She’d tell me all these horrible, horrible things . . .’ Cecilia shook her head, her hands furrowing her jeans, pulling and straightening the seams, her eyes darting between the two detectives and the curtained window.
‘How much do you pay for this flat?’ Carrigan’s question took Geneva by surprise, almost as much as it did Cecilia.
‘A hundred pounds a week.’ She looked embarrassed, as if she’d been exposed as the victim of some scam.
‘Tough being a student. Especially in London, I imagine.’
Cecilia nodded.
‘How do you think Grace could afford to pay twice that for a flat in Queensway?’ Carrigan asked.
‘Really?’ Cecilia looked genuinely surprised. ‘She always had money. Not a huge amount but more than most students. In the first year she’d often take me to dinner. I felt guilty but she laughed it off, said it wasn’t her money anyway. I got the impression she received a sum from her family every month.’
Carrigan wrote something down. He’d already checked Grace’s bank account and there had been no sign of any regular deposits.
‘Do you know anything about this?’ Geneva took out the flyer for the African Action Committee which she’d found among Grace’s things, and laid it flat on the coffee table. Cecilia glanced at it, not even long enough to read the headline, and looked back up at them.
‘Gabriel,’ was all she said.
Carrigan looked at Geneva, then back down at the table. ‘Who’s Gabriel?’
Cecilia bit into a biscuit; crumbs rained down on her jeans and she began picking them up one by one. ‘Gabriel Otto. I guess he was as close to a boyfriend as Grace had. She met him at the end of her first year. I think she’d been impressed by something he wrote in the college paper but . . .’ She stopped.
Geneva could tell that Cecilia was unsure about betraying Grace’s confidence. She leant forward. ‘Go on.’
‘I just . . . I never trusted him. He pretends to be African but he was born and grew up here. I think he does the whole political thing to get girls but Grace seemed to like him.’
‘Do you know where Gabriel lives?’ Geneva asked.
The girl shook her head. ‘I only ever saw him at college and those African Action Committee meetings.’
Geneva watched Carrigan scribbling in his notebook, his fingers clenched white against the pencil’s stem. She knew what he was thinking – the boyfriend, the argument the night of the murder. ‘Did Grace own a laptop?’ she asked.
Cecilia nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘It wasn’t in her flat.’
The girl looked surprised, then upset. ‘She was always so careful with it, always checking she hadn’t left it someplace.’
‘There was nowhere else she might have stashed it?’
‘No, she wouldn’t even leave it in her locker, she was so afraid it would get stolen.’
‘You haven’t been to classes this week,’ Carrigan noted neutrally, but they both caught a flicker in Cecilia’s face before she answered.
‘I’ve not been feeling well,’ she replied at the same moment that Carrigan’s mobile rang, causing Cecilia to almost jump out of her seat, spilling what was left of her tea, apologising as she went down on her knees to clear it up.
Geneva watched, perplexed. Cecilia was definitely grieving for her friend but she also seemed terrified of something. Geneva could almost smell the fear coming off her. Was she scared of them, two white police, or of something else? She was about to ask her when Carrigan snapped his phone shut so hard it cracked like a whip in the airless room. He held it tightly in his fist until his knuckles turned white. ‘We need to go. Right now.’
She followed him into the street and watched as he stopped just short of Cecilia’s gate, turned and started kicking the nearby dustbin, shouting and swearing as people walked by oblivious, not wanting to get into trouble, not wanting to know, just wanting to get safely home where the news of Grace’s murder had just exploded into thirty million living rooms.
12
The clip ran for two minutes and twenty-three seconds. It was obvious both from the extent of her injuries and the jumpy transitions that the footage had been edited down from a master copy. The clip seemed to have been filmed on a high-quality mobile, possibly an iPhone. The camera framed Grace’s face and nothing else. The killer had remarkably steady hands. The lens held a tight close-up, the ends of Grace’s hair and chin nudging the edges of the screen. She wore a gag of blue checked cloth. Her lips were pushed back and looked as if they’d been peeled to reveal the skeleton grin of her gums. Every time something happened to her off-screen her face jumped and buckled, the eyes bulging as if trying to escape the confinement of their sockets. That you couldn’t see the things done to her, that you could only hear it off-camera, the heavy breathing, the laughter, the slash of knife against flesh – made it worse and even though everyone sitting in that room knew what had happened they couldn’t stop their imaginations from gliding away, seeing things even more grotesque than what they knew to be so.
Grace still had a lot of life left in her, that was clear from the violence of her struggle. She hadn’t hit that point yet when you realise you’re not getting out of this, when you see something in the killer’s smile, or the way he looks at you, and you know, know for sure, that the real and only reason you are here, tied to a bed – bleeding and wounded and screaming in pain – is so that someone can watch you die.
For two minutes and twenty-three seconds Grace writhed against her restraints, her face draining of blood, glistening in the camera-glare. Then came the moment everyone watched the clip on repeat for. The moment everyone told their friends about when they forwarded the link.
Three fingers appeared on screen. They were visible for maybe two seconds but that was all the time needed to remove the gag. Grace lurched forward, her face shaking with muscular spasms, the breath spilling out of her as if she were vomiting air. Branch turned the volume all the way up and Carrigan and Geneva could suddenly hear the heavy breathing in 87 King’s Court, the sound of a fire engine outside, the opening and closing of windows in the courtyard, people coming home from dinner and taking off their clothes, running baths and greeting their spouses. Then all they heard was Grace – a massive intake of breath, her eyes focused on the camera, her lips parted, her voice weak and parched.
‘Daddy!’
Just that one word, then a cut, her face appearing at a slight angle to the previous frame and, as she opened her mouth, for a split-second you could catch her life – who she was, the things she’d done – and then it was gone and she uttered her last words.
‘Help m
e, Daddy. Please help me.’
The clip ended abruptly, leaving a window asking you if you’d like to watch it again or see similar items.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Carrigan’s voice was dry and raspy, choked by the thought that this clip was being watched by hundreds, maybe thousands of people, not only here, but across the entire world.
‘We got a call from YouTube,’ Branch said, his face red and veined like someone about to experience a massive stroke. ‘They yanked the video after receiving several complaints. Christ, it had been on the site for nearly three hours by then. They thought it was a fake but they called us just in case.’
Geneva blinked, trying to rid herself of the dread images she’d witnessed. ‘Why us? How did they even know this happened in London?’
It was a good question, Carrigan realised, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it.
Branch hung his head, his thick fingers covering his skull. ‘The video’s labelled Murder in Queensway.’ He looked up at them, his eyes turning black and opaque.
‘We knew this would eventually leak out,’ Geneva offered, trying to soften her voice against what she’d seen, against the flood of fire snickering up her synapses and rushing through her blood.
‘You knew someone taped the killing and would post it on YouTube?’ Branch shot up, the chair tumbling from under him. ‘You’re obviously a better detective than I ever was, DS Miller – since my career is pretty much crucified because of this video, maybe you want to step in and take my place?’
‘She didn’t mean that,’ Carrigan interrupted, his voice as firm and unyielding as his stare. ‘Forget the fucking politics for a minute and you’ll see it’s better this way. The video will help us. We’re not seeing anything now but that’s because we’re looking in the wrong place.’
Branch moved forward so that he was less than two inches from Carrigan’s face. Geneva saw his hands curled into fists, held rigidly at his sides. ‘Where in Christ’s name are you looking?’
Carrigan didn’t blink. ‘Her boyfriend was seen arguing with her the night of the murder,’ he said slowly. ‘We’re concentrating everything on finding him.’
Geneva started to say something then stopped, her eyes darting down to the desk.
Branch turned towards her. ‘Spit it out, Miller, for God’s sake, if you have anything else to add.’
‘I think we should be looking at what she was working on, her dissertation; see if she offended anyone, wrote something that made her enemies.’ Her gaze remained fixed on the desk, unable to meet the super’s glare.
Branch stood up and walked towards the window. He stared at the grey sky then turned back. ‘A waste of time, Miller. Find the boyfriend. We’re not that desperate we have to chase up long shots yet.’ He looked down, seemed to be thinking about something. ‘At least I hope to Christ we’re not.’
The mood wasn’t any better in the incident room, the assembled detectives silently hunched over the small computer monitor, the light flickering on their faces as they watched Grace die.
Carrigan waited until they were finished, seeing his own thoughts wheeling like dark crows in their eyes; the anger, frustration and fury of the last few days exploding in ‘Fuck!’ and ‘Christ!’ and other, more imaginative, epithets. He wanted to give them some good news, a promise that this case wouldn’t end up unsolved, a silent rebuke filed away in a dark cabinet somewhere, but his eyes could not hide the truth.
‘From here on, everyone’s watching us.’ His voice was measured, calm and controlled, but inside he felt himself shaking. ‘It’s already made the TV news. The press will be all over this by tonight, the tabloids will go wild with it tomorrow.’ He didn’t need to explain to them the nature of a case conducted in the public eye, the way it warped procedure, geared up pressure, turned the death of a young girl from tragedy into politics. ‘Branch is apoplectic, as you can well imagine.’ Some laughs and nods of complicity from his men; even Karlson, he noticed, was quieter and less bullish than usual. ‘And that means he’s had the ACC screaming down the phone to him all afternoon. Which means we’ve now got targets painted on our backs. But, having said that, we have to continue as before, pretend none of this matters.’ He took a deep breath, knowing that such a thing would be impossible. ‘We’ve got to look at this video as a break in the case, we’ve now got something to work on. Berman . . .’
DC Berman raised his head from the computer screen, his eyes blinking hard like some nocturnal desert habitant. ‘Already on it, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’m running the clip through an enhancement program. We should be able to improve the image quality once that’s done, maybe see something we can’t see now.’ He spoke in a strange, lilting rhythm, the words breaking off now and then into mumbles and stutters. Carrigan watched him nervously fingering some kind of prayer shawl he wore under his uniform as he returned to his keyboard.
‘Karlson, I need you to talk to Scotland Yard, see if they have any kind of skin or finger database. The killer showed us his fingers. We must be able to learn something from that.’
‘From a three-second flash?’ Karlson was sitting backwards on the chair, slouching into the frame and running a finger through his elegantly manicured stubble. ‘I doubt it. All they can tell us is that he’s black, and that’s bleeding obvious.’
Carrigan turned his head sharply. ‘Do it. I’m not asking for your opinion.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We know from the clip that the killer is an IC3 male but that’s it – ask them if there’s anything about the shade of his skin, anything we can use to narrow this down.’
Karlson grumbled and noisily slurped his tea as Carrigan continued. ‘Also, can we find out what type of phone was used to film it?’
Berman looked up. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem once we figure out the resolution and coding parameters, though I can’t see how much help it’ll be; bound to be a common one.’
‘Everything we know about this man will help us find him. Everything. We all know what he did to Grace, what he’s capable of, the rush he must have experienced during the killing. Uploading the clip is probably his way of trying to replicate it but soon that won’t be enough, he’ll want more. They always do. Do we even have a clue where he uploaded it?’
Berman fingered his prayer shawl. ‘I’m onto it.’
Carrigan smiled – it was time for some good news. ‘We now have a lead on the boyfriend courtesy of Grace’s best friend, Cecilia Odamo. His name is Gabriel Otto. According to Cecilia he runs a group called the African Action Committee. There’s an AAC meeting in Hackney tomorrow night, which me and DS Miller will be attending.’ He stopped, noticed the dark hooded glare that Karlson gave Geneva, ignored it and continued. ‘Jennings and Singh, I want you to go back to SOAS, find out what you can about this group and about our friend Gabriel.’ He looked around the room. ‘This is what we have to deal with now. It’s not the way any of us would have liked it but it’s the way it is. Let’s use the video to help us catch him. Uploading it was his first mistake.’
13
A small upstairs room of the Queen’s Arms just off Mare Street. Carrigan and Geneva paid their two pounds entrance fee and climbed the narrow stairs to the weekly meeting of the African Action Committee.
They were greeted by a room so packed it felt as if the floor was moving. People sitting on chairs, on the floor in between the chairs, cramped into corners and up against walls like Mannerist effigies. The heavy smell of sweat, beer and impatience hung like weather in the room. Other smells too, fainter but more unusual – roots and herbs and strange green drinks swigged from unlabelled bottles.
But it was the screaming and shouting that gave them pause, made them feel as if they’d stepped into an alien world. A wailing chorus of remarks, insults and exultations. Some in English, others in languages unknown to them, others still in hybrids where English words poked between Swahili and local dialects, their owners shifting from one to another as if some were better suited for particular forms of expression. Carrigan could see Ge
neva fidgeting and tight-lipped and knew he should feel the same way too, here among people who’d lost so much to policemen in other countries, their eyes locking on the two white intruders, seeing in them past injustices and fresh indignities. But he was enjoying it, the noise and chaos and heat. The utter strangeness of it, here in the heart of London.
A young man stood by a chipped wooden lectern. Behind him was draped a large red flag with a crossed-through clenched fist on a white target at its centre. The man’s eyes popped and rolled as he addressed the crowd. It was obvious he was loving every moment of it. The catcalls and insults, the exhortations, hollers and electric sting of the room. With each cry from the crowd his voice rose and glided across the massed heads, alternately enraged and calm, his hands reaching out as if promising salvation or something better.
‘And I say it again, brothers, we are not brothers, we are not them and we are not the others. We are our own people.’ A cheer rose from the packed huddle. The temperature was soaring, an electric fan spinning elliptically but to no effect in the corner of the room. ‘They, these people who call themselves our brothers, they are the ones killing our sons, raping our mothers, destroying our villages. All in the name of brotherhood. Of progress. Of God.’
Another loud cheer crested by a stream of booing and insults. The young man smiled and continued, his voice seemingly feeding off the crowd, filling with urgency. ‘Yes, as Jesus declared, each man must atone in his own heart for that which he is not and each man’s heart is a darkness that no other man can hope to penetrate.’ He took a pause, more for effect than to catch his breath, then continued. ‘We will give them the chance to atone but if they do not take it then we must be ready. We must learn from them, these killers, these godless men who try to impose God in our hearts through the sword. If they will not repent we must use their own ways against them.’
Another cheer, more booing. Carrigan felt the atmosphere in the room suddenly shift, a subtle variation in the air like at a football game when trouble is about to kick off.