Now You See Me

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked.

  I gave a little shrug. ‘Well, you know those piano lessons I talked about having one day? Turns out I might have to give up on that idea.’

  She put my hand down and smiled again. ‘I’m sorry about what I did,’ she said, and she might have been apologizing for scratching one of my CDs.

  ‘For killing those women?’ I whispered.

  ‘Lord, no. I’m not sorry about that,’ she said, with an odd little shudder. ‘I’m sorry about trying to make you kill the Groves girl. I should have known that would never happen.’

  I had nothing to say back to her.

  ‘When you sent the warnings to the Curtis and Groves women, I should have known you wouldn’t play ball,’ she went on. ‘I told those detectives I sent them, by the way – that I was trying to stop. I think they believed me.’

  ‘They did,’ I said. I’d been careful when I’d sent the notes to Karen Curtis and Jacqui Groves, there was no way they could be traced back to me. I might as well have not bothered. My warning hadn’t saved Karen, and Jacqui had never been a target anyway.

  ‘And I’m sorry for what I said all that time ago,’ Cathy said, leaning back a little. ‘You know, when you came to the boat and I went a bit mental. It wasn’t your fault, what happened to us in the park, with those boys, I just had to—’

  ‘Get me off your back,’ I finished for her.

  She nodded. ‘You’d spent eight months looking for me,’ she said. ‘I knew you were never going to leave me alone. I’m sorry, Tic. I just needed space. And some time.’

  I let my head nod slowly, as though I understood completely. Which I did, in a way. My sister had needed space and time. To plan the destruction of five families.

  ‘Did you set fire to the houseboat?’ I asked, and when her eyes fell to the table I knew she had. More deaths on my conscience, then. She leaned forward across the table. ‘Why did you do it?’ she said. ‘Why did you tell them that girl in the river was me?’

  ‘To set you free,’ I replied. ‘I knew that’s what you wanted. A couple of days later, a friend of mine died and it seemed like I had the same chance. I didn’t think the world would miss the Llewellyn girls.’

  ‘Was that Lacey?’ she asked me.

  I nodded.

  My whole life long, I’d allowed only one other person to call me Tic, and that was the sad, sweet, drug-crazed young woman I’d met and become close to when we’d both been homeless ten years ago. The story I’d told DI Joesbury in a Cardiff hotel room had been almost 100 per cent true. I’d just told it from the other girl’s point of view. And I’d made up the happy ending. Not long after officially declaring Cathy dead, I’d come back to the Engine Vaults to find Lacey seriously ill. I’d managed to drag her to the street and, with no other options at hand, I’d stolen a car that hadn’t been properly locked. I’d intended to drive her to the nearest hospital, to put her in a private clinic when she was better, but by the time I got the car back to where I’d left her, she was dead.

  So I’d taken a chance on a new life. Lacey’s record with the police was relatively clean; mine wasn’t. I’d driven to the coast, taken what few papers she’d had and replaced them with my own. Then I’d pushed the car and my friend into the sea. At three o’clock in the morning on a clifftop in Sussex, I’d become Lacey Flint.

  And it had worked. I’d taken the time to grieve for both my friend and my sister, then set about building a new life for myself. I’d walked away from the streets, kept my distance from anyone who might know either Lacey or me, and gradually gathered up the reins of another woman’s life. Neither Lacey nor I had much in the way of family, which significantly reduced the number of people I needed to avoid; and I’d had money, which had helped a lot.

  When I’d felt I was ready, I applied to join the Metropolitan Police. Never having taken drugs in my life, I sailed through the drugs tests and then the various entrance exams. I’d taken a law degree and been accepted on to the detective programme. It had been an OK life, while it lasted.

  ‘We’re going to have to tell them,’ I said. ‘Who we really are.’

  Cathy had a trick I remembered from years ago, of crinkling up her eyes until they became bright, sparkling slits. She did that now. ‘In the eyes of the world, Victoria Llewellyn is a sadistic, bloodthirsty killer,’ she said. ‘I made sure of that. Do you really want to be her again?’

  Sitting there, looking into those glinting, hazel-blue eyes, I couldn’t have said whether she was trying to protect me or destroy me. And yet it all made a twisted sort of sense. My neglect of Cathy all those years ago had started the process that had made her what she was. I’d turned my sister into a killer; and now she’d done it right back.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she went on. ‘Did I kill that butch detective friend of yours?’

  I waited, and watched her smile die.

  ‘No,’ I said, when it had. ‘You punctured a lung. The doctors managed to stitch it up. He’ll be OK.’

  I was relying on reports from mutual friends. I hadn’t seen Mark since the night we’d both almost died. Nor would I, for as long as I had any control over the matter. It was enough, surely, that never a second went by when I didn’t think of him.

  At the news that he would live, Cathy gave a little shrug and nodded her head. I judged she was pleased, on balance, that he wasn’t dead, because she’d realized how important he was to me. Otherwise, it was of very little interest. That was the moment when I finally accepted that my sister was insane.

  ‘Cathy,’ I said.

  ‘Shush.’ She leaned forward again. ‘Don’t call me that. I’m Vicky now. I always liked your name better anyway.’

  ‘Cath – do you realize you’re going to prison for life?’

  She sat upright in surprise. ‘Get real, Tic,’ she said. ‘I’ll be out in ten.’

  We were slipping into la-la land.

  ‘Cathy,’ I began. She held up a warning finger and I realized there was nothing I could do but let her have her way. I was to blame for the dreadful things my sister had done in my name. The least I could do now was to let her keep that name if she wanted it.

  ‘Vicky,’ I began again, and just saying the word made me feel like something essential inside me had slipped away for good. ‘You killed four women. They are never going—’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ She leaned forward, holding up the fingers of one hand and started to count them off. ‘One, I’m going to plead guilty and show lots of remorse. That always reduces the sentence. Two, I’ll be a model prisoner. I’ll get therapy, I’ll go to church, I’ll study for a degree. You just watch me. Parole in ten years.’

  The officer in charge of the room started making his way in between the tables, letting everyone know visiting time was almost up. She looked up at him in surprise, then at me with something like panic on her face. I caught a glimpse then of the scared little girl I remembered from her first day at primary school.

  ‘You’ll come and see me again, won’t you?’ she said and I could only nod. She was my responsibility, now more than ever. I’d made her what she was.

  Everyone was leaving, the prisoners were standing up and walking towards the door that would take them back to their cells. I stood up too, let her kiss me and then watched her head for the door. Before she disappeared, she waved, just as she’d always done when she’d gone through the school doors as a child.

  I turned and made my way out, knowing that the next time I saw her, life in prison would have knocked a little more of the spirit out of her. And the time after that, a bit more. And so it would go on, for a very long time.

  She was wrong about the leniency of the system. However she chose to plead in court, however she behaved in prison, she wasn’t going to be out in ten or even twenty years. My sister would spend the rest of her life paying for what she’d done.

  And so would I.

  Also by S. J. Bolton

  Blood Harvest

  Awaken
ing

  Sacrifice

  Author’s Note

  Jack the Ripper: Man or Myth? (or Miss!)

  Eleven decades of fascination with the sadistic serial killer whom the police never caught have given rise to endless ideas, stories and beliefs about his crimes and his identity. As Lacey says, ‘Jack was a real man, but he’s become a myth.’ Here are some of my favourite daft Jack theories.

  1. Jack was a prince of the realm. Any mention of Jack the Ripper will invariably be met with: ‘Wasn’t he a member of the royal family?’ The royal in question was Prince Albert Victor, grandson to Queen Victoria and in direct line to the throne, who allegedly contracted syphilis after an assignation with a prostitute. His subsequent murderous rampage was hushed up by the authorities (who possibly had Masonic connections) to protect the queen from scandal. It’s a lovely idea, but the prince’s whereabouts on any given date are a matter of public record and he was, sadly, nowhere near Whitechapel when the murders took place. We all love a royal conspiracy, but this one simply doesn’t stack up.

  2. Jack was a surgeon who collected internal organs. Annie Chapman and Catharine Eddowes were both partially disembowelled and are believed to have been missing organs. This gave rise to the theory that the Ripper himself took the organs and must have been surgically trained in order to locate and remove them. Equally likely, though, is that the organs were taken some time after death by unsupervised and unscrupulous mortuary assistants, who knew their value on the black market. Jack may well have had nothing more than the most basic knowledge of anatomy.

  3. The Ripper was a smartly dressed gentleman who carried a Gladstone bag. Countless depictions of the Ripper portray him as a Victorian ‘toff’, an elegant gentleman who easily lured women to their deaths. In fact, the relatively few eye-witness accounts differ so much in terms of age, appearance, dress, nationality, that it is impossible to form any reliable idea of what Jack looked like. Certainly, there are as many accounts of his being roughly dressed as there are of his being respectable. The Gladstone bag arises from two eye-witness accounts of passers-by carrying ‘shiny black bags’. Although nothing concrete connects either bag-owner with the crimes, these reports gave rise to a dozen or more black-bag stories, to the point where mere ownership of such an article became a cause for suspicion.

  4. The Ripper was the subject of a massive police and Masonic cover-up. A barely literate chalk-written message near the site of Catharine Eddowes’ murder, referring to ‘Juwes’, along with similarities between the murder and a certain Masonic legend, gave rise to the theory that the Ripper killings were part of a Masonic conspiracy. In reality, the graffiti may have been completely unconnected with the murder, whilst the link between the word ‘Juwes’ and three Masonic murderers, Jubela, Jubelo, Jubelum (the Juwes – are you keeping up?) is pure speculation. As far as the police are concerned, they faced massive public, press and government pressure to identify the killer, not to conceal his identity, and it is hard to believe that over a hundred years later, hard evidence of a cover-up would not have emerged.

  5. The Ripper taunted the police with letters and postcards. During the months of the murders and for several years afterwards, the police, the press and even prominent members of the public received letters supposedly from the killer. Many of them were signed ‘Jack the Ripper’; one was accompanied by a human kidney. The letters have been subjected to endless investigations by police and independent experts of various kinds and are generally believed to be fake. In recent years, the crime writer Patricia Cornwell built a very convincing case that the artist Walter Sickert was the author of many of the letters. She fell short, in my view at least, of proving that Sickert was also the killer.

  And finally …

  6. Jack was a woman. Inspector Abbeline, the officer in charge of the original investigation, took seriously the theory that the killer could have been female, and so we should too. If, as was argued at the time, the Ripper was a midwife, she would have been able to leave her house and wander the streets in the small hours without attracting undue attention, her bloodstained clothing would not have been remarked upon, she would have been able to approach women without alarming them and would have had the medical knowledge a) to subdue her victims and b) to locate and remove reproductive organs. True, there is no direct evidence to suggest a woman committed these crimes, but until the worldwide jury agrees on one prime male suspect, I think Jill the Ripper has to stay in the mix.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a police procedural proved seriously challenging and I’m grateful, once again, to Adrian Summons, not just for his patience and good humour at school pick-up, but also for introducing me to some very useful mates and former colleagues. The ones I’m allowed to name and thank are Detective Inspector Brian Cleobury and Inspector Harvey Martin of the Metropolitan Police’s Southwark Borough Command, and Chief Inspector Derek Caterer of the Marine Policing Unit. As for the one I’m not allowed to name, I thank him too.

  I’m indebted to Mike Katesmark for checking the medical and pathological detail and for his contribution to the text and characterization. Thanks, also, to Denise Stott and Jacqui Socrates, who never seem to mind my pestering them with daft questions; to Gareth Cooper for some eagle-eyed proofreading; and to Edward Teggin, who knows stuff his parents probably wouldn’t approve of.

  Any remaining mistakes are mine.

  The Camden scenes, both above and below ground, owe their accuracy to Peter Darley of the Camden Railway Heritage Trust, and their inaccuracies to my over-heated imagination. I have to point out that any attempt to retrace Lacey’s final journey through the catacombs would be illegal, highly dangerous and, thanks to several demolished basements and tunnels, quite impossible. I would like to thank Peter for being so generous with his time and his local knowledge; and also the Trust for the work they do in conserving this fascinating part of London.

  Reference books I relied on include: Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery by Patricia Weaver Francisco, After Silence by Nancy Venable Raine, Recoveringfrom Rape by Linda Ledray, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, Jack the Ripper by Andrew Cook, Jack the Ripper: The Twenty-First Century Investigation by Trevor Marriot, Portrait of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell and Jack the Ripper: The Casebook by Richard Jones.

  Transworld continue to be the best publishers in the world, with St Martins Minotaur in the US coming a very close second. My especial thanks to Sarah Adams, Lynsey Dalladay, Nick Robinson, Kate Samano and Jess Thomas on this side of the Atlantic and to Kelley Ragland and Matthew Martz on the other.

  Anne Marie Doulton, Peter Buckman, Rosie Buckman and Jessica Buckman remain wise, supportive and diligent. My thanks and love to them once more.

  S. J. Bolton was born in Lancashire. She is the author of three previous critically acclaimed novels, Sacrifice, Awakening and Blood Harvest, all available in paperback.

  Sacrifice was nominated for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, and for the prestigious Prix Polar SNCF Award. Awakening won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Thriller of the Year in the US.

  In 2010 Blood Harvest was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year.

  S. J. Bolton lives near Oxford with her husband and young son. For more information about the author and her books, or to check out her popular blog, visit www.sjbolton.com

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  NOW YOU SEE ME. Copyright © 2011 by S. J. Bolton. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a Random House Group Company

  eISBN 9781429969840

  First eBook Edition : April 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pub
lication Data

  Bolton, S. J.

  Now you see me / S. J. Bolton.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-60052-5

  1. Women detectives—England—London—Fiction. 2. Women—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Serial murder investigation—Fiction. 4. Jack, the Ripper—Influence—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6102.O49N68 2011

  823’. 92—dc22

  2011008751

  First U.S. Edition: June 2011