‘I’ve been wondering about the significance of the chain,’ she says, turning away from him to tidy papers on her desk. ‘It’s bugging me. Did you have any theories?’
‘I didn’t need to, the case was as clear-cut as I’ve ever seen. And we never released the details of the chain to the press so he can hardly claim it’s a copycat.’
‘Uh huh.’ She slurps the coffee. ‘And David Alden never gave you a reason?’
He gives a cynical laugh. ‘Come on, you’re better than that. Why would he? It’s all about the power. He holds out, gets a kick from keeping us in the dark. You’ve never watched Cracker?’
‘Before my time, sir.’
His laughter produces a phlegmy cough. ‘You need to rein back on the hours then, you’re not ageing well.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘Look, I know you, Rutter, you’re clever. But let me tell you something: don’t go looking for complications when there aren’t any. Sometimes cases practically solve themselves. It doesn’t happen very often, once or twice in a career, but when it does, you embrace it. The worst thing you can do is make it harder for yourself.’ He picks up the photo of Oliver and Bella that sits on her desk. They’re smiling in their school uniform. Only she notices the patch of Weetabix on Oliver’s collar. She’d sent them out without brushing their hair, without clean jumpers, having ignored the reminders from school that they were having their photograph taken that day. She always has the same reaction when she looks at it. Their toothy grins, the way they lean in to each other laughing makes her burst with pride. And then she sees the Weetabix stain and her mood deflates. It’s like a symbol of all the missed sports days and concerts and cinema Sundays. ‘You could have this case wrapped up if you stopped making life difficult for yourself you know … reacquaint yourself with your family.’ He places the frame back on her desk.
‘Enjoy the coffee,’ he says as he walks out.
The flashes of the cameras glint off the gold. Don’t blink, Victoria tells herself, you are on TV. She holds it up, not the exact chain found in Eve Elliot’s hand but a replica sourced from Meopham and Sons in Maidstone, Kent, who made the original.
When the photographers and cameramen have taken their shots, DI Rutter starts talking. Her statement is short, to the point. ‘This is an identical chain to the one found on Eve Elliot’s person when she was discovered. We believe it is of significance to the killer. It was not mass-produced and it’s out of production so if anyone has seen a chain like this either recently or in the past we would ask them to get in touch. Perhaps they might have sold one to someone in a second-hand shop or online; again we would like to hear from them.’
She doesn’t tell them they found the same one six years ago on Melody Pieterson too. She’s not giving everything away so easily.
Back in her office, she is removing her make-up with a face wipe when she hears the familiar wheeze in the doorway.
‘Opened a can of worms there, Rutter.’ He’s carrying a takeaway coffee. He doesn’t offer it to her.
Chapter Eight
Eve
FROM MY INVESTIGATIONS I had gathered an abstract mental picture of Melody. Part collage of images, part word cloud formed from the descriptions people gave of her. Funny. Joy. Laughter. Wine. Busy. Energy. Summer. I saw a woman with shoulder length blond hair and a full-beam smile that rarely slipped. She took risks, she pushed it. She liked proof that life was pumping inside her. Occasionally she wore leopard-skin trousers and fake fur and always red lipstick, and when her friends asked her when she was going to grow up and get respectable, she’d say, ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I liked her style. I could have pictured myself whiling away a weekend with her under the big fat sun that followed her around.
Only this was Melody before the attack. The way people described her afterwards suggested that Melody had vanished. Her world had shrunk, she was delicate, in need of protection. The word worry cropped up a lot. No one mentioned red lipstick and leopard prints.
After I died. I had a chance to see Melody for myself which sounds weird and creepy I know but if you were in my shoes you’d have done the same. First impressions? OK, there was no evidence of sartorial flare, no sign of a honking laugh, but then most of the time she was alone and I wouldn’t have expected her to laugh at herself. The woman I saw looked a little drab but she didn’t seem shrunken or delicate. In fact I thought, there’s a woman who’s done well for herself, who has taken adversity and given it a kick up the arse. I had to blink when I looked into her house because it was so sparkly, it dazzled from every angle. I thought, my God, is that her kitchen? Then slowly it grew on me that something wasn’t quite right, though I couldn’t say what exactly. The cleaning was way over the top for starters; she was always checking parcels and delivery times and ordering crap from Lakeland. If I was alive there was no way I’d spend a nanosecond ordering Mary Berry cake lifters from Lakeland. I’d be out there skipping under the sky. I’d be bear-hugging my mum. But this was how Melody chose to run her days. The atmosphere around her was jagged and sharp, and on closer inspection it was as if her whole body was clenched, braced for attack. It hit me that she hadn’t laughed in the face of adversity, she had put up a front, and the effort of maintaining it had made her brittle. So brittle I worried that one single, tiny thing could break her.
And then I worried some more, because she was reading my file and there wasn’t one single thing in it to break her, but pages of them, truths that would explode in her face. And yes, I wanted her to uncover them but I thought, wouldn’t it be kinder if only I could tell her myself, break it to her gently? But when I looked at her again I saw a woman who had been told too many different truths. She had to work this one out for herself. Cruel as it was, Melody had to fall apart before she had any hope of putting herself back together again.
The file took months to compile. By week five I had created a huge table detailing every piece of evidence against David Alden, every lead in the case. Photographs of the crime scene, the surrounding area. What was followed up, what wasn’t. Where were the holes? Where had they made a mistake?
I applied for documents and statements to be released; every telephone call, conversation and scrap of paper relating to the case was noted, collected, retained. I went back to the beginning, to the time when Melody was found on the edge of the park, looking not for what had been found, but what had been missed.
It was there that my first breakthrough came.
Two people had called the police to say they had found a woman, presumed dead, in the undergrowth at Ham Common Woods.
According to the log, the calls came in at roughly the same time: 7.32 a.m. and 7.34 a.m. on Sunday 19 August 2007. Both were men; one a jogger, the other a man walking his dog. Both gave statements to the police, depicting the same scene.
Only the jogger, Mr Colin Regus, was called as a prosecution witness at trial.
Why wasn’t the other witness called? Why choose one over the other? Was there a reason?
There was always a reason.
Eddie Morgan’s house smelt of dogs, or one dog in particular, a collie Labrador cross called Jessie who jumped up and licked my face as Eddie welcomed me in. He lived in a flat not far from the common, a cosy throwback to the seventies, patterned carpets and a brown three-piece suite.
‘Such a long time ago,’ he said. He spoke with a West Indian accent, had a face that made you happy. ‘I thought it was all done and dusted.’
‘I appreciate you might not be able to remember much …’
‘Remember it? You don’t forget something like that no matter how much time passes. Poor girl. I can see her face now. We thought she was dead, she looked about as dead as you can get.’
‘We?’
‘Me and the other man, Colin was his name. I remember, see. He was out for a run, training for a half-marathon. The first time he’d run that way, he told me. I bet it was the last time too.’
Eddie offered to make tea, told me to sit dow
n and make myself comfortable. At a guess he was in his mid seventies, happy for the chance to talk. On the mantelpiece was a photograph of him and a woman, faded by the years, taken before his hair had gone grey.
He emerged from the kitchen carrying two mugs of tea. ‘Sorry I don’t have any cake.’ He pointed to the photograph, ‘She used to make the best ginger cake, wouldn’t ever part with the recipe, not even to me, she said it was all in her head, and now it’s gone with her.’ He cackled. ‘She’s probably laughing at me up there, buying all the no-good ones from the supermarket.’ He settled down in his armchair. ‘So you gonna tell me what this is all about?’
I was straight with Eddie, he deserved it. He’d invited me into his house without suspicion. I knew it would rarely be this easy.
‘Ah well, the police, it’s not like they never make a mistake now, is it?’ he said when I had finished. ‘Just tell me how I can help.’
‘Colin Regus was called as a witness at the trial.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did they ask you?’
‘They didn’t, my suits weren’t as good apparently.’ He laughed. ‘They said my services wouldn’t be needed. Poor Mr Regus, he takes that route once and ends up going to court, and there’s me and Jessie walking there every morning and night and no one bothers us.’
I took a sip from my mug. ‘You make a good cup of tea.’
‘A man has to have a skill in life.’
‘Every morning and night, you say?’
‘That’s what I said. We’re less regular now. Jessie has arthritis and my knees are no good.’ He reached down and patted the dog.
‘But back then you took exactly the same route twice a day?’
‘That’s correct. Jessie always leads the way, knows where she wants to go, this one.’
‘But you didn’t see Melody Pieterson on the Saturday?’
‘No.’
I thought of the photographs of the scene, the undergrowth, how well her body might have been hidden. ‘She would have been easy to miss, I guess.’
He shook his head. ‘No, dear. We didn’t see her because she wasn’t there. Jessie has got a nose like a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing things out.’
‘And you told the police this?’
‘I told them how often we walked there. I told them Jessie had a talent for sniffing thing out.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s very interesting.’
He screwed his face up, looking puzzled. ‘Well, like I say, happy to help.’
To get a conviction, the police needed David Alden to have dumped Melody on the Friday night. He had an alibi for the rest of the weekend, which made me think there was a good reason why Colin Regus was called as a witness and Eddie Morgan wasn’t. And it wasn’t one that had anything to do with his suits. Eddie’s testimony alone wouldn’t have destroyed the prosecution’s case, but it might have introduced an element of doubt.
It also got me thinking: there was almost thirty-two hours between the last sighting of Melody and the time when she was found in Ham Common Woods. Everyone had assumed she was driven there and dumped directly after she was picked up. But what if she had been taken somewhere first? Where would we find evidence that could prove she was dumped in the woods outside David Alden’s window of opportunity?
Together with David’s new solicitor we requested the archive samples of Melody’s clothing from the Metropolitan Police. The excuses varied so much you knew they had to be making them up. They’ve been misplaced/lost/destroyed, and when they tired of those, they went for the more traditional route, ignoring our emails entirely. The thing to do is never give up. For every email ignored I sent another two, always aggressively polite in tone. I had time. David had time. He’d waited long enough. Some police forces take the same approach as the customer services at a budget airline. They make it so hard for you to extract anything from them that only the persistent will ever get a refund for ending up in the arse end of Italy when you were supposed to land in Florence. Most people don’t have the patience; life’s too short, they think. Me, I didn’t mind the wait. Part of me even enjoyed it because I knew I was tormenting them far more than they could ever annoy me.
I was right. After four months we took receipt of two slides containing tiny pieces of the blue shirt Melody had worn the evening she was attacked. My hope was that hidden within the fibres of the fabric was a residue of soil that might tell us a different story to the one that led to David Alden’s conviction.
It was late August by the time the samples eventually arrived, but the summer hadn’t been wasted. I’d spent much of it gathering witness statements, interviewing Melody’s friends who were with her on the night she was attacked and a few who weren’t.
What became apparent was that more than one of them had something to hide.
Chapter Nine
Melody
IN THEIR BEDROOM, it’s dark save for a thin strip of light that beats its way through the curtains and another that slips in under the door. It’s the way they always do it. Not always, she corrects herself, not at the beginning, when the seeing was part of the discovery, the thrill. Watching his face, the need and want in it, knowing that she was doing that to him. His eyes open, never closed. He didn’t want to miss a bit of her.
He doesn’t look at her now. Not with his eyes shut he can’t. She wonders who she is tonight: a woman at work who’s caught his eye? A face and a body plucked from a magazine? A fellow surfer he’s seen on the beach? There are times when she could swear she smells someone else on him. She mentioned it once; he pushed her away. ‘Well if that’s what you think of me,’ he said and ignored her for days afterwards. Although to be fair she hadn’t realised he had fallen out with her until three days later when she asked him which charlotte royales he thought would win the Great British Bake Off semi-final and he’d refused to answer.
Now she can picture all the cakes lined up waiting for the judges to taste them. Stop thinking about cakes. Remove the image of perfect Swiss rolls and delicate bavarois from your head. Think of sex. What does she think of sex? Occasionally it can be a bit hit and miss, like an episode of Homeland, but on the whole it delivers. It’s good sex, above average she would say, although she lacks the evidence to support this claim. It’s just separate. Before, it was about a mutual connection. A coming together, if you can excuse the pun. These days they don’t make love to each other, they assume roles, body doubles for their fantasy of the moment. She knows this because she does it too. Except tonight, when finally having put charlotte royales from her mind, she dares herself to look at him.
His features shift and distort as he rocks back and forth, his face changes as it catches the light.
When they’re done, there is a perfunctory kiss, an ‘I love you’ said with little trace of sentiment and each of them turns to face away from the other. Melody listens for his breath growing heavy. She’s waiting for the twitch in his leg that she knows is the tipping point, the transition between wakefulness and sleep. ‘A hypnic jerk is the proper term,’ he told her once. ‘A twitch,’ she repeated. She refuses to call it a hypnic jerk. From here he slides deeper and deeper into sleep. She waits until she is certain he has gone before pulling back the covers and heading downstairs.
She was reading the file most of the day, with the exception of a few screen breaks when her eyes began to burn in their sockets. Typical then that just as she heard Sam arrive she saw a name that caught her attention.
Patrick.
His statement to the police after she was attacked.
And an interview with Eve.
Any attempt at sleep is pointless until she reads what he said.
Original statement from Patrick Carling to police
This statement consisting of 2 page(s) signed by me is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence, I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe
to be true.
(Signature) Dr P. Carling Date: 21 August 2007
I live at 25 Percy Road, Shepherd’s Bush. I am a doctor at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital specialising in gynaecology. For the past year and a half Melody Pieterson has been my lodger. We have been close friends since we met at university in 1995. On the night of 17 August 2007 Melody met me and a group of friends after work at the Horse and Hound pub in Shepherd’s Bush after work. She arrived around 8 p.m. and came and sat with us. She shared a bottle of wine with our mutual friend Honor Flannigan. She had not been drinking excessively.
I think she left the pub around 10.30 p.m. She lost her footing and almost fell down the steps into the beer garden but I didn’t think she was drunk. I assumed she was going home and offered to walk her back. She declined.
I returned home at around 11 p.m. A colleague, Dr Sonny Ferguson was on a late shift and had arranged to stay at my flat. He was asleep on the sofa when I returned. I left early the next morning to go surfing.
I came home late on Saturday night and Melody was not there. I called her mobile and when I got no answer I phoned Honor Flannigan and Sam Chapman, our friends. Neither of them had heard from her. I waited until Sunday morning when I reported her missing.
Melody doesn’t stop, she reads on to the notes Eve wrote up after her own meeting with Patrick, which took place at a café in Hammersmith just over three months before she died.
Exchange between Patrick Carling and Eve Elliot transcribed from 26 May 2013
Patrick Carling: I’ll help you as far as I can but I hope you know what you’re doing. This might just be another story for you but it has destroyed Mel. She never took life seriously before, always saw the good in people, you know, she was the life and soul. She’s gone from that to being a recluse practically. She thinks people are following her, says they ring her phone late at night. She’s called the police because she thought there was someone in her garden, looking in her window. None of it happens when anyone else is around. Do you understand what I’m saying?
The Life I Left Behind Page 20