The Evil Beneath

by A J Waines

  ‘Let’s see who we’re dealing with, first. You’ll have to give another statement. We’ll need some sort of e-fit, as well, if you can.’

  It was turning into a long day.

  I left the police station on foot, insisting I needed some fresh air, but after a few strides along Shepherds Bush Road, I crossed over and went into the library. It was well past evening meal time, but I wasn’t hungry. Instead, what felt like a bundle of eels was causing a commotion in my stomach, making me jittery and goading me to make some progress. I had been running the second text message through my mind, wondering if it had any link to Aysha’s murder. I knew the message now off by heart:

  Eleven feet and three inches were added before 1940.

  Once inside the library, the significance of my quest hit me. If I did find a link, it meant it wasn’t some random text. It meant there was yet another connection between me and both bodies in the water. It meant, once again, that I’d been specifically targeted. Part of me didn’t want to face that possibility. Go home and let the fine and capable DCI Madison handle this case, said a sensible voice inside my head. But a stubborn and inquisitive one got the better of me.

  There was a vacant computer terminal at the far end, near the periodicals, so I booked it for thirty minutes. I didn’t know where to start, so I requested a search for the exact phrase: eleven feet and three inches to see where it would take me. There were eight results, including reference to a street sign in Wisconsin and the combined height of Santa’s helpers in an entry about Christmas. There were no results with any link to London.

  Then I typed eleven feet three inches, missing out the and. Over thirty thousand hits came up, so I narrowed it down to the UK pages only. This brought up over three hundred hits. Better - but wading through all of those was going to take ages, especially as I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I went back to the blank screen and rested my chin in my hand.

  I added Richmond Bridge and began trawling through individual entries, before adding history to the search. I was about to give up, when the last item on the page caught my eye. It was a timeline for Richmond Bridge. I selected 1940, but found nothing relating to the message.

  I closed my eyes and let my mind go still for a moment. It was easy to focus in here: apart from the odd cough and dropped pencil, everyone seemed to be respecting the library rule of silence.

  The message I’d been sent said before 1940, so I punched in 1939 and found a small item written for a tourist information service that stated that Richmond Bridge had been widened between 1937 and 1939. It didn’t say by how much. My allotted time at the computer was about to finish, so I made a note of the site and signed out, knowing I could always use my laptop at home to check again later.

  I wandered over to the shelves and decided to try one last thing. The section marked ‘British history’ was at the far end by the window. I tracked through the titles until I came across a section on London. Squatting down, I found three books that looked promising, scooped them up and carried them over to a table. The first two were full of photographs and written in a coffee-table style, but the third had a full chapter on the history of Richmond Bridge. I skim-read for several pages, before what felt like a firework exploded in my chest. I read the paragraph twice and then took the book over to the photocopier.

  DCI Madison will want to see this, I said to myself. Here it was in black and white: a reference to how the Richmond Bridge was widened by eleven feet and three inches between 1937 and 1939. Remarkable. And even more remarkable that I’d tracked it down - if I said so myself.

  It was only once I’d got outside and had started walking towards the river, that I started to feel queasy. The devastating truth of the matter struck me like a blow with a sledgehammer: someone had sent me a clue pointing to the location of the second murder - extraordinarily enigmatic though it had been. Why?

  I felt my steps veer to the right. The pavement seemed to be tipping away from me, my eyes were having trouble staying in focus, my head was heavy, like a ball on a chain. I had the proof: someone was sending me messages about these savage murders.

  I wondered if, whoever it was, knew I was telling the police everything I knew. I took a swift look behind me as I joined the path along the Thames, away from the thunder of the traffic. Was it sensible to be walking in this quiet spot? What if the killer was watching me right now? I screwed my hands into fists and turned back towards the bridge.

  Was the killer going to prevent me from leading my life? Was I going to have to modify my every step?

  I needed to tell DCI Madison what I’d discovered at the library. I ran the words of the second message through my mind again:

  Eleven feet and three inches were added before 1940.

  Richmond Bridge. How on earth was I expected to work out the location, from such a flimsy piece of information? Could I have prevented it? I shivered as a more troubling thought took hold of me: was I next?

  Chapter Eight

  I watched the hand of the clock click on to the hour. I’d give it fifteen minutes before I gave up on him. I’d just about to put some washing on, when the doorbell rang.

  Mr Fin had been subdued and only barely unpleasant in our second session, so I’d decided to keep the appointments going for the time being, but since our awkward encounter at the park, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he hadn’t shown up again. Was it him lurking in the bushes the other night? Up to that point he’d been just a sad guy, with a self-esteem problem and a chip on his shoulder. I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but seeing him in that area at all had been something of a coincidence and there had been too many of those lately.

  I took two quick sips of water, wishing it was gin, as Mr Fin’s gangly shape coiled into his seat. This was going to be awkward. He stared at me with those hard eyes that tried to drill their way into mine. It was so unnerving I wanted to avoid eye-contact altogether, but I was supposed to be the trained professional here. I tried to focus on the bridge of his nose and forced my voice to sound warm and welcoming.

  ‘Good to see you again, Mr Fin. Where would you like to start?’

  Mr Fin acted as if he hadn’t heard me and started picking at his nails. I was grateful that he had at least dropped his gaze.

  I heard the clock tick thirty times or more. I broke the ice. ‘Is it hard to know what to talk about, today?’ I wasn’t the kind of therapist who waited indefinitely in silence. I didn’t have the patience.

  ‘I nearly didn’t turn up,’ he said. His voice was raspy and thin. I assumed he must be getting over a cold. ‘I didn’t know if I wanted to see you.’

  ‘To see me?’

  ‘After the other day.’

  ‘Right.’

  He lifted his eyes towards mine again and I felt a chilling unease.

  ‘After I saw you.’

  I sat still, waiting for him to continue. He changed tack. ‘Hot in here, isn’t it?’

  I was relieved. For once, he’d been the one to back off. ‘There’s no heating on,’ I said. ‘Shall I open a window?’ I knew I should press him following his previous statement, but the opportunity to deflect was too good to refuse.

  ‘Don’t bother.’ He thrust out his bottom lip and sat back, in a way that suggested he knew something I didn’t. I waited, forcing my hands to stay still in my lap. The sound of the clock ricocheted around the room.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m wondering why you want to know that,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t you snap out of therapist-mode for one minute and talk to me like a normal person?’ He gripped the arms of the seat, looking for a moment like an emaciated wolf about to pounce. I took my time; kept my voice steady.

  ‘That’s what you’re paying me for. Not for a friendly chat with someone, but for the experience of a psychotherapist.’

  ‘You might be too smart for your own good,’ he said, tilting his head to one side.

  I didn’t want to rise to that one.

>   ‘Are you finding these sessions at all helpful, Mr Fin?’

  ‘Only when you speak to me like a real human being and not like just another one of your patients.’

  ‘Is that what you find happens, Mr Fin? That people don’t speak to you like you are a real person?’

  He looked down at his lap and wrapped his fingers together into a tight ball. I kept my eyes on his face and realised that a lone tear had escaped from the corner of his eye. It hung there for a while, before he brushed it away.

  ‘Rivers of tears,’ he said. ‘Rivers of tears.’

  I waited, barely breathing.

  ‘There will be more, won’t there?’ he said.

  ‘More tears?’ I asked, leaning forward, finding his voice difficult to hear.

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ he said.

  After the session had finished, I went straight to the window and flung it open. I leant right out, looking down to the back yards below. The breeze was divine. I needed it to flush Mr Fin and his oddly threatening behaviour out of my hair, off my skin, out of my clothes. Some clients did this. They seemed to get right inside me and when it felt menacing, it was exceedingly unpleasant. I went straight to the bathroom and started running the shower.

  As the water poured over me, I couldn’t help fix on various words Mr Fin had used. He’d referred to a river of tears. What was he getting at? Did he mean his own tears, there and then in the session, or did he mean something more ominous? Should I break client confidentiality and explain my concerns to the police? Or had I heard the word ‘river’ and overreacted? Was I getting paranoid and linking everything I came across to the murders?

  When I was towelling myself down, the phone rang. I thought it might be DCI Madison, following my message that the anonymous text I’d been sent was indeed an obscure clue to the Richmond Bridge. Without checking the caller ID, I picked it up.

  ‘Oh, hi, it’s you,’ I said.

  ‘I was checking up on how you were and whether you’d heard anything more…about the… you know, river incidents.’ I grimaced at the familiar way Andrew’s words were rolling into one another.

  ‘I’m okay. Not much to report. Look, I can’t talk now, Andrew, I’ve got someone here.’ The lie came more easily than I expected.

  ‘Moved on already, have we?’ His tone was sharp, agitated.

  ‘It’s not like that.’ I took a breath. ‘Even if…look Andrew, we’re not together… you and I, so —’

  The line went dead. I dropped a cushion on to my lap and wrapped my arms around it. If I had any doubts that I was doing the right thing, that call was sufficient to set my mind at rest. Andrew was history.

  Before I went to bed, I switched on my laptop, on the off-chance that there might be an email from Robbie, my mate who’d moved to New Zealand. There were four new messages, but his name wasn’t attached to any of them. Three should have gone straight into my spam box and the fourth was untitled. It came from an address I didn’t recognise, using what looked like random numbers and letters. I opened it:

  Sorry. Don’t think I gave you enough to go on last time. We’ll both have to try harder.

  I grasped the lid of the laptop, scoring deep ruts into my palms. There was no name, but there was an attachment. I opened it and a drawing filled the screen. It was an old etching of a bridge, with several arches reaching across a large expanse of water.

  There were low buildings and boats to the right-hand side, but no other indications: no date, no title, no name of the artist and more importantly, no name of the bridge.

  I swore under my breath and picked up the phone.

  DCI Madison’s voice was sleepy and slow. I knew he was off-duty, but he’d insisted I call him on his private number if anything major came up, no matter what time it was.

  ‘I’m sorry to wake you, but I think this is important. It’s Juliet Grey and I’ve had another message.’

  I pictured him sitting bolt upright in bed. ‘What is it? What have you got?’

  ‘It’s an email this time. I’ve just checked my computer and there’s a picture of a bridge and a message that seems to refer to the last text.’

  I quoted the exact words.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said.

  ‘Shall I forward it straight over to you?’

  ‘You’ve got my email address. Does it say which bridge it is?’

  I paused. ‘No, it doesn’t. The drawing is so old, I don’t recognise it at all. No usual London landmarks, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Okay. Send it over.’

  I hit send. ‘It’s done.’

  ‘I just hope we can work this one out, before…’ Silence. ‘When was the email sent, Juliet? Today?’

  I checked the screen and gasped. ‘No. It was two days ago. Oh, no…I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Someone is using you in a despicable way.’ He rang back once he’d opened the attachment. ‘It’s obviously another bridge, but I don’t know which one it is, either.’

  ‘No - the drawing is so ancient.’

  ‘There are thirty bridges over the tidal part of the Thames,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to get an expert in. Someone who might be able to work out the clues you’ve been getting. Track down which bridge the killer is referring to before…’

  ‘You think there will be more deaths?’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘It’s starting to look that way.’

  I’d tossed around both nights over the weekend, unable to get to sleep, drifting into half-dream states that weren’t the least bit restful. During Sunday night, I woke abruptly, my throat cutting like blades when I swallowed, my forehead burning. I made a hot-lemon drink, took it back to bed and knelt on my pillow in front of the framed photo of Luke I always kept above my bed. It was taken around two months before he died; the last one I had of him. He was at that gawky, self-conscious stage; crossing back and forth between boy and man. I often talked to him in bed; usually silly things about my day, but at times, sharing inner thoughts I never told anyone else.

  I’m scared, Luke. I wish you were here. Something awful is happening and I don’t know what’s going on.

  DCI Madison rang as I was getting dressed. He was out of breath, on the move. ‘Sorry it’s early. We’ve been in touch with the London Blue-badge guides.

  There’s one guy who leads walks for tourists and is supposed to be the number one expert on London bridges.’

  ‘That’s brilliant.’

  ‘Not all good news. We’ve sent him your email, but he hasn’t got back to us yet. Not answering his phone. We’ve also sent it to various other experts: Museum of London, university professors, archaeologists, Tate Britain…even the BBC.’

  ‘You should get something.’

  ‘I hope so. The email came from a library, by the way. Someone created a new email account just for this one message. We’re trying to trace them from the library card, but I’ve got a horrible feeling we’ll find it was stolen. He might also have accessed other sites and left a trail, but it’s a long shot.’

  I could hear phones ringing and people calling out in the background, before he rang off. I pressed the print button on my laptop.

  I’ve got a long shot of my own, I said out loud.

  Chapter Nine

  Two heads are better than one, I thought, as I drove over to Holistica later that morning. I was lucky. When I rang, Cheryl said she had a gap of forty-five minutes. I didn’t tell her what it was about. I wanted her to approach the situation without any forewarning.

  I burst into her room and gave her a garbled summary of the situation. She’d started out open and relaxed, but by the time I’d finished her shoulders had risen and her forehead resembled the lid of a roll-top desk.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m sufficiently gifted to do this,’ she said, perching on the edge of her desk, then straightening up again.

  ‘Can’t you at least give it a try? I’ve got something here that could lead us to the
next bridge…it could help prevent another of these terrible murders in the Thames.’ I held up the plastic folder with a copy of the etching.

  ‘This is police business. I can’t be expected —’

  My voice rose in pitch. ‘This is everybody’s business, Cheryl. I’ve been staring at this etching for hours but I’m not getting anywhere. Please can you give it just a few minutes? Then I’ll drop it. I promise.’

  I was thrown by Cheryl’s reaction, but I had a strange feeling that the prevarication was fake for some reason. Cheryl shrugged and took the plastic folder from my hand.

  ‘Ten minutes and that’s it.’

  It was then that I remembered something odd the day after the first murder at Hammersmith Bridge. It made me think she might know more than she was letting on.

  ‘Just after the first woman was killed, Cheryl, you said something - do you remember? Here, in the clinic?’

  She narrowed her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘You said something about the woman not drowning. I wondered how you knew.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’ Her tone was terse.

  ‘But - you sounded certain - you said straight out, “at least she didn’t drown”. Did you have a…premonition..?’

  ‘Now you mention it, I do remember getting a vague feeling…of doom…that day…’

  ‘About that woman found near the bridge?’

  ‘Yes - but I’ve never had anything since.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She looked at her watch and moved away.

  My hands were shaking. I knew time wasn’t on my side. The email had been sitting inside my laptop for two days.

  She sat behind her desk and closed her eyes. I waited.

  ‘I’m getting a strong smell of fish and a group of men…in a boat…they’re singing…and…’ Cheryl hesitated. ‘I’m way back in time, here,’ she said. ‘It’s London…I’m getting images of men who look Victorian…top hat, frock coat, walking cane…’

  I could feel my face burning with impatience. Come on! I wanted to shout: Where is it? Which bridge is it, Cheryl? Instead I forced myself to breathe deeply and stand still.