The windows of this building had been removed, the insides gutted, and a complete renovation was underway. In a few months, young investment bankers and fashion industry creatives would move into ultra-modern living spaces with smooth, clean edges. But for now, there was an eerie sense of a place caught between eras. Three large yellow diggers and a cherry picker sat idly next to two piles of gravel and sand about twenty feet high. A painted plywood door, connected to the fence, blocked the path in front of them.
It had begun to drizzle.
“We’re in the right place,” Joshi said. “The old Fish & Coal building. It’ll be smart once they’re finished with it. But for now, it’s a bloody mess. Do you see here, where this red triangle is?” She pointed to her phone. “That’s where the messages came from.”
The arrow was dead in the middle of the building site.
Joshi nodded at the long warehouse that seemed to go on for blocks. “If this is accurate, it was sent from within the building.”
Kelly followed her gaze. “Let’s see what’s inside.”
She gave the fence a shake with her left hand to test its strength, then placed the toe of her right shoe into one of the links. With four quick moves, she was astride the fence, swinging her leg over. She landed firmly on the other side, facing Joshi with a smirk.
“Go on, girl,” Kelly said.
Joshi followed her over the top with short, methodical movements.
“Just like in the playground at my elementary school,” Kelly said as they searched for a way into the building. She could feel her adrenaline pumping.
33
The room was dark, apart from the blue–green glow of the video screens. So perfect, he thought. Tucked away from the world, hidden in plain sight. He sat and watched as the two detectives scaled the fence and stepped ever-closer to their deaths. He tracked them as they walked the length of the building until they found the narrow metal door. It was unlocked, just for them. It would take a few minutes for them to work their way through to their end. First, they had to “investigate.” He chuckled out loud. Like sheep, or little children. They couldn’t resist their own impulses. Even if they knew better.
34
Kelly closed the door quietly and stood next to Joshi while her eyes adjusted to the dimness inside. The two women took in the scene. They had walked into a massive space partitioned by half-finished walls and lit by a series of low-wattage bulbs that hung from metal girders securing a half-built ceiling. The floors had a thin coating of white dust, pushed into irregular patterns by the feet of construction workers whose boots left streaks of gray. Kelly felt a familiar twinge in her right arm, even though her service pistol was very far away.
They walked carefully through the maze of plasterboard and metal frames. Here and there, debris was strewn about; a tape measure on the ground, a take-away container on a ladder rung.
“It doesn’t smell right,” Joshi said.
“Yeah, I don’t like it, either,” Kelly agreed.
“No, I mean literally,” Joshi said. “It doesn’t smell like an active building site. It smells stale. Like old food and rat droppings. Like no one’s been here in a while.”
A hollow scratching from somewhere distant seemed to emphasize her words.
“Let’s have a look upstairs,” Kelly said, feeling uneasy.
Along an old brick wall that hadn’t yet been smoothed over, a metal staircase went up to a second level. Kelly took the steps two at a time. Joshi followed her up more cautiously. The second floor seemed more finished. They must have been working from the top down.
The stairs led into a long hallway with a series of doors on either side. Kelly tried the handle of the door closest to her and found it locked. The walls and ceiling had been completed in the corridor and seemed just to be waiting for paint. Streaks of drywall tape, joint compound, and screw holes dotted the surfaces.
Kelly moved quickly up the hall, trying the doors as she went. She noticed that the walls had a strange oily quality to them. When she reached the end, she looked back to see Joshi pointing at a small plastic box near the ceiling. A small red light was blinking steadily.
Three loud beeps came from the box and suddenly a thunderous rolling sound filled Kelly’s ears. A heavy door slid quickly across the hallway, blocking her off.
“Joshi!” Kelly yelled.
The door had sealed her in. She couldn’t see or hear Joshi.
Kelly was trapped. She pounded against the door, but it was rock-solid, a relic of the old building—heavy wood crossed with iron slats sitting in a metal track. There wasn’t a handle or a doorknob.
She pounded again. Nothing.
The lights in the hallway cut out.
Enveloped in darkness, Kelly heard a loud pop followed by a hissing sound. She tasted smoke in her mouth and nostrils.
35
He watched as the fire spread along the walls he had prepared so carefully. Slowly, smoke filled the sealed hallway, consuming the oxygen—doing its work. It was almost too easy. She could kick at the doors all she wanted, but it wouldn’t matter. There was no way she would survive.
The camera was trained on the door that had locked behind her. He had closed it and sealed it remotely by entering a simple code into his computer. There would be no malfunctions. Everything was going according to plan.
The excitement of the flickering images brought his mind back to so many other perfect moments. His heartbeat quickened. His muscles tensed and pulsed as he felt himself grow hard.
He was so absorbed in the image of Kelly down on all fours, gasping for breath, that he didn’t know how long the warning dialog had been flashing on the lower monitor.
There must be some mistake.
The door control had switched into manual mode. Furiously, he typed in commands trying to override it and regain control of the door, but nothing was working.
Looking up, he saw that Kelly lay flat on her belly in the center of the hall. On the next monitor, he could see the other side of the dividing door, and there was the detective, Joshi, standing on a bucket, messing with the control box.
Anger mounting, he slammed his fist against the wall behind him and a loud crashing sound came as a shelf collapsed on the other side.
On screen, he saw the door slide open. The little bitch had done it. She had somehow hot-wired the door, disengaged the system, and pushed it open with her shoulder. His anger subsided as he watched the scene unfold.
His newest cameras had audio and he could hear Detective Joshi yelling Kelly Moore’s name. She was standing only a few feet from her, but the smoke was so thick she couldn’t see her. He laughed out loud at the sight of her yelling into the haze. The image of Kelly lying on the ground went black as the camera caught fire and melted. Just as he had planned.
36
Kelly’s head reeled as the room went out of focus. A small screen mounted on the wall framed blurry shapes and colors, while a faint but steady beeping sound needled her mind through a wall of white noise. Gauzy curtains covered a tall window, filtering in gray light. Where am I?
Kelly’s gaze shifted down in front of her—a wash of white. She realized slowly that it was her own body stretched out under a blanket. She was in bed.
“Miss Moore…” A woman in green scrubs was standing next to the bed. She was short and plump, with glossy auburn hair. “Do you know where you are?”
Kelly shook her head, or at least tried. It felt like she was underwater.
“You are at the University College London Hospital,” the woman said. Her British accent caught Kelly off guard, then her memory came back to her: London, Priscilla Ames, Joshi, the fire. “Don’t try to speak. You inhaled a lot of smoke last night. You need the oxygen, and rest.”
Kelly could barely understand the nurse’s words. She cast her eyes down to her chest and felt a thin plastic tube resting beneath her nose. She tried to think, but everything felt heavy and fuzzy.
“Close your eyes for a while longer, okay?�
� the nurse said. “You will be alright. The worst is over. We just need to give your body a chance to heal.” The woman placed her hand on Kelly’s arm. Kelly closed her eyes and everything went dark and still.
Kelly realized she had slept, but she had no idea for how long. It could have been minutes or days. The conversation with the nurse came back to her as she woke up. Her head ached terribly and she could hear the beeps of medical devices from other patients. The window was dark. It must be evening, she thought. Or morning.
Dunne met her gaze and stood up.
“She wakes!” he announced, rising from his chair.
Kelly nodded and the room spun. I won’t be doing that again anytime soon…
A nurse walked in through the open door—the same woman who had spoken to her earlier. Kelly had no way of knowing if it was still her shift or a new day entirely.
“I bet your head is hurting,” the nurse said. “Better not to move too much. I’ll put a little more Tramadol in your IV. You should be feeling better soon. I’m on my way out now, but another nurse will be coming in to check on you shortly. The doctor will also be in soon to see you. I can tell you, though, that everything is okay. You were very lucky. If you had been in there for even a minute or two longer, the damage would have been irreversible.”
The nurse left the room. Kelly looked at Dunne standing by her bedside; she felt an unexpected flood of emotion.
“It’s good to see a familiar face,” Kelly whispered hoarsely, her throat sore. Whatever dope the nurse gave her was starting to kick in.
“It’s good to see you awake,” Dunne said, his face a mixture of relief and concern. “You’re lucky that Sam is such a wiz with all things electronic, or we’d be burying you right now.”
Kelly poked around the fuzzy recesses of her memory. “What happened?” she wheezed. “Last thing I remember is pounding on the door, hitting the ground, and trying to breathe.”
“Sam climbed up to the control box and hacked the wires to disengage the door. Said she couldn’t even see you at first, ’cause of all the smoke. She almost tripped over you, then dragged you out just in time. Saved the day, called for an ambulance, and here you are.”
“She’s okay?”
“Yeah. Hardly a mark on her. The doctors treated her and then sent her packing. She came back with Rodgers to visit yesterday, but you hadn’t come around. Looks like it’ll be a few days before you’re fine.”
“How long have I been here?”
“It’s Friday. You’ve been in hospital for two days.”
“Any idea who’s behind all this?”
“Not yet. We found a few surveillance cameras outside the building, and Sam’s trying to see if she can trace them. Rodgers has been digging around old case files to see if anything with a similar profile shows up. It’s mind-numbing stuff, even with the digital files. He’s flagged stalkers, vintage gun freaks, pimps that have been known to use the dark web for human trafficking. We’ll kick some stones and see if anything crawls out.”
Kelly took a deep breath of oxygen. “Thanks, Jack,” she managed to murmur before her eyes closed and she fell into a deep sleep.
37
The girl on the first screen was his star. She could command more cash than any of the others. There were ones who were prettier, like Priscilla Ames, but there was something about April that made men crazy. She wasn’t even blonde. He had programmed her feed to alert him whenever she went online, and he watched along with her paying customers. This was her last year of nursing school, and he didn’t know what her plans were after graduation. He rarely spoke directly to any of his girls these days. When he first got into the business, he thought that would be the best part, an excuse to meet with them, get private performances when interviewing them. The truth was, though, he found them dull in person. He preferred to watch.
Priscilla Ames had not been dull, but she was a novice. Her skills were only just beginning to develop when she died. Her main patron was very loyal, and he had taken it slow with her in the beginning. It had escalated, though, very quickly with some intervention, until it reached its final climax.
The phone rang, startling him. He was watching April so intently.
“Yes?” he answered.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Relaxing,” he replied.
Her voice was frustrated, almost angry. “You know what I mean.”
“She had to go,” he said. April was rubbing her bra straps up and down, teasing her patron. The lingerie she was wearing was white cotton, plain, nothing he had seen on her before. There was something about it that made him crazy.
“You need to stop. I’m taking care of it. She isn’t even on the case anymore.”
“I disagree,” he said. “I weighed the risks and the benefits. This is my area of expertise.”
April’s bra was off now, and she was rubbing her own nipples. The other girls looked like amateurs next to her.
“You’re making this difficult for me,” she said. “And if I go down, you’re going to fall into a much darker hole. What you’ve got on me is nothing compared to murder, plus the attempted murder of two police officers. It’s time to back off.”
The screen of his phone flashed as the call ended.
The fire had been a mistake. His first. His last. He wouldn’t be so sloppy again.
Looking at his screens, he saw Kelly Moore lying in her hospital bed and Jenny Hooks’ front door on the monitor next to it. His anticipation grew along with his arousal as April continued her act on the third.
The hole he was in was already dark. There was nowhere left to fall.
38
Kelly took the stairs slowly. Three days in the hospital, and she had gained enough strength to go back to her flat, but her head felt heavy. She’d take half a Tramadol and be ready for action in the morning.
“Hello,” Stephen, the upstairs neighbor, said. He was standing on the landing. He wore gray slacks and a pressed pink pinstriped Oxford shirt. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon. Your picture was in The Guardian yesterday. You’re working on the death of that poor American girl. They said you were trapped in a fire. Are you alright? Can I do anything?”
“I’m okay, thanks,” Kelly said. She’d have preferred to be left alone, but he seemed harmless, if a little bit eccentric. “Nothing a little rest and fresh air won’t cure.”
“Super. I’m off to the shops. Is there anything I can pick up for you?”
“No, thanks, I’ve got what I need.”
“Okay, see you later,” he said as he headed off down the stairs.
Inside the flat, Kelly tossed her jacket on the couch, put on the kettle, and poured herself two fingers worth of brandy. She picked up the phone and made the call that she’d been thinking about since she’d gotten to London.
“Moore!” The voice on the other end was equal parts gruff and friendly.
“How’s it going, Chief?”
Kelly loved Chip Delancey’s voice. He had been her champion and mentor since her early days on the force in Queens.
“Can’t complain. You know—long hours, low pay, the usual. What’s happening in London?”
“Everyone’s driving on the wrong side of the road. I almost get sideswiped every time I step out in the street. In fact, it’s not much safer inside a car. My partner over here drives worse than a yellow cabbie on his first day.”
“I tried to call you at the hospital, but they wouldn’t put me through. I figured it’s best that you take a break anyway. How’s your insides doing?”
“Ahh. It’s only a flesh wound, Chief. They pumped some oxygen and opiates into me, and I’m good as new.”
“Good to hear that you haven’t changed in the week you’ve been away. I talked to the superintendent. She’s pissed off that you’re running around poking your nose into places you’re not supposed to. As far as she’s concerned, you’re done, now that they’ve charged Avery Moss. Look, Kelly, I don’t know what kind of British
shit you’ve stepped in, but I think she’s right—you should pack it in and come home. Ames can blow all the smoke he wants to, but the Mayor’s office is behind me on the decision to bring you home.”
“Not yet, Chief, please. There’s too much going on, and the detectives I’m working with are busting their asses to get it figured out. Let me stay a few more days. I’m still useful here.”
“You’re not useful to anyone if you’re not breathing, Moore. Take a few days to rest, stay out of the way, and then get yourself on a plane.”
Kelly’s phone lit up with an incoming call while Delancey was talking.
“Thanks, Chief. You got it. I’ll be good. Listen, I think I’m getting a call from one of the local cops. I’ll talk to you again soon.”
“Alright. Take care of yourself.”
“I always do, Chief.”
Kelly swiped the screen on her phone. “This is Moore,” she said.
“Hi, Detective Moore, it’s Martin Villiers. I hope I’m not intruding. I found something of interest to the Priscilla Ames case. I couldn’t reach DCI Dunne, so I thought I’d call you.”
“Hi, I’m glad you called. What’ve you got?”
“There was something nagging at me about her death. I thought there may have been a similar case not too far back. So I checked, and after a bit of digging, found something. The postmortem wasn’t done by me, which is why I couldn’t place it at first. There was a woman called Johanna Clement. Do you know the case?”
This Dark Place: A Detective Kelly Moore Novel Page 12