Climbing a narrow set of stairs, Violet and I quickly found ourselves in front of a plain door surrounded by cracking old pieces of wallpaper. It was obvious that this building had not been renovated in quite some time; I began to wonder if maybe these pieces of wallpaper had actually been there during the Blitz.
Violet knocked on the door, and a moment later it opened, revealing a tall, medium build man with a thin face, an aquiline nose, and blue eyes that had obviously been crying. He looked from Violet to me, his eyes moving quickly. This was obviously a man who was worried about something.
“Have you found her? Is she okay?” the man asked.
“Mr. Phillips, I’m sorry to have to tell you but Marnie’s body was found this morning on Baker Street,” Violet told him softly. “Please, let us come inside. You should sit down.”
It was as though the man deflated right in front of us. He seemed to shrink by a few inches, and his shoulders slumped, his eyes now staring blankly at the ground. He opened the door wordlessly and let Violet and I in, then made his way to a stuffed chair in the living room and collapsed onto it.
“Is she really dead?” he finally managed to ask, and Violet nodded, making her way to the couch across from the chair and sitting down on it.
“We need to ask you some questions, is that all right?” she asked, receiving a nod in response.
“Yes.”
“Do you know where Marnie was last night?”
“She went to the gym. She got back from Australia three days ago, and she was still suffering from jet lag. She was hoping that by doing a late-night work out she would be tired enough to go to sleep as soon as she came home, and get back onto a regular sleep schedule before starting her training sessions again tomorrow.”
“Which gym did she attend?”
“The Gym at Bloomsbury,” Phillips replied. “It’s a twenty-four hour gym, which she liked because it allowed her to train whenever she wanted. She jogs there from here, which takes her fifteen minutes, which she considers to be the perfect warm-up. On the way back, she takes the tube, since she’s usually too knackered to run back as well.”
“Her Oyster card wouldn’t happen to be here, would it?” Violet asked, but Mr. Phillips shook his head.
“No, she took it with her last night. She never came home. I stayed up, worried. She left at eleven, and when she wasn’t back by one I started to wonder. I called her phone, and she should have answered, since she uses it to listen to music while she works out. But there was no answer. I texted, but again, nothing. I went out myself, I took her route to get down there, and when I got there someone let me in. But she wasn’t there. That was when I called 999.”
“They told you that they could not file an official missing person’s report until she had been missing for longer?” Violet asked, and Mr. Phillips nodded.
“Yes, exactly that. I knew something was wrong and I spent the whole night wandering around, looking for her. You said she was at Baker Street?”
“That is correct,” Violet said. “We believe she was the victim of a serial killer, who staged her body in the Sherlock Holmes Museum.”
Mr. Phillips buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Marnie. I can’t believe someone would do this to her. She was such a pure soul. Not a mean bone in her body. She wanted to be the best. She was going to be the best. She was going to compete at Tokyo, at her last Olympic Games, and then she was going to retire and we were going to have children.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said to him, my heart breaking for the man who had just lost the love of his life. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through right now.
“You say it was a serial killer who did this. Do you know who it is yet?”
“I have an idea,” Violet said. I wondered if she was lying to the man to make him feel better, but I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t. That didn’t sound like Violet at all. If she said she had an idea, then she did have an idea. “What did your wife do the rest of the time since she came back from Australia? Was there anything out of the ordinary that you can think of?”
“She just slept, mostly. I know she was up quite early yesterday, at maybe two in the morning, but that was the jetlag. She went back to bed around eight, and woke up again around noon. Yesterday afternoon she went out to get groceries, came back, and watched some TV before going to do her work out. There was really nothing out of the ordinary there, and she didn’t seem like she was acting strangely at all.”
“Had she mentioned anyone following her, or anything of the sort?”
“Nothing like that, no,” Mr. Phillips said. “She had barely been out of the house since she got back. She had gone to the gym a couple of times, and she went to get those groceries, but that was about it. The rest of the time she mainly stayed here and slept or studied video of her technique on the computer.”
Violet frowned slightly. I could see she wasn’t happy with the answers Mr. Phillips was giving her, but I didn’t know what she was thinking. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for.
After asking a few more questions that also went nowhere, Violet eventually stood up.
“Thank you for your time,” she told Mr. Phillips. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Members of the metropolitan police will likely be here later to ask you very similar questions to those I have just asked.”
“Right,” Mr. Phillips answered. “Please, do whatever you have to do to find the killer.”
Violet nodded and the two of us headed back out into the street.
“What are you thinking? You obviously have a suspect in mind, so who is it?”
“I had a suspect in mind,” Violet replied. “Unfortunately, Mr. Phillips answers did not eliminate him, but they also do not suit the pattern I had been expecting to see, either.”
I nodded. “Are we going to go to the gym, seeing as that’s the last place where Marnie was before she was killed?”
“We do not yet know that she even reached the gym,” Violet corrected. “However, you are correct. We will go over there, we will see if Marnie was there, and we can hope that someone else who was there around the same time will have seen something.”
The entrance to The Gym Bloomsbury was almost like entering a subway station. The exterior entrance was a ten foot by ten foot piece of glass, with stairs leading down into the actual gym area. When we finally made our way down and entered through some futuristic-looking round doors, a computer against the wall invited us to join, telling us it was “easy peasy”.
The nearby wall was covered with biographies of all of the personal trainers, and three vending machines next to it sold water, sports drinks, and snacks. A fit-looking woman dressed in a polo shirt reading ‘The Gym’ sat at a desk nearby, on a bright blue stool.
“Hello,” Violet said. “I am wondering if it would be possible to speak with the manager.”
“Are you thinking about joining up?” the woman asked in a peppy voice. “I can definitely help you if you’re having problems using the computer.”
I hid a smile; Violet was better with computers than 99% of the people in this country.
“No, thank you. One of your clients was murdered after leaving here last night, and I would like to get some more information about her habits.”
The blood drained from the woman’s face. “Of course. Yes. Follow me, please.”
Violet and I followed the woman past rows and rows of cardio machines, until we reached a closed door. The woman knocked, then unlocked it, leading us into a small office with a desk in the middle, covered in papers. Behind it sat a very muscular woman who must have competed in bodybuilding competitions in the past, if she didn’t still do so.
“Yes, Jessica?”
“Elise, these two women say that someone from this gym was murdered after leaving yesterday. They have some questions they want to ask.”
“Thank you, Jessica,” the woman nodded, and Jessica closed the door behind us. “Are you with the police?”
“We are working with them,”
Violet said.
“Right. You’re Violet Despuis. This is about that body at King’s Cross, then?”
“Another body. This time at the Sherlock Holmes Museum,” Violet answered, and the woman tutted.
“Such a shame. You say the victim worked out here?”
“That is correct. Marnie Philips.”
“Oh, the swimmer. Yes, she’s in here quite a bit. She’s been killed, then?”
“Yes,” I replied. “She was here last night.”
“Let me check on that,” Elise replied, her perfectly manicured fingers tapping away at the keyboard in front of her. She pressed the enter key with a flourish, and then nodded.
“Yes, it says here that Marnie entered the premises at 11:17 last night, and left at 12:47 this morning.”
“Alright, so she did make it into the gym,” I muttered.
“How does it work, here, late at night?” I asked. “Is there always staff around?”
“Not always,” Elise replied. “We do have staff around during regular gym hours, but at night, for safety reasons, the front doors are locked, except to members. Every member has a PIN code that they use to access the gym. For safety reasons, there are CCTV cameras that cover every inch of the space, and there are emergency buttons that our clients can press if they ever feel unsafe.”
“Is the gym busy at night, around when Marnie was here?” I asked.
“Certainly,” Elise replied with a nod. “In fact, late at night, when other gyms are closed, are some of our busiest times. We have a lot of shift workers – everyone from security guards, to grocery store stockers, to doctors and nurses, to cab drivers and many others who don’t work a typical 9-5 schedule, but still want to be able to access the gym when it suits them.”
“So there would have been a number of people there when Marnie was working out?” Violet asked. “Are any of them here now, by chance?”
“Let me have a look, this will take a moment,” Elise said, biting her bottom lip in concentration as she tapped away at the computer. “Okay, sure. There is one person here right now who was also here last night. Let me go grab him for you.”
This was promising. Hopefully whoever this was had seen something that might help us figure out who the serial killer was.
Of course, I was also very aware that it was possible that whoever Marnie had run into who had led to her demise had met her well outside of the gym. I imagined that Violet already had it on her to do list to get CCTV footage for everywhere between the gym and the underground station.
Still, there was a chance it wasn’t going to come to that. We were about to find out.
Chapter 13
About three or four minutes later, Elise came back into the room, followed by a guy who, as soon as I saw him, didn’t surprise me at all that he had been here less than twelve hours earlier. The guy’s biceps were about the size of my face, he could probably squat at least 400 pounds, but as he waved his face in the towel and threw on a hoodie while entering the room, he grinned at Violet and I before holding out a hand.
“I hear you’re looking for someone who was here last night,” he said. “That’s me. I’m usually here twice a day, before and after work. Call me Johnny.”
“What you do, out of curiosity, Johnny?” I asked.
“I work in the city, trading mainly on the ASX. Since I work out of Sydney’s time zone, my hours make this the most convenient gym near my place.”
Stockbroker. I had to admit, I had not expected that. I thought for sure he was going to say security guard, construction worker, something like that. But hey, that was what I got for assuming things about people, wasn’t it?
“You were here last night when this woman left,” Violet said, holding her phone out to Johnny, who took it and squinted at the picture for a minute.
“Yeah, I was. I saw her last night. She was working legs. She’s strong, too. I was using the weights that overlooked the entrance when she was leaving.”
Violet leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “Did you notice anything suspicious as she left? Did you notice anyone following her? Did anyone else leave the gym a minute or two after?”
Johnny thought for a second, then shook his head slowly.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone left after her.”
Elise tapped away at her keyboard for a minute, and then nodded. “Johnny is right. After Marnie left, the next person to leave the gym was twelve minutes later.”
“There was something though,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “As she was leaving, I’m pretty sure I heard her calling out to someone.”
“Did you see who?” Violet asked quickly, but Johnny shook his head.
“No. Since the weights area is a bit elevated, you can’t really see out all that far. Whoever it was wasn’t close enough to the door for me to see. And it may not have been that. Maybe she just got on the phone, or something.”
“Alright, thank you,” Violet said, and Johnny nodded.
“Sure. Anything I can do to help. I hope you find who did this.”
With that, Johnny got up from the chair and made his way back to the gym.
“Can I see the CCTV feeds from last night?” Violet asked.
“Sure,” Elise replied, tapping away on the computer once more. After a minute or so, she turned the screen to Violet and handed her the mouse. “Here you go.”
Violet immediately set the camera that focused on the stairs to full screen, and scrolled back to the previous night. Sure enough, at 12:48am, Marnie Philips came into view. She was with someone, a man. A gym bag was propped up over her shoulder. They stood in the corner, perfectly positioned so that the man’s features couldn’t be made out; his back was to the camera. After speaking for a moment, Marnie turned and continued back up the stairs, but the man stayed where he was. About thirty seconds later, he turned and followed Marnie back up the steps.
“Do you have any footage from outside?”
“Sorry,” Elise said, shaking her head. “Is that… him?”
“We do not know,” Violet said. “He is barely noticeable in this frame. I believe it may be the same man from the hotel, though.”
Elise shuddered. “I can’t believe it.”
“Interestingly, she seemed to know the man,” I muttered.
“That is because I would be willing to bet he is a member here,” Violet replied, and Elise’s face went white.
“Are you sure?”
“It is a reasonable assumption. If Marnie saw the man as she was leaving, that means that presumably he was at least partway down these stairs when she saw him.”
“Right,” I nodded.
“Our list of members is really quite long,” Elise said apologetically. “And I’m afraid I can’t simply give it to you. You would need a warrant.”
“We can get one,” Violet nodded, pulling out her phone and sending a text.
“Please do. I don’t like knowing that one of our members might be a murderer, but unfortunately I can’t do anything without speaking with our local counsel, first.”
“I understand,” Violet nodded. “Someone from the Metropolitan Police will be in touch.”
Elise nodded and shook our hands as we left.
“Should we try to get footage from places around?” I asked, but Violet shook her head.
“I do not think it will do any good, at least not at the moment. The way the man stayed just outside of the view of the camera, even at the gym – he is always on the alert. He knows where the cameras are in the locales that he frequents; he would not have been caught on them.”
“Right,” I frowned. “That’s a little bit annoying. I imagine it would be like trying to catch you.”
Violet smiled at me. “I would not have let the police get this close.”
“So you know who did it, then?”
“As I said, I have an idea. And as it forms, I get closer to the truth. But I will not say anything until I am certain. Now, we must wait for the warrant to arrive, and I will
either confirm my suspicion, or discover that it is wrong.”
“Well, at least we’re somewhere.”
“Yes, if we are lucky, we will know who it was who committed the crime by later tonight. I will call you when I have any more pertinent information.”
“Okay,” I said, before leaving and heading towards the underground station. It wasn’t too far to get home, but a part of me really didn’t want to go home right now. I was all too aware of the decision waiting for me, and I was going to keep procrastinating for as long as I could.
I pulled out my phone, and sent a text to Jake, not really expecting to hear back.
You around?
Doing the autopsy. You’re welcome to come by if you want. Getting lunch soon.
I was already at Russell Square Station, since I knew the line would get me back to Glouchester Road and back home, but instead I got off at Green Park and transferred onto the Victoria line, which got me over to the mortuary where Jake worked.
When I walked into the basement, Jake was busy weighing organs.
“How’s it going?” I asked, pulling up a stool to where Marnie Philips body lay, and having a look at what Jake was doing.
He shrugged. “So far, I don’t have anything here that can help figure out who killed her. I know when she died, but I told Violet that at the crime scene. I can also tell you that she didn’t have anything in her stomach at her time of death, and that she was strangled, but a six-year-old would’ve noticed the bruises on her neck. It’s a little bit frustrating, I have to admit.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure Violet has a suspect in mind.”
“That does help, actually,” Jake said. “I don’t like knowing that someone is out there doing this to people. I hope whoever it is gets caught sooner rather than later.”
“Same,” I agreed. “Anyway, now we’re waiting for a warrant so that we can get a list of the members of a certain gym in Bloomsbury where Marnie Philips met someone who is almost certainly the killer last night.”
“Well, I’m happy for the company,” Jake said. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept in about two days, and I told my boss I’ll be going for lunch soon because if I don’t get out of here for an hour I’m going to go insane.”
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