Whenever Holly laid out the forensic psychology of a case like this, Jessamine would find herself thinking of a car full of people, a brick weighting its accelerator. The car was driving fast towards a wall, a line of spectators watching its progress. Although they knew the car was going to crash they were powerless, forced to stand there and do nothing, even as it hurtled to its fate.
It was a good show. The story of Henry Manners was compelling and well-researched, with a set of moral and ethical questions at its heart. Yet she couldn’t get any of it to stick. She tried not to panic. She didn’t have to memorise the script. A hard copy would be in front of her throughout. But Jessamine knew that relying on it imparted a dull, stilted quality to her delivery.
Another bloom of heat in her chest.
She looked at the iced window panes, then down at her boots. The suede was supple against her calves. Sod it. It was only a bit of snow. She was going out.
Sarah
Sarah Gooch should have been asleep hours ago. Her mother was at work, and before she’d left their fifth-floor flat, Sarah had made her three promises: to feed the cat, to lock the door and to stay up no later than ten o’clock. Technically, she’d made good on all three. Munchie had had her supper and was now snuggled next to her on the duvet, the front door was secure, and she was in bed. Wide awake, but in bed.
Half listening to a podcast on her phone, she stared at the MacBook Air, willing something to happen. It had been fifteen minutes since her last message to him and still no response. The screen timed out and her room was cast into darkness. The podcast came to an end. She pulled out her earbuds and closed her eyes, the screen’s blue after-image on the inside of the lids.
She tried to hold out for a few extra minutes. The longer she waited, the more likely there was to be a message from him next time she looked. To distract herself, she concentrated on the sounds of other people in the building.
On Commercial Road, the block had been built in the 1920s as a hostel for sailors when their ship was in dock, then converted into flats at the start of the Docklands boom. It was five floors high, and each flat was accessed by wooden walkways, safeguarded by waist-height metal railings. The building was triangular, with a smaller triangle cut out of the middle to accommodate the open courtyard. All the flats looked onto it and each other. The design gave the building an unusual acoustic, and on quiet days it was possible to pick out the jazz someone liked to listen to on a Sunday morning or to hear dinner being prepared through an open window, down to the sizzle and hiss of their chop in the pan.
Now was one of those quiet times. Sarah strained for something, anything, to make the seconds pass quicker, and was rewarded by mumbled conversation, the clickety-clack of heels, then a door opening and closing a floor or two below. Most likely the conclusion to a night out in the City or Canary Wharf. A truck rumbled by, the smack and clang of its loading bed travelling up through the walls. Her headboard vibrated dully against her neck.
How many minutes had passed since she’d last checked her screen? Two? Five?
Munchie nudged her hand, asking to be stroked. Sarah obliged, going straight to the velvet nap at the base of her ears. She smoothed them down and back, over and over, until the cat began to purr.
Sarah tried to hold out a bit longer but the urge to see if he had replied was overwhelming. She reached for the mouse, and as her finger made contact with it, the computer came back to life. Once more her room was lit by its swimming-pool glow.
Crunch time. Sarah held her breath and pushed her face close to the screen. Her last message sat there in its speech box, the space below it still empty. She checked the messenger bar. There was a green dot against his name. He was online, but he wasn’t talking to her.
Trying not to cry, she read back through tonight’s thread, looking for clues that might explain his silence. The exchange spanned two hours and was full of long, thoughtful sentences, funny GIFs and perfectly chosen emojis that had made her laugh. Each time her screen had made the new-message noise, like a bubble popping, she’d felt a tiny thrill. No, as far as she could tell, everything had been going brilliantly. There was no awkwardness, no tension, no hint of a problem, but mid-conversation he’d gone quiet, no explanation, no sign-off, nothing.
Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t want to reply, just wasn’t able to. He was always saying they had to keep their relationship a secret. That must be it.
She started to feel better but then another possibility occurred to her. What if he’d cut short their conversation because he was annoyed? What if it was because of the photos?
Not long after he’d first made contact he’d asked her to send him some pictures of herself, different from the ones she’d already posted on Facebook or Instagram. He’d told her what he wanted and she’d complied. She’d thought it would be enough to keep him satisfied, but the night before last he’d asked for others. This time his request was more specific.
Initially, Sarah had gone along with it, wanting to do as he asked. But when it came to putting them in an email and pressing send, she hadn’t been able to follow through.
Her eyes began to droop. The flat was warm, her bed cloud soft. Another truck rumbled by, its vibrations rousing her briefly.
She’d been asleep for ten minutes, her head lolling sideways into the pillow, when the screen woke her with a bubble pop. He was back. She rubbed her eyes and pushed herself back up to sitting.
One new message.
Sorry about that.
Another four messages appeared in quick succession.
Miss me?
Gorgeous?
You still there?
Sarah?
I’m here, she typed, the rush of blood in her veins. So, where were we?
Jessamine
Jessamine emerged from Broadcasting House as the blizzard was starting to falter. She stood there for a moment, relishing the cold air against her hot face, then opened her script and began to walk.
The area directly out front had been gritted, but as she doubled back towards Great Portland Street her boots sank into snow up to the shins. Ignoring the wet already soaking through to her toes, she tramped in a loop around the block, reading, then reciting her lines. On any other day at this hour the city would still be all clatter and din, the pavements busy with people out drinking or on their way home post-dinner. Tonight, though, thanks to the weather, the streets were empty. Emboldened, Jessamine spoke her lines aloud, but the snow had muffled the acoustics and her words carried only a short way before dulling to nothing.
She soon had the first few pages lodged in her head. Happy, she decided to head back. Making her way down Margaret Street, she used the Church of All Souls’ stepped incline to dodge up and around where the wind had formed a collection of thigh-high drifts in Langham Place, cleared the corner and there it was: Broadcasting House, Prospero and Ariel above the main entrance, its grey Portland stone curving out onto the street, like the hull of an ocean-liner.
She’d been on a year-long sabbatical from her job at The Times when she’d got the call to come in and try out for a new radio show. Mick had read the extended piece she’d written about a spate of suspicious deaths in Manchester and thought it demonstrated the qualities he was looking for in a presenter. Published before she had gone on leave, the feature had detailed her investigation into the theory, held by locals and police officers alike, that a serial killer had been at large for years in the city, and that the drownings, suicides or accidents attributed to the men they kept finding dead in the waterways were nothing of the kind, just a way to cover up something far more sinister.
Back then Mick was a relatively new producer. With a scrub of yellowy brown hair, and black-framed glasses, he was fresh from a stint on the Today programme and keen to make his mark with an idea of his own. Huddled in a meeting room on the second floor, he’d presented Jessamine with a milky coffee and explained how he wanted the show to be a twist on the true-crime genre. The Association of Chief Police Offi
cers (ACPO) had recently coined a new category of offender in their multi-agency protection work: Potentially Dangerous People (PDPs). In other words, individuals who, they predicted, would one day commit a serious violent crime. Their plan was to identify them (often without their knowledge), then work with social services, education authorities and the NHS to try to prevent them from being able to commit such a crime. The term had caused a furore, with some experts arguing that it would lead to Minority Report-style policing, and human-rights infringements.
Mick, however, had seen an opportunity and had pitched a live, phone-in format that would turn the Potentially Dangerous People term on its head. His idea was simple. Instead of using the PDP diagnostic to look at future action, the show would use it to study the past behaviour of murderers, dissecting the historic signs and tendencies that all pointed to the fact this person would kill one day. His superiors had loved the idea and the series had been commissioned for an initial six-week run.
Jessamine had been flattered to be considered. Still, had Mick asked her to audition six months earlier she would have turned him down. She loved working on a newspaper. The pulse and stink of it. The way it drove her out into the most unlikely corners of the world in search of information and truth. But that was then. That day, as she’d sat across from him while he talked about his vision for the show, all she’d been able to think about was Sarah.
Before her daughter’s arrival, Jessamine’s plan had been to take a year’s leave, after which she would settle her into appropriate childcare and return to her job at The Times. However, after a short while in Sarah’s company, she knew that that plan was untenable. Motherhood on paper, she’d discovered, was quite different from the reality. She’d been trying to come up with an alternative, maybe a little freelance work or teaching on one of the journalism courses at City University, when she’d got the call from Mick. The radio show was the answer. The job was part-time. It would allow her to keep her hand in, and to be with Sarah for the lion’s share of the week. Not only that, many of the issues the show dealt with – violent patterns of behaviour and the apparent inability of government agencies to protect those most at risk – tapped into a subject that had recently become close to Jessamine’s heart. Soon after their initial chat, when Mick had called to offer her the job, Jessamine had accepted.
She reached the gritted area outside Broadcasting House and was about to go inside when a young woman stepped in front of her, blocking the way. She was wearing a green parka, the fur-lined hood over her head.
‘Jessamine? Jessamine Gooch?’
Her accent was pure Essex, all clipped vowels and pouty consonants.
She pushed the hood back onto her shoulders and laughed, as if she couldn’t quite believe her luck. ‘Sorry.’ She retreated a step, gestured at herself and shrugged. ‘I didn’t know any other way.’ In her late teens or early twenties, she had long brown hair, looped up into the kind of topknot currently favoured by Sarah and her friends. Beneath the parka Jessamine saw a flash of Breton stripe.
‘Do we know each other?’
The woman shivered and blew on her hands to warm them. ‘I listen to your show. Every week.’
Jessamine tilted her head discreetly and directed her gaze behind the woman, to where the security guards stood inside the main door. Her show had a big following and occasionally the families of the criminals she profiled, those who still believed in their innocence, would write angry letters after a programme had gone out. Was this young woman one of those people? Had she come here to confront Jessamine in person? She felt a ripple of fear.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not a weirdo,’ said the woman, as if she had read Jessamine’s thoughts. ‘Although I would say that. It’s not always clear who they are, the dangerous kind.’ She reached into her pocket. ‘It’s about my friend, Cassie. Cassie Scolari.’
She pulled out a photo and thrust it into Jessamine’s hand. It showed a young woman smiling widely at the camera. In her late twenties, she had blonde hair and was wearing a pink and white striped blouse. A turquoise jumper hung loose around her shoulders. She was attractive and had a cultivated, preppy, Boden-catalogue look, but something about the outfit wasn’t quite right. Everything was cut a little too tight, the material thinner and a shade or two off its Jack Wills counterparts.
‘I don’t understand.’ Jessamine tried to give it back but the woman refused to accept it and held up her hands, as if in surrender.
‘Two and a half weeks ago Cassie went missing.’ She pulled out another photo. ‘Cassie’s husband,’ she said. ‘Piece of shit. Knocks her around.’
‘Ah.’ Many of the cases Jessamine covered on her radio show involved domestic violence. When it came to murderous behaviour, hurting your partner was often the canary in the coal mine.
The woman tapped the photo with a neon-pink shellacked nail. ‘He fits the pattern. I thought you’d be sympathetic.’
The woman was right, more so than she knew. Jessamine’s interest in domestic violence might have found expression in her work, but the root of her preoccupation was intensely personal. Twice a week she volunteered as a support worker for Refuge, taking calls on the helpline.
‘I presume the police are involved.’
‘They were all over it in the beginning, now not so much.’
‘If you’re worried, maybe you should try a private investigator.’ Jessamine was sympathetic but that didn’t mean she was the right person for the job. It had been more than a decade since she’d worked in a newsroom, let alone got stuck into a police investigation.
‘I don’t want a private investigator. I want you.’
They were standing next to one of the bollards on the loop road used for BBC drop-offs and pick-ups. Jessamine noticed a black cab about to hook a left, directly towards them, and grabbed the woman’s arm to pull her back onto the thin strip of pavement. ‘My show is retrospective. We don’t investigate ongoing criminal cases.’
The woman waited a beat, her eyes shining. ‘But you used to.’
Jessamine stiffened. ‘How do you – why would . . .?’
‘I looked you up,’ said the woman, shyly, sorry but not sorry. ‘Seems you were quite the newshound in your day.’
Jessamine didn’t know what to say.
The woman sensed an opportunity and took it. ‘Eighteen days ago Cassie went missing. That Friday she went into work and just after one o’clock she got a call from her son’s school to say he wasn’t feeling well. She asked to leave early and they let her go. That was the last anyone saw of her. But the school never made that call. Her son was fine all day.’
In her pocket, Jessamine’s phone buzzed. Probably Mick, wondering where she’d got to. ‘I have to go.’
‘There’s more,’ said the woman, speeding up. ‘Five days ago I received a WhatsApp text from Cassie. I immediately tried to call her but it went straight to voicemail.’
‘I feel for you, I really do,’ said Jessamine. ‘But I can’t help.’
Again she tried to leave, but the woman grabbed her arm and placed herself between Jessamine and the building. ‘Please.’
Jessamine looked down at the woman’s hand, still on her arm. The woman released her grip and stepped back.
‘Miss Gooch. I just want to know if she’s dead or alive. Her son, Matteo, he’s eight. Even if she’d wanted to run away, she would never have left him behind.’ She held out her hands, pleading. ‘His father is Italian. Since Cassie disappeared, he’s been talking about moving back to Rome with Matteo.’
‘They need me upstairs.’ Jessamine handed back the picture, side-stepped her, and walked towards the entrance.
As she grasped the door’s dulled gold handle the woman called after her, ‘Can I at least send you some information?’ The light had gone from her eyes, yet she’d decided to give it one last shot. ‘You could take a quick look?’
‘Sure,’ said Jessamine, not wanting to give her false hope. ‘But you’re wasting your time.’
Inside Reception the mosaic floor rumbled underfoot: a Bakerloo or Victoria line train shuddering its way to the next station deep in the tunnels below. She searched for the pass hanging from a lanyard in the depths of her coat and glanced back as someone was leaving. The woman was still standing in the snow, clutching her friend’s photo.
Upstairs the sound engineers were leaving the studio. The technical problem had been fixed. Mick waved at her and tapped his watch with a rolled-up script. Ten minutes to on air.
Weaving her way through the swathe of desks, she realised that the words she’d just memorised had gone. She’d have to rely on the script after all.
She took her place at the control desk, greeted O’Brien with a nod and was about to start her checks when she noticed a pair of knitted earmuffs lying next to the fader board. They were embroidered with fat red robins. She looked up to see O’Brien watching her expectantly. Another gift. Being careful to hide her smile, she put them to one side and Mick began to count her in to the start of the show, to the moment when her words would be broadcast live to the nation.
2002
Rowena
We sit in his car, the engine off. I press my face to the passenger window and look up. The flat is above a takeaway, a fried-chicken shop. Three sash windows mark its place in the row. The glass is grey with exhaust fumes and, instead of curtains, the windows are covered with blue and purple sheets, the seams trapped in the gap at the top of the frame. The entrance is around the corner, through a brown door.
‘We should go in.’ Sunny puts his hand on my leg.
‘Please,’ I say, and my throat tightens, as it does whenever I try not to cry.
Sunny smiles and cups my chin. His touch is soft. Then he leans forward and kisses me gently where my hair meets my forehead.
The Dangerous Kind Page 2