She knocked and waited, listening for signs of life. Silence. She sniffed. The air around the door and in the small vestibule was scented with bleach and something else, almost medicinal, that seemed to emanate from inside the flat.
She knocked once more. Still nothing. No one was at home. She reached into her bag for her pad, about to scribble a note, when on the other side of the door, she heard a metallic rasp. Someone had opened the spy-hole cover.
She smiled into the fish-eye lens, and a moment later a woman peered out from behind the door. ‘Yes?’
In her late twenties, her face was long and angular, her hair pulled back into a severe bun. She looked tired, her skin grey.
‘My name is Jessamine Gooch. I’m investigating the disappearance of a woman and I think she may somehow be connected to this address. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions?’
‘Are you the police?’ She looked behind where Jessamine stood, as though a team of detectives might be there, waiting to talk.
‘I’m a journalist.’
‘It’s not a good time.’ She went to close the door.
‘Please,’ said Jessamine, taking a step forward. ‘This woman. She has a son. Two minutes, that’s all I ask.’
Cassie’s being a mother seemed to hit some kind of a nerve. The woman bit her lip and looked at the floor. She reopened the door. The medicinal smell was getting stronger.
‘Maybe I could show you a picture?’ She handed her the news article. ‘Her name is Cassie Scolari.’
The woman studied the picture, an expression on her face Jessamine couldn’t quite read. Her eyes softened and Jessamine was sure she saw a hint of a smile. But then, shaking her head, she handed it back. ‘Sorry.’
Again, she went to close the door.
‘One last thing.’
The woman sighed.
‘Do you live here alone?’ It was unlikely a single person could afford the rent on a place like this. ‘Maybe keep the picture and show it to your flatmates?’
‘I come here to look after Mrs Wiles.’ She pulled a tube of pills out of her pocket and gave it a shake. ‘She is very sick.’ The woman had an odd, drawn-out way of pronouncing ‘I’. It was as though she had reached deep at the back of her throat and brought the sound up slowly. Like a bucket being drawn from a well. She looked over her shoulder, into the depths of the flat. ‘Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t be able to help you. The medication.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Most days she struggles to recognise her own daughter.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’
‘If you’ll excuse me.’ She checked her watch. ‘I need to get back to my patient.’
The door closed and Jessamine was left clutching the picture of Cassie Scolari. Downstairs, on the ground floor, she could hear the tiny dogs behind the closed door, yapping for their supper.
Jitesh
Jitesh got into the lift and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Jessamine’s flat. He was there to help with the recording of the second podcast and also to go through the latest batch of emails from Went/Gone. The first episode had been climbing slowly up the charts, and the higher it got, the more messages came in. Until now he’d been forwarding them to Jessamine as and when they appeared, but with so many arriving in the last twenty-four hours they’d decided on a new plan. He would weed out the oddballs, then he and Jessamine would go through the credible emails together and decide how best to follow up on those with the most promise.
He was grateful for the distraction. Since embarrassing himself on the ice at Somerset House, all he’d been able to think about was the look on Meera’s face as he’d scrabbled away, wet and bruised, to the safety of dry land. She’d been concerned, yes, but she’d also been amused. She’d thought his tumble funny.
He stepped out of the lift and turned right, through the door that led onto the wooden walkway. There he paused, taking in the view of the city skyline beyond. The skyscrapers glittered gold and blue against the night. If he half closed his eyes the sequence of tiny lights looked almost like code. A series of ones and zeros that, arranged in the right way, could be used to do anything: send an email, start a car, launch a rocket. He withdrew his gaze back, to the building before him. It was quiet this evening, the tree in the courtyard lit by spotlights sunk into the ground. It was because of this, because the building was so peaceful, that he became aware of someone talking a few floors below. It sounded like Sarah, Jessamine’s daughter.
‘Course I do. You know that . . . Don’t say that.’ She seemed to be talking to someone on the phone. Not wanting to alert her to his presence he made sure to stand perfectly still. ‘I’m babysitting. A kid in my block, Isla.’ She paused. ‘I’ve asked Mum to renew it.’ Another pause. ‘I told her I need it for a school trip. She said she’ll take it into the Passport Office. If you pay a bit more you get it back the same day.’ She paused, presumably listening to the person at the other end. When she spoke again there was desperation in her tone. ‘She doesn’t know . . . Yes, I’m sure. Of course I still want to . . . Don’t say that. I love you, you know I do.’
Her pleading was interrupted by the shrill bleat of his phone. No doubt his father, wondering why he wasn’t at the Mandir tonight. He fumbled for it in his pocket and turned it to silent. But it was too late. From below there was silence, then footsteps: Sarah searching for the source of the noise.
‘I’d better get back to Isla,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Talk later.’ He heard the sound of a door shutting and that was it. She was gone.
He looked at the city skyline. This time he opened his eyes wide. The lights shone out of the windows in each tower: small, neat, uniform.
Monday 16 January
Present day
Jessamine
The reception area at Mai, Hampson & Oakes was as imposing as you might expect for a firm of its stature. A giant glass cube fixed to the front of a converted Victorian hospital, the space was dominated by a swoop of white marble in the shape of a cresting wave. Behind it sat the receptionist, formidable in a black roll-neck, Capri pants and ballet flats.
Jessamine checked herself in and took a seat on one of the brown velveteen sofas dotted around the waiting area. She was there to meet architect Miguel Hampson. Newly returned from his Shanghai sabbatical, he had replied to her email yesterday, inviting her to come in and see him at the earliest opportunity. Jessamine hoped this was a good sign. The last few leads she’d had had fizzled to nothing.
Ten minutes early, she decided to kill time by working her way through the latest batch of emails from Went/Gone. Jitesh had uploaded the second episode onto iTunes last night and they’d already had a huge response. She scanned the first three or four. They were now starting to get messages from people who genuinely thought they could help. Most notable were the listeners who had heeded her request for photos or videos shot in or around Embankment on that day. Jessamine studied each of the images in turn, trying to spot Cassie in the back of the shot. One selfie, taken at the bottom of Villiers Street around the same time Cassie would have been there, looked promising. She enlarged the image and scrutinised the faces of everyone in the back of the picture. Her hopes were briefly raised by a woman with blonde hair passing alongside EAT, but up close her facial features were completely different. The last email in the list was from the man whose email signature was Linus85. Again he had nothing of note to impart and had got in touch just to say how much he was enjoying the series.
Behind the desk, the receptionist was taking a message. While she typed she kept her shoulders back, her head erect, her voice polite but firm. Presumably she had fielded Cassie’s calls to Miguel.
Jessamine got up and approached where she sat.
A flicker of irritation crossed the young woman’s face. Her hand went to the top of her roll-neck, her fingers kneading the soft black material. ‘Mr Hampson will be out in a minute.’
‘Actually, it’s you I wanted to talk to.’
‘Me?’ She pus
hed her headset back, her mouth a prim twist.
‘Last year around October time a woman kept calling here for Mr Hampson. Ever deal with her?’
She huffed and rolled her eyes at the memory. ‘Cassie something? That the one?’
Jessamine nodded.
‘Every day I’d tell her he wasn’t here, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ She tutted at the memory. ‘Nuisance.’
‘Did she ever say why she was calling? Or give any clue about what she wanted to speak to him about?’
‘That was just it. She wouldn’t leave a message or a number he could call her back on. She was insistent that she speak directly with Miguel.’ She leaned conspiratorially towards the marble barrier. ‘After a little while I started to wonder.’ She checked back in the direction of the main building. ‘Her behaviour.’ She leaned a little closer. ‘Miguel. He has a certain reputation.’ She was about to go on when she caught sight of something or someone and retreated behind her computer.
‘Jessamine Gooch?’
She turned to see a man standing there. She recognised him from his profile picture. Impeccably dressed in a three-piece tailored suit, he pronounced her name with a slight accent, the syllables seeming to twist and turn on his tongue. Jessamine imagined each letter lengthening and spiralling onto the air, like a collection of mini tornadoes.
‘Miguel Hampson.’ He offered his hand. ‘So happy to meet you. I used to listen to you on Radio 4 every week without fail.’
So that was why he had been so eager to meet. He was a fan.
He motioned to the corridor. ‘Shall we?
Jessamine followed him into the Victorian section of the building, then into an office with his name on the door. A vast high-ceilinged room punctuated by a series of round clerestory windows, it looked as if it had once been one of the hospital’s wards. A desk, chair and sofa were the only pieces of furniture. The walls were covered with a combination of bookshelves and huge, framed technical drawings of buildings large and small that ranged from jaunty skyscrapers and futuristic sports stadia to Oxbridge quads, brought up to date by sympathetic additions of glass and steel.
She examined a particularly large before and after sketch of an office wing that had had its insides transformed without apparently compromising the historic integrity of the building. The text at the bottom of the drawing identified it as the V&A.
‘These all yours?’
‘Every one.’
He took a seat on the sofa and patted the space next to him. ‘How can I help?’ he asked, as she came to join him. He crossed his legs neatly and stretched his arm towards her, along the back of the sofa.
‘I’m investigating the disappearance of a woman. Cassie Scolari.’ She handed him a picture of Cassie and studied his face for any change in expression. ‘I wondered if you knew her.’
‘The name isn’t familiar.’ His reaction seemed genuine. He looked briefly at the photo and shook his head. ‘Is she a client of ours?’
‘You tell me. In the month leading up to her disappearance she called this company, specifically your office, on ten different occasions. Any idea why?’
‘No clue.’
He held her gaze a moment too long and then, slowly, he smiled. The upper line of his teeth was perfect but the lower ones were crowded and collapsing in on each other, their roots tinged with brown coffee stains.
She thought about the receptionist’s earlier comment. Had she meant that Miguel was a bit of a ladies’ man, or something else?
He leaned in a little closer. This sofa was too small for the pair of them.
‘You sure you don’t recognise her? Please, take another look.’ Again, she handed him the photocopy. As he took it, he let his fingers brush against hers.
This time he studied it properly but again he shook his head. ‘I have a photographic memory. If I’d met her, I’d remember.’
Thinking he was teasing, she laughed.
‘The technical term is eidetic,’ he said, dead serious. ‘Although, admittedly, I’m better with architectural plans than faces. I can remember every version of every technical plan I’ve ever worked on.’ He tapped the side of his head with his finger. ‘This woman you’re looking for, she may not be one of those plans, but I can assure you I’ve never seen her before.’
He seemed to be telling the truth. But if that was the case, why had Cassie called here so many times? And why specifically Miguel? Did she have some random stalker fixation with the man, something he was totally oblivious to? Or was there something more to it, something he wasn’t telling her? Perhaps something connected to Cassie’s work as a prostitute.
Jessamine thanked Miguel for his time, and as she got up to leave, her phone rang.
She didn’t recognise the caller ID. ‘Hello.’
‘I heard your podcast.’
She recognised his voice immediately. Luca.
‘I want to talk.’
Friday 20 January
Present day
Jitesh
Friday night, and Jitesh was sitting on a wall across the street from Kishor’s house. It was Kishor’s nineteenth birthday and, although it was only a week into a new term, Kishor had come home from university to celebrate with one of his famous parties.
Jitesh watched as another two boys approached the front door. According to Meera’s Facebook page, she was making the two-and-a-half-hour train journey back from Durham to attend but he’d yet to see her arrive. Maybe she was already inside.
Jitesh waited until a largish crowd of kids appeared, then crossed the road and hovered on their periphery. When the door opened he huddled in close and followed them into the hall.
Being back in Kishor’s house for the first time since that night last year was dizzying. Very quickly it became difficult to breathe. He steadied himself against the wall and tried to distract himself from his racing heart by focusing on the task in hand. Finding Meera. Once he’d located her he wouldn’t let her out of his sight until she went home at the end of the evening. That way he could make sure she came to no harm.
The party was packed with people. Some were old school friends but they were mostly new faces. No doubt Kishor had made a fresh set of pals at college. Jitesh went from the living room, to the kitchen, to the conservatory. She was nowhere to be seen. He’d check the garden, then have a look upstairs.
Outside he moved slowly along the path that ran parallel to the fence, searching the dark. Again, there was no sign of her – or anyone else, for that matter. The grass was packed with old snow, the air freezing. He hugged himself to keep warm and was about to return to the house when he saw an orange light at the bottom of the garden next to the shed. A cigarette. He sniffed the air. Or a spliff. He crept a little closer. There, underneath a lean-to, two people were sharing a joint. Meera and Kishor.
Once he’d set his mind on destroying the frog video, Jitesh had been like a man possessed. He’d spent hours researching and thinking up possible ways he might go about it. He’d considered sneaking into the changing room while Kishor was playing rugby, then finding and deleting the file from his phone. But to do that he’d need Kishor’s passcode. He’d considered breaking into Kishor’s house and trying to access his computer while he wasn’t there. But that was fraught with difficulty. Even if he’d found the courage to smash a window or force a door he’d have had to log into his computer, to figure out his password. In the end a YouTube documentary on social engineering decided it. Hacking into Kishor’s cloud would be the easiest and cleanest way to delete the video that was slowly ruining Jitesh’s life.
He set to work late one night. He was nervous but took his time, and before long he had access to Kishor’s cloud. He searched iPhoto by date and soon found the offending video. He might not be able to do anything about the people to whom Kishor had already disseminated the footage but he could remove the source and that, at least, gave him back some sense of control. All done, he’d been about to log off when he’d noticed another video, taken on t
he same date. Time-stamped to forty minutes before the incident with the frog, there was something familiar about the image that marked the start of the clip. Intrigued, he pressed play.
In the garden Kishor had just said something to make Meera giggle. Jitesh moved a little closer, just in time to see Kishor bring Meera in for a kiss.
He shifted on his feet and Meera’s eyes shot open.
She pulled back from Kishor and whispered something in his ear.
Jitesh retreated towards the house and was almost at the patio when Kishor caught up with him. He grabbed his arm and turned him around. ‘What the fuck, Ganguly?’
Again, Jitesh tried to retreat but Kishor had him held fast.
‘First the ice rink and now this. What are you? Some kind of stalker?’
‘Leave him, Kish,’ said Meera. ‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not. He creeps me out. He’s mental, everyone knows. Tried to off himself, didn’t he, last day of A levels?’
That second video Jitesh had found on Kishor’s computer changed everything.
Judging by the angle and the distance of the shot, it had been filmed on a webcam, most likely the computer he’d seen on the desk in the corner of Kishor’s bedroom. It captured Kishor and Shanae having sex, without, it seemed, her knowledge that she was being filmed. That was disturbing enough but the worst part was at one point, halfway through, when Kishor looked up to the camera. Without breaking stride, he winked and gave his soon-to-be-audience a thumbs-up. Jitesh didn’t hesitate. He deleted the video immediately. But then he thought of the thumbs-up. He searched Kishor’s email. He’d shared the video with his friends. Their comments – about Shanae’s body, her performance – made him feel sick.
Now Jitesh turned to Meera.
‘K-K-K-Kishor is a bad per-person. You sh-should stay away from him.’
The Dangerous Kind Page 22