Now You See Me Read online

  Slowly, we retraced the last time I’d walked this way, with Tulloch firing questions at me every few seconds. Annoyed with myself for not being more alert earlier, I tried my best. I didn’t think there’d been anyone around. There’d been music, some sort of loud rap that I hadn’t recognized. A helicopter had passed overhead, lower than normal, because I’d glanced up at it. I was certain I’d never seen the blonde woman before tonight. There had been something, for a second, as I’d looked at her, something niggling, but no, it had gone.

  ‘I was looking back at this point,’ I said, as I turned on the spot. ‘There was a loud noise behind me.’

  I met Tulloch’s eye and knew what she was thinking. I’d looked back and had probably missed seeing the attack by seconds. Split seconds.

  ‘When did you see her?’ she asked me.

  ‘I was a bit closer,’ I replied. ‘I was fumbling in my bag as I was walking – I thought I might have left my car keys behind – then I looked up and saw her.’

  We were right back in the thick of it. A white-suited figure was taking photographs of the blood spatter on my car.

  ‘Go on,’ she told me.

  ‘I didn’t see the blood at first,’ I said. ‘I thought she’d stopped to ask directions, that maybe she thought there was someone in the car.’

  ‘Tell me what she looked like. Describe her to me.’

  ‘Tall,’ I began, not sure where this was going. She’d just seen the woman in question for herself.

  She sighed. ‘You’re a detective, Flint. How tall?’

  ‘Five ten,’ I guessed. ‘Taller than both of us. And slim.’

  Her eyebrows went up.

  ‘Size twelve,’ I said quickly. ‘From the back I thought she was young, probably because she was slim and well dressed, but when I saw her face, she seemed older than I expected.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She looked good,’ I went on, warming to my theme. If Tulloch wanted endless detail I could oblige. ‘She was well dressed. Her clothes looked expensive. Simple, but well made. Her hair had been professionally done. That colour doesn’t come out of a bottle you buy at Boots and there was no sign of roots. Her skin was good and so were her teeth, but she had lines around her eyes and her jawline wasn’t that tight.’

  ‘So you’d put her age at …’

  ‘I’d say well-preserved mid forties.’

  ‘Yes, so would I.’ There was movement all around us, but Tulloch’s eyes weren’t leaving my face. There could have been just the two of us in the car park.

  ‘Did she have ID?’ I asked. ‘Do we know who she is?’

  ‘Nothing in her bag,’ said a man’s voice. I turned. Tulloch’s companion of earlier had joined us. He’d pushed his sunglasses on to the top of his head. There was scarring around his right eye that looked recent. ‘No ID, no car keys, some cash and bits of make-up,’ he went on. ‘Mystery how she got here. We’re some distance from the Tube and she doesn’t strike me as a bus type.’

  Tulloch was looking at the large blocks of flats that surrounded the square.

  ‘Course, her car keys could have been stolen along with the car. A woman like that probably drives a nice motor,’ he said. He had a faint south London accent.

  ‘She had diamond studs in her ears,’ I said. ‘This wasn’t a robbery.’

  He looked at me. His eyes were blue, almost turquoise. The one with the scarring around it was bloodshot. ‘Could have been fake,’ he suggested.

  ‘If I was slitting someone’s throat and cutting open their stomach to rob them, I’d take any visible jewellery on the off-chance, wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘And she had a nice-looking wristwatch too. I could feel it scratching against my hand as she died.’

  He didn’t like that, I could tell. He raised his hand to rub his sore eye and frowned at me.

  ‘Flint, this is DI Joesbury,’ said Tulloch. ‘Nothing to do with the investigation. He only came out with me tonight because he’s bored. This is DC Flint. Lacey, I think, is that right?’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Joesbury, who’d barely acknowledged the introduction. ‘Lewisham want to know when you’re bringing her in.’

  Tulloch was still looking at the buildings around us.‘I don’t get it, Mark,’ she said. ‘We’re surrounded by flats and it isn’t that late, dozens of people could have witnessed what happened. Why would you murder someone here?’

  From somewhere near by I could hear a dog barking.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t here by chance,’ replied Joesbury. ‘That woman belongs in Knightsbridge, not Kennington. Thanks to DC Flint’s knowledge of jewellery, we know that robbery seems unlikely, although we do need to find her car.’

  ‘Kids round here wouldn’t kill for a car,’ I said as they both turned to me. ‘Oh, they’d steal it, no question, but they’d just snatch the keys, give her a shove. They wouldn’t need to—’

  ‘Slash her throat so deeply they cut right through her windpipe?’ finished Joesbury. ‘Cut her abdomen from the breastbone down to the pubic bone. No, you’re right, DC Flint, that does seem like overkill.’

  OK, I was definitely not getting good vibes from this bloke. I took a step back, then another. For some reason, probably shock, I’d talked much more than I would normally. Maybe I just needed to quieten down for a while. Keep a low profile.

  ‘How?’ said Tulloch.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Joesbury, who’d been watching me back away.

  ‘She was still on her feet when DC Flint saw her,’ said Tulloch. ‘Still alive, although horribly injured. That means she was attacked seconds before. Probably even while Flint was wandering around fumbling in her bag for her keys. How did he do it? How did he inflict those injuries then disappear completely?’

  Wandering and fumbling? Tulloch had made the attack sound like it was my fault. I almost opened my mouth again and remembered just in time. Low profile.

  ‘There are no CCTV cameras in the square,’ said Joesbury. ‘But the high street is just yards away. Stenning has gone to round up any footage. If our villain left the estate, he’ll have been picked up on one of them.’

  Maybe it had been my fault. If I’d had my wits about me, I might have seen the attacker before he struck. I could have yelled for help, summoned local uniform on my radio. I could have stopped the attack. Shit, that sort of guilt trip was all I needed.

  ‘Whoever did it would be covered in blood,’ said Joesbury, still looking at me. ‘They’ll have left a trail.’ He glanced behind. ‘Sounds like the dogs are here.’

  We looked towards the car park. Two dogs had arrived. German Shepherds, each with its own handler.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said, before I could stop myself. They both turned back to me. ‘If her throat was cut from behind, whoever did it might have escaped being splashed. All her blood spattered forward. On to my car.’

  ‘And then on to you,’ said Joesbury, his eyes dropping away from my face to the bloodstains that were just about visible through the Tyvek. ‘Are we done here, Tully?’ he went on. ‘You really need to get DC Flint back to the station.’

  Tulloch looked uncertain for a moment. ‘I just need to make sure Neil—’

  ‘Anderson knows exactly what he’s doing,’ said Joesbury. ‘He’s got six officers taking witness statements, the traffic has been redirected and they’ll start the door-to-door as soon as the dogs are done.’

  ‘Can you take her back?’ asked Tulloch. ‘I want to have a good look round when things quieten down.’

  Joesbury looked as though he were about to argue, then smiled at her. He had very good teeth. ‘Do I get to drive the Tully-mobile?’ he asked.

  Shaking her head, Tulloch pulled down the zip of her pale-blue suit and dug into her pocket. Glaring, she handed over her car keys. ‘Prang it and I prang you,’ she warned.

  ‘Come on, Flint, before she changes her mind.’ Joesbury had put a hand on my elbow and was steering me towards the DI’s silver Mercedes.

  ‘And make sure she keeps t
hat suit on,’ called Tulloch, as Joesbury held the passenger door open and I climbed inside. The interior looked showroom new. I sank back against the leather seat and closed my eyes.

  4

  IT WAS GONE NINE O’CLOCK BY THIS TIME, BUT THE STREETS were still busy and we didn’t make great progress. I was still smarting from Tulloch’s comments about wandering and fumbling, so I kept my eyes closed and asked myself what I could have done differently. Joesbury said nothing.

  After ten, maybe fifteen minutes of silence, he switched on the car stereo and the eerie notes of Clannad filled the car.

  ‘Oh, you are kidding me,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Is there anything in the glove compartment?’

  I opened my eyes and, still wearing latex gloves, pulled out the only CD in the small compartment. ‘Medieval plainsong,’ I said, reading the cover.

  Joesbury shook his head. ‘If you get chance to speak to her about her taste in music, go for it,’ he said. ‘She had me listening to Westlife the other night.’

  He lapsed into silence again as we reached the Old Kent Road. Occasionally, as the streetlights caught the car windscreen at the right angle, I could see his reflection. Nothing out of the ordinary. Late thirties, I guessed, brown hair cut short. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His face and bare forearms were suntanned. His teeth, I’d already noticed, were even and very white.

  Another ten minutes passed without either of us speaking. I had a sense, though, partly from the way his head kept tilting, that he was watching me in the car windscreen too.

  Wandering and fumbling.

  ‘If I’d got to her sooner, would she have lived?’ I asked, as we turned off Lewisham High Street and into the car park behind the station.

  ‘Guess we’ll never know,’ replied Joesbury. There were no spaces left so he parked directly behind a green Audi, completely blocking it in.

  ‘She was still alive seconds before the ambulance arrived,’ I said. ‘I should have put something against the wound, shouldn’t I? Tried to stop the bleeding.’

  If I was hoping for any sort of comfort from this guy, I was wasting my breath. ‘I’m a police officer, not a paramedic,’ he replied, switching off the engine. ‘Looks like you’re expected.’

  The station’s duty sergeant, a scene-of-crime officer and a police doctor were waiting for us. Together we walked through the barred rear door of Lewisham police station and my arrival was officially recorded. I’d worked for the Metropolitan Police for nearly four years, but had a feeling I was about to see it from a very different perspective.

  Some time later, I sat staring at dirty cream walls and grey floor tiles. My left shoulder was sore from where I’d fallen on it earlier and I could feel a headache threatening. Over the past hour, I’d been asked to undress completely before being examined by a police doctor. After a shower, I’d been examined again, and photographed. My fingernails had been clipped, my saliva swabbed and my hair combed thoroughly and painfully. Then I’d been given a pair of orange overalls normally issued to prisoners in custody.

  I hadn’t eaten that evening and, whether it was due to low blood sugar, shock or just a cold room, I was finding it hard to stop shivering. I kept seeing pale-blue eyes, staring at me.

  I could have saved her. If I hadn’t been in my own little world, we might not be kicking off a murder investigation right now. And everyone knew that. It would be my legacy, for as long as I stayed in the service: the DC who’d let a woman be stabbed to death right in front of her.

  The door opened and DI Joesbury came in. In the small room he seemed taller than he had on the street or even in DI Tulloch’s car. DC Gayle Mizon, the detective who’d assisted the police doctor in examining me, was with him. The two of them had been laughing at something in the corridor outside and he was still smiling as he held the door open for her. He had a great smile. Then he turned to me and the smile faded.

  ‘Still bored?’ I asked, before I could stop myself.

  I might not have spoken. I got no reaction whatsoever.

  Mizon was an attractive blonde woman of around thirty-three or -four. She’d brought me coffee. I put my hand on the mug for warmth but didn’t dare pick it up. I was shaking too much. Joesbury continued to study me, my hair still wet from the shower, my face dry and pink because it hadn’t been moisturized, and my prisoner-in-custody uniform. He didn’t look impressed.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a statement.’

  By the time he called a halt, I’d barely the energy left to sit upright in my chair. If I’d wanted to be tactful about DI Joesbury’s interviewing technique, I’d have said he was thorough. If honesty had been the order of the day, I’d have called him a sadistic shit.

  Before we started, they explained that Gayle Mizon would be taking the statement, Joesbury only sitting in on an advisory capacity. They’d even given me chance to request he leave the room. I’d shrugged and muttered something about it being fine. Big mistake, because the moment the interview kicked off, he took charge.

  What followed didn’t feel like any witness statement I’d ever been a party to before. More like I was about to be charged. He made me go over every detail several times, until even Mizon was looking uncomfortable. And he kept going back to the same point. How could I not have seen something? How could I have missed the attack and yet been close enough for her to die in my arms? Every second I was waiting for him to say that the blonde woman would still be alive if I hadn’t messed up.

  Finally, he terminated the interview and switched off the recording equipment. The clock on the wall said ten past eleven.

  ‘Is there someone you’d like us to call?’ asked Mizon, as Joesbury took the disc out of the recording machine and labelled it.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Will there be someone at home when you get there?’ she asked me. ‘Flatmate? Boyfriend? You’ve had a nasty shock. You probably shouldn’t be on your own.’

  ‘I live on my own,’ I said. ‘But I’m fine,’ I added, when she looked concerned. ‘Is it OK if I go now?’

  ‘Family?’ Mizon wasn’t giving up easily.

  ‘They don’t live in London,’ I said, which was true, if a bit disingenuous. They don’t live anywhere. I have no family. ‘Look, I’m tired, I haven’t eaten, I just want to get home and—’

  Joesbury looked up, frowning. ‘Did nobody offer you food?’ he asked, and really, you had to admire the way he made it sound like it was my own fault.

  ‘Really not a problem. Can I go now?’ I stood up. ‘Sir,’ I added, for good measure.

  Joesbury turned to Mizon. ‘Gayle, if we’d brought the killer in red-handed, knife dangling from his teeth, we’d have fed him. One of our own, we leave to starve.’

  ‘I thought someone else was …’ Mizon began.

  ‘It’s really not …’ I tried.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said to me. I shrugged, managed a smile.

  Joesbury stood up and crossed the room. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding the door open.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ I hadn’t the energy to even try being polite any more. Not that previous efforts had been all that successful.

  ‘I’m getting you fed, then I’m getting you home,’ he replied. He nodded at the disc on the table. ‘Can you get that processed?’ he said to a rather surprised-looking Mizon. Then he walked me out of the station.

  Tulloch’s silver Mercedes had already been moved and Joesbury opened up the green Audi we’d blocked in previously. He turned on the engine, put the car into gear and began flicking through a stack of CDs.

  ‘Got any Westlife?’ I asked, as he reversed the car out of the parking space and turned it round. When he didn’t reply, I made a mental note that a sense of humour wasn’t high on this guy’s list of attributes. And that I could probably cross out fair-minded and compassionate as well. In fact, so far, the only box I could tick was a healthy respect for a woman’s need to eat. He pushed a CD into the stereo. Back on Lewisham High Street, he turned th
e volume right up and rhythmic, percussion-based club music filled the car. Message received and understood, DI Joesbury, I wasn’t meant to talk.

  5

  THE GARDEN IS LONG AND NARROW. AND VERY DARK. Whilst high walls on three sides keep out most of the streetlight, the dense foliage of over-mature shrubs seems to soak up any light that does seep through. The garden is overlooked by several windows, but the intruder moving slowly down the slim gravel path is dressed entirely in black and is unlikely to be seen.

  The garden is scented. The intruder stops for a moment and takes a deep breath, before stretching out a hand to a tiny, star-shaped flower. Jasmine.

  At the bottom of the garden is a small, neat wooden shed, partially hidden by vegetation. Ivy creeps up its walls and overhanging tree branches rest on its roof. The door is locked, but the intruder thinks for a moment before reaching up to run a hand along the rim of the low, flat roof. After a few seconds the hand finds what it is looking for. A key.

  The door opens easily. The intruder starts back with a muttered curse.

  For a moment, a human form appears to be hanging in the shed. It swings gently, turning on the spot. Human in form, but not human. This has a soft, cylindrical torso, it wears clothes but is limbless. Its head – male – once stared out from a shop window.

  The intruder touches it lightly. It spins on the chain that suspends it from the shed roof and the head lolls like that of a drunk. Or a crazy man.

  ‘What a good idea,’ says the intruder. ‘Oh Lacey, what a brilliantly good idea.’

  6

  ‘ARE YOU VEGGIE, LACTOSE INTOLERANT, ALLERGIC TO sesame seeds … ?’ Joesbury was asking me, practically the first words to come out of his mouth since we’d left the station. We were in a small Chinese restaurant, not far from where I live, that I didn’t think I’d ever noticed before. The owner, a slim Chinese man in his fifties called Trev, had greeted Joesbury like an old friend.

  ‘If it stays still long enough I’ll eat it,’ I replied.