Crossbones Yard (22 page)
Authors: Kate Rhodes
PC Meads was curled up on the settee when we got back, completely absorbed in the
Antiques Roadshow
. There was obviously more to him than met the eye. Maybe he was an expert on porcelain, and being a copper was just a sideline. The embarrassment of watching something so uncool was too much for him. His blush glowed salmon pink, as though he’d been caught checking out the porn channel.
Antiques Roadshow
. There was obviously more to him than met the eye. Maybe he was an expert on porcelain, and being a copper was just a sideline. The embarrassment of watching something so uncool was too much for him. His blush glowed salmon pink, as though he’d been caught checking out the porn channel.
Someone had cleaned my bedroom and folded my clothes into neat piles while I was out. Maid service is one of the things I’ve always hated about hotels. An army of underpaid women rummaging through your belongings, carrying out tasks you should do yourself.
I sifted through Marie Benson’s notes. At first sight they were just a muddle of doodles and lists, panic trapped in the grain of the paper. She had tried to catalogue her whole past before the lights went out. One page held a description of a childhood Christmas, detailing every present, and the names of relatives who came to stay. At the bottom of the page there was a scribbled Christmas tree, with baubles hanging from its skewed branches. Wright-Phillips had been right about the self-pity. There were drafts of dozens of letters to politicians, pleading to be set free. It was a travesty, she said. Every day in prison compounded the miscarriage of justice.
Her drawings were more interesting, pictures of trees uprooting themselves and creatures with distorted faces. But
one abstract pattern kept repeating itself, an irregular five-point star hovering above a rectangle. It appeared at the top of almost every page. Trawling through her dog-eared notes made me wish I had worn protective gloves, and it was a relief to stuff the paper back into the envelope.
one abstract pattern kept repeating itself, an irregular five-point star hovering above a rectangle. It appeared at the top of almost every page. Trawling through her dog-eared notes made me wish I had worn protective gloves, and it was a relief to stuff the paper back into the envelope.
Deciding what to do next was less easy. The choices weren’t exactly dazzling. I could sleep, eat some more tasteless hotel food, or go for a run in the gym, without ever arriving anywhere.
My phone rang as I was pulling on my trainers.
‘Lola. How are you?’
She sighed loudly into the receiver. ‘Lars called me. The police picked him up as soon as he got to Stockholm.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ An image of Lars wearing only a charming smile floated into my mind. ‘What did he have to say for himself?’
‘He feels terrible about hurting me. I can hear it in his voice.’
‘And I bet he’s got a load of excuses. A bad childhood, loan sharks chasing him?’
‘He loves me, Al,’ Lola sobbed. ‘I know he does. What am I going to do?’
‘Nothing, sweetheart. You can’t do anything.’
‘I could get on a plane, couldn’t I?’
‘Don’t decide now, Lo. You’ve got your show to think about. Why not come and have breakfast with me tomorrow?’
‘The thing is, Al, I’m not like you.’ There was a long pause while she struggled not to cry. ‘I need him. I can’t get by on my own.’
‘You can, Lo, honestly. You’re stronger than you think.’
She gulped down a sob. ‘What time shall I come?’
‘Nine?’
‘Sorry I’m such a mess, Al.’
‘Hang in there, kiddo. You can tell me about it tomorrow.’
The urge to exercise had evaporated. Lola’s misery made the treadmill seem even more pointless, like a lab rat chasing its tail. I lay back and studied the ceiling, a flawless expanse of white, as though stains had been outlawed.
My phone buzzed again in the middle of the night. I must have been sound asleep, because I had to fight to remember where I was. The text was from Alvarez. I cursed him under my breath, then forced myself out of bed. Meads’s regular snore drifted through the door while I got dressed. God knows what he dreamed about. Maybe wrestlers with Day-Glo tans hurling huge antique vases at each other, or perhaps he was too innocent for nightmares to enter his head. I tiptoed past without waking him. He wasn’t exactly the ideal bodyguard – scared of everything, and oblivious to any kind of threat.
Alvarez looked even more stern than usual when I got to reception; something had neutralised his sense of humour. He turned on his heel without bothering to greet me. When we stepped outside I wished I had grabbed my scarf and gloves. Frost had already whitened every car and lamppost, powdery as a dusting of icing sugar. Alvarez strutted ahead, arms swinging, daring anyone to get in his way. But as soon as he was in the driver’s seat, his self-control crumbled. He smashed his fist against the dashboard as if it had committed a crime.
‘This fucking job,’ he muttered. ‘It wants everything you’ve got.’
I rubbed his shoulder and waited for him to calm down. The muscles were so tense my fingers didn’t make an impression.
‘Tell me what’s happened.’
His head stayed bowed over the wheel. ‘You’ll see for yourself.’
The car raced along Southwark Street. For once the roads were completely clear, the Tate Modern’s black silhouette
menacing the houses at its feet, like a bully in the playground. Alvarez spun left, towards Waterloo. Sean would be fast asleep by now, a few hundred metres away, in his flat that always smelled of wine and spices. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to question Alvarez about where we were going. I just assumed he had good reasons for dragging me into the cold.
menacing the houses at its feet, like a bully in the playground. Alvarez spun left, towards Waterloo. Sean would be fast asleep by now, a few hundred metres away, in his flat that always smelled of wine and spices. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to question Alvarez about where we were going. I just assumed he had good reasons for dragging me into the cold.
We parked in a narrow cul-de-sac called Nicholson Street. It was crammed with squad cars and an ambulance, almost blocking the thoroughfare. There was little to see, apart from an abandoned shop on the corner, lock-ups and small warehouses on either side of the road.
Burns was leaning against a telegraph pole. He didn’t stir as I walked towards him. Maybe he had finally given up on the concept of movement.
‘Thanks for coming, Alice.’ Under the streetlight his round face was even whiter than usual. ‘It’s happened again, I’m afraid.’
I fought the impulse to yell I told you so. At least it proved that Will wasn’t involved.
‘You need a pathologist then, not a shrink.’
‘But I think you know this one, Alice. We want you to identify her.’
My heart twisted uncomfortably in my chest as I followed him past the huddle of police cars. A white plastic tent had already been put up, beside a row of wheelie bins. The stench of rotting fruit hit me immediately, and something worse, like meat that’s festered for too long in the fridge. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand. The familiar heap of black tarpaulin was lying a few metres away.
‘Ready?’ Burns asked.
‘As I’ll ever be.’
He pulled back the material gently, as though the girl might still be alive. Michelle’s pale blue eyes stared up at me
expectantly, like she had asked me a question weeks ago, and was still waiting for a reply.
expectantly, like she had asked me a question weeks ago, and was still waiting for a reply.
‘Oh God.’ A store of words built up inside my mouth, curses jostling for space, making it hard to breathe.
‘It’s Michelle, isn’t it?’ Burns murmured. ‘The lass you met on your run.’ His Scottish accent had come back. Under pressure he always forgot to shorten his vowels.
I nodded, without meeting his eye. When I knelt on the pavement the cold hit me as frost melted through my jeans. I made myself look again. Her face had been destroyed. A deep cross cut between her eyebrows, as if she had joined a cult, her cheeks a mess of raw criss-crossed lines. The ragged wound in her throat was crusted with dried blood. All I could remember was her expression when she told me she had been offered a place at college. It was a mixture of amusement and fear. The idea that her life could improve was too hard to believe.
‘Can I close her eyes?’ I asked.
Burns hesitated. ‘Forensics won’t like it.’
Her eyelashes grazed the palm of my hand. It took two attempts to force her eyelids shut. She seemed determined to carry on looking at the world for as long as possible.
I sat on the kerb to get my breath back, fighting waves of nausea. My boots rested on a grate, strength draining through the soles of my feet, spilling into the city’s sewers. As usual Alvarez was at the heart of things. Members of the forensics team buzzed around him, waiting for instructions.
It was an hour or more before Burns gave me a lift back to the hotel. There was a long silence. I assumed he was too tired to speak, until he drew a deep breath.
‘I hear you’ve been seeing Ben,’ he said.
‘Who told you?’
‘A little bird.’ He tapped the side of his nose and laughed. ‘Thank Christ something good’s come out of this.’
I stared out of the window at the empty river. It was hard to imagine Alvarez marching into his boss’s office to explain his relationships.
Burns looked unusually serious. ‘My first reaction when I heard about it was, thank Christ for that. He’s a tricky sod, but you’ll sort him out.’
‘So he’s not in trouble?’
‘Not if we keep it between ourselves,’ Burns replied. ‘When this is over, you’ll go back to your day job, no questions asked.’
I thought Burns was going to congratulate me and kiss me on both cheeks, but he settled for escorting me inside. He made it up the first flight of steps, then ran out of breath, so we had to part company. When I waved goodbye his head was down, reluctant to face the cold, and the questions waiting for him at Nicholson Street.
I let myself into my suite as quietly as possible. Sure enough, Meads was still sleeping like a baby. I crept into my bedroom, wondering exactly how many days it would take him to notice if someone abducted me.
It was after 4 a.m. when I finally got to sleep. I couldn’t bring myself to turn off the light, because whenever I closed my eyes Michelle was there, staring at me in amazement, struggling to believe how badly I’d let her down. The last five days of her life must have been unbearable − shivering in the dark, waiting for him to cut her again. A wave of nausea hit me. What kind of man would keep someone alive while he lacerated every inch of her skin? The attack had been even more obsessive than before. At least Suzanne Wilkes’s face had been left untouched, but Michelle’s had been ruined systematically. Maybe it was just as well she died. It was better than having to confront his handiwork whenever she cleaned her teeth. No skin graft could have covered wounds as deep as those.
I made it to the bathroom just in time, retching my room-service lasagne into the toilet bowl. Afterwards I felt hollow, like the dried-out bird bones you find on beaches, unbelievably light and empty. When I lay down again, sleep came easily, as if my memory banks had been wiped clean.
I must have dozed through the alarm, because it was ten to nine when I woke up. Remembering my breakfast date with Lola, I hauled myself into the shower. At least listening to her heartbreak would take me out of myself. For an hour it would be easy to forget about scars and death threats. Angie had
replaced Meads by the time I was ready to go downstairs. Her normal perkiness had been diluted.
replaced Meads by the time I was ready to go downstairs. Her normal perkiness had been diluted.
‘I heard about last night,’ she murmured. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Just about,’ I nodded.
She gave a half-smile. ‘You keep your cards close to your chest, don’t you, Alice?’
‘There’s not much to say, is there? Another dead girl, and the letters keep coming. End of story.’
‘I’d be jelly, if it was me. Do they train you to hide your feelings? I mean, shrinks can’t start blubbing every time someone gives you a sob story, can you?’
‘That must be it,’ I agreed.
Angie seemed relieved to know that my heart was still beating. It would have taken too long to explain that concealment was just a trick I’d taught myself, and it wouldn’t have comforted her.
It was nine twenty when we got down to the dining hall. I scanned the room for Lola’s flame-red hair, expecting her to fling her arms round my neck at any minute, but she was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she had gone out last night to drown her sorrows, but that was unlikely. She had one more rehearsal this afternoon, then tomorrow was her first night at the Cambridge Theatre. She had invited me to sit with her family in the front row while she dazzled us with her high-kicks.
I collected a bowl of muesli, and Angie loaded a plate with toast. There was still no sign of Lola by the time we finished our second cups of coffee. And then the obvious fact hit me. She would be halfway to Stockholm by now, or maybe she was already in a taxi to Gothenburg prison, her bag stuffed with borrowed money to pay Lars’s bail.
‘Jesus,’ I muttered. ‘I think a friend of mine’s about to do something unbelievably stupid.’
‘For love?’
‘Lust, more like.’
Angie smirked. ‘You won’t stop her then, it’s a force of nature.’
‘But I can try. If I don’t, she’ll only have a go at me when she sees sense.’
Lola’s phone was switched off. No doubt she was busy pleading with a Swedish jailor.
‘Don’t do anything crazy, sweetheart,’ I told her answering service. ‘Call me when you get this.’
After breakfast I borrowed Angie’s copy of the
Daily Mail
. SOUTHWARK RIPPER CLAIMS VICTIM NUMBER THREE, the front page shrieked. Someone had found a new picture of Michelle before her habit took hold, while her pale eyes were still calm, and her dark hair still had its gloss. She was beaming as though nothing could go wrong. Some hack had already planted the usual dramatic words in her mother’s mouth. ‘Let me kill the beast who stole my angel.’ It reminded me why I hated newspapers. They either pedalled their political agendas or dumbed down each conflict to a battle between angels and devils, for the sake of good copy.
Daily Mail
. SOUTHWARK RIPPER CLAIMS VICTIM NUMBER THREE, the front page shrieked. Someone had found a new picture of Michelle before her habit took hold, while her pale eyes were still calm, and her dark hair still had its gloss. She was beaming as though nothing could go wrong. Some hack had already planted the usual dramatic words in her mother’s mouth. ‘Let me kill the beast who stole my angel.’ It reminded me why I hated newspapers. They either pedalled their political agendas or dumbed down each conflict to a battle between angels and devils, for the sake of good copy.
I kept texting Lola, but she didn’t reply.
Angie rolled her eyes. ‘No point. Just be there for her when it goes tits up.’
‘I know,’ I nodded. ‘But at least I’m doing something.’
Meads began his shift at two o’clock, refreshed from his night of unbroken slumber. As usual he settled on the sofa with the remote control in his hand. This time he found a DIY programme. He looked on in open-mouthed wonder as an elderly man taught him how to hang a door. Inertia was his favourite state. Every TV programme received his undivided attention. I waited until the man had fixed the door safely to its hinges before making my request.
‘Can we go for a drive?’ I asked.
He sprang to attention immediately. ‘Ready when you are.’
Life with Meads was delightfully easy. If I had told him we were going on a Himalayan expedition without sherpas, he wouldn’t have batted an eye.
We drove past the Monument as soon as we left London Bridge. A few hardy tourists had braved the three-hundred-step climb to peer east from the viewing point to the warehouses at Limehouse. Before Canary Wharf obliterated the view, you could have seen past Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs to the hop fields of Kent. Our journey took us due north, dissecting the city as neatly as a cheese-wire. By Liverpool Street people were thronging outside the shops, but the money ran out when we crossed into the East End. Kingsland Road was a different story. The street names gave occasional reminders of the former wealth of the rag trade: Haberdashers Street, Curtain Road. No doubt you could still find sweatshops churning out parades of hand-stitched dresses, just like they did in Charles Dickens’s day. The city grew affluent again as soon as we reached De Beauvoir Town. It was a cluster of Edwardian streets, each villa perfectly gentrified with a Farrow & Ball front door, and plenty of Montessori schools for the delightful middle-class children to attend.
Play Days Nursery was catering for the less moneyed end of the spectrum. Their clients were probably harassed single parents, earning just enough to keep their families afloat. Cheryl Martin was busy tidying up, brown curls swept back from her face with an Alice band, unwilling to let anything stop her concentrating on her job. The kids had been collected already, but the floor was a bombsite of Lego, building blocks and dolls. She was on her knees, scooping toys into brightly coloured crates. I thought she might have forgotten me, but after a second she rose to her feet.
‘It’s Don’s friend, isn’t it?’ She gave a confused smile.
‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping in. I found Play Days on the Internet.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘But you haven’t come to add your kid to our waiting list, have you?’
Her hands rested on her hips while she waited for an explanation. It took all my powers of persuasion to get her to talk. But when I told her about Michelle, she began to melt. The idea that she might be able to keep other women safe finally made her cave in.
‘One last favour.’ She frowned at me. ‘Then that’s it. If you or Don or anyone else ask me again, there’s nothing doing. All right?’
I nodded. ‘Understood. All you have to do is take a look at this photo.’
When I put it on the table I thought she might push it straight back at me, but she was as good as her word. She studied the faces so carefully that she could have been memorising them for an exam. Her sleeves were rolled up and I tried not to stare at the crosses on her forearms, narrow slashes of white scar tissue, with hardly any space in between.
‘Recognise anyone?’ I asked.
‘All of them.’ Her face had drained of emotion when she met my eye. ‘Some of the names have gone, but I remember what they did round the place.’
‘Can you tell me about them?’
Cheryl’s finger hovered above Morris Cley’s face. ‘He was the best of the lot. Simple but sweet, desperate for a girlfriend. He popped in now and again, but he didn’t live there.’
She picked out another woman, who was eyeballing the camera as though she had unfinished business with the photographer. ‘I kept out of her way. Lisa, I think her name was. She’d be your best mate, then she’d hit the booze and be out for a fight.’
When she came to Will her reaction was almost the same as Cley’s. Her body recoiled for a few seconds before she could look at his face again. ‘That’s the one I said about, last time.’
‘Tell me what you remember, please.’ My heart rate quickened. ‘It could be important.’
‘I told you. He was the gatekeeper. Hanging about in the garden, always having little chats with Ray, big eyes watching everything. Will, I remember his name now I see him.’
I swallowed a gulp of air and forced myself to focus. ‘You’re sure that Will and Ray were friends?’
She stared at me. ‘They couldn’t have been closer.’ She buried her hands in the pockets of her jeans, as if they were cold. ‘He got the best room in the place, and he was never short of fags. I reckon they were paying him too.’
She turned away abruptly and carried on with her task, dropping plastic trucks, Barbie dolls and horses into their separate boxes.
I muttered a quick thank you on my way out, but she didn’t look up. Maybe she had already erased me from her memory, focused on what she had to do tomorrow to keep her flock of children out of harm’s way.
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