What She Saw (18 page)

From the window, he watched Corrigan escort his wife and child across Bannerman Square. Then they turned the corner near Claude House and were out of sight.

He looked at his phone, silent in his hand, and willed it to ring, wanting nothing more in life than to hear Corrigan say, ‘They're in the car. They're away.'

In his mind he ran through every corner in the neighbourhood, every blind spot, every dark hiding place, and he wondered which one they'd be lurking behind, waiting with petrol, waiting for him.

42

4.28 P.M.

‘
S
arah?' asked Corrigan, as they reached her car. ‘Is the boss OK?'

Sarah was pleased to hear deeply felt concern for her husband from Corrigan, a man not given to public shows of tenderness.

‘I think I'd better let him explain.'

Sarah placed the baby carrier down on the pavement next to the passenger door of her silver Citroën. Joe hiccupped softly as she opened the door and pushed the passenger seat down.

‘Excuse me.'

She turned at the sound of a young girl's voice. Her face was bruised, her lip cut. From the sleeve of her black padded coat hung a thread of unravelling green material from the cuff of her cardigan. The girl smiled, and Sarah felt a rush of sympathy for her.

She looked at Corrigan and said sweetly, ‘Hello.'

‘All right, love,' said Corrigan. ‘Macy Conner.' He'd seen her picture on Rosen's phone.

A light went on in Sarah's head. Macy Conner. Eye witness. Good kid.

The girl pointed at Joe and said, ‘What a lovely baby you have.'

‘Thank you,' said Sarah.

‘You're welcome,' said the girl. She touched the cut on her lip. ‘You don't live around here, do you?'

‘No, Islington.'

‘Ah, nice. I thought I hadn't seen you before.' She turned her attention to Joe, crouching on her heels to be closer to him. ‘What's his name?'

‘Joseph.'

The girl reached her hand into the baby carrier and stroked the fine hair on his head.

‘We call him Joe.'

‘Poor little thing's hiccupping like crazy.'

‘Teething, hiccupping, that's babies for you.'

‘I know a cure for hiccups. I learned it with the little boy I babysit for.'

The rain started.

‘Here, let me have a go while you put the baby carrier into the back of the car.'

Sarah and Corrigan exchanged a glance.

‘I guarantee I can cure those hiccups.'

‘OK,' said Sarah, eyes pinned on the girl.

Corrigan took a step closer to Macy.

The girl had her hands carefully underneath Joe. She lifted him swiftly and skilfully from the baby carrier. ‘I'm good with babies,' she said, then looked at Sarah. ‘You keep looking at my cut and bruises. . .'

‘What happened to you?' asked Sarah.

She held Joe close to her chest, one hand supporting the weight of his head, the other firmly against his spine.

‘If you give him a little squeeze, not too much, just a little pressure, like this. . .'

Her hand relaxed a little from his spine and Joe chuckled. Several moments passed, and the hiccupping had stopped.

‘That's very impressive,' said Sarah.

‘Well done,' added Corrigan. ‘You
are
good with babies.'

Macy held Sarah's gaze, turned her face as if showing her wounds to the sky and said, ‘What happened to me. I was beaten up. Two men. I'll be OK, I guess.'

She turned her attention back to Joe, rocked him in her arms with great ease and smiled at him with absolute pleasure. Both children's faces lit up, delighted with each other's company.

Sarah turned her back, lifted the baby carrier onto the back seat but was then alerted by Corrigan's voice.

‘Hey, Macy, hey, what do you think you're doing?'

Sarah stood up straight, turned back and her heartbeat quickened. Macy was five paces down the pavement and walking away, jogging Joe softly, her shoulders moving in maternal rhythm.

Corrigan was following. ‘Macy?'

On she walked, her mouth was close to Joe's ear, whispering to him.

Then Corrigan was in front, blocking Macy.

Macy stopped and smiled at Corrigan. But the smile quickly dissolved from her face because he now looked cold and mean. She turned away from him.

‘Yes?'

Sarah held out her hands. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and a prickly heat ran down her spine.

‘Thank you. I'll take him now.'

Macy walked towards Sarah. She looked Joe in the face and spoke to him as if he was a child of her own age. ‘Joe, some people have all the luck. Here's your mum now.'

Macy handed Joe to Sarah and, without another word, walked away.

‘Thank you,' called Sarah. ‘For helping with his hiccups.'

The rain shifted up a gear, hammered down, and Macy lifted the collar of her coat up over her head. She looked like a short, headless being.

Sarah strapped Joe in and, when she closed the passenger door, noticed that Macy had stopped at the corner. She caught Sarah's eye.

‘I bet you can't wait to hear him talk, to hear his voice,' said Macy, with a sadness that released a tender glow inside Sarah.

‘I can't wait for that,' replied Sarah.

‘I'm so happy for him.' Macy turned the corner and was gone.

As Sarah drove away, Corrigan called Rosen's mobile and said, ‘They're safe and sound. In the car and on their way back to Islington.'

‘Thanks, Corrigan, much appreciated.'

43

5.59 P.M.

J
ust before the team briefing at Isaac Street Police Station, Rosen picked up a call on his landline and immediately recognized a fragile elderly voice.

‘Mr Rosen?'

He looked across the room and picked out Feldman's snow-white head.

‘Mrs Feldman?' said Rosen, to his colleague's mother.

‘I'm worried about Michael,' she said. Rosen looked at his watch. People were waiting. ‘Please don't let him do anything dangerous.'

‘I'll take care of him, Mrs Feldman.' She was in and out of early dementia and Feldman had moved back home to take care of her. He was a dutiful son who didn't know his mother called his boss. Nor did anyone else. Rosen shielded Prof Feldman from the utter embarrassment of the calls that came in her periods of clarity.

‘Did I tell you he was always a bit odd as a child?'

‘There's nothing odd about Michael Feldman,' said Rosen. ‘He's the brains in my team and I couldn't do without him, frankly.'

‘Did I tell you he was tested for Asperger's Syndrome when he was a schoolboy? The educational psychologist said he had autistic tendencies.'

‘Yes, you did and I'm aware he was given the all clear. It's been nice to
talk, Mrs Feldman, but I'm going to ask you
again
to send any messages to me through Michael.'

‘You didn't tell me that.'

He had done, every single time.

‘I have to go now. I'm leading a meeting.'

‘Make sure he doesn't go on any roofs chasing robbers. He hasn't got much of a head for heights. Thank you, Mr Rosen, and goodbye.'

He placed the receiver down.

‘Everyone's here, boss,' said Feldman.

As Rosen positioned himself to speak, his phone vibrated twice in his pocket, signalling the arrival of a text. MORTUARY, the screen said.

He read the text and felt his heart sink at the inevitable news.

The room was silent.

‘Fresh in, dental records confirm, today's victim is
definitely
Stevie Jensen, our witness from Bannerman Square. . .'

A wave of disappointment ran round the room.

Rosen let it roll out and called, ‘OK, more thoughts on today's events at the conclusion. Let's start with the two suspects running from the Bannerman Square scene. Have you viewed all the footage?' Rosen asked Gold.

‘With Feldman, we've been through every scrap of CCTV, all the junctions onto the main road, and there was no matching combination of two like suspects coming onto Lewisham High Street,' said Gold.

‘Your view?' Rosen turned to Feldman.

Baxter's door opened and he drifted into the incident room, eyeing the presence of Henshaw and moving in Rosen's direction.

‘They knew where all the cameras were on their point of exit onto the high street. They either split up and entered separately or they took off down a side road, such as Wales Close, and stayed out of the way of CCTV.'

‘Any individuals on the high street who could've fitted Macy Conner's description of the men?'

‘Yeah, we identified and printed them off. Paper copies on Rogues Gallery!' Feldman pointed to the sea of faces on the wall near Rosen's desk.

Baxter stopped close to Rosen and stood at an angle to him.

Rosen looked at the faces on the adjacent wall and asked, ‘How many?'

‘Twenty-six maybes in the five-minute time span you gave us. We're going through the CCTV that's come in for the Renault Megane. Nothing yet. Work in progress.'

Rosen thanked them and caught Henshaw's eye. The profiler stepped forward.

‘I'd like to introduce you to James Henshaw. He's now the profiler attached to the case. He's based at UCL and he's the man who helped Avon and Somerset nail the South Coast Hammer Club, so he's well tuned in to what I believe this case revolves around. Over to you, James.'

Henshaw nodded at Rosen, and began to speak: ‘Contradiction. The Bannerman Square crime scene screams
contradiction
over and over. We have the most brutal yet secretive crime – the burning alive of a young boy – and where is it performed?' Henshaw pointed the remote at the SmartBoard and brought up a picture of the burned-out car. ‘Right in front of a residential housing block where hundreds of people have a clear view.'

He clicked and brought up another image, this time of the buckled CCTV camera in its battered cage.

‘However, they go to the trouble of taking out the CCTV but have, probably, also gone to the trouble of. . .'
Click
. An image of the painted eye appeared. ‘. . . painting a symbolic, probably all-seeing eye on the wall directly in front of the car.'
Click
. The symbols from the rear of the wall appeared on screen. ‘These symbols appear at the bottom rear of the wall. They could have hidden behind the common assumption that they were a paedophile ring, but they leave a symbolically coded message for us that screams out to me,
We are a cult
.'

‘What's happening with the symbols? asked Baxter.

‘On DCI Rosen's instruction, I've made copies and circulated them, de-contextualized, around the linguists at UCL. I'm waiting.' Henshaw handed Rosen the remote.

Click
. The small, angular symbols from the wall blown up and magnified on the SmartBoard.

On the board, Rosen over-wrote the symbols with a red board marker.

‘First two words. Anyone recognize these symbols?'

Silence.

Rosen pinpointed Corrigan. ‘Jeff Corrigan found an eye marker-penned on the brickwork in the arches where Stevie's body was found. Did anything else come up, graffiti-wise?'

‘Not yet, but I'm still badgering the scene with Scientific Support,' said Corrigan.

‘OK.' Rosen hid his disappointment, but knew exactly where he was going when the meeting ended. ‘So, how do the two incidents sit alongside each other?' he continued. He brought up Thomas Glass's school photo on screen. He was smiling, handsome, the world was his playhouse. He brought up an image of the burned car in relation to the eye and the gunned-down CCTV camera.

He then brought up a picture of Stevie's charred face. It was as if the room took a collective punch in the stomach.

He indicated the photo of Stevie Jensen. ‘This was an improvization.' He brought up the burned-out car. ‘This one, Thomas Glass, was carefully orchestrated. What happened today happened because Stevie went to help Thomas Glass. There are at least three people
involved in this group' – Rosen made eye contact with Henshaw and Baxter – ‘Let's go as far as calling it a cult. Two of them are men, aged eighteen to thirty. An eyewitness saw them running away from the scene. Someone else must've been on the square and seen Stevie help Thomas. That makes a third party. The strong possibility is a local freelancer was commissioned to attack the CCTV. I don't believe at this point, after talking to Tracey Leung, that any of the local gang members are involved in the core activity of attempted murder and murder. James, do you have anything to add?'

Henshaw shook his head.

‘Based on evidence left on the SIM card from the Megane, I believe Thomas Glass set himself on fire.'

Rosen could feel the mixed weight of surprise, scepticism, disbelief even, and addressed it directly.

‘He had the Nokia with him in the car. Why didn't he call for help? Because they told him if he did that,
x
would be the first consequence. If he didn't follow the instruction,
y
would be the next consequence. God knows what they did to his head in the days he was missing. But we do know Thomas said they'd do it again, and they did. And they'll do it again.'
Rosen! You're dead! You're next!
The words of the caller from Stevie's phone swam around his head, but Rosen said nothing about the death threat to him. ‘Any questions?'