Now You See Me (37 page)

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Authors: Sharon Bolton

BOOK: Now You See Me
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As we entered the warehouse vaults, the blackness all around us was weakening, becoming greyer. I could make out pillars, the reflection of water at our feet, and an orange glow at the far end, where the light from a canal-side lamp could just about seep into the building.
‘Hi.'
We stopped. Llewellyn was about five metres ahead of us, had just stepped out from behind an archway footing. The night-vision goggles had been pushed on to the top of her head. In her left hand she carried a torch that she switched on now. In her right, she still had the gun. If it was a replica, we were safe. She was no match for Joesbury. Not even for me. But if it wasn't …
I stepped in front of him and faced her. Behind, I heard Joanna being lowered to the ground. Then Joesbury's hands were on my shoulders.
‘Out of the way, Lacey,' he said, trying to pull me behind him. I wasn't moving.
‘She won't shoot me,' I said, without taking my eyes off Llewellyn. ‘It's over,' I told her. ‘You heard what he said. There are police at every exit.' I stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I'll stay with you,' I went on. ‘Just let Mark and Joanna—'
I didn't get chance to finish. At that moment, poor, terrified
Joanna Groves made a run for it. Without thinking, I dived after her and gave Llewellyn a clear shot. I saw her raise her arm and then there was an explosion that sounded like the roof had fallen in. I turned back in time to see Mark jump forward as if he'd been scalded. I think I must have closed my eyes because when I looked again, he was on the ground.
A split second later I was with him. He'd fallen against a pillar and had collapsed into a sitting position. Llewellyn's torch focused on him and I could see a pool of blood spreading across the right side of his sweatshirt. His eyes were still open. There was a scuffling sound behind and then Joanna was flung on to the ground beside us.
‘Handcuff her,' Llewellyn told me. ‘Quick. There isn't much time.'
Mark didn't have much time. His body was trembling and each breath sounded like it was whistling through a blocked pipe.
‘I'm sorry,' I mouthed, before reaching into the left pocket of his jacket and taking out the cuffs. More blood poured out of the wound on his chest. I pulled my jacket off and pushed it against the blood flow, then lifted both his hands and put them against the wound too.
All the time, Llewellyn hadn't taken her eyes off us and the gun was still raised. Pointing at Mark. Behind her, Joanna Groves was crouched, shivering and sobbing, against another pillar. I crossed to her quickly, pulled unresisting arms behind her back and slipped the handcuffs on. Then I ran back to Mark and touched the side of his face. Already it felt far too cold. I turned back to the girl with the gun.
‘Please don't let him die,' I begged her.
She dropped her head on to one side as she looked at us with something like interest in her eyes. Then she crouched down and fumbled around in the shadows.
‘Guess that's up to you now,' she said, as she stood and held out something that gleamed in the torchlight. ‘Brought a spare,' she went on, holding the knife out towards me. It looked exactly like the one that had arrived by post at my flat the day before.
I'd been holding Mark's hand, but I let it go now. There wasn't going to be an easy way out of this.
‘Thought you might,' I replied, getting to my feet. The place couldn't possibly be surrounded by armed police, as Mark had claimed. He'd never have been allowed to come in here by himself. He'd gone AWOL, just as I had. We were on our own. Mark had taken a stupid risk because he'd wanted to believe in me and it was going to get him killed.
‘I've got a car parked by the canal,' Llewellyn said to me. ‘We can still make it.' She held the knife out towards me. Her grip on the gun hadn't faltered.
‘Let's go now,' I said, knowing that the minute we left him, Mark would be able to summon help. We were barely any distance underground here, both his radio and his phone would work.
‘Job to do first,' Llewellyn replied, glancing over towards Joanna Groves, who hadn't looked at anything but the knife since Llewellyn had produced it. As I took the weapon, she started to cry. On the other side of me, Mark's breathing sounded like an old pair of bellows. I looked into turquoise eyes that had gone dark with pain and knew I had a very simple choice.
If I killed Joanna and fled with Llewellyn, the police might arrive in time to get Mark the help he needed. If I refused, we'd stay down here as hostages and he would die.
‘Lacey, what are you doing?' he whispered.
I didn't even look at him. I'd made my choice. I just needed to get it done. I strode across, dropped to my knees, and took hold of Joanna Groves by the hair. The poor girl was too terrified even to scream.
‘Lacey, don't you dare.'
I couldn't help but turn then. He was slipping away, right in front of me. Flesh seemed to have fallen from his face, his body had shrunk.
‘I can't live if you don't.'
That's what I tried to say. Whether any of the words came out I don't know, I think I might have been crying too hard. Just do it. I leaned back so that I was holding Joanna's head at arm's length. Then I took a firmer grip on the knife and brought it down. At the second it made contact with flesh, I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth together and made the cut with every ounce of strength I had left.
Three screams rang out around the vaults. None of them had been mine. I'd neither the breath nor the energy. The pain beating a tattoo against my brain was too intense and all I could do those first few seconds was to live through it. I'd let go of Joanna's hair. She sprang away from me, her face covered in blood. Mine. Hearing movement behind, I passed the knife into my left hand and placed the knife edge, gleaming scarlet in the cold light, against my right wrist.
‘I'll do it,' I said, stopping Llewellyn in her tracks. She'd been diving towards me but she stopped now. Her eyes dropped from mine to the blood that was pumping in waves from the gash on my left wrist. I'd slashed vertically down the artery, as determined suicides always do. It had been seconds since I'd made the cut but already I was starting to shiver.
‘How long do you think it takes to bleed to death?' I asked her. ‘Ten minutes? Twenty?'
She stared at me for another second.
‘Tick tock,' I said.
For a moment she looked angry. Then she shuddered. Finally, she smiled and it was still the sweetest face I'd ever seen. She bent down, and when she stood again, she wasn't holding the gun but something that looked like a towel. She came towards me, crouched down and wrapped it tightly around my wrist. The pressure of it eased the pain just slightly. I still didn't trust myself to move. I just watched her, as she reached inside Joesbury's pocket for his radio and held it out to me. Mark's eyes were still open, still focused on me, and there was a gleam on his left cheek that looked like a diamond. Or a tear.
Hold on, Mark, hold on.
I expected her to run. I never, for a moment, thought she'd give up. But she just sank down on to the ground next to Joesbury.
I picked up the radio.
‘I love you,' I told her, just before I made the call for help.
Friday 9 November
 
O
N FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER, A LITTLE OVER ELEVEN DECADES after Mary Kelly was hacked to pieces in a small, rented room off Dorset Street, I followed a line of people along a brightly lit, yellow-painted corridor. We'd all travelled some distance, waited for what felt like hours. The people around me all appeared to be used to it. I wasn't.
It was the first time I'd visited a prison.
In the five weeks since I'd been carried out of the catacombs, the young woman who'd abducted Joanna Groves had made a full confession. Starting that night at Lewisham police station, she told Dana Tulloch and Neil Anderson the full story of how she was raped at knifepoint as a teenager by a group of boys high on drugs, alcohol and arrogance. She remembered every threat, every taunt, every insult, with the screams of her sister ringing in her ears the whole time. She told them she'd genuinely believed, at one point, that she'd died, that this was hell, and that it was never going to end. There were times, she said, when she still thought that.
I heard from colleagues that DS Anderson left the interview room unusually pale and spoke to no one for several hours.
Giving information that only the killer could have known, she freely admitted murdering Geraldine Jones, Amanda Weston, Charlotte Benn and Karen Curtis. She signed the confession Victoria Llewellyn.
At the end of the prison corridor, a door led into a large, high
room. The windows were way above our heads, but they had bars across them all the same. Twenty or so small tables were evenly spaced around the floor. Already, people ahead of me in the line were settling themselves down on spare chairs.
In the hours they spent talking to her, Llewellyn told Tulloch and Anderson that she'd gone abroad after her sister's death, that she'd learned how to fight with knives and guns, and had returned several years later. She came with no papers, no passport, nothing to indicate her identity or her home country. It's quite commonly done, I learned. If people arrive in the UK with nothing to prove where they've come from, we can't send them back.
After a few tough months, she'd been granted leave to stay and apply for a work permit. She'd worked her way into the west London community around St Joseph's as a nanny, an au pair, even a house-sitter and a dog-walker. She'd been hardworking and reliable. The families had liked her. She'd come across Samuel Cooper and, spotting a future use for him, had become his lover, feeding him drugs and sex in equal measure.
I looked over at the last line of tables. Closest to the far door sat a young woman in her own clothes. Unconvicted prisoners don't have to wear prison uniform. The bright-blonde hair dye had begun to grow out and at her roots I could see a centimetre of the soft toffee brown I remembered. Exactly the same colour as my own. She wasn't wearing make-up. She didn't need to. She was still one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen.
That pretty girl had insisted, several times, that she'd had no contact with me since she'd returned to the UK and that I'd taken no part in any of the abductions or murders. She was determined that I would carry no blame for what she'd done.
She saw me and smiled, watched me make my way towards her table and sit down. I glanced round. Those people in earshot were chattering away, intent only on themselves. No one would hear us talk.
‘Hey, Tic,' she said.
I hadn't heard that nickname in a very long time. Certainly not coming from the girl who'd given it to me in the first place, when her plump toddler's mouth hadn't been able to form the four syllables of my real Christian name. My baby sister hadn't been able to manage ‘Victoria', so she'd called me Tic.
‘Hello, Cathy,' I replied.
F
OR WHAT SEEMED LIKE A LONG TIME, CATHY AND I DIDN'T speak. Then she laid a hand across mine on the tabletop.
Wrapping her fingers around my bandaged wrist, she turned it over.
‘Will you be all right?' she asked.
I gave a little shrug. ‘Well, you know those piano lessons I talked about having one day? Turns out I might have to give up on that idea.'
She put my hand down and smiled again. ‘I'm sorry about what I did,' she said, and she might have been apologizing for scratching one of my CDs.
‘For killing those women?' I whispered.
‘Lord, no. I'm not sorry about that,' she said, with an odd little shudder. ‘I'm sorry about trying to make you kill the Groves girl. I should have known that would never happen.'
I had nothing to say back to her.
‘When you sent the warnings to the Curtis and Groves women, I should have known you wouldn't play ball,' she went on. ‘I told those detectives I sent them, by the way – that I was trying to stop. I think they believed me.'
‘They did,' I said. I'd been careful when I'd sent the notes to Karen Curtis and Jacqui Groves, there was no way they could be traced back to me. I might as well have not bothered. My warning hadn't saved Karen, and Jacqui had never been a target anyway.
‘And I'm sorry for what I said all that time ago,' Cathy said, leaning
back a little. ‘You know, when you came to the boat and I went a bit mental. It wasn't your fault, what happened to us in the park, with those boys, I just had to—'
‘Get me off your back,' I finished for her.
She nodded. ‘You'd spent eight months looking for me,' she said. ‘I knew you were never going to leave me alone. I'm sorry, Tic. I just needed space. And some time.'
I let my head nod slowly, as though I understood completely. Which I did, in a way. My sister had needed space and time. To plan the destruction of five families.
‘Did you set fire to the houseboat?' I asked, and when her eyes fell to the table I knew she had. More deaths on my conscience, then. She leaned forward across the table. ‘Why did you do it?' she said. ‘Why did you tell them that girl in the river was me?'
‘To set you free,' I replied. ‘I knew that's what you wanted. A couple of days later, a friend of mine died and it seemed like I had the same chance. I didn't think the world would miss the Llewellyn girls.'
‘Was that Lacey?' she asked me.
I nodded.
My whole life long, I'd allowed only one other person to call me Tic, and that was the sad, sweet, drug-crazed young woman I'd met and become close to when we'd both been homeless ten years ago. The story I'd told DI Joesbury in a Cardiff hotel room had been almost 100 per cent true. I'd just told it from the other girl's point of view. And I'd made up the happy ending. Not long after officially declaring Cathy dead, I'd come back to the Engine Vaults to find Lacey seriously ill. I'd managed to drag her to the street and, with no other options at hand, I'd stolen a car that hadn't been properly locked. I'd intended to drive her to the nearest hospital, to put her in a private clinic when she was better, but by the time I got the car back to where I'd left her, she was dead.
So I'd taken a chance on a new life. Lacey's record with the police was relatively clean; mine wasn't. I'd driven to the coast, taken what few papers she'd had and replaced them with my own. Then I'd pushed the car and my friend into the sea. At three o'clock in the morning on a clifftop in Sussex, I'd become Lacey Flint.
And it had worked. I'd taken the time to grieve for both my friend and my sister, then set about building a new life for myself. I'd walked
away from the streets, kept my distance from anyone who might know either Lacey or me, and gradually gathered up the reins of another woman's life. Neither Lacey nor I had much in the way of family, which significantly reduced the number of people I needed to avoid; and I'd had money, which had helped a lot.
When I'd felt I was ready, I applied to join the Metropolitan Police. Never having taken drugs in my life, I sailed through the drugs tests and then the various entrance exams. I'd taken a law degree and been accepted on to the detective programme. It had been an OK life, while it lasted.
‘We're going to have to tell them,' I said. ‘Who we really are.'
Cathy had a trick I remembered from years ago, of crinkling up her eyes until they became bright, sparkling slits. She did that now. ‘In the eyes of the world, Victoria Llewellyn is a sadistic, bloodthirsty killer,' she said. ‘I made sure of that. Do you really want to be her again?'
Sitting there, looking into those glinting, hazel-blue eyes, I couldn't have said whether she was trying to protect me or destroy me. And yet it all made a twisted sort of sense. My neglect of Cathy all those years ago had started the process that had made her what she was. I'd turned my sister into a killer; and now she'd done it right back.
‘That reminds me,' she went on. ‘Did I kill that butch detective friend of yours?'
I waited, and watched her smile die.
‘No,' I said, when it had. ‘You punctured a lung. The doctors managed to stitch it up. He'll be OK.'
I was relying on reports from mutual friends. I hadn't seen Mark since the night we'd both almost died. Nor would I, for as long as I had any control over the matter. It was enough, surely, that never a second went by when I didn't think of him.
At the news that he would live, Cathy gave a little shrug and nodded her head. I judged she was pleased, on balance, that he wasn't dead, because she'd realized how important he was to me. Otherwise, it was of very little interest. That was the moment when I finally accepted that my sister was insane.
‘Cathy,' I said.
‘Shush.' She leaned forward again. ‘Don't call me that. I'm Vicky now. I always liked your name better anyway.'
‘Cath – do you realize you're going to prison for life?'
She sat upright in surprise. ‘Get real, Tic,' she said. ‘I'll be out in ten.'
We were slipping into la-la land.
‘Cathy,' I began. She held up a warning finger and I realized there was nothing I could do but let her have her way. I was to blame for the dreadful things my sister had done in my name. The least I could do now was to let her keep that name if she wanted it.
‘Vicky,' I began again, and just saying the word made me feel like something essential inside me had slipped away for good. ‘You killed four women. They are never going—'
‘Oh for God's sake.' She leaned forward, holding up the fingers of one hand and started to count them off. ‘One, I'm going to plead guilty and show lots of remorse. That always reduces the sentence. Two, I'll be a model prisoner. I'll get therapy, I'll go to church, I'll study for a degree. You just watch me. Parole in ten years.'
The officer in charge of the room started making his way in between the tables, letting everyone know visiting time was almost up. She looked up at him in surprise, then at me with something like panic on her face. I caught a glimpse then of the scared little girl I remembered from her first day at primary school.
‘You'll come and see me again, won't you?' she said and I could only nod. She was my responsibility, now more than ever. I'd made her what she was.
Everyone was leaving, the prisoners were standing up and walking towards the door that would take them back to their cells. I stood up too, let her kiss me and then watched her head for the door. Before she disappeared, she waved, just as she'd always done when she'd gone through the school doors as a child.
I turned and made my way out, knowing that the next time I saw her, life in prison would have knocked a little more of the spirit out of her. And the time after that, a bit more. And so it would go on, for a very long time.
She was wrong about the leniency of the system. However she chose to plead in court, however she behaved in prison, she wasn't going to be out in ten or even twenty years. My sister would spend the rest of her life paying for what she'd done.
And so would I.

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