The Stranger You Know (6 page)

‘There’s the address.’ She pushed the notebook at me, open at the correct page. ‘Carrington Road.’

The sat nav was out of order, spilling wiring through cracks in the sides where someone had tried, and failed, to tape it together. I pulled out the
A–Z
, grateful for once for Derwent’s prejudice against modern technology. He liked to drive and drove too fast. I was capable of plotting routes on blues at the same time as giving a commentary over the radio to the controller and hanging on for dear life. I was fairly sure I could cope with whatever DCI Burt threw at me. Fate and my colleagues often conspired to make me work with Derwent. It was the exact equivalent of altitude training: I felt like vomiting at the time, but he gave me an edge that I’d otherwise have lacked. Just at that moment I needed anything that might impress Una Burt.

I risked a glance sideways. She had flung her jacket into the back seat where it lay in a crumpled heap, tangled up with her coat. Neither was going to look the better for it. Her light brown hair was collar-length and copious. It never seemed longer or shorter, which gave rise to suspicion that it was a wig. No make-up today or ever. No jewellery. She gave not a single shit about what anyone thought of how she looked or what she wore. She had a reputation for being blisteringly clever, mildly eccentric and totally absorbed in her work. The drive would be the longest time I’d ever spent with her, but I was already quite sure I wouldn’t know her any better after it. She wore her concentration like armour.

‘Better catch up or Charlie will be wondering where we’ve got to,’ she said.
Charlie
. I wondered if she called him that to his face. It was just possible that she did. I couldn’t imagine her flirting with him, or anyone, but I could believe she revered him for his professional achievements.

The car eased up the ramp and paused for a bare half-second at the top before it slid into a gap in the traffic. I was still reading the map, working back from the address, but I had enough spare capacity to notice that she was an excellent driver, smooth but unshowy. The car was purring.

We actually made good progress until we landed on the Euston Road. It was moving at its usual rush-hour crawl: eight lanes of traffic going precisely nowhere. Burt tucked the car in behind a red bus that had an ad for its cleaner emissions plastered all over its rear end. Bathed in diesel fumes, I couldn’t actually tell that there was much improvement. I hit the button to recirculate the air in the car, and listened resignedly as the fan made a horrible grinding noise.

‘You’ll have to bear it, I’m afraid,’ Burt said.

‘I’ll survive. At least I’m not in the same car as Maitland and his coat of many odours.’

She half-smiled, then her face went blank again as she returned to her own thoughts. When she eventually looked at me, I could see the effort that went into returning to here and now. Like a diver resurfacing, it took her a second to orientate herself.

‘What were we talking about? I was supposed to be briefing you, wasn’t I?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Do you know about the other two cases? Maxine and Kirsty?’

The way she said their names made it sound as if she knew them personally. There was nothing like investigating someone’s murder to get to know them. None of them would have any secrets left by the time we were finished – no shadows in the corners of their lives. It was what I was trained to do and it still felt, at times, like a violation of the victims themselves.

‘I only know what I’ve read in the papers. Both were single women who lived alone, found strangled. No sign of a break-in in either case. No apparent links between them. Apart from the fact that they were killed by someone they trusted.’

‘Exactly. And the killer’s signature.’

‘The eyes.’

She nodded, satisfied. ‘That’s what makes us concerned that this latest murder is the next in the series.’

‘But that detail was in the
Standard
. Everyone in London read it. It could be a copycat.’

‘What it said in the
Standard
was that he gouged out their eyes. Not true.’

‘Oh, really?’ I didn’t know why I was surprised. Journalists rarely got stories absolutely right, especially given the Chinese-whispers effect of secret tip-offs.

‘He removes them with a knife. He does it quite carefully.’

‘Are they trophies? Does he take them away?’

‘No. He positions the bodies in a distinctive way, as you’re about to see. In all three cases, they’ve been found with one eye in each hand. If it was a copycat killer working off the
Standard
article, I think he’d have used his hands to remove the eyes, don’t you? Given that they used the word “gouge”?’

‘Right. Yes.’ My stomach was flipping over and over.

The bus accelerated through the lights in front of us, on the amber. Derwent would have gunned it through on red and ended up squatting on the intersection, causing traffic chaos. Una Burt stopped sedately, well behind the white line.

‘Charlie had mentioned to me that we might be involved, so I’ve already familiarised myself with the files. It helps to be prepared.’

No kidding. It would be nice to know what that felt like. I was distracted by
Charlie
. And people thought I was the one who was over the side with Godley. Una Burt’s greatest asset, it turned out, was looking like the back of a bus. They
couldn’t
be having an affair. Godley wouldn’t. Would he?

Burt was continuing, oblivious. ‘And of course we were fairly sure there would be a third. Just not so soon.’

Three was the magic number. Three tipped us into serial-killer territory, with all the hysteria and hype that would bring to the media’s reports. And three was what it had taken for the Commissioner to become seriously agitated about the safety of London’s young women.

‘He’s bringing the SIOs to the new crime scene, after we’ve had a look at this girl, so we have as much information as we can share with them. We’re working with them, not taking over. At least, that’s the official line.’

‘They’re not going to be happy,’ I predicted.

‘Would you be?’ She glanced at me. ‘Didn’t think so.’

I was following my own train of thought. ‘Is that why I’m involved? Because I’ve met Andy Bradbury before?’

‘Who’s he?’ The question came immediately at machinegun speed: DCI Burt didn’t like being uninformed.

‘He’s a DI. Just been promoted. He’s in charge of the Maxine Willoughby investigation.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘I met him a few months ago at a crime scene.’
And I have absolutely no happy memories from that encounter
.

‘Charlie wanted you to be involved because you have more in common with the victims than the rest of us do.’

‘Oh.’ I looked out of the window, waiting for the sting of disappointment to fade. I was there because of what I was rather than who I was. All the old insecurities about making up the numbers came rushing back.

‘Don’t take it amiss. You have to know what’s normal to see what’s not.’

‘Fine, but you don’t have to be the same as a victim to know what was normal for them.’

‘It might help.’ She looked across at me again, for longer. ‘You know, most people your age and rank would be pleased to be involved with an investigation such as this, especially at such an early stage.’

‘I am pleased.’ It came out sullen and DCI Burt sighed.

‘I don’t give advice and I’m certainly not going to pretend to be a mentor to you. But you can waste a lot of time worrying about why you’re here, or you can use the time wisely. You should be asking me what we know about what happened last night at number eight, Carrington Road.’

I managed to stop myself from squirming. A headmistress tone came easily to DCI Burt and it was far more effective than any of Derwent’s sarcasm. ‘That was my next question.’

‘I thought it might have been.’ She had her notebook open on her lap but she didn’t even glance at it as she recited the facts. ‘The property is a self-contained two-bedroom ground-floor maisonette with its own front door and side access to the rear of the building. It’s owned by Anna Melville, aged twenty-nine, who lives there alone. She works in HR at a bank in the Square Mile. A neighbour heard a disturbance at her home last night at about ten thirty and thought about it for a couple of hours before he called it in as a possible burglary.’

‘You wouldn’t want to rush into anything,’ I said.

‘Exactly. Much better to wait until there’s absolutely no chance of us catching anyone in the act. A response team was dispatched to the address and found it was secure – no lights on, no answer when they knocked at the door. They spoke to the neighbour and he said he hadn’t heard anything since he’d phoned, so they left. The lads on early turn picked up on it in the briefing and decided to check it out in daylight to make sure there was nothing amiss. I gather they’ve been getting hammered on domestic burglaries so it’s a high priority for them.’

‘That’ll be the recession. Burglary stats always go through the roof when people are skint.’

Una Burt nodded. ‘The premises looked fine from the front, but the response officers were thorough. One of the PCs went around to the rear of the property and looked through the windows. Everything seemed to be in order until he reached the main bedroom. It was in a state of considerable disarray, and on the bed he could see what he thought was a body. And so it proved to be.’

‘Anna Melville?’

‘Yet to be confirmed but we’re working on that assumption.’

‘And she was laid out as the others had been?’

‘More or less. We’ll see when we get there.’ She frowned to herself and I fell silent too, looking out of the window at the pedestrians who were making better time than us, seeing the young women walking on their own. They were heading to work, for the most part, striding in high heels or scuttling in flat shoes. It was cold, thanks to a stiff easterly wind that came straight off the North Sea, and their hair flew behind them like flags. What they wore and the way they wore it told me so much about them: the ones who dressed for themselves, but with care; the ones who wanted to be looked at; the ones who wanted to hide. What would I look for, if I was hunting? Who would I choose?

Anne Melville had shared something with Maxine Willoughby and Kirsty Campbell, apart from the manner of their deaths. The killer had seen that something, and had known it, and had used it to destroy her. At the moment, he was a stranger to me, a black hole at the centre of the picture. But if I could see what he had seen, I might know enough about him to find him. Una Burt was right. It was far better to be on the team than left out, no matter why I was there in the first place. Every case was another chance to prove I deserved to be there because I was good at what I did – and I
was
good, and I could do it. I sat up a little bit straighter. My hangover slunk away, defeated. I had better things to do than feel sorry for myself.

Like answer my phone. It hummed in my bag and I dug for it, knowing I had six and a half rings before it cut to voicemail.
Two … Three …
It came out wrapped in an old receipt and I had to waste a second untangling it.
Four …
Beside me, DCI Burt’s voice was cold.

‘Who is that?’

‘DI Derwent.’
Of course
.

‘Don’t answer it.’

I stopped with my thumb poised to accept the call, obedient to the tone of pure command without having the least idea why she’d forbidden it. The ringer cut off and I waited for the beep of a new voicemail. I wasn’t actually all that keen to listen to it. A disappointed Derwent was an angry Derwent, and an angry Derwent was even less charming than the usual kind.

‘Why can’t I speak to him?’

‘Because it’s not a good idea.’

Which wasn’t actually an answer. ‘Okay, but he’ll be livid. He’ll be wondering where I am, for starters.’

‘He doesn’t own you.’ The road ahead was suddenly, miraculously clear – one of those freak moments in heavy traffic when the lights all go your way and no one else does. We were actually making some progress towards the crime scene.

‘Of course he doesn’t.’
He thinks he does, though …
‘Is he meeting us at the house? Or—’

‘DI Derwent will not be involved in this investigation.’

I stared at her profile. ‘But he was asking about it yesterday. He was insistent.’

‘He will not be involved in this investigation,’ she repeated, and I didn’t know her well enough to be able to tell if she was pleased.

I listened to half of the voicemail before I deleted it: Derwent, ranting about my absence from the office when there was work to be done on the Olesugwe case. It was certain to be the first of many messages. I couldn’t imagine why Derwent was shut out, but I knew it was going to be bad news for me.

Chapter 6

When we arrived at the crime scene Godley was standing outside, a still point in the organised mayhem, impossibly glamorous as the low autumn sunlight struck a silver gleam off his hair. The SOCOs were at work already, sealing off the property, and the superintendent was watching from a safe distance. Something about him suggested he was impatient to get into the house, and that he had that impatience under control, but only barely. I felt the same pull myself. There was nothing like seeing a body as the killer had left it, in the place where the victim died. Photographs didn’t do the job. Every sense had to be engaged, I had learned. Where a normal person would shy away we leaned in, absorbing every detail. To understand what had happened, you had to allow yourself to relive it, and I was keen to get it over with in Anna Melville’s case. I had known what it was like to be afraid for my life, but I had always been lucky, so far. Anna Melville’s luck had very definitely run out.

The house wasn’t the only focus for the SOCOs’ attentions. They had identified her car. It would be taken away for detailed examination, in case she had given the killer a lift, or in case he had opened the door for her, or in case he had so much as leaned against it while they spoke. Like her home it would be ripped apart. There was so much mud to pan for one tiny fleck of DNA gold that could incriminate a killer. Technology meant we needed less and less to prove our cases, but that made it harder on the technicians who had to search for evidence that was literally invisible. There was still a place for good old-fashioned police work to narrow the focus to one person, one man with a dark heart, one killer. Jurors treated forensic evidence with reverence, but more often than not we were the ones who had put the defendant in the dock, and the forensics were just part of the picture.