‘I see. There’s just a small issue.’ Tamir was still smiling, but her eyes flicked down at her desk and she shifted slightly in her chair. ‘There’s a certain amount of protocol that needs to be followed in the case of chatlines: companies have to be licensed, and when they advertise they have to provide the advertiser – us, in this case – with their licence number. To be perfectly frank we don’t go after chatline advertisers. You’ll have seen the section is quite small. They’re what I’d call a necessary evil.’
‘Why necessary?’ Kelly said.
Tamir looked at her as though the answer was obvious. ‘They pay well. Most of that sort of advertising – sex lines, escorts, dating agencies and so on – is all online nowadays, but our print readership is still high, and advertising is what pays for it all. As you can imagine, the sex industry is open to all kinds of abuse, so our measures make sure any chatline operators are properly licensed and therefore regulated.’ She looked down at her desk again.
‘But these protocols weren’t followed in this case?’
‘I’m afraid not. The client first approached us at the end of September, with adverts to run daily throughout October. Shortly before the end of the month they submitted a second batch of adverts, and they did the same for November. The account was handled by a new member of staff, a man called Ben Clarke, and he processed the order without a licence number.’
‘That’s not allowed?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Can I speak to Ben?’
‘I’ll get his details from HR. He left a couple of weeks ago – I’m afraid we have a rather high turnover of staff here.’
‘How did the client pay?’ Kelly said.
Tamir consulted the notes written on her pad. ‘By credit card. We can let you have those details, and the address of the client too, of course, but I’ll need a data protection waiver from your side.’
‘Of course.’ Damn. Tamir Barron had agreed to see Kelly so readily, she had been holding out hope that the other woman would simply hand over the file. A data protection waiver would need an inspector’s signature, which Kelly wouldn’t be able to get without coming clean about her extra-curricular investigations. ‘In the meantime, perhaps you could let me have copies of the adverts; both those you’ve run, and those waiting to run?’ She held Tamir’s gaze as confidently as she could.
‘A data protection waiver—’ she started.
‘Is necessary for personal details such as addresses and credit cards. I quite understand. But there are no personal details in those adverts, are there? And we are talking about a potential crime series.’ Kelly’s heart banged in her chest so loudly she was surprised Tamir couldn’t hear it. Did she need a data protection waiver for the adverts too? She couldn’t remember, and she mentally crossed her fingers that Tamir wouldn’t know either.
‘A series? Have there been other robberies?’
‘I can’t tell you anything else, I’m afraid.’ Data protection, Kelly wanted to add.
There was a pause.
‘I’ll get copies made of the adverts and have them sent down to reception. You can wait for them there.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Needless to say we’ve spoken to all our staff about the importance of adhering to procedure.’
‘Thank you. You’ll cancel the remaining adverts, I presume?’
‘Cancel them?’
‘The adverts that haven’t run yet. You can’t put them in the paper. They could be facilitating crimes against women.’
‘I sympathise, DC Swift, but with the greatest respect, it’s your job to protect the public, not mine. Our job is to print newspapers.’
‘Could you stop for a few days though? Not cancel the adverts altogether, but …’ Kelly tailed off, aware she sounded unprofessional. She needed concrete proof the adverts related to criminal activity. The link between Cathy Tanning’s keys and her advert was clear, but Zoe Walker hadn’t been a victim of crime. It wasn’t enough.
‘I’m afraid not. The client has paid in advance; I’ll need to get permission from my boss before I can cancel the contract. Unless of course you have a court order?’
The expression on Tamir’s face was neutral, but her eyes were hard and Kelly decided not to push it. She mirrored the other woman’s polite smile.
‘I don’t have a court order, no. Not yet.’
No sooner had Kelly pressed the doorbell than she heard the excited shrieks of her nephews, running to greet her. Five-year-old Alfie wore a Spiderman outfit, teamed with a plastic Viking helmet, while his three-year-old brother Fergus ran towards her on podgy bare legs, his T-shirt sporting the Minion figures he adored.
‘What’s this?’ Kelly said, feigning amazement as she looked at Fergus’s lower half. ‘Big-boy pants?’ The boy grinned and lifted his T-shirt to better show off his briefs.
‘Early days,’ Lexi said as she appeared behind the boys. She scooped up Fergus and kissed Kelly in one fluid movement. ‘Watch where you step.’
Lexi and her husband Stuart lived in St Albans, in an area teeming with yummy mummies and their buggies. After leaving Durham, Lexi had done a PGCE course, finding a job teaching history at the local secondary school. She’d met Stuart – the deputy head – there, and they’d been together ever since.
‘Where’s Stu?’
‘Parents’ evening. I did my lot yesterday, thankfully. Right, you two: pyjamas. Go.’
‘But we want to play with Auntie Kelly!’ Alfie moaned. Kelly dropped to her knees and gave him a squeeze.
‘Tell you what: you two go and do your PJs and teeth double quick, and then we’ll have tickle time. Deal?’
‘Deal!’ The boys ran upstairs and Kelly grinned.
‘It’s a doddle, this parenting lark.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d been here about half an hour ago. Melt-down central. Now, the boys have eaten, so I thought we could put them to bed then eat in peace once they’re asleep; I’ve done a mushroom risotto for us.’
‘Sounds perfect.’ Kelly’s phone beeped and she frowned at the screen.
‘Something wrong?’
‘Sorry, it’s work. I just need to reply to this.’ She tapped out a message then looked up to see Lexi’s disapproving face.
‘You’re welded to that thing. That’s the problem with smart phones – it’s like carrying your entire office in your pocket. You can’t ever switch off.’ Lexi refused to buy an iPhone, extolling instead the virtues of her brick-sized Nokia that went three days without a charge.
‘It’s not a nine-to-five job. Not like you lot, with your three p.m. finishes and all summer off.’ Lexi didn’t bite. Kelly read the incoming text message and fired off another reply. She’d been first on scene at a nasty fight on Liverpool Street concourse, tasked with gathering witness details once the trouble-makers had been nicked. An elderly woman had been caught up in the skirmish, and Kelly had subsequently been in touch with her daughter, who had wanted to update her mum on the case.
‘What she really wants is for me to tell her they’re locked up,’ Kelly said, once she’d explained the situation to Lexi. ‘Her daughter says she’s too frightened to go out in case she sees them again.’
‘And are they locked up?’
Kelly shook her head. ‘They’re kids with no form. They’ll get community service or a rap on the knuckles at best. They’re no danger to her, but she doesn’t see it like that.’
‘But surely it’s not your job to counsel her and her daughter? Aren’t there victim support people for this sort of thing?’
Kelly made herself take a deep breath. ‘I don’t tell you how to do your job, Lex …’ she started, and her sister held up both hands.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll keep out of it. But please, for once can you switch off your phone and be my sister, not a cop?’ She looked at Kelly, her eyes beseeching, and Kelly felt a stab of guilt.
‘Sure.’ She was about to put her phone away when the screen flashed with Cathy Tanning
’s number. She looked at Lexi. ‘Sorry, it’s—’
‘Work. I get it.’
She didn’t, though, Kelly thought, as she walked into the living room to take Cathy’s call. She never did.
9
Cannon Street police station is just moments from where I work; I must have walked past it a thousand times or more and never noticed it. Never needed it. My headache hasn’t shifted, despite the painkillers I took this morning, and there’s an ache in my limbs that has nothing to do with a hangover. I’m coming down with something, and immediately I feel worse, not better, as though the acknowledgement alone gives the virus permission to settle.
My palms are clammy around the door handle, and I feel the irrational clutch of panic that law-abiding people feel when a police car drives past. Justin hasn’t put a foot wrong in years, but I remember that first phone call from the police with painful clarity.
I don’t know when Justin started stealing, but I do know that day he got nicked wasn’t his first time. You take something small, the first time, don’t you? A packet of sweets; a CD. You don’t take twenty-five packets of razor blades when you’re too young to shave. You don’t wear a coat with the lining carefully cut at the top, so contraband can be dropped neatly inside. Justin wouldn’t say a word about the others. Admitted the theft, but wouldn’t say who he was doing it for, what he’d have done with the razors. He got off with a caution, which he shrugged off as though it was a telling-off at school.
Matt was furious. ‘You’ll have that on your record for ever!’
‘Five years,’ I said, trying to remember what I’d been told in custody. ‘Then it’ll be spent and he’ll only have to declare it if asked directly by an employer.’ Melissa already knew, of course, just like she knew about the fights he used to get into, and the worry he caused me when I found a bag of grass in his room.
‘He’s a kid,’ I remember her saying, after pouring me a much-needed glass of wine. ‘He’ll grow out of it.’ And he did. Or he got better at not getting caught. Either way, the police haven’t knocked on our door since he turned nineteen. I think of him now, wearing one of Melissa’s smart aprons, making sandwiches and chatting to customers, and the image makes me smile.
The duty officer is sitting behind a glass barrier, like the type you see in the post office. He speaks through a gap big enough to pass through paperwork, or small bits of lost property.
‘Can I help you?’ he says, in such a way that it suggests helping me is the last thing he wants to do. My brain feels fuzzy behind my headache, and I grapple for the words.
‘I have some information about a murder.’
The duty officer looks mildly interested. ‘Go on.’
I push a newspaper cutting beneath the glass barrier. There’s a piece of hardened chewing gum squashed into the corner, where the counter meets the wall, and someone has coloured it in with blue biro. ‘This is a report in today’s London Gazette about a murder in Muswell Hill.’
He scans the opening paragraph, his lips moving slightly around the unspoken words. A radio crackles on the desk beside him. The details in the Gazette are scant. Tania Beckett was a teaching assistant at a primary school on Holloway Road. She took the Northern line from Archway to Highgate at around 3.30 p.m., then the 43 bus to Cranley Gardens. I was going to meet her off the bus, her boyfriend is quoted as saying, but it was raining and she said to stay inside. I’d do anything to turn back the clock. There’s a photo of him with his arm around Tania, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re looking into the eyes of a killer. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Most murder victims know their attacker.
I slide the second cutting under the barrier. ‘And this is an advert from yesterday’s Gazette.’ White spots dance in front of my eyes, and I blink rapidly to clear them. I bring my fingers to my forehead and feel them still burning as I take them away.
The desk officer looks from one piece of paper to the other. He has the poker face of someone who’s seen it all before, and I wonder if he’s going to tell me I’m imagining the resemblance; that the dark-haired girl with the crucifix around her neck isn’t twenty-five-year-old Tania Beckett.
But he doesn’t tell me that. Instead he picks up the phone and presses zero; pauses and holds my gaze while he waits for the operator to pick up. Then, without taking his eyes off me, he says, ‘Could you put me though to DI Rampello please?’
I text Graham to say I’ve come down with something and won’t be coming back to work. I sip tepid water and wait for someone to come and speak to me, resting my head against the cool wall.
‘I’m sorry,’ the desk officer says after an hour. He introduces himself as Derek, but it feels too familiar to use. ‘I don’t know what’s keeping him.’
‘Him’ is Detective Inspector Nick Rampello, coming to Cannon Street from what Derek referred to as ‘MIT’, before apologising for his use of jargon. ‘The Murder Investigation Team. That’s the unit tasked with looking into this young lady’s death.’
I can’t stop shaking. I keep staring at the two pictures of Tania and wondering what happened between her appearing in the Gazette, and lying strangled in the park in Muswell Hill.
Wondering if it’s my turn next.
It was my photo in the Gazette last Friday. I knew it the second I saw it; I should never have let myself be convinced otherwise. If I’d have gone to the police straight away, maybe it would have made a difference.
There has to be a connection. Tania Beckett was killed twenty-four hours after her advert appeared; Cathy Tanning had her keys stolen forty-eight hours after hers. It’s been five days since I saw my own photo; how long before something happens to me?
A man comes in to present his driving documents.
‘Such a waste of time,’ he says loudly, as the desk officer methodically fills out a form. ‘Yours and mine.’ He glances at me, as if in hope of finding a sympathiser, but I don’t respond and neither does Derek. He looks at the man’s driving licence and notes down details with a slowness I suspect might be deliberate. I decide I rather like Derek. When he has finished, the man slots the licence into his wallet.
‘Thank you so much,’ he says, in a voice thick with sarcasm. ‘This is exactly how I like to spend my lunch break.’
He’s replaced by a woman with a screaming toddler looking for directions, then an elderly man who has lost his wallet. ‘I had it at Bank,’ he says, ‘when I came out of the Tube. But somewhere between there and the river it …’ he looks around as though it might materialise in the police station, ‘… vanished.’ I shut my eyes and wish I was here on such a mundane mission; that I could walk out with nothing more than mild irritation on my mind.
Derek takes the man’s details, along with a description of the wallet, and I force myself to take deep breaths. I wish DI Rampello would hurry up.
The wallet man leaves, and another hour goes by, and finally Derek picks up the phone. ‘Are you on your way? Only she’s been waiting since lunchtime.’ He glances at me, his face inscrutable. ‘Right. Sure. I’ll tell her.’
‘He’s not coming, is he?’ I feel too ill to be cross at the wasted time. What would I have done instead? I wouldn’t have got any work done.
‘It seems he’s been waylaid by some urgent enquiries. As you can imagine, the incident room is very busy. He asked me to pass on his apologies and said he’ll be in touch. I’ll give him your number.’ He narrows his eyes at me. ‘You don’t look well, love.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ I say, but it’s far from the truth. I tell myself I’m not scared, just ill, but my hands are trembling as I find my phone and scroll through the contacts.
‘Are you anywhere near Cannon Street? I don’t feel well. I think I need to be at home.’
‘Stay where you are, Zo,’ Matt says, without hesitation, ‘I’ll come and get you.’
He tells me he’s just round the corner, but half an hour passes and it’s obvious that wasn’t the case; I think guiltily of the fares he’s missing out on whi
le he makes a mercy dash for me. The door to the police station swings open, and to my embarrassment I feel tears rolling down my cheeks as I see his familiar face.
‘You here for your missus?’ Derek says. I don’t have the energy to correct him and Matt doesn’t bother. ‘Double strength Lemsip and a drop of whisky, that’s what she needs. Hope you feel better soon, love.’
Matt settles me in the cab, like I’m a paying customer, and turns the heating up full blast. I focus on my breathing, trying to stop the violent shaking that seizes my entire body.
‘When did you start feeling like this?’
‘This morning. I thought it was odd I had a hangover – I didn’t drink that much last night – then my headache got worse and I started feeling shaky.’
‘Flu.’ He diagnoses me without hesitation. Like most cabbies, Matt is an expert in everything. He watches me in the rear-view mirror, his eyes flicking between me and the road ahead. ‘What were you doing at the cop shop?’
‘There was a murder last night. In a park close to Cranley Gardens.’
‘Crouch End?’
‘Yes. She was strangled.’ I tell him about the London Gazette adverts; about my own photo, then seeing Tania Beckett.
‘Are you sure it’s the same woman?’
I nod, although he has his eyes trained on the road ahead. He sucks his teeth, then spins the steering wheel decisively to the left, cutting through one-way streets so narrow I could reach through my window and touch the brick walls as we pass.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Traffic’s a nightmare. What did the police say?’
I look out at the street, trying to get my bearings, but I’m not sure where we are. Children are walking home from school; some on their own, others still clutching their mothers’ hands.
‘They called the detective inspector in charge of the case, but he didn’t come.’
‘Figures.’
‘I’m scared, Matt.’
He doesn’t say anything. He never was any good at handling emotions.