“Put this on, then,” he said, offering her a spare helmet and a dust mask. “You don’t want to be inhaling any glass shards. And try not to get in the way.”
It was way too big and must have looked comical, but at least it gave her the authority to get in close to the smashed driver’s window, next to a green-suited ambulance technician. Given the state of the car, Flora looked in reasonable shape. At some point she had vomited and the inside of the car smelled appalling; an oxygen mask was over her face, blood already drying on her cheek from a cut above her eye. A quick glance at the backseat confirmed what Les had told her.
The medics were trying to keep Flora awake, chatting about inane things while the rescue teams prepared the cutting gear.
“Flora, can you hear me?” Lou said. She lifted the dust mask from her face briefly so that Flora could see who it was.
She couldn’t move her head or turn it because they’d already managed to get a neck brace around her. “It’s you,” she said, her voice muffled slightly through the plastic mask.
“Yes, it’s me. Lou Smith. From earlier. I’m sorry we didn’t get longer to talk.”
“My dad. I have to get back.”
“Flora, earlier today you wanted to tell me something. Do you remember?”
“No . . . it wasn’t that. I was wrong after all.”
“You can tell me now,” Lou said. The medic who was right next to her shot her a look.
“Your—what’s his name?—the big one . . .”
Lou had to think for a minute. “You mean Andy Hamilton?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Hamilton. I wish he’d leave me alone.”
Lou smiled at her. “Shall I ask Sam to keep an eye on you instead?”
“Yeah, Sam. She’s nice. I don’t like the other one. He’s downstairs all the time.”
“You need to move away now.” The fire and rescue officer had a hand on her upper arm, pulling her away.
“Downstairs? You mean waiting outside for you?”
“No,” Flora said, her voice becoming indistinct. “The other flat.”
“I’ll come and see you as soon as you’re in the hospital,” Lou called. “Try not to worry.”
Then she was taken back across the road, picking her way over bits of plastic from the smashed bollard and broken glass to where Sam was waiting. Les was sitting in the back of an unmarked van that had just arrived. Firearms, clearly, come to take charge of the weapon. Les would be briefing them so they could take over control of the scene.
“What did she say?” Sam asked. “Is she all right?”
“I think she’ll make it. I hope so, anyway. Can you do me a favor? Make sure Les stays with the car and doesn’t let that evidence out of his sight, whatever Firearms say. We’ll need to start bagging it as soon as the roof comes off. Don’t let Traffic take over or do anything until that’s done, okay? Get one of the patrols to stay with Flora, especially if she’s not too badly hurt after all. I can’t risk losing her again.”
“We’re going to arrest her?” Sam asked.
“Soon as we can, yes, I’m afraid so.”
“And Nigel Maitland?”
“I’ll see if I can get the surveillance team on him until we’ve been through the stuff and got enough to arrest him. Christ knows we’ll need plenty of time on the clock to argue the toss with that solicitor of his.”
“Right.”
As soon as Sam had gone out of earshot, Lou pulled her mobile phone from her jacket pocket and dialed Andy Hamilton’s mobile number. “Come on,” she said. “Answer, you piece of crap.”
There was no reply. Lou swore gently, disconnected the call, and redialed the number she had called yesterday. This time, the call was answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi! Karen, it’s Lou Smith.”
“He’s not here. No idea where he is.”
“Oh.”
“Went out this morning, hasn’t come back. If you find him, tell him to get his arse back here, would you?”
When she had promised to do just that, Lou hung up and looked around for Sam. She was with Les Finnegan, standing by the back of the Firearms van.
“Sam!” she called, already heading back to the car. This time, she was going to drive.
Taryn Lewis had told her—she had actually fucking told her everything she needed to know. Her father had said, “She likes to kill people.” Lou had thought Brian was talking about Flora Maitland—but he wasn’t talking about Flora at all, or Barbara for that matter. He was talking about her. Suzanne.
She likes to kill people . . .
12:40
“What do you think?” Lou said.
They were parked on Waterside Gardens, across the road from number 14. A single car, a black Mercedes, was parked on the gravel driveway, and further down the road, clearly in their line of sight, was Andy Hamilton’s people carrier.
“I don’t know. He could be . . . I mean, it’s his day off, right?”
Lou frowned. “She’s a suspect, Sam. A bloody suspect. You really think he’d . . . ?”
Sam looked like she didn’t want to say it, but went ahead anyway. “You know him better than me. What do you think?”
Lou sighed heavily. “I don’t want to do this, I really don’t. Everything about this feels bad.”
“What do you want to do?”
This wasn’t something they could train you for, as a senior investigating officer, but then no situation was like any other, was it? They trained you to think on your feet, make decisions and hope to God they were the right ones. And if you made the wrong decision, heaven help you. You weighed up the pros and cons and you did your best. The only thing you could do.
“Try his number again,” Lou said.
“I just did. Still nothing.”
“Okay. We need to get Tac Team down here, but we’re going to go in, whatever happens. Let’s hope to fuck he’s in there interviewing her or something sensible like that.”
Sam called it in and Lou kept her eyes on the house, the two doors side by side at the front; the one on the right would lead to Flora’s first-floor flat, the other one to the ground-floor flat where Suzanne Martin lived.
“They’re on their way,” Sam said.
A moment later, the door on the left opened and Sam and Lou both sat up straight. The woman who came out—the woman on the CCTV, without a doubt—was in a hurry. She slammed the door and hurried over to the Merc, opening it and getting inside.
“Sam,” Lou began, as the Merc’s wheels sprayed gravel in an arc, turning fast in the driveway. “You follow her. Call backup.”
As the Mercedes flew past, Lou got out of the car and ran across the road while Sam climbed across to the driver’s seat, started the car, and moved off in pursuit.
Lou’s heels crunched on the gravel as she hurried across to the house. Her mind raced through the possibilities of all the things that might confront her in this woman’s flat. Not least the body of Andy Hamilton. The last thing she should do was go in there by herself.
The door had slammed fast, and would not open. She rang the doorbell, knocked on the door hard. Looked in through the letterbox. Nothing. The empty hallway stretched away toward the back of the house. A smell drifted to her. Coffee, she thought. And something else, something she could not identify.
“Andy?” she called through the letterbox.
Nothing. Not a sound. Halfway up the hallway was a door to the left, and on the floor by the door was a pile of clothes, crumpled into a heap. On top of the pile, a mobile phone. Lou reached for her own phone and speed-dialed Andy Hamilton’s number—and the phone inside began to ring.
That was enough. Technically she needed a warrant to enter the premises. For her own safety she should wait for backup, for the proper equipment. But under these circumstances she could argue that there was a risk to life.
She went around the side of the building, looking for a back door. There was a wrought-iron gate at the side, which opened easily
. And there, a second door, glass panels top and bottom. She tried it. Locked! Fuck it.
Lou went into the garden and, holding a piece of roof tile over a drain, there was a brick. That would do it. She went back to the door. “Andy!” she shouted. “I’m coming through the back door—stand back.”
Then, one arm up, shielding her eyes, she hammered the brick at the glass.
It took two blows before the glass smashed on the tiled floor of the kitchen and over the step outside. The hole was big enough to put her arm through, and to her immense relief the key was in the door on the other side. She turned it and opened the door.
“Police!” she called. “Anyone in here?”
Nothing. From a long way off, she could hear a siren. Was it Sam’s backup? She must have stopped the Merc . . . that was good.
She crossed the kitchen to the door at the far end. The hallway stretched up toward the front door. To her left, a door opened into the sitting room—empty. To her right, the pile of men’s clothes and a closed door. Deep breath and open.
It took a second to register what she was seeing.
The man was stretched out on the bed, naked apart from leather straps around his ankles and wrists, which were attached to cords leading to the corners of the metal bed frame. But his head—the most bizarre thing of all—was encased in a wooden box, his neck disappearing into a padded hole at its base. On the top of the box was an oval-shaped hole, which should have revealed his face.
The whole box was wrapped in cling film.
A second later, she realized that he wasn’t breathing.
“Andy!” She took hold of a wrist, felt for a pulse. His hand was swollen, bluish already. Kneeling on the bed she could make out his face through the cling film. He was blue. His eyes open, staring, unseeing.
“Andy! Can you hear me?” She tried to pull the cling film away, tried to tear at it with her fingers, poke holes into it, but it was layer upon layer, wrapped and wound tight, and her fingers were ineffectual.
Back to the kitchen, pulling out drawers looking for a knife, a screwdriver—something! Shit, shit—nothing. And then, the last drawer she came to, a set of stainless-steel cutlery. Back to the bedroom, to the box, using a blunt dinner knife to snag at the plastic. Then there was a hole she could pull at, make larger, and at last she could see him properly.
“Andy!”
Her hand inside the box, touching the skin of his face; he felt clammy. He needed air, he needed mouth-to-mouth—and there was no way she could get close enough to his mouth with the box in the way.
Yelling with frustration, back to the kitchen—scissors, there had to be a pair of scissors in here—all the time wondering about how long he’d been like this, if it was already too late to make a difference. He was dead, he was dead. Too late.
No. Lou pulled at the door of the dishwasher. Inside, clean and shiny, a basket full of cutlery and among them a black-handled sharp kitchen knife. Yes.
In the bedroom Lou knelt on the bed, sawing at the cling film at the side of the box, tearing the loose bits away, pulling at strands that just became stronger until she cut them free. Once she was down to the bare wood she pulled the cling film away, exposing the box. His face was gray-blue.
The knife was slipping out of her hand, and she saw there was blood everywhere. Where was it coming from? Had she cut Andy’s neck somehow? She couldn’t see a wound.
At last the lid of the box could be lifted and she took hold of a handful of Andy’s damp, dark hair, lifting his head out of the box and pulling it away, throwing it off the bed.
“Breathe, damn it! Andy!”
As soon as she was certain he could get air, she started chest compressions, but his body bounced on the mattress, flailing underneath her clasped fingers. She had to get him off the bed. She took hold of the knife again, hacking at the black cords that secured his wrists to the bed. The first snapped quickly, and she moved to the other arm. By the time she was sawing at the cord tethering his right ankle to the bed, the blade was blunt. The cord frayed, then gave way. The last one took the longest and in the end she gave up, abandoned the knife, and pulled at his arm to drag him off the bed with one leg still tied.
He was so heavy and inert that at first she thought she would not be able to move him. Finally she dragged the corner of the bedspread and he came with it, slithered to the floor like a dead fish.
Now she could do it. His chest was slathered in blood, and it was only when she started the compressions with all her weight behind it that she realized it was her hand the blood was coming from. “Andy!” she shouted, as much to reassure herself that he was still there.
Was she imagining it, or was his skin a more normal color? And now she could hear steps on the gravel outside. “Get in here!” she roared. “I need help! Get in here now!”
The sound of boots on the broken glass in the kitchen. “In here!”
She didn’t look round but she knew they were there, both from the sound and from the muttered “Jesus!”
She didn’t want to stop, not for a second, until she knew Andy’s heart was beating strongly and wasn’t going to stop; didn’t want to see their expressions as they took in the naked officer, the cords tied tightly around his wrists and ankles, one still attached to the corner of the bedstead.
And it was only when one of them said to her, “Stop, guv, let me take over now,” and his colleague, who had been radioing for an ambulance, pulled her gently to one side, taking her hand and raising it, pressing tightly against her palm, that she saw through the tears that the cut to her hand was deep.
13:02
“I’m sorry about your hand,” Andy Hamilton said.
He was sitting upright on a trolley in the back of the ambulance, wrapped in blankets that were barely enough to cover him. Two hairy shins faced in Lou’s direction. She was on the jump seat the technicians used, her hand bound up in a great wad of bandage, holding it still as she’d been instructed.
“It’s okay,” she said.
The paramedics were about to cart them both off to hospital to be checked over, but Hamilton was recovering by the minute.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him.
He gave her a look. Stupid question, of course. She’d never seen him brought so low.
“What was it?” Lou asked.
“She must have drugged me. I think it was the sweetener tablet—I thought she’d put it in her cup.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant, what was that bloody box for?”
“Oh, that. I read about them. It’s called a smother box.”
“Sounds charming. You into all of that sort of thing, then?”
“Not anymore.”
Lou’s phone was ringing. It was Sam.
“Ma’am. The nominal has stopped at an office block on London Road, just past the hospital. Lots of businesses in there, according to the sign. You want me to go in? I would have intercepted her outside but—”
“Don’t worry, Sam. I don’t want you to tackle her without backup. What’s the building called?”
“Constantine House. It’s the second turning left after the hospital. Opposite the entrance to Sainsbury’s.”
“Wait for me there. Don’t move unless she does, right?”
The back doors of the ambulance opened and the paramedic came back in. “Let’s get you both strapped in, then, shall we? Time to go to hospital.”
But Lou was already clambering out.
“Lou,” Andy called.
His use of her first name was what made her stop.
“Be careful,” he said. “She—I think this is all just like fun and games to her. She doesn’t give a shit.”
Lou responded with a smile he probably didn’t deserve. “I’ll bear that in mind. Can I borrow your car?”
13:15
Hamilton’s car was surprisingly clean and tidy. She’d had to pull the seat forward about three feet in order to reach the pedals, and it wasn’t easy with a bandaged hand, but thankfully
it was an automatic—gear changing would have been a challenge too far. Lou sped off in the direction of the one-way system through the town center, praying that the traffic would have cleared.
She had got as far as the one-way system when the sirens started. Two marked cars overtook her at the lights and a third turned into the main road from East Park Road, all of them going at top whack and heading in the direction of the hospital. If she’d been in a job car she could have turned on the lights and followed them, but Andy’s people carrier was designed for safety, not for speed.
Swearing at the cars in front of her, she went as fast as she dared until finally she could see the hospital buildings on the left, the supermarket ahead. There were blue lights everywhere and police cars parked haphazardly on the road, another inside a small car park by a squat, square office building. She pulled into the car park.
Black-uniformed officers were gathered in a crowd in one corner of the car park, but they all looked relaxed and they were starting to disperse, heading back to their abandoned patrol cars.
Lou got out of the car and went over to them. Sam Hollands was holding open the door to one of the patrol cars as an officer built like a tank helped a blond woman into the backseat. Though handcuffed, she was clearly still trying to put up a bit of a fight.
“You sure you don’t want to wait for the van?” the officer was saying to Sam.
“Not if it’s in Newhall, Steve. It’ll take too long.”
“Get your hands off me!” the woman was yelling.
The gentle helping hand became a shove. “Keep that up and you’ll end up on the floor again, and we don’t want that, do we?”
“Ma’am,” Sam said, seeing Lou approach. She had a graze on her cheek and dabbed a tissue at it. When she raised her hand, Lou could see a nasty-looking bite mark on her hand.
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell happened?”
Sam indicated the door of the office building. “It’s a nursing agency,” Sam said. “Turns out she was here to collect her payslip but there had been some mix-up with it. She came out just as I finished talking to you, and she was in a bit of a grumpy mood.”