Authors: Kasia Radzka
“That doesn’t mean he was following me. He could have been waiting for someone.”
“So why make a move as soon as I headed towards him?” Cara said. “Did you see anyone suspicious on your way here?”
Lexi shook her head. The truth was she hadn’t been paying attention. Her guard hadn’t been up. It probably should have been in an unfamiliar place but two years in London was long enough for her to grow comfortable and complacent in her surroundings.
“You need to be careful, Lexi. There are people involved who don’t like outsiders meddling in their business,” Cara said.
They were back at the booth, a fresh pint of beer for both and a bowl of hot chips in the middle.
“You sound like you know something is going on.”
Cara sighed and took a swig of beer.
“We’re still off the record Lexi.”
“Of course. I didn’t think we were meeting just so I could get juicy story quotes from you.”
“You’re smart. Keep going and you’ll be my favourite person in town.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lexi said. “So what’s really going on?”
“There’s an internal investigation being conducted that may have links to Tatiana Petrenko’s disappearance. I say links because I’m not privy to all the details, not yet anyway. The detectives on the case are sitting on nothing and haven’t made a dent in the investigation. The Commissioner is getting antsy, he wants this wrapped up, and extra bodies, even if they are prostitutes, are not doing any good for his reputation or this city’s trust in him.”
“You think cops are involved?”
“I have no doubt,” Cara said. “But not just cops. I think that we’re talking about businessmen and politicians with too much money to burn. They think if they pay they won’t get caught. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to be dirty just to stay in the game.”
“Any names?”
“Nothing concrete. That’s why you need to be careful. As soon as they figure out someone is snooping and getting close to the truth they are not going to second-guess themselves. It’ll be them or you. You won’t have time to react. If I were you, I’d stay as far away from the sidelines as possible. You don’t want to get killed over a job.”
“I’ve heard that one before too,” Lexi said, all too familiar with the warning she never adhered to.
“What in the world did you get involved in back home?”
“I tell stories people don’t want told. Everyone is in the comfort of their own homes. They don’t want their precious lives to be disturbed. Heaven forbid that their idealistic existence becomes threatened by reality. People don’t see the terror that goes on in their own backyard. They are oblivious to the sex trade, to domestic violence, to the war on drugs, the dirty politicians and businesses that are functioning around them. As long as they get to go home to their pretty houses, throw parties, watch their kids go to school, who cares what happens to everybody else? It’s a problem. No, it’s an epidemic. I don’t want to be a statistic. I want to tell stories that people don’t want to hear but need to. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“That’s very noble.”
“I’m not trying to be noble. I’m just sick of living in a superficial and selfish world. People need to watch each other’s backs. We’re nothing without each other.”
“I agree with you there. But how are you going to manage that?”
“One story at a time. It’s impossible to change the world, but by impacting even one person positively with my story, my job, my dedication, it’s one step closer to making a world of difference.”
“Cheers to that, Lexi Ryder,” Cara said. “Just make sure to stay alive while you do it all.”
She’d managed to stay alive thus far. It wasn’t that she purposely got herself into trouble, it just seemed that trouble followed her. Trouble followed what seemed to matter most.
“I’ll do my best,” Lexi said, just as Cara’s phone buzzed.
She answered it and listened to the person on the other end. Lexi saw her facial expression change.
“What is it?” Lexi asked as Cara put the phone down.
“A late night jogger just found Hannah Brown’s body.”
Chapter 11
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This wasn’t how the job was supposed to go down. No one was supposed to get killed. Not yet anyway. The order was to watch. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
It wasn’t the first time he’d killed. The first was a bar fight ten years before. He was provoked. A wanker was giving him shit about his date, a pretty redhead he had picked up during his jog in Hyde Park. He tried to grab her butt and so the sucker punched him. The guy was dead before his head had hit the ground.
An arrest was made. The redhead testified he hit in self-defence. Technically it could be classed as that. He had been protecting his date’s right not to have her ass groped by a stranger in a bar. The courts let him off with a warning and a month’s worth of community service in a hospital.
He vowed to avoid sickness and death.
But fate had other things in store.
After a time he realised getting off a prison sentence for killing an idiot in the bar was not because the courts believed he was innocent. Someone had made a significant payment and made a deal to ensure that he would stay on the streets. It hadn’t been a free deal. He would repay the debt in full. He had been recruited. Quickly, silently, but recruited, and now he had no choice. So he had killed several other times. Premeditated kills that he had learnt to emotionally disengage from. But he had never killed a woman nor had he killed without a clean-up plan in place.
The woman lay on the ground bleeding, within minutes he knew she would bleed out. The knife slashes had cut the arteries on her wrists. They looked like defensive wounds. And so with his gloved hands he picked up her handbag and rummaged through it, grabbing whatever he could find of value, purse, phone, earrings, then chucked the bag to the ground next to the body for the police to find. Then he disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 12
Hannah Brown had lived an interesting life. From a difficult upbringing, to getting into UCL and studying forensic psychology. She would have been a cop or an investigator, or a criminal psychologist or anything she wanted to be for that matter. Lexi realised she had never asked her. One thing was certain, even in death, Hannah Brown had been a fighter. She fought for what she wanted and that was a life of her own choosing.
Hannah’s body lay on the ground, face down, her arms outstretched in front of her, her hands covered in slashes, her bracelet lying beside her, the contents of her bag spilt on the asphalt. The blood pooling around her. Gone. Dead. Never to spin a wild tale or help the needy. The click of the camera, the hushed tones of the officers, a bolt of thunder in the background, even in death Hannah would have the last word.
Lexi stood behind the police line, her gaze fixated on the body. It was only hours ago that they were speaking on the phone. What had happened between then and now? Hannah had been found two roads from where she lived. The time of death had been estimated at under an hour. From the time of their conversation to when the body had been discovered had only been a couple hours, so what had happened in that space of time? Who had she spoken to? What had she found? Lexi could only think of the cop connection.
Now as Lexi looked around they all looked suspicious. Any one of them could have been responsible for Hannah’s death, any one of them could have figured out what she had discovered. It wouldn’t have been that hard to follow her, maybe stop her for a chat, play friendly, and then strike. Hannah was approachable. If she felt no danger she would have chatted and probably flirted just for kicks. Whoever killed her may have known just how to approach her, maybe even catch her by surprise.
“She’s got no purse,” Cara said ducking underneath the police line and urging Lexi to come to the side. “Would she have left her house without her purse? Wallet? Keys?”
“Probably not. Do you think this was a mugging gone wrong?” Lexi said, knowing that would be too great a coincidence. A mugging was out of the question. A mugger would have taken the bag and run.
“No. No, I don’t,” she said, her arms at her hips.
“She was on her way to see me,” Lexi said, her apartment was only a few minutes away.
“How do you know that?”
“I live around the corner. Plus there’s a text from her on my phone, it came through an hour and a half ago,” Lexi said. “She could have been followed. Someone could have been watching her, waiting to make a move. A mugging is too coincidental and doesn’t add up.”
“Do you think she found something incriminating?”
“I don’t know. But why else would anyone kill her?” Lexi asked. “Why go to the trouble? Why take such a risk, especially here? Someone could have witnessed the murder. It’s a public spot and not that late at night.”
“Was she involved in anything other than this investigation?”
“All I know is she was determined to find out what happened to Tatiana.”
Back in her apartment Lexi made sure that the door and windows were locked. She went from room to room, and even checked her cupboards, underneath the bed, and behind the curtains, before she dared going to the bathroom. She stood under the shower, her tears blending with the water until the stream became so cold she couldn’t handle it any more.
Sleep wouldn’t come immediately. She was tired, overtired. But that was the problem. Her mind was unable to relax. Her thoughts kept her awake. The investigation; the story. Hannah was dead. Tatiana, a girl she had never even met, was missing. Why was she doing this to herself? Why was it so damn important? She should have become a florist; life would have been much easier or at least simpler.
Finally, Lexi fell asleep but even in sleep her dreams forced her mind in overdrive. There was no retreat in her slumber. She dreamt of Hannah. She dreamt of her family back home. She dreamt of the love she had left behind.
A life that seemed far away but one she hadn’t really left behind. She’d be lying to herself if she thought any different. She had run away from the problems her family posed but they were still there. Still with a grasp over her. She was still Lexi Ryder, and while that may have not had any significance in London, it was like a pair of handcuffs Lexi fought against every day. Sooner or later she’d have to face them all.
When she awoke in the morning, she reached for her mobile and found she had slept well past eight, but her body felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Reality hit within moments. Hannah had been murdered. The police were going to treat it as a mugging, there was no evidence to say otherwise. But Lexi knew better. Coincidences didn’t exist when murder and deception were at bay.
She lay in bed for another ten minutes or so before flicking on the television and catching up on the latest news. Dirty politicians, the civil war in Syria, a car crash on the outskirts of London, a small mention of a woman’s body found last night. Hannah. Smart. Interesting. Paranoid.
Lexi grabbed her phone and checked her emails. Her phone beeped. Ten new messages popped up. She scrolled through them.
Hannah.
Why hadn’t she checked them last night?
The time stamp was at around eleven at night. Maybe only half an hour before she was attacked? Two hours after Lexi had got to the scene. Hadn’t Hannah said she didn’t understand why people did such silly things in movies like not back-up the information they were going to share? Murphy’s Law suggested that if you were going out in the middle of the night to share juicy evidence, chances were that you weren’t going to make it. Why risk losing evidence when there was the invention of email? Send the email then go share the info in person. Had Hannah known she wasn’t going to survive the night?
The email was enlightening to say the least. A photo. A name. A date. An address. It didn’t mean much to Lexi until she googled the details realising that Hannah, or whoever Hannah had at her beck and call, was smarter than Lexi or anyone else had given them credit for.
Chapter 13
Lexi couldn’t get the picture of Hannah on the pavement, the blood pooling around her, out of her head, nor stop her voice from echoing in her mind.
She read the email again. She had a name, an address. She googled both.
Adrian Somerville.
A Metropolitan police officer. Several awards. A decade in the service.
Was he dirty?
Hannah’s email implied so.
A few articles popped up. ‘Decorated police officer busts drug lab… Decorated officer shot in the line of duty… Decorated detective questioned over sex worker murder… Decorated officer reinstated into the Met after false accusations laid to rest.’
But were they really false? Lexi couldn’t be sure. She’d have to check with Cara when they spoke again.
Then there was the address. When she looked it up on Google Maps it looked to be near the water; a shipyard of sorts not far from town. At first she thought it was the Docklands but realised that had turned into a more residential area. More hipsters than ship workers.
Lexi threw on some comfortable clothes, grabbed her bag and headed for the Tube. She wanted to check out the address in person.
Twenty minutes later, Lexi got out of the taxi and made her way onto the port. The smell of sea water, oil and metal floated in the air. The sea breeze reminded her of home. It wasn’t the same as the Gold Coast’s sea but it was the pleasantness of the moisture and salt in the air. In the distance a cargo ship was docked, cranes lifted containers, placing them strategically on the deck.