Authors: Kate Rhodes
‘You haven’t even got the guts to do it yourself. Cut these ropes off me, you freak.’
The man punches her so hard that her head bounces from the siding. ‘It’s not my decision.’
She gives a loud moan. ‘Why not chuck yourself in and let me go?’
He pulls the tape from his pocket and seals her mouth once more. Then he pins an ancient brooch to the lapel of her coat, a piece of the past connecting her to the river’s memory. He tightens the bonds around her wrists and ankles then walks away. Much as he would love to see the tide claim her soul, he knows it would be too dangerous.
The drive back disturbs him. Flashing lights appear in the rear-view mirror, and he’s afraid he’ll get pulled over. He’s exhausted by the time he drives through Poplar, Canary Wharf lit up like bonfire night. He parks the woman’s car on waste ground near Virginia Quay. The water is smooth as glass. Blackwall Tunnel hides below its depths, but the spirits are oblivious, drifting east to join the sea. The man takes a long breath before performing his final task of the day. Paraffin splashes over the car’s upholstery then he drops a lighted match on the driver’s seat. The flames grow steadily until they reach the fuel tank. He’s a hundred yards away when it explodes, metal and debris scattering across the tarmac. The river sings his praises, but he’s already vanishing into the shadows, running too fast to look back.
50
‘Thank God you came.’ Millie grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the hallway of Tania’s flat. ‘The doctor gave her tranquillisers, but she’s no better.’
A voice keened in the background, its pitch rising and falling like someone singing out of key. I’d heard the sound before. That thin wail of despair must be the same in every country, the universal soundtrack of grieving. Louise was slumped on the sofa in a pool of thin morning light. A wad of tissues was clutched in her hand, cheeks glistening as she released her wail. On a professional level, it was a straightforward case of situational hysteria. The normal treatment would be to wait for the diazepam to take effect, but there was a child to consider. Sinead huddled in an armchair, wide-eyed with terror. The girl seemed determined to hold herself together. An iPod rested in her lap, wires trailing from her ears, muffling her aunt’s cries. She eyed me cautiously as I knelt down.
‘My name’s Alice, I work with your mum. Are you okay here, or do you want to wait in your room while I help your auntie?’
‘I’m not leaving.’ Her voice was no more than a whisper.
‘Of course, that’s fine.’ Her aunt’s eyes had opened by a few millimetres. ‘I hear you’ve been up all night, Louise. Why don’t you rest now? We can wake you when there’s news. You’ll feel stronger after you’ve slept.’
Soon she let me lead her to Tania’s bedroom, the sedative finally taking effect. She lay down on the bed fully clothed, exhaustion felling her before her head hit the pillow. I took off her shoes and laid them at the foot of the bed before joining Millie in the kitchen.
‘Did you get any sleep?’ I asked.
Her face was drawn. ‘Not much. She’s been like that since dawn. It’s the kid I feel sorry for. And it would help if the boss didn’t snap all the time.’
‘Burns?’
‘He’s in a hell of a mood. He bit my head off again last night.’
‘The stress is getting to him.’
She gave a nod of agreement. ‘The poor sod’s split from his wife.’
I blinked at her. ‘I thought they were back together.’
‘It didn’t work out. He let slip to Pete that he’d moved out yesterday. Talk about bad timing.’
An odd feeling passed through my stomach, like a knot unravelling. When I looked back into Tania’s living room, her daughter was frozen in her chair, silencing the world with music. The idea that Burns had left his children failed to make sense.
Millie looked anxious as I put on my coat. ‘What if Louise gets upset again?’
‘Comfort her and let her cry it out; tears are a natural reaction. Try and keep Sinead busy though. Board games are better than TV. Are there any grandparents who can help?’
‘Her grandma’s been in Florida on holiday. She’ll be here tonight.’
‘That should give them some support.’ I still had no idea how Millie coped with helping victims through tragedy after tragedy. The work would have brought me to my knees. The upside of being a shrink is seeing people recover: if a treatment works, patients gradually shed their burdens over a course of months, but she stepped from one crisis to the next, witnessing endless suffering.
I chose the wrong day to arrive late for my meeting with Burns. He was sitting in a café on Wapping High Street, scowling at a computer printout. The pulse of attraction was stronger than ever. It annoyed me that my body was following its own instincts, while Tania’s family fell apart at the seams. His face was deadpan when he shunted a coffee cup across the table.
‘That’ll be stone cold by now.’
‘Millie asked me to check on Tania’s sister. I had to call there first.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s reacting to the shock. Has there been any news?’
‘We found Tania’s car at Virginia Quay.’
I stared back at him. ‘Her phone’s in Wapping, but her car’s three miles east?’
‘It’s been torched. The forensic evidence is blown, and the rain’s washed away any footprints.’ Only the subdued rage in his voice signalled that he had no intention of giving up. ‘You had quite a day yesterday, listening to Shelley’s confession, by the sound of it. Odd to think he’d been seeing Speller for over a year. Politicians are meant to be pillars of the community, aren’t they?’
‘It could have been the final straw for Guy. When Shelley told me about his violence, it sounded like he’d accepted he could be the killer.’
Burns shook his head in disbelief. ‘Do you agree?’
‘If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have said Guy was too frail. But it’s pointing that way, isn’t it? Shelley thinks that the only people who knew about his affair are Guy, Jude, Father Owen and possibly Amala. I still think Jude can give us the answer. She’s ninety per cent of the way there.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Recovering buried memories is partly a conscious choice. If you’re brave enough, you can fight your way back. All it takes is courage.’
‘And you think she’s got enough?’
‘She’s braver than anyone I know. I’ll see her again straight after this.’
We talked for another twenty minutes, but I got the sense that he’d stopped listening to my theories, and he seemed immune to comfort. When I got up to leave he was staring at his stack of papers, as if the killer’s identity was concealed between the words like a crossword clue. My thoughts strayed to the reason why he’d left his wife. Some crisis must have triggered it after he’d shown so much determination to stay.
I bumped into Angie when I left the café. Her tone was upbeat when I asked how she was doing.
‘My lot are keeping busy. We found where he kept Julian Speller, in an abandoned basement that floods every day. Search teams are scouring all the buildings on the wharfs.’ She pointed towards the river. ‘The divers are dragging the riverbed.’
‘They won’t find her. Tania’ll have him wrapped round her little finger.’
Angie’s smile had vanished. ‘I’d have said that about Amala, but she ended up at Execution Dock.’
A fine mist of drizzle clouded my vision as I walked back to my car. But something caught my attention by Alderman Stairs. A police boat was anchored ten metres from the shore, a cordon of red plastic buoys drifting from the bank. One of the divers appeared at the surface with powerful lights strapped to his wrists. I caught a glimpse of his oxygen tank and the tips of his black flippers before he disappeared. The diving conditions must have been atrocious. They were searching for a tiny object, constantly resurfacing to check the GPS signal. And they weren’t just looking for Tania’s phone. They were hunting for her body, in water so dense with silt that even the strongest lights could barely penetrate it.
I felt a renewed sense of urgency as I drove away. If Jude failed to remember her attacker this time, Tania wouldn’t survive. The look on Burns’s face had concerned me too: rage mixed with the kind of anxiety that saps your strength.
Security was tighter than ever when I reached the Royal London, uniforms and plain-clothes police mingling with visitors and hospital staff. A young woman checked my ID card before allowing me upstairs. At least the procedures meant that Jude was safe. If the killer targeted her again, he would need the nerve of the devil to con his way inside.
The sister on duty looked less upbeat this time. When I asked after Jude, she just shook her head and pushed the door open carefully, as if she was trying to minimise noise. Heather was hunched beside her daughter’s bed. It was clear that Jude’s condition had worsened. She lay prone on the pillows, her exposed eye fixed on the ceiling, flawless hair rippling across her pillow. The only sound was the pump of the respirator keeping her alive. Heather was clutching her daughter’s hand. Her pale face was free of makeup as she threw me an unsteady smile. I felt a stab of sympathy as I thought of her husband’s drunken revelations, knowing I was about to cause her even more pain, but I had to witness her reaction.
‘They can’t lower her temperature.’ Her focus stayed on her daughter’s ruined face, and it finally hit home that she was slipping away. If Jude didn’t open up soon, her secrets would vanish forever.
‘I need to speak to you, Heather,’ I said quietly. ‘Could we step outside?’
‘We can talk here. I don’t keep anything from Jude.’
‘The police will question you later, but I thought you’d prefer to hear it from me.’
‘Hear what?’ She chose not to meet my eye.
‘I’m afraid your husband’s been having an affair.’
The last trace of her calmness went up in smoke. ‘Do you think I care?’ she snarled. ‘I stopped asking about his weekends away years ago.’
‘Did you know who he’d been seeing?’
‘Some tart from his office, probably, an intern sleeping her way into a job. Why are you bothering me with this?’
Jude’s hands twitched helplessly, but she made no sound. ‘I’m afraid he’s admitted to an affair with Julian Speller. It had been going on some time.’
The shock on Heather’s face would have been hard to fake. Her skin blanched, lips trembling with distress. Her chair clattered against the wall, and before I could say another word she’d rushed from the room. I approached Jude’s bed as soon as she’d gone. Her ribcage rose and fell, the plastic tube funnelling oxygen into her throat. I had no idea whether she could hear me.
‘I’m sorry, Jude, but it’s too late to protect anyone. It’s time all the secrets came out. The police will interview your mum about Speller, and they’re talking to your dad too. Have you remembered anything else?’
Her glazed eye held mine. ‘I hear his voice, that’s all.’
‘Is it Guy? Is that why you won’t let yourself remember?’
The respirator wheezed out a long breath. ‘Deeper,’ she whispered.
‘Sorry?’
‘His voice. It’s a man, not a boy.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t your brother?’
‘He lashes out sometimes, but it’s never planned.’
I didn’t have the heart to suggest that Guy might have changed his style, shame making him disguise his voice. Part of me felt guilty for pressing her, but I knew it could be my last chance.
‘You know who did it, Jude. Tell me before someone else gets hurt.’
Her words were a raw sob. ‘I wish I knew.’
‘But there’s something else?’ I squeezed her hand.
‘Jamal. I want to see him.’ As the words left her mouth, her shoulders convulsed and I watched in panic as the numbers on her monitor plummeted, her body giving up the fight. Her grip on my hand tightened as a bell peeled in the corridor. A doctor arrived immediately, with Heather pacing behind, her eyes red from tears.
‘What’s happened?’ Her voice was shrill with anxiety.
The doctor studied the bank of machines above Jude’s bed, then twisted a dial. ‘It’s an oxygen imbalance, this should bring her round.’
The machine hissed even louder and I felt myself shaking. It was impossible to tell whether it was the prospect of Jude dying or the memory of the divers dragging the river for Tania’s body that made it hard to breathe. I saw Jude’s body shudder as she regained consciousness, then stepped out onto the landing. My hands shook as I fumbled for Jamal Khan’s card in my bag. I tapped out a quick message, asking him to visit Jude while he still had the chance.