Authors: Kate Rhodes
‘It still might not be Guy Shelley.’
Burns rubbed his hand across his face. ‘Whoever it is, Tania hasn’t got a prayer unless we find her. He won’t just turn himself in.’
‘It can happen. The last woman the Baltimore strangler abducted persuaded him to drive her home, safe and sound. Somehow she talked him out of it.’
His eyes blinked shut. ‘Let’s get that meal. There’s bugger all I can do here.’
We ended up in a Chinese on St Pancras Way with paper lanterns suspended from the ceiling. The garish synthetic flowers on every table were a poor match for Burns’s gloom. He talked nonstop about the investigation, swallowing mouthfuls of food too fast, as if it had no flavour.
‘Why don’t you think it’s Guy?’ he asked.
‘He’s neurotic, not psychotic. I’m not sure he’s deranged enough to destroy his sister’s face. There’s a big leap between bullying your sibling, and butchering her then leaving her to drown. You’ve got no evidence he did it, unless the lab results prove he was at Amala’s flat.’
Burns gave an exhausted shrug. ‘I hope to God they do.’
‘I still think we’re missing something. The killer’s left clues all along that he’s obsessed by the river’s history. I can’t believe the trail led us in the wrong direction.’
‘Maybe Guy took us down a blind alley on purpose.’
I studied him again. ‘You’ve been working flat out, Don. Why not rest your brain for half an hour?’
‘Easier said than done,’ he said, pushing his plate aside. ‘How’s your boyfriend these days?’
I shook my head. ‘I haven’t seen him recently.’
‘You were an item last time we spoke.’
‘People haven’t been items since the Seventies. Your vocabulary needs updating.’
His gazed locked onto mine. ‘Are you seeing him or not?’
‘Not, as it happens. I called it quits.’
‘Me too.’ The anger in his eyes dwindled. ‘All the old rows started again. The boys are in a bad way – trying to keep it together did more harm than good.’
‘I’m sorry. You’ll still see plenty of them, won’t you?’
‘Every weekend.’ Burns’s gaze intensified. ‘There’s another reason why I had to leave.’
‘What?’
‘You, obviously. It’s been that way for years.’
Something shifted inside my ribcage. It felt like a heavy piece of furniture was being dragged across my chest. I remembered Lola’s speech about honesty. I’d spent my whole life concealing my emotions, determined to protect myself. I opened my mouth to tell him how I felt, but no sound emerged. The impulse was there but not the words.
‘Where are you staying?’ I asked, when I caught my breath.
‘A shite hotel on Gray’s Inn Road. The guy next door’s into heavy metal.’
‘Stay at mine.’
Burns’s slow grin unfurled. ‘Are you serious?’
‘In the spare room. At least you’ll get a good night’s sleep.’
‘I need to go back to the station. I can’t just walk away.’
‘Come to mine when you’re ready.’
Burns’s phone rang as we were splitting the bill. The full range of emotions crossed his face as he listened: first he looked stricken, then his smile slipped back into place. ‘Tania’s alive,’ he said. ‘The ambulance is taking her to Guy’s Hospital.’
‘Thank God.’ I reached across and touched his hand.
‘They think she’ll be okay. I’ll go there now.’
When we stood up to leave, my stomach was twisting into knots. My emotions were pulling in different directions – relief that Tania had been found, combined with fear about letting Burns get close. The tables had turned so quickly it hardly made sense. I could have stood there watching him for hours, but we behaved like sensible adults, putting on our coats and heading for the door.
The deluge had started again when we got outside. Rain was cascading from the sky so fast that the pavement had become a river, but Burns didn’t seem to notice. When I looked up his face was bleached by the streetlight as his thumb skimmed my cheek.
‘I just need to see she’s all right, then I’ll come round.’
I watched him stride away before hailing a taxi. When I settled on the back seat, a senseless grin unfolded across my face as the cab raced into the night.
53
I waited an hour before calling him. The news about Tania had lifted my spirits, but I was still impatient to see Burns shambling down the hallway in his outsized raincoat. There was no answer from his mobile, and I knew that something must have delayed him. When I finally got through to the incident room, there was a barrage of noise. Phones jangled frantically in the background, the clamour of voices so loud I could hardly hear Angie’s voice.
‘It’s mayhem here. Did you know Tania’s been found?’ she said. ‘A few of us are going to see her now.’
‘Is Burns with you?’
‘I’ll check his office.’ There was a pause before she spoke again. ‘He’s set off for the hospital already.’
The muffled cheer in the background made me wish I’d stayed put. I wondered whether Tania’s sister and daughter had been given the news, suddenly so keen to know how she was that I couldn’t stay indoors. I threw on my coat and left the flat.
Tiredness must have been catching up with me when I reached the hospital, because I was worrying about Tania’s injuries, even though Burns had said she would recover. I was afraid that her face might have been slashed to ribbons, just like Jude’s. By the time I arrived at accident and emergency my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. A nurse told me that she had been taken to a surgical ward, which raised my anxiety another notch.
A small crowd of police was hanging around outside her room, and Hancock was the first familiar face I spotted. His expression gave no clue as to the severity of Tania’s injuries. His black monobrow was in its usual place, a centimetre above his eyes. Only his demeanour let me know that he was relieved, and for once he didn’t bark at me.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘Pretty beaten up. Her back took the worst of it, apparently.’
‘Do you know what happened?’
‘A patrol boat found her wedged in a concrete overflow. Two of the blokes pulled her out, unconscious. She’s swallowed so much water they’ll have to pump her stomach.’
‘Poor her.’ It would be a cruel twist of fate if Tania had survived an encounter with a serial killer, only to succumb to the river’s toxins. ‘Where’s the rest of the team?’
‘At Rotherhithe shore, where she was found.’
After a few minutes, someone tapped my shoulder. I expected to see Burns but when I spun round it was Millie, her face blank with tiredness.
‘God, what a relief,’ she said quietly. ‘Louise and her mum are in no state to leave the flat. I told them to rest till morning, then bring Sinead over.’
‘Have you seen Tania?’
‘No one has. The doctors are stabilising her.’ The tense expression on her face made me realise that she shared my fears about Tania’s injuries.
A medic appeared as we were talking. He explained that two of us could see her, and Millie and I were first through the door. The room was such a hive of activity that I couldn’t see the bed, nurses crawling over each other, but when I finally got close enough, Tania was lying face down on the gurney. A ragged wound ran from the middle of her spine up to her hairline. One of the doctors was taping surgical dressing to her torn skin. When I turned to Millie, she was two shades paler than before.
‘God, I could kill that bastard with my bare hands,’ she murmured.
One of the medics spoke to us. He was a middle-aged man with the face of an eternal optimist. ‘It looks worse than it is. The wound’s superficial, so it should heal nicely. But she may need a skin graft on her arm. It looks as if she scraped her wrists over raw brick to loosen her ties.’
‘What about the head wound?’
‘There’s no skull fracture, just subdural swelling. A concussion, in other words.’
‘When do you think she’ll come round?’ Millie asked.
His smile widened. ‘She’s already regained consciousness. She was so exhausted and traumatised we gave her sedatives to help her sleep. You can talk to her tomorrow.’ The man’s hopeful expression faltered for a second, as if he was contemplating a worst-case scenario. ‘She’s been lucky. Most people don’t survive a fall into the Thames. It’s a blessing she was found.’
Millie’s colour improved when we returned to the corridor. ‘Thank God she’s out of the woods.’
‘Have you seen Burns anywhere?’
‘Not since we left the station.’ She gave me an absent smile as she punched numbers into her phone. ‘Wherever he’s hiding, he must be over the moon.’
54
Silence rings in his ears. The river is no longer murmuring a word, but at least the man’s patience has been rewarded. An hour ago he stood outside the police station, unnoticed in the scrum of journalists, while the detective announced that his colleague had been found, a sickening look of triumph on his face.
The man lingered at the back of the crowd until Burns emerged again. He watched him walk between the press vans in the car park, then slip down a narrow alley. The detective stood by his car, face tipped to the sky, accepting the rain like a benediction. All it took was a powerful blow to his skull to make his body crumple. The keys were hanging from the lock of his car, but the man couldn’t lift the detective’s dead weight into the boot, so he dragged him onto the back seat instead.
Now he’s sitting in the driver’s seat, hands fused to the wheel. He’s too afraid to twist the key in the ignition. Police cars are racing down St Pancras Way, their lights flashing. He needs to return to the river, but without its voice to instruct him, he doesn’t know how. When he peers into the rear-view mirror, the detective’s soul is drifting like smoke. The light it casts is so fierce, he’s afraid that someone will see it glowing through the car’s locked windows.
55
I ran down the corridor at the police station searching for Burns. The incident room’s atmosphere had changed from gloom to celebration, empty bottles of Cava littering the table, a dozen people letting off steam in a roar of chatter. I was hoping to find him asleep at his desk, felled by exhaustion, but his office was empty. I inhaled his familiar smell of coffee, musk and fresh air. I tried telling myself there was no reason to panic, but the reassurance brought no comfort.
I found Angie putting on her coat, her elfin face shadowed by tiredness.
‘Shouldn’t you be home by now?’
‘Burns is missing, Angie.’
She stared at me. ‘He’s still at the hospital with Tania.’
‘He never made it. And he’s not answering his phone.’
She sighed loudly then punched a number into her mobile. Her expression was only slightly less sceptical when there was no reply. ‘He’s probably gone home.’
‘He never switches his phone off, and anyway, he split up from his wife. He’s staying at a hotel on Gray’s Inn Road.’
Her gaze grew more focused. ‘Tell me what you know, Alice, slowly and clearly.’
‘I was with him when Tania was found. He said he was going to the hospital, but he never arrived.’
‘He’s been under so much pressure. Maybe he went for a drink.’
‘No way. He was desperate to see her.’ I felt like saying that he was equally keen to get to my flat, but Burns would hate his secrets being spilled.
She suppressed a yawn. ‘I’ll get my lot to find him, then someone’ll ring you at home.’
‘You know he had bypass surgery three years ago, don’t you? He could be lying somewhere by the side of the road. Or maybe he’s been taken, just like Tania. You have to take charge, Angie.’
The mention of her newfound responsibility had the desired effect. Once she realised that she was now first in command, Angie raced away like a small tornado. I stayed silent while she handed out duties. One team began phoning hotels on Gray’s Inn Road, another worked on tracing his car, someone else called his wife. I was left with nothing to do except observe the shock on people’s faces. Things like this didn’t happen to men like Burns, with the heavyweight build of a boxer, six foot five, tipping the scales at over two hundred pounds. Attacking him would be an act of bravery, or madness.