Chapter Thirty-One
The doorbell rang at
one minute to eight. April and Fiona had been sitting at the
breakfast bar discussing the events of the previous day and picking
at a couple of croissants Fiona had magicked from the oven. She had
been up and about amazingly early, humming a tune and happily
tidying away the wreckage downstairs; the kitchen surfaces gleamed.
April had always been amazed - not to mention annoyed - by Fiona’s
powers of recovery. And when did she become a
domestic goddess? she thought. Is this
part of the recruitment process? April felt terrible for
suspecting her best friend of having been seduced by vampires, but
she had begun to find paranoia a useful tool; it was better to
suspect everyone than wake up in a pool of blood. Fiona
had been awfully pally with Davina and
Benjamin the previous day. April had originally planned to discuss
everything Gabriel had told her with Caro and Fiona, but now she
wasn’t so sure it was such a good idea. She wasn’t sure about
anything any more.
The doorbell rang
again, more insistently this time.
‘Oh God, he’s early,
he’s here,’ said April, leaping up and immediately regretting it as
her knee complained. Even so, she straightened her skirt. ‘How do I
look?’
‘You look amazing,’
said Fiona. ‘Now calm down, he’s only a boy and if he’s early he
must be keen.’
Yeah, right, thought April as she walked to the
door. Come on,
April, don’t lose it, she scolded herself. She reached up
and opened the door.
‘On time for once …’
she began, then stopped.
Itwasn’t Gabriel. It
was DI Ian Reece and DS Amy Carling. Her heart
dropped.
‘Expecting someone?’
said Carling with a nasty smile.
‘Oh, no, well, just a
friend,’ stammered April before recovering herself. ‘What’s going
on?’ she asked, looking at DI Reece. ‘Has something
happened?’
‘Nothing to worry
about,’ said Reece. ‘I just wanted to have a word before school.
Could we come in?’
April glanced over
her shoulder. ‘Well, it’s not exactly the best time. What with the
funeral yesterday and everything.’
‘It won’t take a
minute, then we’ll get out of your hair,’ said Reece with a winning
smile.
‘All right,’ she
said, quickly scanning the square behind them for any sign of
Gabriel. The last thing she wanted was for the police to start
asking questions about their relationship, especially as she wasn’t
entirely clear on it herself. She opened the door and showed them
into the living room. ‘I can’t be too long,’ she said nervously as
they sat down.
‘I quite understand,’
said Reece. ‘Do you want to call your mum in?’
April shook her head.
She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible and dreaded
to think how a badly hung-over Silvia would react to being woken at
this time of the morning, especially by a man she had threatened
the last time she had seen him.
‘No, that’s not
necessary,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ said Reece.
‘Now, first of all, I was rather concerned about your phone call
last night, April. What happened there?’
April could feel
herself blushing. ‘Oh, sorry about that,’ she said, ‘I was a little
upset. I thought someone was following me, but I was … well, I was
wrong.’
‘But what were you
doing in the centre of London, love?’ asked Carling.
Don’t ‘love’ me, you cow, thought April. The
friendly older sister routine didn’t ring true with the
policewoman’s personality and demeanour. In fact, April seriously
doubted she had any friends.
‘I, well, I suppose I
ran away,’ said April. ‘The wake was full of all these people I
didn’t know and they were all talking about Dad as if they knew him
better than I did. I just wanted to go somewhere where I remembered
him being happy.’
‘And where was that?’
asked Reece.
‘The patisserie in
Covent Garden near my grandpa’s house.’
Carling flipped open
her notebook.
‘And did you go in?’
Reece asked.
‘No. When I got
there, I realised I didn’t have any money,’ said April. ‘Listen,
what’s all this about? Have you learnt something new? What’s going
on?’
Reece and Carling
exchanged a look.
‘We tracked your
phone call that night,’ he said. ‘You can be pretty accurate in the
centre of a city, so we have a fair idea of where you
were.’
April didn’t say
anything, so Reece continued, ‘There was a violent incident near
Covent Garden last night. I can’t say too much, but there were
details about it that are very similar to the cases in
Highgate.’
‘Like what?’ asked
April.
Reece shook his head.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at this stage.’
‘Why not? Don’t I—’
began April, but DS Carling cut her off.
‘Can you tell us
exactly where you were?’
April looked down.
‘Not really. As I said, I thought I was being chased, so I wasn’t
really looking where I was going.’
‘Who did you think
was chasing you, April?’ asked Reece.
‘I don’t know.’ She
glanced up at him. ‘The killer, I suppose.’
Carling eyed her
sceptically. ‘April? Did you see anything?’
‘No, no I didn’t,’
said April, a little too quickly, feeling her stomach turn over.
‘What happened? Was someone killed?’
Reece paused. ‘I’m
afraid so,’ he said. ‘It was pretty nasty.’
April put her hand
over her mouth. ‘Oh no,’ she gasped.
DS Carling looked at
her closely. ‘What’s the matter, April?’ she asked. ‘Do you know
something about it?’
April closed her eyes
and shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’
But you do! her mind screamed. You do! You were there! That much was true, but
beyond that, April really couldn’t tell them anything. Did Gabriel
kill those men? She had been sure they were still alive when she
ran off. But you didn’t see what he did when
you were running up the steps, did you? mocked her
mind. Face it, he’s a vampire - who knows what
they’ll do when your back’s turned? But why would he kill
them? They were no threat to April by then, and what of Gabriel’s
line about vampires from the night before: ‘Why kill them? What would be in it for them?
Yes, when you applied logic to the
problem, it seemed unlikely, but that was assuming vampires behaved
logically. Weren’t they bloodthirsty monsters?
Reece sat forwards
and touched April’s knee. She winced.
‘What’s the matter,
April?’
April looked at him,
anger sparking in her eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’ she snapped. ‘My
dad was killed about six feet from where you’re sitting - do you
really have to ask? You told me that serial killers are rare, but
here it is, happening right in front of me, in my house, following
me around. I can’t seem to get away from it.’ She looked up at
Reece, her eyes glistening. ‘Do you think it’s my
fault?’
Reece returned her
gaze for a long moment. ‘No, April, it’s not your fault,’ he said
seriously, standing up. ‘Unfortunately, this sort of thing does
happen. It’s not pleasant, but it happens. And London’s a very big
place with a lot of people in it. I know it might feel as if it’s
following you around, but it’s not. Sometimes these things are
entirely random.’
‘But what happened,
DI Reece?’ she said. ‘I mean, don’t you have CCTV footage or
something?’
Again, the two police
officers glanced at each other.
‘Yes,’ Reece said,
‘but it’s inconclusive. The incident happened in a tunnel near
Covent Garden. Sadly, it doesn’t have cameras. We have footage of
you running from Trafalgar Square and then …’
‘What?’
Reece shrugged. ‘It’s
probably nothing. We have a fairly clear shot of you running into
an alleyway as if someone is chasing you, but there’s no one behind
you.’
April frowned,
feeling a horrible clench in her stomach.
‘No one?’ she
whispered. ‘No one at all?’
Reece frowned. ‘No.
Did you think there would be?’
April shook her head.
‘Like I said, I thought someone was following me, but I guess I was
just imagining it.’
‘Exactly. So don’t
worry about it, it’s probably just coincidence. There’s a lot of it
about.’
April did her best to
smile at the policeman. She knew Reece was trying to be nice, but
he didn’t know the truth. He didn’t know that Gabriel was there, he
didn’t know he might have killed those men in cold blood. And he
certainly wouldn’t have believed her if she had told him the rest
of the things she knew about Gabriel Swift. April stood up and
showed the officers to the door. She was just closing it behind
them when she had another thought.
‘DI Reece?’ she
called, just as he reached the gate. ‘Can I ask you
something?’
Reece glanced at her,
then turned to Carling and told her he would meet her in the
car.
‘Why did you say
“it’s probably nothing”?’ asked April when the other officer was
out of earshot. ‘You know, about the CCTV footage.’
Reece pulled a face.
‘Oh, that. Nothing to worry about, probably just a fault with the
camera.’
‘But what was it? Was
I being followed?’
Reece shook his head.
‘No, it’s just a shadow on the film, nothing more,’ he said, and
tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. April could tell something
was bothering him.
‘Please, DI Reece,’
said April. ‘You’re starting to worry me.’
The policeman looked
at her for a moment, then sighed. ‘Okay, just after you run into
the alley, something else passes across the alleyway, like a thick
shadow. For a while I thought it might be someone following you,
but our tech boys assure me they can see the wall through it, so
it’s probably just a fault on the disk or something. I really
shouldn’t have mentioned it. Now, try not to worry,’ said Reece. ‘I
promise you, we’ll get to the bottom of all this.’
Not before I do, thought April as she closed the
door.