58

Tuesday 2 October

NEXT MORNING, I DRESSED CAREFULLY. I DON’T OFTEN wear a skirt but I have a couple of more formal outfits for when the job demands it. The smarter of the two, a dark-blue suit from one of the high-street chains, is plain but respectable. I wore it with a loose cream blouse and twisted my hair into a knot at the back of my head. It could almost have been a trainee barrister staring back at me from the bedroom mirror. From the neck down, of course.

My face was still a mess. My nose was swollen and discoloured and the bruising around both eyes, whilst fading, was still very much in evidence. The stitches were visible at my left temple and my lips were twice their normal size. Joesbury hadn’t been lying that night in hospital; my injuries were 90 per cent superficial and already improving. I was still barely recognizable though.

Every cloud, as they say.

I spent less than an hour in the office, drinking strong coffee, trying to summon up enough nerve for what I had to do. When the police left my flat the night before, it had been nearly two o’clock in the morning. They’d carried out a thorough search of the park and the alley leading up to it, but had found nothing. By the time they finished, the words ‘wild goose chase’ were practically hovering in the air above their heads. It wasn’t even as though I had anything concrete to tell them. Scuffling sounds and footsteps. It could have been anything. Anyone. I didn’t mention the music. To do so would have been to face too many unanswerable questions. I drank a third cup of coffee, collected Mizon from the next room and left the station.

First on the list were the Benn children, whose mother had been found dead the previous evening in a room sprayed liberally with her own blood. Out of respect for the immediacy of their grief, we’d arranged to see them at the home of friends, where they’d stayed overnight.

Felix Benn was twenty-six years old. I’d put his height at six two and his weight at around 180 pounds. He was a sportsman, it was clear from his walk, the way he held his shoulders, from the muscle visible through the pale-blue polo shirt. He was fair-haired, freckled, thin-faced. His younger brother, Harry, was similar but darker, maybe not so tall. Madeleine, at seventeen, was slender as a willow with long blonde hair. She was the only one who’d been visibly crying. I introduced myself and Mizon and said how sorry I was for their loss. They nodded and thanked me, three polite, well-brought-up kids.

‘Can you think of any reason why anyone might want to kill your mother?’ I asked, once I’d gone through the basics. ‘Why someone might want to kill Mrs Jones and also Mrs Weston – Mrs Briggs, as she was when you knew her?’

Felix shook his head. ‘My mother never did anyone any harm,’ he said.

I turned to Harry and Madeleine. ‘You both still live at home, I know,’ I said. ‘How did she seem yesterday morning?’

They looked at each other, then back at me. ‘Mornings are always a bit hectic,’ said Harry. ‘But she seemed OK.’

‘She was pissed off about that journalist,’ said Madeleine quietly. ‘The one that kept calling her.’

‘Someone was calling her?’ I asked.

Madeleine nodded. ‘A reporter. Calling about Geraldine and Amanda. She said she was talking to several of the mothers from the school, wanted to get a feel for what everyone thought, whether they were scared.’

‘When was this?’ asked Mizon.

‘It started a few days ago,’ Madeleine said. ‘In the end, Mum told me that if she rang again, to say she wasn’t in.’

‘Did your mother mention a name at all?’

Madeleine nodded. ‘I wrote it down. It’s in my bag in the hall.’

Mizon and I and the two boys waited while Madeleine fetched her bag. She handed a small notebook over and the two of us looked down at the name Charlotte Benn had warned her daughter about.

Emma Boston.

As Mizon drove us back to the station, I phoned in the news about Emma Boston being in contact with Charlotte Benn and was told that someone would be sent out to find her. We arrived to find that Tulloch, Anderson and several of the team were still at the public meeting over at St Joseph’s and that it had already featured on several morning news programmes and London-based radio stations. We learned that Emma had yet to be located and people in her building thought she might have gone away for a few days.

The Jones children, sons of the blonde woman who’d died in my arms the night all of this started, were waiting for us.

Jacob, aged twenty-six, had prematurely greying hair and startling blue eyes. His mother’s eyes. He was tall, with long arms and legs, good-looking and aware of it. He was a junior doctor in Sheffield. Joshua, at nineteen, was taller than his brother but very slight. We spoke to the boys for twenty minutes and got the same old story. Their mother had had no enemies. They had no idea why she had been on the Brendon Estate that night. They couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt her. They weren’t aware of her having been in contact with Charlotte Benn in years. Amanda Weston, formerly Briggs, they barely remembered.

The Weston/Briggs children, just like the two Jones boys, were sad, scared and angry. Like the Jones boys, they could tell us nothing. By the time Mizon and I had finished with them, Tulloch and the others were back. The public meeting had been an ordeal, by all accounts. Nearly seventy confused and frightened families wanting answers we didn’t have. The mothers in particular had been told to take extra care in the coming weeks, to report anything suspicious, to let people know where they were at all times, to pass on the warning to others connected with the school.

The post-mortem examination on Charlotte Benn’s body had now taken place and we’d had early results emailed through. Death had been caused by massive loss of blood when both carotid arteries were cut. She’d probably died some time between eight and ten o’clock on the morning of Monday 1 October. A little late to mark the exact anniversary of the Ripper killing, but I guess our killer had to wait for her to be home alone.

At the end of the day, I drove home, but instead of going inside, I walked to the South Bank, bought a burger and sat on a bench to eat it, watching the river that I knew couldn’t scare me any more. I sat there for as long as I could bear it, waiting for the shadow drawing closer, for the voice whispering in my ear. When I needed a change of scene I crossed Vauxhall Bridge and headed for Westminster. I kept in the open, in well-lit spaces, easy enough to spot, not too vulnerable to being jumped on. Just by the Houses of Parliament, I turned quickly on the spot and saw a dark shape disappearing into a side road. I was being watched. Impossible to tell who was watching.

Nothing happened. No one came anywhere near me. By ten o’clock, I was cold and exhausted. I made my way home and went to bed. For a few hours, I actually slept.

When I arrived at work the next morning, Mizon was finishing a cigarette at the front door. She stubbed it out as I approached.

‘Everyone’s upstairs,’ she said. ‘A woman arrived five minutes ago, asking to talk to the DI. She’s claiming she’s the next victim.’