‘Can I get you another tea?’ He smiles. ‘It might even be hot this time.’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘OK then. Let’s get back to last night, shall we?’
His voice is calm, measured. Friendly. And his smile is almost paternal. But he leaves another long pause for me to speak. I hold his gaze until he finally breaks the silence.
‘Why don’t you just tell us, Ellen?’ His voice is soft, no edge to it. ‘Get it off your chest.’
‘Ihavetold you. I just did.’
‘But you’ve left us with a three-and-a-half-hour window that we can’t account for. At 3.06 p.m. we’ve got you on camera leaving Marylebone with someone else’s child, then entering a café on St George Street eleven minutes later, where you stayed for sixteen minutes. After that, nothing. A big blank, until officers are called to Bassingham Road on the King’s Meadow industrial estate just before 7 p.m., where they find you running around with the child and a gun, covered in blood. Kathryn Clifton is nowhere to be found, your so-called kidnapper is nowhere to be found, and I’m just struggling to fill in those three and a half-hours, to corroborate anything you’ve said so far.’ He smiles at me, spreading his hands. ‘Help me out?’
‘I’ve told you. Everything.’
‘Hmm.’ Gilbourne frowns, studying me again over the top of his glasses. ‘Let’s go over it again, shall we?’
18
Dominic
The stitches were a dull, constant throb in his cheek, the whole side of his face tender to the touch. He washed at the cracked sink, the cold water shocking him awake and lighting up fresh lines of pain that radiated from the wound. He patted his face dry with the thin towel. The stitches were still holding, each surrounded by puffy red skin against a darkening purple bruise. He covered it with a fresh plaster but his face still looked a mess. Sleep had come in fragments, a string of blood-soaked dreams from which he’d finally jerked awake after a couple of hours, but there was nothing to be done about that. Time was running out and he had to move soon.
He took her phone from the pocket of his bomber jacket and sat down on the small bed. He wasn’t good with technical stuff but he knew enough to get what he needed before she could get home, log into another device and lock the phone or wipe it remotely. There was nothing particularly sophisticated or technical about it. He opened the phone with her unlock pattern, scrolled through a couple of screens until he found the Google Maps app, selected it and watched as it zoomed in on his current location. He tapped the search bar and immediately the screen was populated with all her address searches for this week, last week and prior. Oxford, Northolt, Chiswick.
At the top of the list, with little blue icons next to them, were two words: ‘Home’ and ‘Work’.
He clicked on ‘Home’ and the map scrolled, pulling out then zooming in again until it came to rest, a spidery route laid out in blue dots from his location to hers. He switched to satellite map and studied the top-down street view. A neat neighbourhood of newbuild houses and small gardens, parallel streets above and below it, not far from the A40.
Claverton Gardens, South Greenford.
He clicked on the car icon.
22 minutes (3.7 miles) fastest route.
It was a postcode, no house number. He came out of Google Maps and scrolled more apps until he found one for Outlook email. He scrolled her inbox briefly, then the list of folders until he found what he was looking for. A recent Amazon delivery confirmation, complete with her full address.
I see you. I know where you live.
He took a screengrab of the address and texted it to the number of the new SIM for his next burner phone. The work address was near Bond Street. He googled it and clicked on the first result. It looked as if she’d been telling the truth about her job, at least. He screengrabbed that as well. It would be useful to keep in reserve in case there were more complications. Still using her phone, he did a search for news stories, scanned the first few results. Just the usual lies and bullshit, half-truths and police propaganda regurgitated by the media. He retrieved a USB drive from his backpack and connected it to her phone, downloading her address book, message history, picture gallery and the contents of her email inbox. With the download complete, he switched off her phone, extracted the SIM card and snapped it in two, before smashing the screen of the phone with the butt of his knife, bringing it down again and again until the mobile was a shattered wreck. He swept the cracked plastic and metal fragments into the small, sticky bin by the bed and took his remaining burner phones out of the backpack – only three left now – unwrapping the nearest one and inserting the new SIM card. He plugged it in to charge.
He emptied the rest of her purse. Credit card, debit card, stamps, gym membership, organ donor card, Costa loyalty card, a few receipts. No driver’s licence. No family photos in the little plastic window; no snapshots tucked into any of the pockets. He pressed the soft leather between his fingers, feeling for anything metal sewed into the lining. Picked up his knife and ripped into it, tearing open the lining and separating all the pieces until he was satisfied there were no GPS devices inside. He pocketed the cash and threw the rest into the bin. Better to burn it, to dispose of it properly, but there was no time for that.
The knife had a custom-made sheath that strapped to the inside of his left forearm, so it was concealed but could be drawn quickly. He stood up and strapped it to his arm and put his bomber jacket on over the top.
Finally, he took out a folded picture from his own wallet. He kept nothing digitally, no images, moving from one burner phone to the next without leaving a footprint behind. It was as close to off-grid as he could get, but he hadn’t been able to give up this picture, the printed image already starting to wear and crease where he had folded and unfolded it so many times. He allowed himself a moment to stare at the picture, his eyes travelling over her face, her lips, her cheeks, her eyes. He had to get to her before it was too late. Before anyone realised who she was.Whatshe was.
He had found her once. He could find her again.
And this time, he would do what needed to be done.
19
DI Gilbourne
Gilbourne took a long drag on his cigarette, looking out over the street lights on Northolt Road.
He liked it up here after hours. The city was asleep, laid out beneath him. The streets quiet, the night air cold and sharp in his lungs, the good people of the city asleep in their beds. He did some of his best thinking up here when it was like this. He was on the fourth-floor fire escape, the door wedged open with a fire extinguisher dragged in from the hallway. It was the only place in the whole building where you could smoke without setting off the fire alarm or having one of the young snowflakes coughing and covering their mouth. The chief had forbidden officers from smoking out the front of any station, anywhere that was visible to the public – it didn’tsend the right message, apparently, to have cops smoking when there was police work to do – so the few remaining smokers congregated at the rear of the building in a scrubby patch of gravel next to the vehicle compound. He didn’t mind making small talk with the other twenty-a-day pariahs, but sometimes he liked to have a few minutes alone with his vices of choice.
