“Yeah, Charlotte is… was… very funny.” Jessica looks down at her hands and then rubs her eyes. “It was days before old Wentworth-Brand noticed what she’d done. That was the funniest assembly ever. He came in holding a framed photo of Steve Buscemi. One hundred percent of pupils were in hysterics. Even Old Wen-B saw the funny side, in the end.”
“Did Charlotte have a boyfriend, Jessica?” the male officer asks, and the atmosphere in the room shifts.
Jessica shakes her head, clenches and unclenches her fingers. “Charlotte had a huge crush on this guy from—”
“What’s his name please?” the male officer asks, pen poised.
“No, you don’t understand,” Jessica says. “He’s called Charlie Heaton—”
“And does Charlie go to your school?”
“No, Charlie’s fromStranger Things.”
“What’s that?” the officer pushes.
“It’s a TV show,” DC Chloe Spears clarifies for her colleague.
“Charlotte didn’t have any real-life crushes,” Jessica says. “We’re only thirteen—well, Charlotte just had her fourteenth birthday… All we do is go to school, do homework, play netball, hang out and watch shows. Sometimes we go to the café for bubble tea. Charlotte loved mango balls in hers, which costs an additional two pounds fifty, but she thought it was worth it.”
“They’re just children,” the woman behind Jessica says, her voice soft.
“Was Charlotte raped?” Jessica asks suddenly and her mother gasps. “That’s why you’re asking about boys, isn’t it? I read that the Metropolitan Police drops more than ninety-five percent of rape cases without charging the men who—”
“I’m afraid we can’t disclose—” the male officer begins, but DC Spears holds up her hand to silence him.
“We have no evidence of sexual assault, Jessica,” she says in almost a whisper.
Sam smiles. There’s no way that Spears should have disclosed that information, but Sam is pleased she did. In the video, Jessica begins to cry and say “good” and “thank God” again and again. Sam feels a wet drop land on her wrist and looks down, only then realizing that she is crying, too. The tightness in Sam’s chest has now established a viselike grip and she rises from her desk, quickly closing down the video clip without reaching the end of Jessica’s interview. She promises herself she’ll watch the rest later, forcing herself not to think about Past Sam, who would have moved through such a recording with quiet determination and her emotions in check.
At the next desk over, her trainee DC has found his way back from the nonexistent lower basement and now has his nose inHow to Get Away with Murder.He’s scribbling notes and highlighting his copy as he goes. Everyone else on the fourth floor is still working, and likely to do so well after their shift ends. Sam hesitates for a moment, then stands. She pulls on her coat and slides Charlotte’s file into her handbag, along with Denver’s book. Her first day back at work is over; she can’t take a moment more. She’s not only exhausted, she’s famished, too.
London is already full of evening traffic—theatergoers and commuters on their way home mingle with tourists and university students. Across the river, directly opposite HQ, the London Eye turns steadily and the tiny people in the glass bubbles look out at Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge. Sam doesn’t want to be among the throng longer than she has to, but she can’t face her messy terrace house right now.
She makes her way along Embankment, then toward Charing Cross tube station. The Kit Kat Club is advertising a show starring Eddie Redmayne and Elton John, which strikes her as an unusual combination. For a moment, she pictures Eddie swaying along to “Candle in the Wind” and she realizes she’s smiling to herself. Her chest is easing. A little farther along the street is asecret alley called Craven Passage. Sam turns down it toward the Ship and Shovel, a brightly painted pub with a bloodred facade, barrels for outdoor tables and seats hidden in ancient alcoves.
Inside the Ship and Shovel is Victorian England, and Sam relishes the trip back in time, as well as an anachronistic but delicious chargrilled double cheeseburger, which she ordered at the bar. As Sam sinks into a desperately creaky hundred-year-old chair, she exhales deeply, looking up at portraits of British ships and explorers from days of yore. Perhaps some of her ancestors came to this pub. Maybe they ice-skated on the Thames and wore face masks indoors so as to not suffocate from the fog that seeped into their homes.Did Denver Brady’s ancestors skate on the Thames, she wonders?
If Denver even exists at all. He feels very much alive in Sam’s mind, but she knows better than to trust her tattered instincts. What niggles at Sam as she devours her dinner is Denver’s specificity. The shale quarry. The book on Mary Ann Cotton. His cousin, Bobby. Jono’s stutter and pale skin. The devil’s always in the detail, as the saying goes.
As any true-crime fan knows, though, communication can lead the police straight to the door—so why do it? Why write a book? Perhaps that old adage that every serial killer wants to be caught holds some truth. And who can blame them? A world of celebrity awaits. Maybe Denver wants to be found, or maybe he’ll divulge more about his true reasons for taking up the pen in the coming chapters.
There are other cases of serial killers who’ve written books, Sam remembers. Denver isn’t alone in that. Sure, most tend to write treatises aimed at justifying their crimes, like theUnabomber Manifestoby Ted Kaczynski.Didn’t police catch Kaczynski by using that book?, she wonders. Then there are the numerous serial killers who have written books after they were caught.
How many killers have flaunted themselves as publicly as Denver while still at large? One comes to mind immediately: HappyFace, an American serial killer whom the police misidentified and left to operate unimpeded across the country for years, just as Denver claims he has. Rather than a book, he contacted the police with notes and long letters.
Then there’s the Zodiac Killer. He sent letters and ciphers to law enforcement via newspapers, and even called up a talk show for an on-air interview. Years later, a man named Eddie Seda became a fame-seeking copycat of Zodiac, choosing victims according to their star sign. Could Denver be a real killer, and Charlotte’s murderer an admiring copycat? That would mean the Met has two killers on their hands. Sam swallows the thought. She takes a sip of her lime and soda and refocuses.
Wearside Jack taunted the police with voice notes sent on cassette tapes. He claimed to be the Yorkshire Ripper but was in fact innocent of murder—a fantasist who diverted valuable attention and resources away from the investigation.Is it possible, she wonders,that Denver’s book is completely fictional, the product of overexposure to crime entertainment and a deep-rooted fear of vaginas?Charlotte’s real murderer could have simply taken Denver’s work of fiction and used it to deflect police attention toward finding the author ofHow to Get Away with Murderinstead of the child’s actual killer.
Sam places her knife and fork together and dabs her mouth with her napkin. So, Denver could be a serial killer who murdered Charlotte; he could be a real killer who did not kill Charlotte but inspired a copycat; or he could have made the whole thing up and simply be a distraction. Any of the three options are equally possible at this stage.
The pub is getting busy and loud, but Sam still has no desire to return to her lonely home in Clapham, so she orders herself a mocktail. Sam’s never been a drinker—she’s always considered the drunk detective too much of a cliché. The one time she allowed herself to let her hair down was when she and her ex-colleaguecommiserated over a grisly cold case they couldn’t get reopened. The night that Phil Lowry accidentally bought a whole bottle for her, instead of a single glass. She should have seen it coming.
Sam takes a slow sip of her virgin drink, savoring the fruitiness, and pulls Charlotte’s file from her bag. The file should never leave the office, strictly speaking, and she takes care that no one else is close enough to see as she pushes the envelope marked “Crime Scene Photos” aside and begins to read the front-page summary.
Charlotte Mathers was walking home when she was killed. Charlotte went to her friend Jessica Patel’s house every Thursday after netball practice and Nigel Mathers usually collected his daughter at 8 p.m. sharp. On the night in question, Nigel had fallen asleep and failed to arrive, even after numerous missed calls from his daughter.
When her dad didn’t show, Charlotte had told her friend she would simply walk the thirty-minute route home. Jessica said Charlotte was completely herself that evening, and confirmed that Nigel had failed to collect Charlotte a couple of times before and this always worried her, so she’d been eager to get home. Jessica’s older brother, Jamil, backed up his sister’s statement, saying that Charlotte left their house on foot at around 9 p.m.
