Sam orders an Uber and steps out at Jessica and Jamil Patel’s home. Using the map that DC Chen had built from CCTV alongside her phone app, she traces Charlotte’s precise route to HollandPark and arrives at the entrance. Dog walkers are everywhere and she wishes she’d brought little Toni—he’d love the park. She’s been teaching him how to play fetch, using treats and a squeaky ball.Next time, she thinks.
Sam follows in Charlotte’s footsteps, going in through the gate and taking an immediate left, passing the miniature hedges and flower beds. The path sweeps around in a large arch and Sam follows it until she comes to a small path shooting off to the left. It leads away from the main route and has lower-level solar lighting, rather than the tall, overhead streetlights of the larger path.Why would you go this way, Charlotte?Sam thinks to herself. It might have saved the girl a few minutes, but surely…? She must have been really worried about Nigel. But why?
Sam takes the footpath until she comes to the oak trees. A pair of green parakeets sit preening each other on a branch. The park is less cultivated here, and feels more wild and natural. The grass is longer and the bushes provide a lot of ground cover. The path rises slightly and drops back down, creating a hidden area of undergrowth to Sam’s left. She has no trouble finding the tree. There’s a mountain of teddy bears and flowers beneath the oak that mark it out.
Sam walks over the grass, stands in front of the tree and looks around. At night, this place would be invisible from the main path. Why would any girl come this way? Even if Charlotte was highly concerned for her father. Unless she was with someone? A raw section of trunk catches Sam’s eye. She steps closer, recognizing the spot where the love heart with CM + DB used to be. The forensic team have carved away the branded bark, but the tree will bear the scar forever.
The pieces are all in front of her—she can feel it.
“Why can’t I get it?” she mutters. “Why can’t I solve it?”
Sam looks from the scratched-away love heart to the cards and teddies, flowers and letters, their ink running inside of plasticpackets. She picks a few up. Notes from friends, teachers, strangers. Sam replaces each one and begins arranging those that have fallen over into a neat pile. Sam’s breath catches when she picks up a card titled “Niece.” She prizes it open, but the ink has run and is no longer legible.
“Why didn’t Charlotte call you that night, Jack?” Sam asks aloud. “Was it just because she knew you were out? Or…”
Mind whirring, Sam pulls her phone from her pocket and opens a map application, typing in the name of the pub in Brenham where Jack Mathers was the night his niece died. Over five miles away. Feeling like a rookie private investigator, Sam googles how long it would take to run that distance. Between thirty and seventy-two minutes for the average person, Google says.
“Well, that’s helpful,” Sam mumbles frustratedly to herself. Jack Mathers couldn’t have left the party for more than an hour without his absence being noticed. His phone didn’t disconnect from the pub’s Wi-Fi at all, even though he claims to have left to go to a shop. No witnesses reported him being sweaty or out of breath, so he can’t have run. The pathologist confirmed that it would have taken at least fifteen minutes to murder and pose Charlotte, and then there’s the carving of the love heart on the tree, which would also have taken time.
The love heart on the tree…
Sam feels the pieces slotting slowly into place, and lets her eyes continue to roam to the wound on the trunk where the carving was. She remembers that the expert confirmed the carving itself was fresh, and that it would have taken at least half an hour to make, and required tools. That’s a long time to risk lingering at a crime scene, with a bag of chisels and a dead child beside you. It must have been carved before the murder. Sometime earlier that day. But that would only have been possible if the killer had known Charlotte’s route in advance.
Sam’s skin prickles and she knows she’s close to something.She lets her mind run over the sequence of events once more. Someone concealed a tracker in Charlotte’s school bag. Carved the love heart. Then waited for Charlotte to walk through the park on her way home. Charlotte only came this way because it was an emergency and she was concerned for her father, who wasn’t answering the phone. No one could have known that Nigel would fall asleep and fail to pick Charlotte up that particular night…
It clicks.
Just like that, Sam knows who murdered Charlotte Mathers. She knows how. She even thinks she might know why.
“My God,” she says under her breath. She gives herself a moment, staring skyward and letting the tears come. She takes deep lungfuls of air, feeling a new, heady lightness in her chest, then pulls out her phone, a trembling finger hovering over the call button.Call Taylor,she thinks.Get a warrant, make an arrest.She’ll be the hero who solved Charlotte’s murder. She’ll prove everyone wrong who thought she wasn’t up to the task: Tina Edris, Dr. Pete Thomson… Even herself.
Tina’s words roll through her mind once again:Blakelaw has only made you joint SIO because he needs plenty of heads in line to roll before his own.Then Sam pictures the moment she told her godfather about DS Lowry grabbing her and sliding his fingers up her inner thigh. She remembers the look in Harry’s eyes as he sighed and asked her if it was a case ofhe said, she said.
“You know I believe you, Sam, but we both know how these things go,” he’d said. “I only want what’s best for you.” She’d thrown up in his wastepaper bin. He’d taken her home, told her to leave it with him and he’d see that it alljust went away. Sam remembers finding out a few days later that Harry had pulled strings, called in favors and seen Lowry transferred to another police force. Transferred with promotion, that is. Sam remembers the weeks that followed. The nightmares, the depression, the fear. Then the giant panic attack at work that saw an ambulance calledand Sam carried out of the fourth-floor office, not strong enough to return for six months.
Sam takes a deep breath.
“Fuck Prozac,” she says, “and fuck Harry.”
Sam hits dial.
It’s time to start doing things differently. It’s time for her to take back control of her own story.
Chapter Sixteen
The room erupts in applause and whoops when DI Tina Edris steps out of the lift. She smiles and raises her hands in a gesture of thanks. Her eyes meet Sam’s and the women exchange an imperceptible nod. Four floors below them, Jack Mathers sits in a cell, waiting for DI Edris and Harry to interview him on suspicion of murdering his niece.
“I still don’t get how Jack did it,” Chloe says from somewhere behind her. “Jack was miles away. He has an alibi. He didn’t have time to kill Charlotte and carve that heart. He couldn’t have known she’d be walking home that night.”
“He followed Denver’s advice,” Sam says, sitting down at her desk.
“He didn’t have time, ma’am,” Taylor argues. “The heart would have taken—”
“To be honest, we should have realized sooner.” She sighs. “Jack simply put a tracker in Charlotte’s school bag, then he drugged Nigel a couple of times and watched Charlotte’s route home. He carved the heart into the tree in advance and then he—”
“Why, though?” Taylor asks. “This is his family.”
“Money,” Chloe says flatly. “Nigel inherited all the family wealth because Jack was on drugs and all sorts back when their father—Charlotte’s grandfather—died. Jack wanted the money.”
