I was just drifting through the pages when, like some sort ofconjuring trick, a creased white note slipped from the book and drifted to the cobbled pavement below me. I snatched it up before the wind would have a chance to whisk it out of my reach.
Expecting a lacklustre doodle or a harmless reminder pressed to work as some form of bookmark on her eighty-seventh read-through, I stretched out the paper against the hardback cover of the book to inspect.
It was not a doodle. The paper was enormously dense with fading scribbles in, undoubtedly, Greta’s handwriting that hadn’t changed since Year 7. A few words remained legible: ironically ‘handwriting’, a hurried ‘headlines’, and, more unsettlingly, the names of all five Telltale Killer victims up to that point. Beside each name stood a date, ranging from 2019 to 2023, and what appeared to be a different vehicle registration number beside each one. Wait a second, had Greta been investigating the case? The dates on the piece of paper didn’t match the victims’ dates of death in the slightest, so they must mean something else. What was their relevance?
For the love of God, why hadn’t I listened to Greta that night in Sabroso? What had she been trying to tell me?
At the bottom, scrawled in capitals and circled again and again, were the words:
MUST BE THE KILLER.
God, I always knew Greta was clever; two years gone and she was still reminding me of that fact. She’d solved the case of the TellTale Killer and surely, she was now handing the baton to me to finish the job.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I rang Detective Carlota straight away, but she was already knee-deep in another case; I guessed lesser criminals weren’t too willing to step aside so the Telltale Killer could hog the limelight. Plus, I presumed she would face quite a severe slap on the wrist if it came out she was still working on a case she’d been forbidden to have anything to do with. I forwarded her a photograph of Greta’s note, and she sneaked away to a stairwell to begin analysing and dissecting it. But she was just as confused and perplexed as me. The relevance of the dates? The number plates that were scribbled beside them? It didn’t seem to connect in any coherent way.
‘Run it past me again,’ she whispered, clearly avoiding unwelcome ears who may be in her vicinity.
‘So, the ink’s faded with time a little. I guess Greta’s pen must have been dying anyway, but I think she must have known who the Telltale Killer was. The note lists five different number plates, each beside each victim’s name, and then a date. The dates seem random, all falling between 2019 and 2023, and I can’t find any kind of pattern,’ I said, almost breathless with nerves and panic.
Greta, I thought to myself,what are you trying to tell me?
‘Look,’ said Detective Carlota hurriedly, clearly she was being pressured by some nearby force to hang up. ‘We have a windowbefore Jago unwraps the parcel and the headlines erupt. For now, sit tight, I’ll drop by tonight and we can go through it together. Please don’t do anything stupid or impulsive, okay? We need to bereallycareful here.’
‘Of course,’ I lied. Sitting tight wasn’t really in my nature – just ask Mrs Lambert and Justin. I had been given an incredible clue here, a few loose strands in this case, and I intended to pull them together tight.
Two people were already dead, and I knew that once the deposited heart made the headlines, the killer would soon be on the rampage for his next victim. He would be angry, furious. It felt as though a clock had already started ticking and I wasn’t about to let another person die. I couldn’t let there be one more Greta.
‘Hello?’ Nico said with a modicum of hesitation I could hear in his voice as he picked up the phone. I wasn’t 100 per cent sure it was him at first; it had admittedly been just over a week since I had last heard his voice. It was deeper and more baritone than I remembered. All credit to him for picking up. If it were me, I’d have ignored the unknown number and googled it like everyone else does.
‘Hi, Nico, it’s Ruth. Not sure if you remember me, we met a week or so ago, with Chlo and Oscar.’
‘Oh, Ruth,’ he said with a delivery and diction I couldn’t quite read. Was he happy to hear from me, or regretting even owning a phone that I could contact him on? ‘Yeah, I remember.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Err, may I ask how you got my number?’
‘Ah…’ I began, aware it was important not to come across as a stalker or my plan would fall apart quite quickly. Chlo did confirm that this guy had thought I was fit, which I hoped would hold me in good stead. ‘I asked Chlo, who I guess got it off Oscar. Look, I know this is a bit of a weird thing to ask, but you said you worked at TFL security, right?’
‘Yeah, I do.’ I could easily sense the sudden shift to nervousness in his voice. I suppose it was a bit of a rather odd phone call for him, some gal from a bad first date calls you up out of the blue and then starts asking you specifics about your job.
‘So, peculiar request: would it be possible for someone like me to look at some security footage from, say, two years ago?’
‘Well, I mean, it’s possible,’ he said, a little dazed. ‘I just need to warn you that it needs to go through a lot of processes before we can give it the thumbs-up to be released. I can help you fill in the form to put in a request if you’d like, that’s no trouble. Maybe we can meet up for a coffee and I can?—’
‘So,’ I interrupted, I had no time to let him finish the end of his sentence, ‘this may sound a bit crazy, but I was wondering if you would be able to help me right now? It’s a pretty time-sensitive issue.’
‘Now? I mean, now may be a bit hard, Ruth. You would need to travel to our offices for a start,’ he replied.
‘Oh, well, yeah, that’s true. It’s just…’ I decided now would be an appropriate time. ‘I’m actually outside your office right now.’
I was beginning to wonder, on a scale of one to ten, how crazy he thought I was. Eleven? It just felt like it would be harder for him to say no if he knew I was only outside.
‘Right,’ he said, elongating the vowel before he aspirated the sharp clip of the ‘t’, weighing up the options in his mind I imagine. Did the words ‘bunny boiler’ bounce around his mind? How bad would he feel if he saw a muscular security man tackle a small woman to the pavement while he watched out of a window above. ‘So, what, you just want to look at security footage?’
‘Yeah. From two years ago,’ I said, clarifying the time frame again.
‘Right, okay,’ he murmured and then expelled what sounded like a long, slightly weary breath. ‘Stay right there, I’ll come down and get you.’
Nico came down to the lobby promptly to fetch me, sporting a look of trepidation on his face. I tried my best to summon a big grinand wave so that he wouldn’t suspect I was here for any kind of malicious purpose. However, he still regarded me with a rather strained smile and a tense, clenched jaw as I curled my arms around him in a light, friendly hug. It was not a full-on bear hug but rather the kind you give when a handshake would simply feel far too awkward.
