Fade to Black (13 page)

She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror even as she sped down the narrow ramps from level four. Her hair
definitely
needed attention. Damn, why hadn’t she had it done last week? She knew why, of course. There had been no one in her life to dress up for over the past six months. Eric had left her in a blaze of self-recrimination over his newly-discovered ‘gayness’ and while he left her well provided for, with money and property courtesy of his flourishing real estate business, he had caused her much embarrassment socially, to the extent that she could no longer stand the sideways looks from people she had considered friends. Hence, the last few months had been simply miserable for her. Well, she’d not put on weight—worry had seen to that—and the girls at the office said she still looked like the pretty cover girl she’d been twenty years ago. Her legs were still great, and after her hair was ‘re-blonded’ this afternoon, well, who knew? Maybe the dark, lonely days of the past six months were all about to be put behind her.

Chapter Ten

10:35 a.m.

Allie finally slid out from under DCS Carr’s office door after the biggest bollocking she had ever had in her life. Her father’s annoyance long ago when she had crashed her scooter against his brand-new (purchased that day) Mercedes 300SL now seemed positively benign in retrospect. Allie had never seen Carr blow a gasket like that before—and she had seen her with her fuse well and truly lit.

Still reeling, on a whim, she texted:
So where were u then, Angel?

The reply appeared immediately:
Hey
,
that’s one scary woman
.

DC Connors caught her wry smile. “Something funny?”

The humor went out of it for Allie then and there. She checked her watch. “Ok, sorry, Mathew. I’m running late for our meeting. Got your file together?” She led him to her office and waved a hand for him to sit at the chair that was pulled up at her desk, not the soft ‘lounge’ chairs reserved for informal chats.

She asked him what he had gleaned from Mr. Lin, the owner of the Bamboo Dragon restaurant. Connors flipped open his thin manila folder, carefully picking his way through to a particular piece of white A4 paper, on which Allie could see three blocks of handwritten text.

“Mr. Yeow Chin Lin has owned the Bamboo Dragon for nine years…”

Allie listened, albeit distractedly, while Connors ran through his report. There was nothing remarkable in it and she said so. She was still perturbed by the thought that Connors might have leaked information to the media about the case. Why he might do that, she couldn’t imagine, but decided not to raise it for the moment.

It seemed Mr. Lin from the Golden Bamboo restaurant had not seen or heard anything prior to discovering the body, when he carted out an empty oil drum and threw it in the corner of the laneway at about 11:20 p.m. It had been a quiet night, presumably because of the inclement weather, and the last customers—a middle-age couple—had left at about 10:30 p.m. Mr. Lin claimed he and two staff had packed up and cleaned the kitchen, and Mr. Lin had been the last person at the restaurant.

Allie studied Mathew for a moment, noting the very dark circles under his eyes and his pasty face. He was near done-in. She quietly asked if he’d personally checked the kitchen at the restaurant.

Mathew was clearly surprised by the question. “No, I didn’t. Do you think I should have?”

“How do you know Lin cleaned the kitchen? Just because he said so?”

Mathew looked uncomfortable and said he’d had no reason to doubt Mr. Lin.

“The girl didn’t murder herself, Matthew. What, our Chinese brethren don’t commit murder?”

He flushed. Allie sighed and looked away. She was tired as well and probably irritable because of it, but by any measure, this was hardly an impressive start from Connors. She didn’t think Mr. Lin had committed the murder either, but assumption was the mother of all cock-ups. Theoretically, Lin could have murdered the girl after the last customers had left, then called the police. It was highly unlikely, but there had been time, so who could rule it out at this point? She changed tack.

“Have you secured copies of all the credit card transactions, then?” Her slight exasperation unmasked.

Relieved, Connors said he had and that they were currently being sorted by another officer.

“Alright, get someone on the phones as soon as you can. We need to talk to every customer from last night. How many transactions are there?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Not unmanageable—that’s good. Does Mr. Lin know any of the customers personally?”

Connors looked down at the floor. “Sorry, I didn’t ask. I assumed he didn’t, I suppose.”

There it was again—assumption and maybe a little racism lurking under it. What the hell was wrong with him? Connors was a better detective than this. Yes, he was tired, but even last night he’d failed to interview Mr. Lin immediately.

“Did you look at any of the names on the receipts? Quite apart from anybody else, Chinese people eat at Chinese restaurants—that’s why the restaurants were established in the first place. Besides, he may have many friends—Chinese or not—who support his restaurant. I could see last night that he was an outgoing type; he will know something about most of his customers.”

Connors simply nodded. Allie rocked back in her chair and looked at him. Something was badly amiss here.

“Mathew, what’s the problem? Is everything alright?”

He looked stunned by the question, but recognized that she was giving him a chance to explain his lack of performance. It was a gift under the circumstances.“Al…” he hesitated, “DCI St. Clair, I don’t quite know. I saw that girl and I just stopped thinking, I guess. I’ve never seen such… sick brutality. God almighty, it’s inhuman!”

Inhuman
.
Yes
, she thought,
according to Michael, that’s exactly what it is.
What to do about Connors though? He wanted to be assigned to the case, but was buckling at the knees already. Clearly, he had not conquered his revulsion from last night.

“I understand. And I agree; it’s a shocking thing for anyone to witness. What she must have endured doesn’t bear thinking about. But, we
do
have to think about it. And thoroughly—every grizzly, evil, bloody aspect of it. That’s our job and you know it as well as I do.” She was repeating the mantra she had used on herself.

“Yes, of course.” Connors fiddled with his collar and shifted constantly in his seat.

“You still want to run with it?” Allie asked the question, but was unsure what she wanted the answer to be. Either way, it could represent a problem. Her previous confidence in him had plummeted in the space of ten minutes. Connors nodded; he still wanted in.

“Let’s get hold of the forensic report first and take it from there,” she said finally. “Please ask everyone to convene in the conference room in thirty minutes.”

She watched Connors stumble from her office and made a decision. She would involve herself directly in this case. She alone knew what they were really up against—or thought she did.

*****

Margaret Daly delivered the forensic report to Allie a couple of minutes after Connors left the office. Allie asked her to distribute copies to DC’s Banks, Connors, and Wilkinson and with some hesitation, added DS Strauss to the list. She also asked Daly to make sure everyone knew to gather in the conference room—‘the green room’ as it was known, at 11:00 a.m. It was already getting late—the briefing should already have been completed. Allie was keen to see the pathologist’s report, which she knew would not be available for another hour.

The forensic report from the crime scene was comprehensive, as she had come to expect from Forensic Services, and contained about thirty A4 pages and as many photographs. The events of the previous night rushed back into her thoughts, including the moment when she could have sworn the girl had flown at her. It had seemed absolutely real.

She felt the prickle of sweat on her back as she remembered her horror. She also remembered the sound of breaking glass. She suddenly wondered where Michael was at that moment and looked at her phone, half expecting him to text her. But it remained silent. Perhaps he really had gone to Portobello Road to browse the antique shops as he had threatened. His petulance still surprised her. He was a strange… man… thing, alright. She shook her head as if to purge it of an unwanted intrusion, like a dog shaking a flea from its ear.
The whole supernatural aspect is just too much
, she thought for the umpteenth time.

She quickly read the report, which covered the technical details of the scene, a broad description of the injuries to the young woman, and physical evidence on site: the wine bottle, scraps of clothing, shoes and blood. No murder weapon had been identified, nor had the victim, for that matter. Only one set of DNA had been found—presumably the young woman’s–but they were not matched on file. Somebody’s parents or boyfriend weren’t too worried about her whereabouts either; no missing persons report had been filed that morning.

If the forensic report was a bit dry, the photographs made up for it. The photographer—a Mr. Everett Blight in this case—had done a good job in the atrocious, wet conditions, perhaps too good. The brightly lit, color images were profoundly disturbing and Allie unconsciously put her hand to her mouth. By the third photograph, her eyes had misted over. Her breath came again in short bursts as images from last night merged with those in front of her. Even the smell burst back, causing her to dry-retch noisily. Margaret Daly’s head jerked up outside her glass-paneled office. Jumping to her feet, Allie spun and, parting the thin venetian blinds, opened her tiny window. She looked out of her office window, down towards Broadway.

The Feathers Inn stood right in her line of sight. Breathing slowly, she brought herself under control again. She turned from the window and half-lowered herself into her chair before straightening again and turning back to the window. Something was not right. She pulled the braided cord, hoisted the blinds to the top of the window and stared out onto the streets again. She saw it immediately–the color of everything was… different. There was a gray pallor to the sky and a similar washed-out look to the buildings, even the cars moving along Broadway. She looked through St. Anne’s Gate towards St James’ Park, which abutted the Mall and Buckingham Palace. Even through the narrow lane and archway, she could see the pale trees and the faded stonework of the once-tan palace. It all looked like a sun-damaged impressionist painting. The light had changed. Color blindness sprang to mind. Surely, it couldn’t happen just like that.

She turned back to face the office. Margaret stood in her doorway, a deeply concerned look directed at her. But it wasn’t
exactly
Margaret.

Allie stared at her long enough for the middle-aged woman to fidget uncomfortably. “Ma’am?” Margaret finally breathed. “Is everything alright?”

Allie snapped out of her sepia-colored zone and refocused on the hunched figure before her. She looked normal enough now, but a moment ago she could have sworn Margaret had red blotches on her throat, eyes that seemed to have shrunken to pinpricks and hair that had three distinct colors to it: brown, orange and gray. Very gray. It was as if she had glimpsed the unadorned Margaret, devoid of makeup, artificial hair color and pride. Allie had seen a frightened, gray rabbit desperately trying to disguise its real self. And she could smell her fear.

Allie finally managed a laugh. “Sorry, Margaret. I was deep in thought!”

Margaret sighed and manufactured a half-smile in return. Allie had clearly frightened her. Margaret was all but backing out of the room.

“Don’t suppose you could rustle up a cup of tea and a biscuit, by any chance?”

This broke the spell and Margaret returned to her safety zone. Allie
saw
it happen. Once again, the colors in the room paled. Margaret’s skin faded to a cool blue around her neck and her face regained a pinky hue. Allie watched as the pupils in her eyes returned to normal size as blood returned through the minute spider web of veins surrounding the pupils. Her hair remained multi-colored though—it looked embarrassingly bad to Allie. Funny, she never noticed it before. Allie quickly shifted her gaze in case she spooked Margaret again by staring too hard at her.

To her relief, Margaret simply uttered a cheery, 'right you are,' and scuttled off toward the tearoom.

Allie fell back into her high-back chair and exhaled hard.
What was
that
about?
she wondered. She looked down between her outstretched fingers at the old desk she had inherited from Billy McBride and decided to concentrate on it to see what might happen. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds, the fibers in the wood leapt out at her. She could clearly see ink marks, graphite ridges from lead pencils, old phone numbers that had been unsuccessfully erased, stains—ones she hoped were just the result of spilt coffee and tea—fragments of paper lodged in the minute crevices in the wood grain and scratches—hundreds of tiny scratches. She ‘unfocused’ her gaze and everything returned to normal—colors, light, everything. She looked again at the desk and saw nothing of the previous vision. She pinched her nose high up and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, hard enough to make them water. ‘Weird’ was all her inner monologue could offer.

It hit her then that something was missing. The photographs—there was something about the photographs. She reached for the huge manila envelope and emptied the contents out on to her desk. There were nineteen 10x12 photos in all. She suspended her revulsion as best she could and carefully studied each one.

Margaret arrived with the tea and a mountain of chocolate-coated biscuits. Allie smiled as she saw the feast appear on the corner of her desk. Chocolate biscuits were not the normal morning tea fare. Margaret had made a special effort; clearly, she had a stash of ‘special’ biscuits and Allie made a mental note to remember that. She thanked Margaret without taking her eyes from the photos, mostly because she was afraid she’d now see Margaret in digital Technicolor and they’d both freak out.