The Reckoning (43 page)

The superintendent’s return prevented Derwent from replying, which was probably just as well.

‘Right. We’ve got the all-clear to handle this.’ He put the data stick in Colin’s outstretched hand. ‘No prints, unsurprisingly. She’ll send the swabs off for analysis. I wouldn’t count on getting anything off it though.’

‘Well, let’s have a look at the files, assuming there are any.’ Colin stuck it into the USB port and the machine whirred obediently. ‘Huh. Okay. That’s interesting. There’s a Word file called “Dear Maeve”.’ He looked up at me. ‘That’s you, presumably.’

‘You’d think,’ I agreed. ‘Go on.’

‘Then there’s a folder of picture files. It’s called “Album One”. And the last thing, in a folder called “Present” is a video file called … well, called that.’ He pointed. The title of the video file was a meaningless collection of letters and numbers jumbled together. ‘That suggests it was copied off a website. You’d never name a file that, but a website might host it with that tag.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘Okay,’ Godley said. ‘A picture paints a thousand words, but give us “Dear Maeve” first so we know what we’re supposed to be looking at.’

‘What if it’s private?’ I was trying to sound amused, but my heart was thumping.

‘We’ll forget we read it. Come on. Open it.’

It seemed to take an age for the file to open. I leaned in, aware that all of us were doing the same thing. Rob and Liv had to crane to see from where they were standing, but I had a grandstand view from behind Colin’s shoulder.

Dear Maeve
,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue. I’m afraid you don’t know me, but I know you. I hope that doesn’t scare you
.

I wanted to give you a present to say thank you for all the entertainment. You wouldn’t believe how long it’s taken me to find something special. What do you get the policewoman who has everything?

I found this and I thought of you. I think you’ll like it. I hope it’s what you’ve been looking for
.

You need to smile more, Maeve. You’re so pretty when you smile. Do you see what I mean?

Maybe not yet. But you will
.

With love,
Your admirer
.

‘What the fuck is he on about?’ Derwent said.

I had a deep feeling of foreboding. ‘Open the images.’ Colin selected them and opened them all, so the screen filled with picture after picture, layered on top of one another. As they flashed up in turn, I felt the blood drain from my face. I shouldn’t have been surprised –I had seen what was in the letter – but I couldn’t quite believe that the images were of me. All of them. Me outside my house, talking to a passing window-cleaner who had nearly taken me out with his ladder. Me in the corner shop chatting to the guy behind the till while I paid. Walking along in the sunshine on the phone, laughing, in jeans and a cotton top. Through my living-room window, me sitting on the sofa, my head turned to say something to someone out of sight. Walking against the wind, my hair flying behind me as I hurried down the street. On the last leg of a run around the park, laughing, and I recalled it had been because ‘Eye of the Tiger’ had just started playing randomly on my iPod and it seemed altogether too appropriate. Not smiling in the rain. And then, suddenly, not in my neighbourhood any more. Not smiling talking to DI Derwent in the street outside the nick. Laughing hysterically with Liv as we left the previous night.

‘That was yesterday.’ Liv pointed.

‘Bang up to date,’ I made myself say. I felt as if my feet weren’t properly on the ground. That was shock, I thought. That and feeling ice cold.

Dimly, I was aware of someone taking my hand, putting their arm around me, supporting me as I wobbled. I expected it to be Rob, but when I looked it was Derwent who was staring into my face intently, concern in his eyes. I felt even more unsettled.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

‘N-no. I’m fine.’

‘Sure?’

Instead of answering, I looked across the circle to where Rob was standing, and took reassurance from the fact that he looked as calm as ever. Interested, certainly, but not unsettled. I dislodged Derwent’s hand from my arm gently and with one small part of my mind wondered how a simple look from Rob could be more effective than all of Derwent’s patting and fussing.

‘This doesn’t sound like John Skinner.’ There was a note in Godley’s voice that I identified as relief.

‘Yeah. Just your common-or-garden nutcase. Nothing to worry about.’ I laughed shakily. No one else joined in.

‘He said he’d got her a present. What’s the present?’ Liv asked.

‘The video?’ Colin clicked on it and the screen went dark as the file began to load.

The difference between the blank screen and the start of the video was subtle; at first, I didn’t realise it had started to play. The light wasn’t good, the image darkening to invisibility and then wavering back into some kind of focus. The camera moved and showed us a low ceiling, a narrow, slightly arched space that looked somehow familiar.

‘It’s the back of a van,’ Rob said, a couple of seconds before the wheel arch appeared in the corner of the frame and confirmed it.

‘What’s that on the floor?’ Godley asked.

‘A tarpaulin, I think.’ Colin leaned in for a closer look, and then sat back again as the screen suddenly flared with light.

‘Oh, Jesus. That’s Cheyenne.’ Derwent sounded distraught. I made myself look back at the screen.

She was lying on the ground, on the tarpaulin, and the skirt of her dress was pulled up high on her thighs. Her hair was over her face.

‘Are you sure it’s her?’ I asked.

‘Definitely.’

‘That’s the dress she was wearing when she disappeared,’ Rob said.

‘What is this?’ I heard my voice crack.

‘This is what happened next.’ Godley had moved so he could see better and his face was so close to mine I could smell the shower gel he’d used that morning. My mind was twisting away from the fact of what was playing out in front of me, plunging at distractions like a leaping deer. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste metal, the stinging pain bringing me back to the room, to my job. To the girl lying on the floor and her hair over her face and a hand reaching out to move it away.

‘Is she dead?’ Liv whispered.

‘No. You can see her chest rise and fall.’ Derwent hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen. ‘Minor injuries.’

Cheyenne stirred, and the sound cut in, shockingly loud after the silence that had been the soundtrack before. Rustling, breathing from behind the camera, then laughter as the girl came around, sitting up, staring around her in confusion. She was fourteen years old and alone with someone who clearly wished her harm, but she was John Skinner’s daughter too. Fascinated, I watched her pull herself together, draw herself up to a more dignified position and prepare to deal with the situation. When she spoke, it was with the confidence of someone who had never known a threat to fail because it would always be backed up by her violent, dangerous daddy.

‘You are in really big trouble.’

And the screen went black.

I let air out of lungs that were creaking; I hadn’t been aware I was holding my breath.

‘Is that everything?’ Godley asked.

‘I think so. There might be something else hidden on it. Files that have been overwritten sometimes still show up if you look for them. Depends on whether this was a new data stick or one he reused.’

‘Well, find out. Fast, Colin. We need to know everything that’s on there. And where this person found the video footage. You said you thought it came off a website.’

‘Could be.’ Colin shrugged. ‘Could be his own personal video, though, and he’s just making it look like he took it from somewhere else.’

I found my voice. ‘It would be a pretty big coincidence that the guy who kidnapped Cheyenne and Patricia would start to focus on me, don’t you think?’

‘You are investigating the case,’ Derwent pointed out. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘No.’ I poked Colin. ‘Go back to the images of me. Can you show them as thumbnails?’

A window appeared with the images arranged neatly in rows. I swallowed the panic I felt at seeing them all laid out, not wanting to think about the work that had gone into collecting them, the total lack of warning I had had.

‘Right. That one,’ I pointed at the jogging image, ‘that was two weeks ago. Long before Cheyenne disappeared. Before I started working on the paedophile case, which was my first point of involvement with this whole mess.’

‘Are you sure?’ Godley asked.

‘Absolutely. It was such a nice day that I went for a run, and I hadn’t been running for a long time so for the next few days I could barely walk, and I haven’t had any time this week. Since I moved to the new house I have been jogging once, and that was it.’

‘Okay. So whoever sent you this …’

‘Is just a local nutcase, like I said.’

‘Someone who knows you’re a copper and what you’re working on,’ Rob pointed out.

I bit my lip. ‘I sort of told my neighbours what I do. But it couldn’t be any of them.’

‘Couldn’t it?’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘All of those pictures were taken in the street either here or near my house. Someone’s been watching me come and go. If they were following me anyway—’ I stopped to clear my throat; it had closed up at the thought ‘—they could have seen where I worked. And it would only take a bit of research to find out what I was doing. I spent the day before yesterday at the crime scene in Brixton, and the discovery of Cheyenne’s body was reported in the
Standard
.’

‘Let’s assume it’s not directly connected.’ Godley the peacemaker stepping in to bring order and direction to what was turning into a row. ‘Let’s focus on tracing him as a separate enquiry. I want to know what he knows. Colin, you and Peter Belcott can work together. Track him down for me.’

‘And me,’ I said flippantly. ‘I’d like a word.’

‘Looks as if all you have to do is keep your eyes peeled, Maeve.’ Derwent grinned. ‘Are you sure he’s not in here now?’

‘That’s about all I’m sure of.’ I couldn’t keep the distress off my face even though I tried, and he looked contrite.

‘Sorry. I shouldn’t joke.’

‘We should watch the video again,’ Liv suggested.

‘That was my next suggestion,’ Godley said smoothly. ‘Colin?’

He played it again, all the way through, this time with an audience of every team member who was at work on a sunny Sunday, which was most of us. I could hear a beat in the background, faintly, when the sound cut in. Music was playing somewhere nearby.

‘I think this was at the warehouse. I think that’s the sound of the club’s music.’

Godley nodded, his attention focused on the screen. When the video faded to black, he said, ‘Again.’

The third time Colin went through it frame by frame, stopping when the cameraman’s hand entered the frame. The still image was blurry and I frowned.

‘Next one?’

The hand inched forward, still distorted by the speed with which he had moved and the poor quality of the recording. When he got as far as touching her hair, his hand lingered for a moment and came into focus, then blurred again.

‘Go back to the last frame.’ I leaned forward. It was his right hand. Something was niggling at me. Someone I had met. Someone I had spoken to. Faces flashed in front of me: Tom Malton, Matthew Dobbs and Carl McCullough, Lee and Drew Bancroft, Ken Goldsworthy, William Forgrave. Malton, open and honest and almost too forthcoming. Forgrave, who had hunted for girls on the Internet. Ken Goldsworthy.
You never get your hands dirty
… Dobbs? Derwent had said he was a safe pair of hands. Hands. Whose hand?

In a rush, I remembered. The thumb. The twisted nail. Lee, chewing on it nervously. It was Lee’s hand I was looking at on the laptop’s screen. And then, with a shiver, I remembered more: Drew so relaxed, so chatty.
I drove the van over with the lighting and sound stuff
…

I looked up and found Derwent in the group clustered around the desk. ‘It’s them. It’s the brothers. They’re the ones.’ He was looking baffled, much like everyone around him. I couldn’t get the words out quickly enough, or think how to explain. ‘They must have swapped masks to give each other an alibi. And they had a van, Drew said so.
They’re the ones
.’

‘What are you talking about?’

It felt as if everyone was a million miles behind me. I made myself summon up enough patience to be able to explain what I’d seen, and once I’d finished, Derwent nodded. ‘Harry, have you got those images you pulled off the Internet yesterday? I want any images where you can see the Bancrofts.’ Maitland went to fetch them and Derwent looked at me. ‘You can tell them apart, can’t you? You know which one is which.’

‘They do look different.’ I sounded as if I was trying to convince myself. ‘I suppose they were relying on the black-and-white masks to disguise them.’

‘I imagine it’s easier to see the differences when you are looking at them side by side,’ Godley said. ‘If they weren’t in the same place, people would be easier to fool.’

‘Especially somewhere dark, like a nightclub in a derelict warehouse.’

Derwent tapped the ring binder Maitland had given him. ‘Come on. Let’s all play spot the difference. It’s joint enterprise whatever happens, but I want to know which of them took her.’

‘Well, that’s definitely Lee in the video.’

‘Okay. Follow it through. Was Lee the one who got her out of the club?’

The answer to that, it seemed, was no. Drew disappeared for a good chunk of the evening, his place taken by Lee who had been snapped standing beside the bouncers, black mask in place.

‘You can’t see his hand in that picture,’ Godley pointed out.

‘It’s definitely him. Look at his skin. Drew doesn’t have acne, but Lee does. And Lee’s bigger. Put that side-by-side with another shot of Drew with Carl McCullough and you can see he’s not anything like as broad as the bouncer, but Lee’s nearly the same size.’

‘Lee must have popped out from behind the bar, supposedly to change the beer barrel or something. Then all he had to do was swap masks, come up the other stairs as Drew, make sure he was noticed, then swap back.’ Derwent shrugged. ‘Simple, isn’t it?’