What She Saw (16 page)

‘He's just arrived. Are you all right, David?'

He tried to stifle his feelings and fix the desperate sadness he knew was playing out on his face. He went for neutral but answered, ‘No, I'm not all right.'

Rosen felt as if he'd just fallen from a cliff. His heart pumped, his head reeled.

‘Carol, call James Henshaw for me.' As Bellwood left the tent, Gold arrived. ‘Look at his feet,' said Rosen, flicking his light onto the trainers.

‘Oh, shit!' The battle-weary cast of Gold's rotund face was softened by what he saw, and he looked child-like as his eyes widened and drilled into the murder victim. It was the same rare and vulnerable expression Gold always exhibited at murder scenes, but it was heightened because this time it was just too close to home.

Rosen stood up and composed himself.

He took the light to the boy's hands, to the remains of his bandages, considered the boy's overall shape and height. He recalled standing on Bannerman Square watching an athletic teenager at the start of his evening run; the same boy sitting in the back of Gold's car.

‘It's Stevie Jensen,' observed Rosen. ‘They couldn't get to Thomas, so they went for the next best thing, the eye witness. . .' He was consumed with the recent memory of a dutiful son who had asked his colleague to call his mother and let her know he wasn't in trouble. Stevie's life taken in his prime, his mother left behind to grieve until the moment she died, an emotional equation that could never be balanced. Rosen was silenced by sorrow, but then he focused and forced himself on.

‘Yes,' Gold confirmed. ‘He was respectful in the car. I liked that. I liked him.'

Gently, Gold lifted Stevie's arm with his paw-like hand and revealed a patch of blue on the teenager's running shirt that had been untouched by the fire.

‘Nike. It's the blue Nike top I saw him in last night,' said Rosen. ‘Someone watched the scene unfold, saw Stevie try to save Thomas.'

Bellwood re-entered, her calmness rattled. ‘Henshaw's on his way.'

‘Where's Feldman?' asked Rosen.

‘I left him in the office at Isaac Street, still ploughing through CCTV,' replied Gold.

Rosen turned to Bellwood. She was almost dancing on the spot.
What's up?

‘David, this way.' They left the tent together.

A train roared overhead. Traffic pounded. It was like being in a sound storm.
A great place to commit a murder
, thought Rosen.
Timed correctly, with the trains and the traffic, no one could hear a victim scream, even if his head was on fire
.

Bellwood directed her torchlight at the blackened bricks of the lower
arches. At first glance, it was almost impossible to tell them apart but, black marker on black brick, the human eye soon became accustomed to the graffiti eye.

This time the eye on the wall was smaller. And this time the medium was not aerosol.

‘Who found this?'

‘Me,' said Corrigan. ‘As soon as I got here, I went looking for graffiti.'

‘Well done. Good work, Corrigan.'

Rosen scrolled down the contacts on his phone. ‘Gold, you spoke with Stevie's mother last night?'

Gold looked miles away. ‘Right?' pushed Rosen.

‘Yeah.' He sounded distant but ready to kill.

‘I need you to do something for me, for Stevie.'

‘Go on,' said Gold.

‘I need you to take a deep breath and put in a call to Stevie's mother. Ask when she last saw him.'

In an emotional corner, Gold was as tactful and sensitive with victims and their families as he was hard and scornful towards perpetrators.

‘Carol,' said Rosen. ‘Line up Victim Liaison.'

Rosen came to the number he was looking for: Stevie. He dialled, connected, but there was no sound of a phone ringing, just: ‘Sorry, the person you're calling is currently unavailable.'

They took your life
, thought Rosen.
Why not your phone as well?

Willis held a torch up to the wall, and Rosen said, ‘OK, Eleanor, we're looking for symbols – vertical lines with short horizontals coming off either to the right or left.'

He opened his notebook and gestured Willis forward. She stood next to Corrigan and they looked intently at Rosen's notes.

‘I copied these from pictures I took. I found this scratched into the brickwork on the wall in Bannerman Square right behind the aerosoled eye.'

Willis looked sick with embarrassment.

‘Eleanor, you were looking in the dark, it was raining, the marks are very superficial. It took me a dozen turns in the daylight to find them. You know what you're looking for?'

Uniformed and non-uniformed officers were arriving at the edge of the scene-of-crime tape. Rosen approached them.

‘I'm DCI Rosen. We'll pass protective clothing over the tape. DS Bellwood will organize and take charge of the fingertip search.' He picked out a sergeant he knew from Isaac Street. ‘Sergeant Cross will take care of the log book.'

Gold was at his shoulder, his phone to his ear.

‘I'm still on the line to Stevie's mother,' warned Gold. Rosen knew. He could hear the hysterical crying filtering out of Gold's phone. ‘Could you pass me over to your sister, please,' said Gold. He listened, then held the phone to his body. ‘She reported him missing at midnight. He was four hours late. Left the house some time after six fifteen to go jogging, told his mother he'd be back by seven fifteen. His mother, her sister and a friend went walking the streets looking for him from nine at night until dawn.'

He returned the phone to his ear.

‘Please listen to me, madam. In my view, right now, you need to be with your sister. OK. She needs you so much. On my honour, madam, I will phone you back shortly.' Gold closed the call down.

‘What did you tell her?' asked Rosen.

‘We heard about her visit to Isaac Street and were looking for him.'

Rosen returned to the tent, hoping against hope that another look at the body would rule out its similarity to Stevie. He stepped inside, looked long and hard and was bitterly disappointed.

This was your reward
, thought Rosen,
for your decency, your courage
.

Rosen turned. ‘Thank you for handling that, Gold.'

‘I'll get on to Victim Liaison now and then back to Ms Jensen and her sister. You want me to go and see her with VL?'

Rosen was reminded of Gold's personal strength and was grateful he was on the team. The former rugby player never shied away from the painful encounters murder investigations always threw up.

‘In an ideal world, yes. . .' said Rosen.

‘But you want me to go back and CCTV-it with Feldman. You're right, boss, we've got a savage to catch.'

Rosen walked out of the tent and into the quiet, intent action of the murder scene, determined and inspired by Gold's parting words.

38

3.25 P.M.

D
S Bellwood had two jobs to do in one journey to Bream Street Primary School.

To all intents and purposes, she was playing messenger girl and quietly returning Macy and Chester's diaries. She handed in a sealed brown envelope, marked FAO: MISS HARVEY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL to the receptionist and waited at the gate with the gathering groups of adults.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs Price had confirmed to Rosen that Macy, a girl on the verge of secondary school, very often walked home on her own.

Bellwood waited at the gate and looked through the railings at the memorial to three dead sisters where Miss Harvey had buried the class pet. Rosen had mentioned it briefly.

We will not forget
. Bellwood made a mental note of the names and ages of the Rainer sisters: Denise six, Jane four, Gail two. Something deep stirred in Bellwood's memory and left her feeling like she was suspended in water, held in place by a huge weight as the sunlight played on the surface above.

Bellwood looked around at the waiting mothers, felt a surge of jealousy and wondered if they knew how lucky they were coming to school to
pick up their children. She was thirty-four years of age and it seemed all the good men were now gone. She doubted that she would ever have a child, stand at the gate waiting for that look of recognition, mother to child, the deep hug that plugged the absence of a day spent apart.

An electronic bell rang inside. Soon, the main door opened and children filed out, bursting into life as they hit fresh air. Bellwood watched the tide of faces and spotted Macy in the flow, flanked by Lucy-Faye and Su Li. Macy frowned on making eye contact with Bellwood, but then smiled and raised her hand.

At the gate, Su Li burst out into a stream of Cantonese and hurtled to her mother. Lucy-Faye and her mother – a larger replica of the child – greeted each other with less enthusiasm.

And Macy said, ‘Hello, what are you doing here?'

In the course of a frantic afternoon, which had included three bad-tempered phone calls to Superintendent Baxter, Rosen had organized covert protection for Macy in the form of a patrol car with an officer at the front of Claude House.

‘I'm giving you a lift home, Macy. It's nothing to worry about. I need to speak with your mum, so I'll come up to your flat when I drop you off.'

‘She's not in.' Macy showed the front door key in her hand. ‘She's gone with Grandma in an ambulance for an appointment at St. Thomas's Hospital.'

‘Who the fuck are you?' A voice came from behind Bellwood and she faced it head on.

Baseball cap over his shaven head, pale-skinned, gym physique, he was about seventeen or eighteen, with a tough guy persona that didn't quite come off. He pointed a finger at Bellwood and said, a little louder, ‘Who . . . ?'

‘I heard you.' She flashed her warrant card. ‘DS Carol Bellwood, Metropolitan Police. And you are?'

His nails were bitten to the quick.

He folded his arms and leaned back, head tilted and looking at Bellwood as if she were behind bars in a zoo. She drank in the cheap body spray he'd doused himself with and guessed he wasn't easy with his own personal scent. She held on to the quiet and watched him, waiting for him to crack.

‘That's my sister and I've come to walk her home from school.'

‘Oh, you must be Paul,' said Bellwood.

‘Yeah, Paul Conner.' His jaw twitched.

‘Well, let me give you a lift home.'

He stared past Bellwood's head.

‘I'm not arriving in Bannerman Square in the back of a police car.'

‘It's not a marked police car, Paul.'

He unfolded his arms, hands dropping to his hips.

‘I need to see your mother really, but I understand she's unavailable this afternoon.'

He made a noise.
That's right
.

‘Come on, Macy, you can sit up front with me.'

As they walked to her car, with Paul metres ahead, Bellwood smiled at his affected street swagger. He was trying for tough and cool but looked like he was in desperate need of the toilet

‘Has he?'

‘This past couple of weeks, actually.' She drew a circle in the air near her temple and pointed at her big brother's back as they arrived at Bellwood's car.

‘What kind of weird?' asked Bellwood, confidentially.

‘He's been giving me the silent treatment.' Macy's voice was soft and lined with pain. ‘I don't think he likes me any more. And that's kind of weird really.'

‘I'm sure it's not your fault, Macy,' said Bellwood, kindly. ‘Maybe there's something playing on his mind right now.'

Macy smiled at Bellwood but sadness remained in her eyes.

‘Maybe there is,' said Macy. ‘Maybe.'

39

3.33 P.M.

F
rom Bream Street Primary to Lewisham High Street, not a word was spoken in Bellwood's car. Every few moments, she glanced in the rearview mirror. From the nose down, Paul's face was buried behind a fist, his eyes fixed beyond the window, his cap set low.

‘How did the class assembly go?' asked Bellwood.

‘OK. No one was really in the mood, though. Miss Bellwood?'

‘Yes, Macy?'

‘Can I ask you a question?'

‘Go ahead.'

‘Did you ever meet your father?'

‘Shut up, Macy!' snapped Paul from the back seat. ‘That's none of your frigging business.'

‘It's OK,' said Bellwood.

‘It's just I've never met mine,' said Macy.

‘I met him when I was a teenager. Once. My parents divorced when I was a baby, so I don't remember him as such. He went back to Nigeria after the divorce, as it's where my parents came from originally.'

‘We've got something in common,' said Macy, sounding more than a little pleased with the connection.

Bellwood slowed in the line of traffic as her car came close to the
bridge. Rearview mirror. His fist had dropped and he shifted in his seat at the police presence under the arches.