Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘Yep,’ said Joesbury, who wasn’t too keen to let me edge away. ‘She told me I was nuts, but if I could find any evidence that you’d had any past dealings with the Jones or the Weston families, or Samuel Cooper after he became our most wanted, she’d take me seriously.’

‘Did you?’ I asked, wondering when I’d stopped breathing.

‘Zilch,’ said Joesbury, his hand firm on my waist, not letting me go anywhere. ‘No evidence at all that Lacey Flint ever came across either family until the mothers were found dead. Or that she ever met Sam Cooper before this evening.’

His one good hand left my waist and gently touched the under-side of my chin. He was tilting my face up towards his. ‘And just so we’re clear,’ he said, when we made eye contact once more, ‘your Camden-based social life will be a problem for me.’

The door to the room opened. Joesbury raised his head but otherwise didn’t move. I turned. A plump black nurse in green scrubs stood in the doorway. Behind her, a young, uniformed police constable.

‘You shouldn’t be up,’ she announced, stepping inside. ‘Come on now.’

Joesbury let me go and the nurse crossed to the bed, peeling back the covers. She patted the mattress and her expression made it clear she was having no nonsense.

‘Say goodnight, big fella,’ she told Joesbury.

Joesbury looked at his watch. ‘Good morning, beautiful,’ he said. And then he followed the nurse’s pointing finger and left the room.

48

Wednesday 19 September

TWO DAYS AFTER I’D BEEN ADMITTED TO GUY’S, SAMUEL Cooper was pulled out of the river by the Marine Policing Unit. His body had become trapped beneath a pier just beyond the Blackwall Tunnel. I didn’t go anywhere near the mortuary at Horseferry Road where he was taken, but I saw a photograph some days later.

The river is rarely kind to those who fall into its clutches and it hadn’t been easy on Cooper. His body had been torn and broken and shredded until it barely resembled a human form. I wouldn’t have known the scared, drug-crazed young man I’d fought with on Vauxhall Bridge just seconds before he nearly killed us both.

His mother, Stacey, identified him from a small arrowhead tattoo in between his shoulder blades. Fingerprints confirmed that he was Samuel Cooper and the results of a DNA test told us, beyond any doubt, that it had been his semen in Amanda Weston’s pubic hair.

I learned all this from a succession of visitors. Tulloch came a couple of times, so did Stenning, and a few of the girls from the unit. Emma Boston came the first day and, after clearing it with Tulloch, I gave her a short off-the-record interview.

An admin officer from Scotland Yard brought me yet another mobile phone. The previous one had been ruined by the Thames but all my old details had been transferred. Gayle Mizon brought me grapes and managed to hold off eating more than half of them. Even DS Anderson came once.

They told me that, thanks to a tip-off, they’d managed to track down where Cooper had been living, a tiny room three floors above a DVD rental shop in Acton. Amidst the squalor, the remnants of drug use and medication, they found Amanda Weston’s handbag.

As soon as I heard that, I asked about the woman we’d heard he was living with. No sign of anyone else, I’d been told. Cooper had lived alone.

They also found two more replica guns. The one Cooper had produced on the night we fell had disappeared, probably for ever, but it seemed a fairly safe bet I’d been right. It hadn’t been real.

‘How did you know?’ asked Tulloch, when she came to see me. ‘Those things are very realistic.’

‘There was a robbery at a dealers in Southwark about six months ago,’ I said. ‘I did all the processing work. It was a Jericho 941, one of the more popular air pistols.’

‘It does help explain how he got Amanda Weston to the park,’ said Tulloch. She was perched on the edge of my bed. ‘You remember we saw footage of them walking together along the Grove Road.’

I nodded, remembering that something about the footage had bothered me.

‘It looked as though she was going quite willingly, but if she thought he had a gun, well …’

Tulloch was right. Most women, threatened with a gun, would do what they were told. Most women would not anticipate the horror that had lain in wait for Amanda in that park shed. Get a glimpse of that, and I think most might take their chances with a bullet.

‘Possibly even with Geraldine Jones, too,’ said Tulloch. ‘If he’d said, “Turn around, face that car,” she’d have expected a mugging and done it. I know I would.’

I was silent for a moment. Tulloch had brought me a white orchid in a pot and I wondered if Joesbury had told her about my plant collection. He hadn’t been back to visit since that first morning, but the next day an anonymous parcel had arrived from a German company called Steiff. Inside I found a brown cuddly toy with a bright-red bow and an impossibly cute face. I had a teddy. I took my eyes away from where it was perched at the foot of my bed to look at Tulloch again.

‘He claimed he’d been set up,’ I said. ‘On the bridge, he said it was a fix.’

‘They all do, Lacey,’ she replied.

I guessed she was right about that too. ‘Why did he do it?’ I asked her.

‘We may never know,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He’d been a serious drug user for a long time. The teachers we spoke to from his school report all sorts of behavioural difficulties. He was obviously someone who needed help and didn’t get it.’

‘But why those two women, why the Ripper stuff?’

‘We found a lot of Ripper books and memorabilia in his flat,’ said Tulloch. ‘Including a ticket for one of the Ripper tours. As to those two women, well, he could have known them. He hung around the school a lot. Maybe he had a big problem with people more privileged than him.’

I nodded. It made some sense.

Tulloch pulled a clear evidence bag out of her jacket pocket. There was something inside.

‘Lacey, we also found a photograph of you at his flat,’ she said, holding it out for me to see. ‘It’s a snapshot. Do you have any idea where or when it was taken?’

I looked. I was on a London street, unlocking my car. Something had attracted my attention and I’d looked up. I was wearing a jacket I’d bought two years ago and jeans. I had no recollection of being photographed. I shook my head.

‘We’ve got people working on it,’ Tulloch said. ‘Once we pinpoint the location, we can use light and shadows apparently to estimate the time of year. There may even be CCTV footage available. We do need to know when he became fixated on you.’

I sighed and leaned back against the pillows. ‘It’s really over then,’ I said. ‘We caught Jack the Ripper.’

Tulloch stood up and smiled. ‘Oh, I think he decided for himself who was going to catch him.’

Dana Tulloch became something of a celebrity in the days that followed. Against her own inclination but faced with clear instructions from her superiors, she agreed to most interview requests. She was young, female and not entirely white. She ticked all the boxes. It was even suggested that I be put up for interview. From my hospital bed I refused on the grounds that notoriety so early in my career would be bad for it in the long term. I was commended with unusual wisdom for one so young.

I was officially convalescing, but when I went into the office to collect some things, the investigation team gave me a standing ovation. I started to cry again and got hugged so much I think the buggers cracked another rib.

I still looked like the back end of a bus, but most of the time I didn’t mind. Taking medication for the pain, I found myself sleeping better than I had for years. And when I woke up, a brown bear with a red bow was never far away on the pillow.