Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘Still bored?’ I asked, before I could stop myself.

I might not have spoken. I got no reaction whatsoever.

Mizon was an attractive blonde woman of around thirty-three or -four. She’d brought me coffee. I put my hand on the mug for warmth but didn’t dare pick it up. I was shaking too much. Joesbury continued to study me, my hair still wet from the shower, my face dry and pink because it hadn’t been moisturized, and my prisoner-in-custody uniform. He didn’t look impressed.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a statement.’

By the time he called a halt, I’d barely the energy left to sit upright in my chair. If I’d wanted to be tactful about DI Joesbury’s interviewing technique, I’d have said he was thorough. If honesty had been the order of the day, I’d have called him a sadistic shit.

Before we started, they explained that Gayle Mizon would be taking the statement, Joesbury only sitting in on an advisory capacity. They’d even given me chance to request he leave the room. I’d shrugged and muttered something about it being fine. Big mistake, because the moment the interview kicked off, he took charge.

What followed didn’t feel like any witness statement I’d ever been a party to before. More like I was about to be charged. He made me go over every detail several times, until even Mizon was looking uncomfortable. And he kept going back to the same point. How could I not have seen something? How could I have missed the attack and yet been close enough for her to die in my arms? Every second I was waiting for him to say that the blonde woman would still be alive if I hadn’t messed up.

Finally, he terminated the interview and switched off the recording equipment. The clock on the wall said ten past eleven.

‘Is there someone you’d like us to call?’ asked Mizon, as Joesbury took the disc out of the recording machine and labelled it.

I shook my head.

‘Will there be someone at home when you get there?’ she asked me. ‘Flatmate? Boyfriend? You’ve had a nasty shock. You probably shouldn’t be on your own.’

‘I live on my own,’ I said. ‘But I’m fine,’ I added, when she looked concerned. ‘Is it OK if I go now?’

‘Family?’ Mizon wasn’t giving up easily.

‘They don’t live in London,’ I said, which was true, if a bit disingenuous. They don’t live anywhere. I have no family. ‘Look, I’m tired, I haven’t eaten, I just want to get home and—’

Joesbury looked up, frowning. ‘Did nobody offer you food?’ he asked, and really, you had to admire the way he made it sound like it was my own fault.

‘Really not a problem. Can I go now?’ I stood up. ‘Sir,’ I added, for good measure.

Joesbury turned to Mizon. ‘Gayle, if we’d brought the killer in red-handed, knife dangling from his teeth, we’d have fed him. One of our own, we leave to starve.’

‘I thought someone else was …’ Mizon began.

‘It’s really not …’ I tried.

‘Sorry,’ she said to me. I shrugged, managed a smile.

Joesbury stood up and crossed the room. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding the door open.

‘Where are we going now?’ I hadn’t the energy to even try being polite any more. Not that previous efforts had been all that successful.

‘I’m getting you fed, then I’m getting you home,’ he replied. He nodded at the disc on the table. ‘Can you get that processed?’ he said to a rather surprised-looking Mizon. Then he walked me out of the station.

Tulloch’s silver Mercedes had already been moved and Joesbury opened up the green Audi we’d blocked in previously. He turned on the engine, put the car into gear and began flicking through a stack of CDs.

‘Got any Westlife?’ I asked, as he reversed the car out of the parking space and turned it round. When he didn’t reply, I made a mental note that a sense of humour wasn’t high on this guy’s list of attributes. And that I could probably cross out fair-minded and compassionate as well. In fact, so far, the only box I could tick was a healthy respect for a woman’s need to eat. He pushed a CD into the stereo. Back on Lewisham High Street, he turned the volume right up and rhythmic, percussion-based club music filled the car. Message received and understood, DI Joesbury, I wasn’t meant to talk.

5

THE GARDEN IS LONG AND NARROW. AND VERY DARK. Whilst high walls on three sides keep out most of the street-light, the dense foliage of over-mature shrubs seems to soak up any light that does seep through. The garden is overlooked by several windows, but the intruder moving slowly down the slim gravel path is dressed entirely in black and is unlikely to be seen.

The garden is scented. The intruder stops for a moment and takes a deep breath, before stretching out a hand to a tiny, star-shaped flower. Jasmine.

At the bottom of the garden is a small, neat wooden shed, partially hidden by vegetation. Ivy creeps up its walls and overhanging tree branches rest on its roof. The door is locked, but the intruder thinks for a moment before reaching up to run a hand along the rim of the low, flat roof. After a few seconds the hand finds what it is looking for. A key.

The door opens easily. The intruder starts back with a muttered curse.

For a moment, a human form appears to be hanging in the shed. It swings gently, turning on the spot. Human in form, but not human. This has a soft, cylindrical torso, it wears clothes but is limbless. Its head – male – once stared out from a shop window.

The intruder touches it lightly. It spins on the chain that suspends it from the shed roof and the head lolls like that of a drunk. Or a crazy man.

‘What a good idea,’ says the intruder. ‘Oh Lacey, what a brilliantly good idea.’

6

‘ARE YOU VEGGIE, LACTOSE INTOLERANT, ALLERGIC TO sesame seeds …?’ Joesbury was asking me, practically the first words to come out of his mouth since we’d left the station. We were in a small Chinese restaurant, not far from where I live, that I didn’t think I’d ever noticed before. The owner, a slim Chinese man in his fifties called Trev, had greeted Joesbury like an old friend.

‘If it stays still long enough I’ll eat it,’ I replied.

Joesbury’s eyes opened a little wider. He and Trev shared a look, had a short, muttered conversation and then the Chinese man disappeared. Joesbury took the seat opposite mine and I waited with something like interest. He was going to have to talk to me now.

He picked up a fork and ran the prongs down a paper napkin, before leaning back to admire the four perfectly straight lines he’d made. He glanced up, caught my eye and looked down again. The fork made its way down the napkin once more. It was becoming blindingly obvious that DI Joesbury and I weren’t of the same mind on the talking issue.

‘If you’re not part of the MIT, what do you do?’ I asked. ‘Traffic?’

If you want to insult a fellow cop, you ask him if he works on traffic. Quite why I was insulting a senior officer I’d only just met was, of course, a good question.

‘I work for SO10,’ he replied.

I thought about it for a second. SO stood for Special Operations. The divisions were numbered according to the particular function they served. SO1 protected public figures, SO14, the royal family. ‘SO10 do undercover work, don’t they?’ I asked.

He inclined his head. ‘Covert operations is the term they prefer these days,’ he said.

‘Then you’re based at Scotland Yard?’ I asked, slightly encouraged at getting a whole sentence out of him.

Another brief nod. ‘Technically,’ he said.

Now what did that mean? Either you’re based somewhere or you’re not.

‘So how come you ended up at the scene tonight?’