Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘She’s keeping the pressure on,’ said Tulloch. ‘She wants us focusing our attention on where the head’s going to turn up, so we take our eye off the ball.’ She turned to Stenning. ‘And don’t think I don’t know you bozos have a sweepstake running.’

Stenning blushed bright pink. ‘Just a bit of fun, Boss,’ he muttered to the table. ‘To relieve the tension.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Helen.

‘My caring young DCs are taking bets on where the head is going to turn up,’ said Tulloch. ‘They’ve narrowed it down to twenty well-known Victorian sites around London.’

Helen smiled. ‘What odds will you give me for the Albert Memorial?’ she asked Stenning.

‘It’s not funny,’ said Tulloch. ‘All she has to do is get to Jacqui Groves and she’s beaten us.’

A knock sounded at the door. Helen got up and left the room.

‘She can’t get to her,’ said Anderson. ‘Jacqui Groves has got round-the-clock bodyguards and no one knows where she is.’

‘Hey, gorgeous,’ came the familiar voice from the hall.

I straightened up in my seat before I realized what I was doing. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tulloch watching me. And smiling to herself.

‘You’re late,’ we heard Helen say, as the front door closed.

‘Save me any grub?’ Joesbury appeared in the doorway and glanced round the table. ‘Evenin’ all.’

He took Helen’s seat, next to me, as Helen left the room. He reached across the table, brushing his left shoulder against me as he helped himself to the water jug.

‘Do you want a beer?’ offered Tulloch.

He shook his head. ‘I’m off in a minute,’ he said. ‘Anybody here still sober?’

‘Why?’ asked Tulloch. ‘What have you found?’

‘Tell you in a sec,’ he said, as Helen reappeared with a plate piled high with risotto. She put it down in front of Joesbury and then walked round the table to perch on the side of Dana’s chair. Joesbury shovelled several forkfuls into his mouth while we all sat and waited. My shoulder was still tingling.

‘Be great with a bit of chicken,’ he said eventually, putting down his fork and refilling his glass.

‘If you’ve nothing sensible to say, eat up and go,’ said Helen. ‘We’re about to convene the poetry club.’

‘I may have found Tye Hammond,’ said Joesbury.

Helen, Mizon and Anderson looked puzzled. ‘The survivor of the river-boat fire,’ Stenning said as Joesbury carried on eating. ‘The one in which Cathy Llewellyn died.’

‘Where is he?’ asked Tulloch.

‘Living in a warehouse just east of Woolwich,’ said Joesbury. ‘It was sold off to developers who went bust. It’s sitting empty while the lawyers fight over it, and a couple of dozen low-lifes – sorry, Flint, street people – have moved in. Word has it that if we pop along in the next hour, we might just find him at home and coming down from one of his highs. He might be able to tell us more about Cathy. He might even remember Victoria.’

‘And how do you know this?’

‘Contact,’ said Joesbury mysteriously, continuing to eat.

Tulloch glanced up at Helen. The older woman shrugged. ‘We can have pudding later,’ she said.

‘Should we call out uniform?’ asked Anderson.

Tulloch was looking at Joesbury.

‘Your call,’ he said. ‘But personally, I’d keep it nice and low key for now. If you send the numpties in you could have every morning paper running with the story that we suspect one of London’s homeless is the Ripper. That’s not going to make for good community relations.’

Tulloch stood up. ‘Just you and me then,’ she said to Joesbury. ‘Helen can stay with the others.’

‘No,’ said Anderson, getting to his feet. ‘No disrespect, Boss, but you’re not going down some semi-derelict doss house at this time of night with a one-armed man. Pete and me are coming too.’

Joesbury was looking down at his injured arm, wriggling his fingers as if to make sure it was indeed still working. He looked up at Mizon and winked. She smiled back and then let her eyes drift to me.

‘You’ll be less threatening with more women in the party,’ I said to Tulloch. ‘These people that DI Joesbury calls low-lifes are easily scared.’

‘I want to come too,’ said Mizon, pushing back her chair.

A moment’s silence. Helen and Joesbury were the only ones still sitting.

‘Well, you’re sure as hell not leaving me with the washing-up,’ said Helen.

70

WE TOOK TYE HAMMOND TO AN ALL-NIGHT DINER AND ordered food he didn’t seem too interested in. We’d found him, as Joesbury had predicted, in the warehouse, another Victorian building on the riverbank at Woolwich, and had persuaded him to come with us for a short chat. I sat with him at a Formica table, together with Tulloch and Mizon. Not wanting to intimidate him with numbers, Helen and the three blokes sat a few tables away.

‘Am I under arrest?’ he said, grabbing the sugar bowl and spooning grimy white powder into his mug. Tulloch nodded at me to reply.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We just want to ask you about something that happened a few years ago. There was a fire on a houseboat, at Deptford Creek, do you remember?’

He began stirring his tea. ‘What if I do?’ he asked his spoon.

‘People died,’ I said. ‘Either in the smoke or drowned in the river. You were the only one who survived.’

He shrugged. ‘Got lucky, didn’t I?’

‘How?’ I asked him. ‘How did you get lucky?’

He didn’t reply, just wrapped his hands around the mug and looked over at the sugar bowl. He’d half emptied it. He still hadn’t looked me in the eyes.

‘Tye,’ I said, ‘nobody here wants to take you down the station to talk to you formally. But we will if we have to. Why don’t you—’

He looked up then. ‘You think I’m scared of that?’ he said. ‘They’ll have to feed me in the nick. It’ll be warm. There’ll be a proper bog I can use.’

‘We don’t have to give you smack, though,’ I said. ‘Is that what you’re on? In fact, we’ll have to wait till you come down off whatever it is and get the DTs out of your system. Could be twelve hours or more. Won’t be much fun.’

Tye’s eyes went back down to his tea. He picked up his fork and began pushing beans around on his plate.

‘OK, let’s go,’ said Tulloch, pushing back her chair.

‘Wait.’ Tye was holding up one hand. ‘There was a – what do you call it? – an inquiry?’

‘An inquest?’ I suggested.

He nodded. ‘In court,’ he went on. ‘I told them everything I knew. I can’t tell you anything else.’

‘Tell us how it happened,’ I said. ‘How did the boat get away from its moorings?’

‘The rope was cut,’ he said. ‘That’s why I was on deck. This girl, Cathy, she called me up. Someone had cut the rope and we were drifting.’

I could sense Tulloch and Mizon sharing a look. I kept my eyes on Tye.

‘Cathy?’ I said. ‘Cathy who?’

He shook his head. ‘Just Cathy. We didn’t use second names. Not even real first ones, most of us.’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘We were well away from the bank by this stage. It’s serious shit, you know, being loose in the river, especially at night. We knew we were in trouble. Then Cathy said there was a fire.’

‘On the boat?’

He nodded. ‘I didn’t see it, but she ran up the front. Then there was a huge flash and a couple of seconds later, I’m under the water. I must have fallen in.’

‘Were you rescued?’ I asked, remembering the light shining down on me from the RIB, the moment I’d known I would live.

He shook his head. ‘No, I managed to swim to a pier. I caught hold of one of those wooden columns and made my way to the shore.’