Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

Miss Munnery’s eyesight might have been failing, but her brain was razor sharp. She remembered both girls, Victoria in particular. ‘I remember her leaving,’ she said to us, as we were getting ready to go. ‘I was sad, but not surprised. That trouble with her sister in the park – something died inside her when that happened. She became – what’s the word I’m looking for? – cold. Her eyes looked, I don’t know …’

‘Unhappy?’ I suggested as we stood on the doorstep.

‘No, dear,’ she replied. ‘They looked like shark’s eyes. Dark and dead.’

Police budgets don’t stretch to luxury hotels, but business centres like Cardiff often have empty hotel rooms at the weekends. The Met had got us a good deal on a new and rather glitzy hotel in the bay area and we checked in shortly after six.

‘Where do you want to eat?’ asked Joesbury, stifling a yawn as we took the lift up.

‘Actually, I don’t,’ I said, without taking my eyes off the lift buttons. ‘I’m just going to crash. I’ll see you at breakfast.’

The lift got to my floor first and I left it without looking back. My room was beautiful, quite the classiest place I’d ever been in. The bed was king-size, the décor understated but elegant in shades of soft cream and biscuit. Most of one wall was glass. I walked over and pulled back drapes that were fine as cobwebs.

Night had fallen properly by this stage and lights were shining across the water. Not far from shore a yacht had anchored. It gleamed like a jewel on dark velvet and I could see people moving around on deck. The lights seemed to stretch away from it like coloured streamers across the water. I watched the yacht until everyone went below and the loneliness felt like something that could smother me.

Then I ran a bath and lay in the water for a long time, thinking of Joesbury a floor or two above me and of what could never be. And I thought about two young girls, who hadn’t had much to start with except each other, and who had lost even that when an evening in the city had gone so very badly wrong. I lay there, thinking that finally, at last, I might have found enough courage to take my own life. And that I probably would do exactly that when this was all over; in a warm, sweet-scented bath just like this one.

When the water was starting to cool, I got up and dressed in jeans and a sweater. I pulled on trainers and my jacket and left the hotel. Outside, I fastened my coat and started walking. Within a few metres, the smooth brick path became rough stone and shingle. Most of the remaining light slipped away and rough grasses, taller than me, rose up on either side, turning the path into a tunnel.

I was walking through an area of natural wetlands, preserved as part of the bay development. Signs along the path warned of deep water, life buoys at intervals suggested the signs probably weren’t kidding and soft splashing sounds told me I wasn’t alone out here.

To my right, through gaps in the grass I could see a single row of brick-built terraced houses. Lights were shining in most of the windows. I saw a woman of about my own age, with a toddler in her arms, pull the curtains in an upstairs room. She stopped for a second to look at the solitary figure walking through the wetlands, before shutting herself off from view.

A normal life. It had never seemed so far away.

I kept on walking, listening to the sounds of the city on one side of me and those of the bay on the other, until I reached a wooden pier that zigzagged out across the water. As I made my way along, water gurgled gently below it and a swan flew close enough for me to feel the air under its wings. It landed close by and disappeared into the bullrushes.

I’d reached the end of the wooden structure when, a hundred metres or so behind me, someone else stepped on to the pier.

I bent forward, leaning my elbows against the wooden railing. To my right was a small marina, the yacht riggings clinking gently in the wind like tiny bells. The port buildings of the old Tiger Bay were across to my left and I could just about make out tall cranes and a few boat masts against the skyline.

The footsteps on the pier were getting closer. They were heavy, the steps of a man. I watched a water taxi skim across the bay like one of the water fowl.

‘I told you I wasn’t hungry,’ I said a second later, to the reeds in front of me.

‘What you said was, you were going to crash,’ came the response. ‘And what makes you think they’re for you?’

‘A man who stalks me with chips in his hands had better be prepared to share,’ I said, turning round.

Joesbury had two wrapped packages under his arm and a carrier bag in one hand. The smell of hot chips had given him away. We set off back along the pier and, once on dry land, stopped at a large stone sculpture that looked a bit like a wave and a bit like a sail. It had a circular base and we sat down together. Joesbury handed over a package that had Harry Ramsden stamped on it.

‘I’m feeling surprisingly warm towards you right now,’ I said, unwrapping it. I honestly hadn’t realized quite how hungry I’d become.

‘Well, that sounds like progress,’ he replied and I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was smiling. I heard the sound of a ring-pull being torn and then Joesbury handed over a cold can of lager. I drank and put it down on the stone beside me. In the tall grasses in front of us something was rustling. For a few minutes we ate in silence.

‘Have you heard from DI Tulloch again?’ I asked, when the more pressing hunger pangs were starting to fade.

‘The image enhancers have got back to her,’ Joesbury replied. ‘You know, the boffins who take a picture of a three-year-old with a bad diet and age it so that you know the kid will be Lard Man with prostate cancer when he’s forty.’

Wishing I hadn’t asked, I nodded. A few days ago, Tulloch had sent the snapshots of the Llewellyn girls away to see if a computer programme could indicate what they might look like in their late twenties.

‘Any good?’ I asked, realizing my hunger had mysteriously disappeared.

Joesbury popped another chip in his mouth and shook his head. ‘Not promising, from what she told me,’ he said, in between chews. ‘They didn’t have much to work on with Victoria, given that the picture was in profile. They had a bit more with Catherine, but nothing conclusive.’

‘Shame,’ I said, putting my fork down.

Joesbury looked at me sideways. ‘Turns out the kit works best on distinctive features,’ he said. ‘Big noses, pointy chins, wide foreheads. Classically pretty women like the Llewellyn girls, especially Catherine, have very bland features. How they look when they’re older depends on things we can’t predict – weight loss or gain, skin condition, that sort of thing.’

‘Worth a try, I suppose,’ I said, and pushed a few chips around the tray to give the impression I was still eating.

Joesbury finished his first can and opened another. ‘Some wag in the department aged Cathy’s picture twenty years, darkened the hair and skin tone, and now it’s a dead ringer for Tully herself,’ he said.

I managed a smile. ‘Well, let’s hope she has a good alibi.’

Silence fell again and I found I could eat some more, after all.

‘Is Dana all right?’ I asked after a few seconds.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joesbury’s head flick in my direction. ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘She’s tougher than she looks.’

Joesbury was so full of shit. ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said.

‘What?’ He had his hard-man voice on. This wasn’t something I should have brought up. Well, tough. I was way past worrying about upsetting senior officers.

‘I know she’s struggled with this case,’ I said, turning to look at him properly. His eyes had narrowed, one brow was higher than the other, he was just daring me to say something disrespectful about his precious Dana. ‘She told me so herself,’ I finished. I wasn’t scared of Joesbury any more.