Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

I took a deep breath. ‘I know this is something I should have told you before,’ I said. ‘But I think you’ll understand why I didn’t. At least, until I was sure there was no alternative.’

A glass with about two centimetres of amber-coloured liquid was in his left hand. He brought it to his lips.

‘You remember me telling you I lived on the streets for a while?’ I asked him. He inclined his head and the glass went down on the table beside him with a soft clink. ‘And you know I had a drug problem once?’

Another nod from him. Another deep breath from me.

‘The truth is, I was a complete mess,’ I said. ‘Completely addicted to heroin for nearly two years. It was far, far worse than I told the Met’s selection process.’

One eyebrow went up.

‘What I told them was that I’d had a problem in the past,’ I went on. ‘That it had been the main reason why I didn’t finish my degree, but that I’d been clean for several years before I applied to join the police.’

Joesbury’s eyebrow relaxed. His eyes hadn’t left mine.

‘They did lots of tests,’ I said. ‘And they found out that as far as that part was concerned, I was telling the truth. I was completely clean when I applied. I’d been lucky in that I’d always managed to avoid any serious trouble with the police. If I’d had a record of any kind I wouldn’t have got past first base, I know that. But when I applied, they were broadening their admissions criteria. The fact that I knew so much about what you call London’s low-life was seen as an advantage. They thought people like me would bring something new to the service.’

I could see from Joesbury’s expression what he thought about the Met’s relatively recent relaxation of its selection procedures. ‘They’ll let anyone join these days,’ was a refrain heard a lot around stations.

‘I had to be routinely tested all the time I was going through training,’ I said. ‘And I had to see counsellors. The Met didn’t take any stupid risks. But I kept my nose clean and I got good marks in all my exams.’

‘So they let you through,’ said Joesbury.

‘They let me through,’ I agreed. ‘But if they’d known the truth, it would never have happened. When you report what I’m about to tell you – and I know you have to – I’ll be finished in the force.’

I stopped, giving myself a moment.

‘I have no family,’ I went on, after a second. ‘And as you’ve probably seen for yourself, not much of a social life. My career is everything and I couldn’t give up on it until there was no choice. Can you understand that?’

‘Consider it understood,’ said Joesbury. ‘But you haven’t really told me anything yet.’

‘My home life was abusive,’ I began. ‘You don’t need the details. I went to live with my grandparents, but they couldn’t cope. So I spent most of my childhood in and out of children’s homes and foster care.’

‘Sounds like someone we know,’ said Joesbury.

‘By the time I was sixteen I was smoking weed, using cocaine when I could get it, experimenting with all sorts of weird cocktails. Cocaine and meth was a popular one at the time. For all that, I was pretty bright and I managed to hold things together enough to get a university place. But on a campus it was all so easy to get hold of. By the end of my first year, I barely knew what day it was. I was thrown off the course, naturally. I had nowhere to go. My grandparents were both dead by this time and the State stops looking after you when you’re eighteen.’

‘You went to London?’ Joesbury said.

I nodded. ‘It seemed as good a place as any,’ I said. ‘I found a group of kids in north London who taught me the ropes. We used to sleep in abandoned buildings, until we were moved on. Then we’d look for the next one.’

‘Where did the drugs come from?’ asked Joesbury.

This was the bit I was going to struggle with. I dropped my eyes to the carpet.

‘Were you on the game?’ he asked me.

I kept my eyes down and nodded. ‘There was a boy called Rich,’ I said. ‘He was Jamaican. Young, but big and nasty with it. He was … my pimp … I suppose. He had a few other girls working for him as well. He’d take us out, sometimes to clubs or bars, sometimes just street corners and derelict buildings, and send the punters to us.’

I risked looking up. Joesbury’s eyes seemed to have lost all their colour.

‘I never saw any money,’ I said. ‘None of the girls did. We did tricks and then we got the gear. There was a brief window every day when we were just about functional. Rich would collect us, take us to places where we could get cleaned up and fed, and then we’d go out. By the time the business was over, we were desperate. All we could think about was the next hit and just being able to forget.’

Joesbury’s empty glass made contact with the table.

‘Sometimes, Rich would just turn up wherever we were sleeping with some of his mates,’ I said. ‘He didn’t even charge them. They just took turns until they’d had enough. That’s why I want to work with the sex-crimes unit. Because of what happened to me.’

Joesbury got up and poured himself another drink.

‘I think it would have gone on like that,’ I said, ‘until one day I took the wrong stuff or just too much of it and didn’t wake up any more.’

‘So what happened?’ he asked me, sitting down again.

‘I met a girl,’ I said.

Joesbury sat a little more upright in his chair.

‘I’d been on the streets for a few months when she just turned up one day,’ I said. ‘She was about my age, maybe a year or so younger, and completely naive about street life. But she was different somehow. She was focused.’

Joesbury put his drink down. ‘Focused how?’

‘She didn’t take drugs,’ I said. ‘She had nothing to do with Rich and his friends. She wasn’t – I don’t know how to put it, really – she wasn’t hopeless.’

‘Go on,’ said Joesbury.

‘She was looking for someone,’ I said. ‘Another girl. She had a photograph. She spent her days just making her way around London, around all the places where homeless people gather, showing the photograph, asking around.’

‘Did she tell you who it was?’

I shook my head. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘She really didn’t talk much about herself. I knew she’d grown up in care, like me, and that she had nowhere else to go, like me.’

‘What was her name?’

‘I called her Tic.’

He frowned at me. ‘Tic?’ he said.

‘People on the street don’t use their real names,’ I said. ‘Most of them are hiding from something or someone. They use nicknames, made-up names, several names. She told me to call her Tic and I did.’

‘Do you think she was Victoria Llewellyn?’ asked Joesbury.

I nodded. ‘I think she must have been,’ I said. ‘But you have to believe me, she looked nothing like that photograph we have. Her hair was much longer, for one thing, and she was fair, not blonde exactly, but close. She wore practical, sensible clothes and no make-up. Ever. And she had, I don’t know, a sort of poise about her. There was no way she was some screwed-up Welsh teenager.’

‘Welsh accent?’

‘Possibly.’ He raised his eyebrows, gave me an incredulous look. ‘Look, I was a total sleepwalker, I couldn’t have told you about my own accent most of the time. I remember a lovely, soft voice. That’s all.’

‘OK, OK, calm down. What happened to her?’

‘I think – I have problems remembering time frames, I was out of my head so much of the time – but I think she found the girl she was looking for and it wasn’t good.’

He leaned forward. ‘She was dead?’ he said. ‘Well, that would fit. We know Cathy died round about—’