Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

I found another café, this time with a TV, and asked permission to change to the twenty-four-hour news channel. I watched for twenty minutes and saw several references to Joanna. None to me. I switched my phone back on. Still nothing. Move on.

Shit, this was not what I’d planned. Panic was rising inside me like milk coming to the boil. Llewellyn didn’t know I was out here. She wouldn’t contact me.

And my sense of paranoia was growing too, because everywhere I went I had a sense of people looking at me. It was impossible; I’d kept my phone switched off, I’d stayed on the move, I’d avoided cameras, the attention I was getting had to be down to my still-bruised face. But as every minute went by, the sense of being watched increased.

I could just run.

But if I did that, Joanna Groves would die. There had to be another way. I knew this woman. I knew how she thought. Where would she take Joanna?

She’d killed Geraldine Jones in a south London housing estate. She’d cut Amanda Weston to pieces in a park. Charlotte Benn had been murdered in her own home, Karen Curtis at her mother’s house. There was no pattern.

I left the café, unchained my bike and just pushed it along the street, forgetting even to watch out for cameras. For the first time that day I had no plan, no idea where to go next.

Llewellyn had sent me a knife. She wanted me to kill Joanna Groves. That meant she had to believe I’d find her. I passed a newsagent’s, a children’s clothes shop, a second-hand record shop. I’d stopped walking, was staring at my reflection in the record-shop window. On the pavement, people were having to make their way around me, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my eyes off the stack of vinyl recordings of old musicals. The Sound of Music wasn’t there, but it didn’t have to be. I’d got it.

Of course there was a pattern, there had been all along. It was me. It was all about me and my favourite things. Because a couple of times, I’d played that game with someone else. We’d had long lists, that other girl and I, but one day, we’d narrowed our choices down to just five each. We’d laughed because I’d tried so hard to make my five all begin with P, but it didn’t matter how much time we spent, we couldn’t think of another word for zoo that began with P.

So my list was the (P) zoo, Parks, Pools, Public libraries and Ponies.

Geraldine Jones had been killed where I would be bound to find her, to make sure I became involved from the outset. Amanda Weston had been murdered in a park I visited, part of her body left for me in one of my favourite swimming pools. Charlotte Benn’s heart had been found in the children’s section of a Victorian public library, on top of one of my favourite books. We’d been sent on a wild goose chase to London Zoo to find Karen Curtis’s head. Parks, libraries, pools and the zoo. Four out of five boxes had been ticked. One left.

Ponies.

Finally, I knew where they were. Poor terrified Joanna Groves and the Llewellyn woman who was holding her hostage, waiting for me to arrive and draw a knife across her latest victim’s throat.

When I’d told Joesbury the story of two young women sharing cardboard walls and body warmth in a derelict London building, I hadn’t been specific. The exact location of that half-forgotten, freezing-cold place hadn’t seemed significant. And, of course, it didn’t take a genius to spot that when I mentioned a particular London district to Joesbury his eyes had a habit of narrowing and his jawline of becoming that bit tighter. When it came to me – and Camden – Mark Joesbury had a bit of a blind spot.

I’d wanted him listening and sympathizing, not getting mad. So I hadn’t mentioned that the place where I’d met and lived with the other young runaway had been less than half a mile from where I now regularly – to use his words – go shagging.

But it made perfect sense that Llewellyn would choose Camden. I’d lived there for months, knew it well, and although much of it had changed beyond recognition in recent years, the entire development had been themed around that other favourite of mine. Ponies. Llewellyn was holding Joanna somewhere around Camden Stables Market. Almost certainly in the Camden Catacombs.

89

‘YOU CAN SEE ME, CAN’T YOU?’ SAYS JOANNA. ‘I DON’T know how you do it, but you can see in the dark.’ She’s had her suspicions for some time now. The girl moves softly and silently around the dark space, never stumbling. Joanna has never seen her use a torch.

‘Yes, I can see you,’ the girl replies. ‘I have night-vision equipment. Gives me a headache after a while, but it’s useful down here.’

‘Please,’ says Joanna, ‘can we have some light? Just a torch. I already know what you look like, it can’t make any difference.’

‘We can’t, I’m afraid,’ says the girl. ‘We’re waiting for someone, you see. And I need to know exactly when she’s coming.’

90

IT WAS ALMOST SIX O’CLOCK BY THIS TIME. IN A HARDWARE shop I bought a torch and a large pair of pliers and then it took me nearly two hours along the back streets to reach Camden. Once there I found somewhere to chain my bike and jogged down to the towpath that runs alongside Regent’s Canal.

Mention the Camden Catacombs and few people in London, even those who know Camden, will have any idea what you’re talking about. But they exist, all the same: a buried network of underground chambers and tunnels, constructed nearly two centuries ago as part of the railway development. In recent years, lots of old tunnels have been opened up and developed as part of the Stables Market. Not all of them.

On the lock side of the railway bridge, built into the wall that edges the canal, is a solid black-metal door. I stopped in front of it. This was the time to phone Joesbury. He, Tulloch and the team would stand a much better chance of getting Joanna out than I would alone.

On the other hand, if I was wrong, they’d arrest me. I’d never get away again, and Llewellyn wouldn’t keep Joanna alive indefinitely. Having me kill her might be the icing on the cake, but when people are hungry enough, they’ll usually eat their cakes without icing.

The padlock on the door looked new. After a quick glance around I pulled out the pliers. Copying Joesbury’s actions in Victoria Park a few weeks earlier, I pushed them beneath the curved lock and pulled them sharply apart. The padlock fell to the ground. When I opened the door, I’d be inside an old tunnel that would take me to a vast underground structure called the Stationary Winding Engine Vaults.

In the old days, the noise made by trains travelling up the steep hill from Euston to Camden had driven wealthy residents bananas. That was before you got on to the subject of smoke. So, to avoid noise and smoke pollution, the trains at this point were pulled up by two steam-powered winding engines and a very long circular rope. The winding engines, the driving wheel and other large sheaves and pulleys were housed in a huge, vaulted underground space, nearly 200 feet long and 150 feet wide, that still sits directly beneath the main railway line. Up until the mid nineteenth century, two tall chimneys indicated the building’s position. These days, practically nothing of this massive cavern can be seen from the surface; very few people even know it’s there. Ten years ago I and a few dozen others had called it home. And this rickety piece of black metal had been my front door.

The best plans are the simple ones, they say. All I had to do was find Joanna without Llewellyn spotting me, guide her out of the vaults to safety and then get the hell out of London. Simple.

Except, when I tried the door it didn’t budge. There was no handle as such, just the metal clasps that the padlock had held together. I tried inserting my fingers into the gap between door and frame and pulling, but nothing happened. Somehow it had been locked or jammed from the inside.