Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

About the Book

Despite her life-long fascination with the infamous Jack the Ripper, young London policewoman Lacey Flint has never worked a murder case or seen a corpse up close. Until now…

As she arrives at her car one evening, Lacey is horrified to find a woman slumped over the door. She has been brutally stabbed, and dies in Lacey’s arms.

Thrown headlong into her first murder hunt, Lacey will stop at nothing to find this savage killer.

But when Lacey receives a familiar letter, written in blood, pre-fixed ‘Dear Boss’, and hand-delivered, it is clear that a Ripper copycat is at large. And one who is fixated on Lacey herself.

Can this inexperienced detective outwit a killer whose role model has never been found?

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Part Two

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Part Three

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Part Four

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Part Five

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by S. J. Bolton

Copyright

For Andrew, who reads my books first; and for Hal, who can’t wait to get started.

Prologue

Eleven years ago

LEAVES, MUD AND GRASS DEADEN SOUND. EVEN SCREAMS. The girl knows this. Any sound she might make can’t possibly travel the quarter-mile to the car headlights and streetlamps, to the illuminated windows of tall buildings that she can see beyond the wall. The nearby city isn’t going to help her and screaming will just burn up energy she can’t spare .

She’s alone. A moment ago she wasn’t .

‘ Cathy,’ she says. ‘Cathy, this isn’t funny .’

Difficult to imagine anything less funny. So why is someone giggling? Then another sound. A grinding, scraping noise .

She could run. The bridge isn’t far. She might make it .

If she runs, she leaves Cathy behind .

A breeze stirs the leaves of the tree she’s standing beside and she finds she can’t stop shaking. She dressed, a few hours ago, for a hot pub and a heated bus-ride home, not this open space at midnight. Knowing that any second now she may have to run, she lifts first one foot and then the other and takes off her shoes .

‘ I’ve had enough now,’ she says, in a voice that doesn’t sound like her own. She steps forward, away from the tree, a little closer to the great slab of rock lying ahead of her on the grass. ‘Cathy,’ she says, ‘where are you? ’

Only the scraping answers back .

The stones look taller at night. Not just bigger, but blacker and older . Yet the circle they make seems to have shrunk. She has a sense of those just out of her line of sight slipping closer, playing grandmother’s footsteps; that if she spins round now, there they’ll be, close enough to touch .

Unthinkable not to turn with an idea like that in her head; not to whimper when a dark shape plainly is moving closer. One of the tall stones has split in two like a splinter of rock breaking away from a cliff. The splinter stands free and steps forward .

She runs then, but not for long. Another black shape is blocking her path, cutting off her route to the bridge. She turns. Another. And another. Dark figures make their way towards her. Impossible to run. Useless to scream. All she can do is turn on the spot, like a rat caught in a trap. They take hold of her and drag her towards the great, flat rock and one thing, at least, becomes clear .

The sound she can hear is that of a blade being sharpened against stone .

Part One

Polly

‘The brutality of the murder is beyond conception and beyond description.’

Star , 31 August 1888

1

Friday 31 August

A DEAD WOMAN WAS LEANING AGAINST MY CAR.

Somehow managing to stand upright, arms outstretched, fingers grasping the rim of the passenger door, a dead woman was spewing blood over the car’s paintwork, each spatter overlaying the last as the pattern began to resemble a spider’s web.

A second later she turned and her eyes met mine. Dead eyes. A savage wound across her throat gaped open; her abdomen was a mass of scarlet. She reached out; I couldn’t move. She was clutching me, strong for a dead woman.

I know, I know, she was on her feet, still moving, but it was impossible to look into those eyes and think of her as anything other than dead. Technically, the body might be clinging on, the weakening heart still beating, she had a little control over her muscles. Technicalities, all of them. Those eyes knew the game was up.

Suddenly I was hot. Before the sun went down, it had been a warm evening, the sort when London’s buildings and pavements cling to the heat of the day, hitting you with a wave of hot air when you venture outside. This was something new, though, this pumping, sticky warmth. This heat had nothing to do with the weather.

I hadn’t seen the knife. But I could feel the handle of it now, pressing against me. She was holding me so tightly, was pushing the blade further into her own body.

No, don’t do that .

I tried to hold her away, just enough to take the pressure off the knife. She coughed, except the cough came from the wound on her throat, not her mouth. Something splashed over my face and then the world turned around us.

We’d fallen. She sank to the ground and I went with her, hitting the tarmac hard and jarring my shoulder. Now she was lying flat on the pavement, staring up at the sky, and I was kneeling over her. Her chest was still moving – just.