Читать книгу The Runaway - Ali Harper - Страница 11

I caught the bus to Hyde Park Corner and threaded my way through the streets back to the office. Aunt Edie was at the computer, two-finger typing and swearing under her breath as I slung my bag onto my desk. I noticed Jo was wearing her hangover lipstick – dark purple, like crushed blueberries.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

‘Matt’s house.’

‘Why didn’t you answer your mobile?’

‘Oh.’ I pulled open my desk drawer and rummaged. ‘It needs charging,’ I said, holding my new iPhone aloft.

‘You’re supposed to charge it at night so that it’s ready every morning,’ Jo said, snatching it off me and plugging it into the wall socket. ‘How many more times?’

‘I went for a run – had a chat with Matt’s housemate, Jan. She said he disappeared once before – didn’t show for days.’

‘Told you,’ said Jo. ‘He’ll show up with numb nuts and a hangover, I’d bet money on it. Or he knows she’s preggers and he’s moved to the Outer Hebrides. You know what men are like.’

‘But,’ I said, crossing the room and pulling the file from the cabinet, ‘his car’s been done over, like, seriously done over.’

‘Crap,’ said Aunt Edie.

I frowned at Jo. ‘What’s she doing?’

‘She’s doing my head in, that’s what she’s doing.’

I glanced back at Aunt Edie. Her glasses had fallen to the tip of her nose and her lips were pursed but she didn’t appear to have heard Jo’s comment. I raised my eyebrows at Jo. We both know Aunt Edie doesn’t take criticism well.

Jo shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t care. ‘She’s typing up Martin’s notes. Thought I might as well get her doing something, seeing as how we didn’t know where you were.’

I put my notes from my interview with Jan into the file and thought about what we had. A possible date in Old Bar today at 2 p.m. And Tuff. We needed to speak to him – it looked like he was the last person to see Matt – and maybe he could shed some light on what had happened to Matt’s car. The bookshop was opposite the university Union, which housed Old Bar. It made sense to combine the two appointments, not that Tuff knew we were coming. A glance at the clock above the filing cabinet told me it wasn’t even ten. I dropped the file with my notes onto Aunt Edie’s desk so she could type them up later. She peered at her computer screen and cursed again.

Call me sensitive, but I was picking up on an atmosphere. Luckily, I’ve been mates with Jo long enough to know what she needed. ‘Why don’t we take a drive to see the flats where the woman’s body was found? Martin said they overlook Roundhay Park. There’s got to be a café round there somewhere. I’ll buy breakfast.’

Jo and I left the office together. I didn’t even take my jacket. The van was parked just round the corner, and I clambered into the passenger seat and got that buzz I always get when I know we’re leaving our normal. A trip. Probably I need to get out more.

We had to negotiate the mad ballet dance that is the Sheepscar Interchange, which involved a few car horns and Jo sticking the Vs up out of the window as the satnav lady fired directions at us. We eventually joined Roundhay Road, which takes you out to the north-east of the city.

Leeds 6 is a bubble: it insulates against the real world. Its only inhabitants are the young, the impressionable and the idealistic. The shops are all takeaways, off-licences, laundrettes and taxi firms, so there’s never any pressing reason to go anywhere else. But as Jo drove us down a hill, into Roundhay Park, and we caught a glimpse of the enormous lake, I thought perhaps we should have made more of an effort and visited before.

‘I googled Roundhay Park this morning, while you were out, running.’ Jo made the last word sound like a euphemism.

I rose above it. ‘And?’

‘It was bought by the mayor of the city, for the people of Leeds, a couple of hundred years ago.’

‘That was nice of him.’

‘Before that it was privately owned. There’s a stately home at the top.’

I peered out of the windows but all I could see was parkland.

Jo turned into the car park at the bottom of the hill and reverse parked into a space. ‘Roundhay Park had its own serial killer, once upon a time,’ she said.

‘The Park Killer? That was here?’

You couldn’t live in Leeds and not have heard of the Park Killer. He was a serial killer who’d killed all of his female victims in parks, hence the moniker. He’d been caught by a late-night dog-walker, who’d discovered him cutting up his final victim in bushes and had made a citizen’s arrest. According to folklore, the dog, a black Labrador, had pinned the killer down, holding him until the police arrived. Some people claimed the Park Killer had been inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper, who’d stalked Leeds’ streets back in the seventies, but the truth was no one really knew what had motivated him to do what he had done, because the Park Killer committed suicide in prison, before his case had come to trial. I glanced around.

‘He killed two women here,’ Jo said. ‘Think the others were in Meanwood.’

‘Fucked up,’ I said.

We climbed out of the van and surveyed our surroundings. ‘The flats are up there,’ said Jo, pointing to the crest of the park.

‘Food first,’ I said. I’m not stupid. Hanging out with Jo when her blood sugar is low is taking your life in your hands.

We made our way over to the Lakeside café – a wooden building jutting out over the lake – and I ordered us both a full English breakfast with an espresso for Jo. We sat on the balcony, the sun glistened off the water, swans and ducks glided past, and I filled Jo in on the details of my conversation with Jan while we waited for breakfast to arrive.

‘Matt could have easily popped home Sunday,’ Jo said when I told her everything I could remember. ‘Picked up his stuff and bought a single ticket away from planet parenthood.’

‘Seems weird that he’d know Nikki was pregnant before she even did. And Jan said she couldn’t tell whether any of his stuff was missing.’

‘He’s probably out getting laid in between typing up his dissertation.’

‘What about his car?’

‘Or getting laid while some woman types up his dissertation. A woman on my course did that. Typed up her boyfriend’s dissertation. He dumped her like a week later.’

I paused as the waitress arrived and handed us two plates brimming with sausage, eggs and beans. Jo poured vinegar onto her fried eggs – she likes them dripping with the stuff.

‘There’s the note in the pigeonhole as well,’ I pointed out. ‘Someone else is looking for him.’

‘Could be weeks old, that note. And from anybody.’ Jo spooned a forkful of baked beans on her slice of bread, folded it over and took a bite.

‘We’ll find out this afternoon,’ I said. ‘Even if Matt doesn’t turn up, the person who wrote it might.’

‘Might,’ Jo stressed as she chewed on her baked bean sandwich.

‘Not like we’ve got anything else to go on.’

We ate the rest of our breakfast in silence. I watched the colour return to Jo’s skin as she ate. When her plate was empty she poured the last of her coffee down her throat and licked her fingers. ‘Delish. I’ll have that sausage if you’re not going to eat it.’

*

After breakfast, we climbed the steep hill to the flats at the top. When I think flats I always picture council sky-rises, like the ones that mark the edge of the city in Little London, or new-build student halls of residence, which remind me of battery hen coops. These flats weren’t like those. White stucco, with huge portrait-shaped windows, built on the crest of the hill overlooking the park and the lake. Location-wise, it didn’t get much better. Apart from the wooden café, there wasn’t a single building in sight from the top of the hill, just miles of green parkland.

Jo put her hands in the small of her back as we surveyed the vista. ‘Not bad, eh?’ Roundhay Park stretched before us, a natural flat-bottomed bowl, with what looked like a cricket pitch at its base. I was reminded of school and my geography teacher droning on and on about glaciation. We were high up, above the trees. From where we were it looked like you’d be able to trampoline in them. ‘U2 played there,’ said Jo, pointing down the slopes. ‘And Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Williams, Ed Sheeran – apparently the acoustics are well good.’

Martin’s notes included a detailed description of where the woman’s body was found. To get into the grounds we had to walk down a small road that ended just behind the flats. The gates were open and it was easy to slip inside. A car park with more than its fair share of convertibles and BMWs stood between us and the rear of the building. Surrounding the car park were well-established trees and shrubs. ‘What are we going to say? If anyone asks?’

That’s the thing about leaving the Leeds 6 bubble – you become aware of how different you are to ‘normal’ society. It’s unusual to see anyone over twenty-five in Leeds 6 and the dress code is relaxed to say the least. I was still wearing my denim cut-offs and Jo was in her hangover outfit – baggy trousers she’d picked up in Thailand and a sweatshirt that had the neck and cuffs removed.

In the park and around the café, I’d seen old people walking dogs, kids running around, an Asian couple feeding the ducks, mothers with prams. The prams had made me think of Nikki. What a weird thing, to grow another life. I shook the thought from my head and concentrated on our surroundings.

‘We’re gardeners,’ I said. ‘Here to price up a job.’

Jo tugged Martin’s notebook out of her bag. ‘OK.’

I wasn’t sure that anyone would fall for it because the gardens were immaculate. The hedges ruler straight, the soil finely tilled, the roses all neatly budding. We made our way down a small path, around the building to the front – the side of the flats that overlooked the park – Jo reading from Martin’s notes. ‘Middle of the garden, by the statue.’

‘The statue?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Of?’

‘There.’ We rounded the corner and sure enough there was a statue in the middle of the front gardens. A statue of a woman, naked and kneeling, holding what looked like a large pitcher, water flowing from it into the well next to her.

Jo read from Martin’s notes. ‘Vic. discovered by statue, right wrist attached to statue’s right arm. Cable tie. Black.’

‘Weirder and weirder.’

Jo paused from reading. She dropped her bag on the floor and looped a full circle around the stone woman, the gravel crunching under her feet as she walked. When she’d done the full three hundred and sixty degrees she turned to me. ‘She’s like the suffragettes, chaining themselves to railings. Solidarity?’

‘Who is she?’ I peered up close at the statue woman’s face, freckled with lichen, her hair tied in a topknot, the ponytail swirling around her moss-green neck. ‘Aquarius?’

‘Don’t know.’ Jo crouched to the ground and pulled the camera out of her bag. ‘Knew this baby would come in handy.’

‘Martin’s right,’ I said. ‘There’s something wrong here.’ I couldn’t put into words why, but every part of my body refused to accept the narrative we’d been given. I glanced around the garden. It was completely cut off from the park by an eight-foot hedge, anyone in the park wouldn’t be able to see into the gardens. There were three benches arranged at the east, west and south ends and bird feeders swung from a metal pole. The beds were planted with the kind of shrubs that don’t take much looking after. Jo snapped pictures of the statue as I tried to put my sense of unease into words. ‘You’d be scared someone would see you for one thing.’

Not someone from the park, but someone from the flats. I glanced up at the many windows of the numerous flats that overlooked us. The windows got bigger the higher up the building you went – so that on the top floor they were floor to ceiling. Huge windows. I counted the number of floors and did a rough estimate. At least sixty of them.

‘Would have been dark,’ said Jo. She put the camera on the stone at the base of the statue and picked up the notebook again. ‘Vic. discovered by newspaper boy: 6.50 a.m.’

‘Time of death?’

Jo flicked through the pages. ‘Pathologist reckoned she’d been dead between three and four hours.’

‘Let’s give her a name. I don’t like calling her Vic.’

‘Vicky?’

Despite myself, I half-smiled. That’s what I love about Jo. Even in the hard times, the darkest of dark times, she can make me smile. ‘Why would the newspaper boy be round here? The entrance to the flats is at the rear.’

‘No, there’s another one there, look. Some residents must use that one.’

‘We need a plan of the flats. I’ll put Aunt Edie on it.’

I kept looking up at the windows, hit by the enormity of the task ahead. There must be at least thirty flats in the building, thirty owners to track down – possibly more because some of the flats would have been sold in the seven years since our woman’s body had been discovered. Some of them were probably sublet. The theme tune to Mission Impossible started up in my mind. I tried to get a more precise count of the number of windows, and that was when I first noticed her.

On the third or fourth floor, the face of a woman, an older woman, pressed against the glass, the palm of her hand also raised and touching the window. When she saw me spot her, she pulled back, so quick I wasn’t sure whether I’d imagined her. Just a dark space where she once stood and perhaps the smudge of her fingerprints, although I was far too far away to see for sure. ‘This place gives me the creeps,’ I said to Jo.

‘Nutter. This is the pinnacle of human achievement. You live here, you’ve made it. Bet these cost a bomb,’ she said.

‘Someone’s watching us,’ I said, scanning the building again. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and I felt the shudder run all the way to my toes.

Jo lifted the camera and rapid-snapped photos of the building. Nothing moved but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I stepped away from Jo and tried to imagine the scene. A naked woman, cable-tied to the statue. I sat on the ground next to the statue, held my wrist against hers.

Jo returned the camera to the bag. ‘There’s something missing. Something we’re not seeing.’

‘Besides her clothes?’

‘Yeah, besides her clothes. Although, actually they were there; Martin said they were neatly folded, next to her body.’

I shook my head. ‘Who’d get naked to commit suicide?’

‘I know right.’

‘So what’s missing?’

Jo flicked through Martin’s notebook. ‘We’ve got a list of her possessions. Brown ankle boots, scuffed. Denim-effect dress, belt, bra, red knickers. Train ticket dated 28th of August – the day before her body was found. Stamped.’

‘Didn’t Martin mention a necklace?’

‘Yes. She was wearing that. The only thing she was wearing.’

‘Go on.’

‘The train ticket was found in bushes near the body.’ We both glanced around at the perfectly manicured shrubs. ‘So where was her purse?’

‘Good point. Maybe she didn’t have one?’

‘And the other thing – what did she carry the strychnine in? Had to be some kind of container.’

‘Is it a powder or a liquid?’

‘Her bag’s what’s missing,’ said Jo, bending to scribble something in the notebook. ‘It’s obvious. Every woman has a handbag.’

I pulled a face at that. I’ve never owned a handbag in my life.

Jo straightened up. ‘Women that wear dresses have handbags. Dresses don’t have pockets.’

I thought about this. ‘She’d have needed money for the train fare.’

‘She would have had a handbag,’ said Jo, again. ‘’S’obvious. Can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner.’

‘Maybe there was one and Martin’s not noted it.’ I glanced at Martin’s pristine notebook and knew I was clutching at straws.

‘We need to speak to the police – the person in charge of the original investigation,’ said Jo. ‘DI Roberts, according to the notes here.’

‘Wasn’t that the one that Martin said he wasn’t sure about?’

‘And what about the necklace? What kind of necklace was it? It’s got to be important if she kept it on.’

‘Wonder what they do with it? The evidence? Do they store it all somewhere?’

‘It’s an unsolved case,’ said Jo. ‘They can’t throw everything away. There must be a warehouse somewhere with Vicky’s possessions in it.’ Jo’s eyes lit up at the thought.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We’re going to need to speak to the police.’ My heart sank at the thought. Neither Jo nor I are keen on involving the police in the business, even though we know it’s going to be unavoidable at times. We’ve both grown up seeing them as the enemy – due to a couple of student demonstrations where they’ve seemed more concerned with social control than upholding the freedoms of the general public.

Jo sat on the bench by the bird feeders and wrote something in Martin’s notebook. I took a walk around the small enclosed garden before taking a seat next to her and lighting a cigarette. ‘Why here?’ I said. ‘She caught a train from Nottingham. Why come all this way to die? Martin’s right, it’s like she was trying to draw attention to something, but what? The flats? Someone who lived in one of the flats?’

‘Possible.’

‘The statue?’

‘The park?’

‘If it was the park, you’d think she’d have killed herself in the park.’

‘What about the Park Killer?’ I said. I’d been unable to get him out of my thoughts since we arrived.

‘He’d been dead five years before Vicky got the train here.’

‘Maybe she wanted someone to find her,’ I said, looking up again at all the windows in front of us. ‘I mean, before she died. Maybe it was a cry for help.’

‘Aspirin is crying for help,’ said Jo. ‘She’s hard-core. She didn’t want to be found, not alive at any rate.’

‘How did she know the statue was there?’

‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe the idea only struck her when she got here.’

‘What about the cable tie? She had to have brought that with her. Is there anything on that in the notes?’

Jo flicked through the pages of the notebook. ‘No. Only that they’re standard issue, available in every DIY shop in the country. Black plastic.’

‘She chose this spot. It’s so, so,’ – I struggled to find the right word – ‘premeditated. There’s no reason to ever come here unless you were coming here.’ What little road there was stopped at the flats, the rest was trees and parkland. ‘And naked. Why would you strip to commit suicide?’

‘It was August,’ said Jo, as if that made any sense at all.

I shook my head. ‘It’s another statement. Naked and tied.’

‘The statue’s naked.’

‘Why go to all this trouble to make such a statement but then not leave a note?’ I kicked at the grass. ‘It’s like she wanted to make a statement, but it’s one no one can understand.’

‘Maybe the message wasn’t aimed at us. Maybe it was aimed at someone else.’

I thought about this for a moment.

‘Maybe it wasn’t suicide,’ said Jo.

That was the thought that had been playing in my head since the moment I’d seen the statue. Maybe she’d been forced to ingest the strychnine. Maybe she’d been tied to the statue once she was already dead. ‘We need to know more,’ I said. ‘More about her, more about her background. Jesus. How are we going to do that if the police didn’t even manage it at the time?’

Jo slung her backpack over her shoulders and linked arms with me. ‘Martin doesn’t think the police were trying very hard.’

‘Well, we’re going to try harder. Much fucking harder,’ I said.

Jo grinned at me and I noticed she’d got lipstick on her teeth. ‘Right.’

‘First things first. We need to know who she was. Martin’s right. Somewhere she’s missing. We need to find out who’s missing her.’