Authors: A.J. Waines
Brad made a noise like a steam engine. ‘Flippin’ heck, Jules…’
I gave his cheek a tender peck. ‘It’s only because you can’t swim that it seems a big deal.’
‘You’re right…saved two girls’ lives…no big deal…’
His skin smelt a dizzy mixture of cocoa, faint spice and fabric softener. He pulled me to my feet, both his arms around my waist. Those lagoon-blue eyes were playing havoc with my breathing.
‘I wanted to apologise,’ he said, smoothing loose strands of hair away from my forehead.
‘What for?’
‘For being such a dork…the other time…when you…’
‘It’s okay…I was probably too emotionally charged.’
‘And what about now?’
‘What do you mean?’ He ran a finger along my neckline and something hot and compelling burst into my bloodstream. ‘Shall we do this properly?’
I didn’t need to stop and think. I didn’t need to consider Andrew, anymore. I was free and I was ready. This man; half Italian waiter, half airline pilot (but really a detective) was filling my veins with urgency, making the muscles behind my knees go soft. It made what we were going to do next seem as inevitable as a bomb exploding, once the fuse has been lit. Which, by now, it well and truly had been. Right there, right then. Unstoppable. Everything about me; my weak limbs, my dreamy eyes gave him his answer.
He pressed his mouth against mine, at first hesitantly and then as I responded, with more pressure, his tongue searching inside, exploring, caressing. We moved, joined as though in an inelegant three-legged race, through into the bedroom. There was no time to put on the light or draw the curtains. We bundled straight onto the bed. I could feel his hands making their way under my jumper, urgent, pulling at my blouse. I started wrenching at his shirt, smoothing my fingers over the thicket of dark hair on his chest. I pressed my face into it, breathing in the musky oil of his skin and ran my tongue down to the top of his jeans.
At that moment the phone rang. Rude and abrasive in my ears.
‘Ugh…’ I said.
‘You going to get that?’ he muttered between kisses.
‘Do I look like I am?’
We both heard the answer-phone take over and would have ignored it had a man’s voice not filled the space in the sitting room. We both froze as the voice reached us.
‘Oh, God, no,’ said Brad, clawing his way to the edge of the bed.
I followed him into the next room and we both stood staring at the phone, as if it was a deadly reptile we’d never seen before.
The voice was the same muffled monotone as before. William Jones.
‘Are you ready to take me down? Clean and close to the edge?’ came the voice.
‘What the hell does he mean?’ I said.
‘Shush!’ said Brad.
‘Are you ready to take me down?’ the voice repeated. ‘Clean and close to the edge?’
‘Should I pick up?’
‘Yes. Now.’
‘Hello?’ I said, my voice fragile and small. Brad squashed his head against mine, trying to listen in. There was a silence the length of an inhalation and then the voice repeated the two questions.
‘Mr Jones? Is this another..?’ I whispered into the mouthpiece.
The phone went dead.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Brad. ‘What on earth does it mean?’
‘Another clue?’ I said.
‘What kind of a clue is
that
?’
‘There’s no date, no place, there’s nothing.’
The phone rang again and I answered straight away. It was the police saying they’d heard the call and had recorded it. We both sat on the edge of the sofa staring into our own murky visions of what could happen next.
He slapped his hands onto his thighs. ‘I’ve got to go. They’ll buzz me any minute.’
‘I thought you were off-duty.’
‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure we get another officer back outside straight away.’
He grabbed his coat and disappeared, leaving a delicate kiss brushed across my lips.
I don’t know how long I stood there in my bare feet after Brad had left, my jumper around my neck, my blouse half-open. I noticed one button had been snapped off during our brief, but unfettered moment of passion. The clock said 11.30pm. I wasn’t the least bit tired. I stomped into the kitchen, infuriated by the interruption to our special moment, but also angry and bewildered by the ridiculous clue we’d been given.
Was it really a clue to another murder? How on earth were we going to prevent this one?
I poured boiling water on to a bag of camomile tea. We couldn’t even be sure we had prevented a murder at Kew Bridge. Nothing appeared in the water, but perhaps there was still a body lying in hiding somewhere. Maybe that’s why the latest clue had come along so soon afterwards. Just two days after Kew.
If we
had
managed to prevent the latest murder, it would make sense that the killer would raise the stakes by making the already cryptic clues even more tenuous. Was it really William Jones? Jones with someone else?
I took a sip of tea and tasted bits, like sawdust, in my mouth. The teabag had burst. I poured it down the sink and wandered into the sitting room, automatically gravitating towards my laptop. It had helped in the past, but this time? The clue consisted of two silly random questions. My search engine wasn’t going to be able to pin anything down from those, surely. I didn’t even bother to punch in the message. There was no point.
Instead, I emailed everyone I could think of, asking them if they could think of any link, however weird, between
Are you ready to take me down?
and
Clean and close to the edge?
I didn’t give the reason, just said something vague about a competition. I expected to receive some puzzled responses as a result, but I didn’t hold out much hope that they were going to lead anywhere.
There was nothing else I could do. I went to bed.
First thing on Thursday morning, I phoned Cheryl and told her about the latest message.
‘You were so helpful last time, Cheryl, do you think we might —’
I was interested in her response. If, in some way, she was involved with her brother, she might try to throw me off track - although the royal connection she’d come up with after the last message had eventually taken us to the right bridge. I still wasn’t ready to condemn her.
‘Say the questions again,’ she said.
I heard her breathing, then she said she was picking up nothing at all. ‘It’s sometimes like that. Sometimes there’s no connection, nothing happens. Nothing at all.’
‘But, if we could meet - sit together, like we did last time…’
‘I’m not getting a thing, Juliet.’
‘I could get the recording of his voice. You might be able to —’ I didn’t care that desperation was oozing from my voice.
‘You can’t switch these psychic powers on and off, Juliet. I’m sorry. I’ll call you if anything comes to me.’
She cut me off and I sat holding the handset in some vain hope that I’d misheard her and she was on her way over. The room suddenly felt hollow and I was acutely aware of being alone.
Was Cheryl telling the truth or was she deliberately holding back this time?
I knew Cheryl had no appointments at Holistica that day, but I had one supervisee I had to see. Feeling isolated and burdened with the excruciating pressure of stopping another murder from taking place, I was pleased to turn my attentions somewhere else. I caught the Tube - I couldn’t trust myself to drive.
Clive had dyed his hair pink, looking as if he’d been in the same wash as his red t-shirt.
‘Nice,’ I said, realising as I said it, that it sounded half-hearted.
‘I know, I know. Supposed to be “burgundy”,’ he said. ‘A friend did it. Never trust amateurs.’
There was no one waiting in the reception area and Clive was keeping himself busy by painting his toe-nails black.
I had a thought. Clive was an off-the-wall sort of bloke. It was worth a try. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know a link between “Are you ready to take me down?” and “Clean and close to the edge?”, would you?’
Clive let out a little laugh that sounded like a Pekingese sneezing. I took that as my answer and turned to go, but he spoke before I got to the stairs.
‘It’s obvious,’ he said.
‘What is?’ I said.
‘Both of them.’
‘I’m sorry, Clive, you’ve lost me.’
‘They’re both songs.’
‘What are?’
‘Those phrases: “Are you ready to take me down?” and “Clean and close to the edge?” - they are both song titles…by the Federal Jackdaws.’
I could feel my face twisting into a something resembling a gargoyle.
‘
Federal Jackdaws
? What on earth..?’
‘Yeah. I saw them in concert last year. Bloody good they are too. “Are you ready to take me down?” was a single; came out earlier this year, and “Clean and close to the edge?” was released ages ago. 2003, I think.’
It didn’t make any sense. What did this band, the Federal Jackdaws, have to do with a London Bridge or the river Thames? I found myself sitting down on the edge of one of the chairs.
‘Are you okay?’ he said. ‘You’ve gone a funny colour.’
I thought that was ironic, coming from him. He got up, after rolling up the legs of his jeans to avoid smearing his toenails, and brought over a plastic cup of water.
‘It’s not what I expected, that’s all,’ I said. I rang and left a message for Brad, hoping it would mean something to him.
‘Why do you ask? Pub-quiz?’ asked Clive.
‘They don’t have any link to a bridge in London, by any chance, do they? Those songs, or the Federal Jaybirds…’
‘Federal
Jackdaws
, if you don’t mind.’ He made a little ‘humph’ noise. ‘A London bridge? Sorry - I can’t help you with that one.’
After seeing my supervisee, I wandered out into the street in a daze, wondering what Brad and Derek Moorcroft were making of this one. It had started raining and I ducked into the doorway of a closed shop to call Brad again. His team had also got as far as the Federal Jackdaws, but had no other leads. He was as incredulous as I was.
‘We’re looking for an expert on this Indie band,’ he said, ‘to see if they have any connection to any London bridges.’
‘It seems so obscure,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but hasn’t that been the theme of this case?’
It started to rain harder. I didn’t have an umbrella and the underground station was a few streets away. ‘There’s more bad news, I’m afraid…with William Jones,’ he said. I waited. ‘Apparently, he was in his flat all yesterday evening and didn’t use either his mobile phone or his landline.’
‘Are you saying the call I had last night wasn’t from him?’
‘The call was made from a coin-box near Waterloo station, but it wasn’t him.
But,
’ he emphasised the word, ‘it could have been his voice.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We’ve got specialised spectrographic software that picks up unique features of a person’s speech. Things like pitch, tone, cadence and vibrations in the larynx. It’s not a hundred per cent accurate, but the voice analyst says it’s close enough to identify Jones as our caller - only the voice was slightly distorted this time, as though it was played from a tape-recorder.’
‘So, it
was
William Jones’ voice…recorded beforehand, you mean?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘He’s one step ahead of us every single time. Can’t you just arrest him, on the basis of a voice-match?’
‘Nothing happened at Kew, remember. The previous messages you got were in text. We can’t attach his voice to those.’
I drifted out from the doorway, not caring now that I was getting soaked.
‘But the two phone calls I had were threats. He called me, threatening to kill someone.’
‘No. He didn’t. He left a few words, that’s all. A cryptic clue. No mention of killing anyone.’
I moaned.
‘There’s something else,’ he said.
Why did I always hate it when he said that?
‘It looks like the killer was on to us at Kew Bridge.’
‘Really? How do you know?’
‘Forensics checked out the boat that drifted towards us. It looked empty, but, as well as grit, debris and sand, they picked up two hairs in the bottom, deliberately left for us, it would seem.’
‘And?’
‘You remember giving us DNA samples, early on, so we could screen you out of any evidence we found at the crime scenes?’ I held my breath. ‘Well…the hairs we found in the boat…’ There was a silence and I thought I’d lost the line.
I squeezed the phone. ‘What? What about them?’
‘They’re… yours, I’m afraid.’ As he spoke, my arm went limp and my bag fell to the pavement. I swore. I couldn’t trust my legs to continue walking, to hold me upright. I staggered inside the next doorway and rested my head against the wet brick.
My own hair. How up-close-and-personal can you get? Left where the body was supposed to be.
My bag was soaking wet. My head was spinning. I let the wall take the weight of my whole body. I could feel myself sinking down onto the soggy doormat.
‘Juliet…are you okay?’
I was crouched in a ball. ‘Not really…’
‘Don’t worry, you’re not a suspect again.’
I rallied suddenly. ‘I should think not!’
‘We’re more concerned about what it means.’
‘How on earth did the killer get hold of my hair?’ I cried. A van roared past, sending a cascade of water on to the kerb.
‘Where are you?’
‘Near Holistica. On foot.’
‘Is one of our officers tailing you?’
I glanced up and found the blue Astra waiting at the kerb. ‘Penny’s right here.’
‘Good. Make sure you don’t lose her.’
‘I’m going home,’ I said, forcing myself to my feet. I was tempted to hail a lift from the WPC, but knew that was against the rules, so I broke into a jog until I got to the underground.
The flat felt cold and unwelcoming when I got back. Dark and hostile, like a place I barely knew. I ran into every room with clenched fists checking for an intruder. I looked in the wardrobes, under the bed, behind the doors. Nothing, but still I didn’t feel safe.
I needed to keep busy, so I made a sandwich for lunch, but put most of it in the bin, then popped downstairs to see if Jackie was there. There was no reply. I didn’t want to be left on my own all day with four walls bearing down on me and the knowledge that the killer had somehow managed to get close enough to grab a handful of my hair.
I picked up the hairbrush in my bedroom and glared at it. There was another one in my bag. There were hairs on my pillow. I wanted to scream.
My life didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore; bit by bit, it was being dismantled by this monstrous killer. Fragments of who I was were gradually being taken from me. Personal momentos from my life were being removed and placed on the bodies of dead women. I felt naked, stripped, like someone was slowly peeling away my skin. Everything was slipping away; my privacy, my dignity - my sanity.
I walked back into the bedroom. The blue Astra was in place across the road. At least I wasn’t quite alone.
I switched on my laptop and took a look at several sites about
The Federal Jackdaws.
I couldn’t find any mention of London or any songs with a London bridge in the title. I knew Brad and his team must be doing the same; I wished I could have been with them. I started running through play-lists on video-sharing sites, but many were only short extracts. I moved on to downloading lyrics and listening to full-length videos and suddenly I found something. Seconds later Brad was on the line.
‘We’ve got something,’ he said.
‘So have I,’ I shrieked. ‘The
Body-Snatchers
track,’ I said, jumping in before he could say any more.
‘That’s impressive,’ he said. ‘There are eight of us here working on it and only one of you.’
‘Blackfriars Bridge,’ I said, triumphantly.
‘Ditto. Pitlock has searched every line of their lyrics and that’s the only bridge mentioned by name.’
‘Then it has to be there, surely. That has to be the bridge.’
I was on my feet, but Brad’s words were slowing down instead of speeding up.
‘There could be something else we haven’t got to yet; something in one of their interviews…’ he said. ‘Perhaps one of them lived near a London bridge sometime, maybe they were on a bridge when they wrote one of their songs…’
‘I’ve just heard the song - it’s all about dead people!’
I could visualise the broad red and white arches of Blackfriars Bridge, with its white criss-crossed ironwork and gold rosettes set into the red beams. I could see the green-black river rushing underneath it and I knew we had to act on this.
‘You’ve got to get William Jones in again, question him about it,’ I said.
He took his time. ‘It’s all conjecture at this stage.’
‘But, talk to him, interview him, break him down. He’s fragile, get him to tell you what the plan is - we need a date. We have no idea when the next one is due to take place.’
‘Blackfriars is in a very busy section of the Thames. There are always people about. There are a fair number of security cameras. It’s an ambitious project to get a body down there, in the water, without being seen - even at night from a boat.’
‘He’s managed it before! At Battersea Bridge. And the police can’t be on high-alert every single day until Christmas. We need a
date
.’
‘I know. You’re right. But, we don’t even know if it’s definitely Blackfriars Bridge.’
‘Get him in. Please. Speak to Jones again or let me do it. If he has, or thinks he has some personal connection with me, perhaps I can surprise him and catch him off guard.’
I could hear his pen rattling between his teeth.
‘Okay. Let’s go for it. I’ll speak to the SIO.’