10
Ben had offered to help her up to the flat, but she’d refused. She wanted to be alone to watch the Crimewatch re-enactment.
Letting herself into the block, she leaned on the bannister as she tentatively put weight on her foot. The jolt of pain shooting up her leg was strong, but manageable. She dropped two more painkillers onto her hand, threw them into her mouth and made for her front door.
Turning on the television in the sitting room she set the PVR to record just as the anchor finished summarising what was coming up in the programme; an image of Amy Spencer’s sweet smiling face filled the screen over his shoulder. It was her Hendon graduation photograph, the metal buttons of her full-dress uniform gleaming as brightly as her eyes. Kate could hardly breathe.
The narrator’s voice echoed around the small living room. ‘It was on a cold and wet January evening one year ago that London police officer Amy Spencer was walking home to her flat when she was attacked, assaulted and stabbed to death. It was a brutal slaying that sent shockwaves across the nation’s capital.’
Kate didn’t need reminding. The day had started like any other, but nothing could have prepared her for how much would change by the time Big Ben struck midnight. Kate was working every hour of every day at that time. They were under pressure. She was under pressure. Those moments where Amy would share horror stories of some of the men she’d met through the dating site over a glass of wine, seemed all too brief. Somehow, even though Amy was really the one with her neck on the line, she managed to keep the team’s spirits high. Kate knew she would go far.
The screen faded to a shot of two paramedics in green tending to a young woman in a dark, wet gutter. The word ‘RECONSTRUCTION’ appeared in the bottom corner of the screen as a male voice – one of the paramedics – provided commentary.
‘We were called to the scene in the early hours of Saturday morning, and found Amy Spencer dead from heavy blood loss. There was no pulse and it was clear she’d been dead for some time before we arrived.’
Kate could remember running towards the ambulance’s flashing lights. She’d nearly slipped on the wet ground several times, but she needed to see the scene for herself to believe it. One of the uniforms at the perimeter had tried to restrain her, but she’d fought him off and dived under the cordon just as the body was just being lifted by the coroner. It had to be a mistake. It couldn’t be Amy, she wasn’t working that night. It had to be someone else.
She’d screamed and shouted for the medics not to give up. Amy was young; a fighter like Kate. She wouldn’t pass away without a battle. But as Amy’s lifeless emerald eyes stared blankly back at her, a spear of ice lodged itself in her heart. It would remain there until she caught the monster that did this.
The scene on the TV cut away to the redheaded actress playing Amy, now dressed in a shirt and trousers, walking towards their old office. A new voice took over the narration, explaining that Amy wasn’t just a vulnerable young woman cut down in her prime, but a serving police officer.
Kate paused the screen, her cheeks burning with anger; furious thoughts raced through her mind. She looks nothing like her! How is this supposed to jog people’s memories? Why is her hair down? Amy always had it tied in a ponytail… Who put this shit together?
She cursed the Met for not consulting her. It had been her investigation for months; she’d lived and breathed every second of it. Kate knew Amy and the case better than anyone.
Erin Delaney appeared on screen, her accent unmistakeable. ‘Amy didn’t deserve to die like this… she was my little baby…’ She paused to dab her eyes. ‘She never should have been left alone out there… She was a good girl, and nothing was ever too much for her. Amy needed protecting, but where were her colleagues when she needed them most? Where was her backup?’
Kate thought back to the last time she’d seen Amy alive. She’d said she was going to stay with her family for the weekend. Kate teasingly told her not to have too much fun. Amy replied that she should take the weekend off too, but despite promising that she would, she’d planned to spend both days reviewing everything they knew about the killer, trying to find that one additional link to help identify him. Amy wasn’t due to return to her cover until Monday, the night of her next date. There was nothing in the books for Friday night.
Amy’s step-brother Finn Delaney was next on screen. Wearing a jumper and jeans, he spoke with the anguish that only a sibling could convey. With a rugged handsomeness, he looked much older than when she’d first met him in the days following the discovery of Amy’s body. The strain of a year of not knowing who had torn his family apart had clearly taken its toll.
He’d been the only one who defended Kate when the press vultures tore apart her investigation, and her personal life. Finn had demanded that she stay on the case, even if she was replaced as SIO. He understood that she was the best person to find the killer, but his demands had fallen on deaf ears, particularly when Erin Delaney had spoken out so strongly against her. The Met had had little choice but to remove her from the line of fire.
The screen flicked back to the reconstruction; it was night-time and the actress playing Amy was dressed in a tight miniskirt, heels and a low-cut top. It was a good match for Amy’s outfit in the security-camera footage they’d traced from that evening at Waterloo station.
The voice of DCI Trevor Armitage picked up the narration, explaining that Amy had been working undercover in the hunt for the man suspected of slaying three other women in the capital in the previous six months. The images of the three other victims emerged on the screen, followed by a map of London, pinpointing the seemingly random locations where their bodies were discovered.
Kate paused the screen and studied the map. Even looking at it with fresh eyes, there was no obvious pattern in where he’d struck. That was until he’d killed Amy: her body had been discovered just outside her flat, not far from where they’d found the second victim. Was that a clue? Or was it just coincidence?
Limping to the kitchen, Kate opened the freezer and pulled out the half bottle of vodka she kept there. Back on the sofa, she threw two more pills into her mouth and washed them down with a long pull on the bottle, anticipating the moment when the pain would ease.
She un-paused the programme and Armitage continued. ‘We know Amy caught a tube to Waterloo, arriving just before seven, but where she went from there is still unknown. Despite extensive CCTV coverage of the area, the last image we have of her is the one of her leaving the station and heading in a north-westerly direction up the Waterloo Road.’
Kate knew where she’d been heading. The voicemail Amy had left said she was meeting someone at the National Theatre. Kate had given the recorded messages to the new SIO who’d taken her place, but the team had been unable to locate Amy on footage around the theatre, so the lead couldn’t be corroborated.
‘Amy didn’t own a car,’ Armitage continued, ‘and neither her Oyster card or debit card were used on the underground after her appearance at Waterloo, so we’re appealing to anyone who may have spotted her on her way back to her flat in Battersea. It’s possible that her killer gave her a lift home from Waterloo, but we don’t have any witnesses who saw her climbing into a car.’
Kate had managed to get her hands on a copy of the pathologist’s post-mortem report before she was benched. Defensive wounds on Amy’s body suggested she’d put up a struggle, but had been unable to prevent the stabbing. Another officer suggested that Amy could have been killed by someone new, unconnected to the previous murders, but Kate knew this wasn’t the case. He’d taken the bait, but he’d slipped through their fingers.
Through her fingers.
‘It’ll do you good to spend some time out of the limelight,’ her DSI had advised.
‘But, sir, he’s still out there. He will strike again. I need to finish this case. I owe it to Amy—’
‘You screwed up, Matthews!’ His outburst caught her off-guard. ‘We can’t have you anywhere near this going forward. I’m not prepared to lose anyone else.’
She’d stared him down as she had so many times before. ‘Nobody knows as much about the killer as I do. I’ve been tracking him for months, and I know I’m getting closer.’
But this time he didn’t back down. ‘Closer? How close are you, Matthews? Do you have a name? A photograph? An address?’
‘We have descriptions of him from witnesses—’
His tone had been mocking. ‘Remind me, no wait, I remember: he’s between five feet eight and six feet two, of medium build, with either light- or dark-brown hair. That was it, right? I mean, that describes a third of the male population of London. Christ! I match that description too. Do you think I’m the killer?’ He’d scowled at her. ‘An interagency task force is being put together to catch this bastard before he kills again.’
‘That’s precisely what I need, sir. More detectives mean—’
‘I want you nowhere near the task force. You’re finished here, Matthews. If you’ve got any sense you’ll tender your resignation.’
Kate paused the picture again as the paramedics hovered over the body on the screen. Something else was off. She’d looked at the scene-of-crime photos dozens of times in the aftermath and post-op enquiry, but no matter how hard she concentrated now, she couldn’t put her finger on what wasn’t right. She closed her eyes to recall the scene-of-crime photographs, but her head was feeling fuzzy. She took another sip of vodka and narrowed her eyes to cover every pixel, but she still couldn’t see it. She sat back and restarted the programme.
It ended with Armitage staring into the camera making a heartfelt appeal to anyone who had been in the area at the time of Amy’s death and might be able to offer an eyewitness account. Kate rewound the programme to the beginning, finishing off the vodka in one long and wonderfully agonising drink. Placing the empty bottle on the floor, she promised herself again not to rest until the killer was behind bars.