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‘So, Freddie,’ he said as they climbed onto the bus and squashed themselves between gobby kids in pimped trainers and weary shoppers reading the Sunday papers. Freddie caught sight of the words Hashtag Murderer on the front page. ‘Do you want to know my name?’

Shit
. She’d been so distracted by his hipbones she hadn’t even thought of that. ‘Sure.’
Apollyon could be anyone, and anyone could be the next victim.
She shook the thought from her head. Let the police work on the case; they didn’t want her around anyway.

‘Brian,’ he said.

‘Like May?’ she said, as someone pressed the bell and the bus lurched.

‘Who?’ He caught hold of her two shoulders, keeping her upright.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said, standing on tiptoe to push her mouth against his. He tasted of balsamic vinegar Kettle crisps and chewing gum.

Freddie woke up on Brian’s sheet-free mattress on the floor. Shit, she hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He seemed a nice guy, but she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea by staying over: she wasn’t interested in a relationship right now, just a bit of fun. He seemed to share a flat with two other guys who’d come in pissed in the early hours of the morning. His room was empty apart from a pile of clothes in the corner and mugs with fag butts squashed into them. Still, least he had a door that people didn’t open. He was sat on the sash windowsill, a sheet hung crudely across it like a curtain. In just his jeans, he’d braced his bare bony feet against the wall so he could exhale the smoke from his fag through a narrow gap in the window. The duvet over Freddie’s naked body also had no cover. She reached an arm out and along the floor until she found her scrunched knickers. ‘Can I have a puff?’

‘Hey,’ he smiled and passed his baggy roll-up to her. Doomed to failure, she thought: I could never be with someone who can’t roll a decent fag. ‘Want to get some breakfast? There’s a good cafe with decent coffee close?’ He took the rollie back from her.

Freddie checked the time. The thought of returning to the Jubilee, of seeing Moast, of seeing Nasreen again, filled her with dread. ‘Sorry, got to get to work.’

‘Sure, don’t want to keep The Fuzz waiting.’ He stubbed out the remainder of his fag in a chipped red mug. ‘So can I get your number?’

‘Look, Brian.’ She pulled her tights on under the duvet, wiggling them up. ‘Last night was cracking.’ Well, it was okay: he wasn’t about to knock Ajay off the current top spot. She found her skirt at the end of the bed and fastened her black bra with her back to him. ‘But I’m kind of focusing on work right now. You on Twitter? Want to hook up there?’

‘Snapchat?’ He passed her her black shirt.

She bent over the tiny Keep Calm and Smoke Weed mirror she kept in her bag and swiped the mascara smudges from under her eyes. ‘Sure. Let’s do that.’ She had a great angle of her in her neon blue knickers she’d got for Christmas on her computer. It’d taken several goes, and her tits looked too good in it to send to just one person.

‘Cool.’ He rolled another cigarette.

Brian walked with her to the bus stop, pausing to grab Freddie a couple of cans of Coke and a packet of Quavers from a corner shop with crates of pumpkins, potatoes and frozen-looking apples outside. Freddie checked her phone as people clicked past her in suits, presumably on the way to The City. Where was she? Stokie. Cool. It wouldn’t take too long to get to the station. She’d feel better after her Coke. They ran the last bit as the bus approached through cars and cyclists as the roads delivered the workers of London to their jobs. This whole rush hour thing was a real pain, thought Freddie.

‘I’ll message you, Frankie!’ Brian called as she got on the bus.

‘See you later, Brain!’ she laughed. It was only as the bus pulled away that it hit her.
Don’t want to be late for The Fuzz?
She had no recollection of telling Brian she worked with the police. Trepidation sprang up like spores across her bathroom ceiling. Something didn’t feel right. She pulled her phone out and typed Brian’s name into Snapchat.
User unknown
. She Googled him. Nothing but some accountant in Texas came up. There was no Twitter account. No Facebook account. No blog. Nothing. He was a ghost. Freddie swallowed. He’d put his number in her phone last night: she pressed dial.
This number has not been recognised. Please try again.
She tried to breathe. It must just be a simple mistake. He’d written the number down wrong. Or misspelled his name.

He could be Apollyon. The thought exploded into her head. He could be the killer. She’d posted online the pub she was in. He could have deliberately found her. Tracked her down. Hunted her. Crouching to look out the juddering bus window, she saw Brian was no longer there. He’d melted into London’s anonymous canvas.

09:02

Monday 2 November

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Tibbsy was waiting for her in reception, his tall rangy frame stuffed into an ill-fitting navy suit. The scuffed wooden doors and the indeterminate-grey squeaky floor reminded her again of school. ‘Head boy looking after detention today, then?’ Freddie’s voice sounded shaky. She had to get this stupid idea about Brian out of her head. She thought over the night before: there were no possessions in his room.
Where was all his stuff?
And he hadn’t said much about himself, just asked her loads of questions. She must have mentioned working with the police last night.
Must have
. She was being paranoid. This whole situation was getting to her. Just like when she’d panicked that Apollyon, the killer, was somehow on the same DLR carriage as her on the way back from the crime scene. It was ridiculous to think Brian might be Apollyon. For a start why would the killer be in Dalston? Mardling was murdered in E14. And why would the killer be interested in her? She’d only written that article and appeared at the press conference. Freddie ticked herself off for being self-obsessed. Or anxious. She was just spooked. She reminded herself that there was no firm evidence to suggest Apollyon even was Mardling’s killer. It could just be a kid who’d hacked the police Cloud and stole that crime scene photo, or a sicko hoax. She really needed to try and get a better night’s sleep tonight. She needed to get a grip. ‘Here, I brought you a Coke,’ she said, passing Tibbsy the can.

‘Cheers,’ he smiled. ‘The guv wants me to bring you straight to the incident room,’ Tibbsy said.

‘Course he does.’ She leant on the front desk, between the two raised shelves that towered up either side of it like a fortress, and signed in on the clipboard. ‘Don’t see why I’ve got to go through this palaver every day – I’ve got my lanyard, haven’t I?’

‘Them’s the rules.’ Tibbsy opened the push-button door behind him.

‘Seems to me you guys have got too many rules.’ She held her black denim bag up so the Duty Sergeant could riffle through it with his pen. Surely all these procedures were just wasting time they could be using to find the real culprit. ‘I could’ve walked by myself to the incident room, you know. I don’t see why I need a babysitter,’ Freddie said.

Tibbsy turned to face her in the empty corridor. ‘Because you pissed the guv off.’ His voice echoed flatly off the blue metal stairs that cornered their way up to the other floors.

‘Yeah, well, he pissed me off too.’ All she needed now was Nasreen to come and have a go at her for copying her homework and this nightmarish rehash of school would be complete.

‘Look, Freddie,’ Tibbsy said. ‘None of us are too thrilled about the way this case is developing, but trust me, things will be a lot easier if you just learn to give the guv what he wants.’

Tibbsy’s slack-jawed face seemed to be genuine. Was his whole suck-up buddy act just a means to get on? ‘I don’t know how you lot do it: all this yes sir this, yes sir that!’ Why couldn’t Nas have come and got her? Least
she
sulked quietly. ‘Urgh,’ she said, flapping her arms up and letting them slap against last night’s purple cord miniskirt. ‘Look I’m sorry about the whole press conference thing. I’m not great at controlling my temper.’
Generation Rage: How I Learned to Manage My Anger.

Tibbsy laughed, his navy tie, which had a dribble of milk down it, bounced.

Freddie smiled. ‘I do think Moast’s making a mistake over this Twitter thing though – aren’t you worried about the last message?’
Or that the guy I just fucked might be Apollyon?
She had to stop this. She was being paranoid.

‘We’re all worried, mate, but panicking won’t solve anything. We’ll get there.’

They started walking again, side by side this time.

‘Moast just wants to do his job well,’ Tibbsy started up again. ‘He’s a good cop. Knows what he’s doing.’

Freddie scrubbed at a small stain on her skirt with her fingernail. She wasn’t so sure. ‘So what happens now?’

‘Team brief. Regroup. Go through what we know. See if the appeal’s turned up any leads.’

Two dark-haired uniformed policemen stopped chatting as they passed them in the corridor. Freddie heard the guffaw and whispered words as they walked away. She was struggling to know what to wear. She had her black Espress-oh’s clothes or the stuff she went out in. She wasn’t convinced that by putting tights with this skirt she’d made it look work-suitable. She tugged the hem down. She didn’t belong here. After the press conference yesterday, perhaps she’d be able to bargain with Superintendent Gray: get him to let her go? She’d speak to him straight after the meeting.

Tibbsy paused as he rested his hand on the handle of the blue-painted incident room door. ‘Ready?’

‘Let’s get this over with,’ she said.

Even though the room was painted white and lit by fluorescent tubes, the volume of PCs in their black uniforms grouped at chairs and desks lent a distinct grey hue to everything. Tibbsy took a seat at the front next to Nasreen, who looked professionally perfect in her black trouser suit. Freddie tried to meet her eye, but she was reading her notes, or avoiding her. Behind Nasreen sat Jamie, pale-faced. He gave her a weak smile and a nod. She patted his shoulder on the way past. Freddie headed to the back, weaving past the coppers who sat with plastic cups of coffee and their notebooks out. She had no idea this many people worked on a murder case.
An Insight Into Britain’s Largest Institution.
Pulling a plastic grey chair out, she dropped her bag on the table in front of her, resting her arms and chin, respectively, on top. She kept her coat on – she had no intention of staying any longer than she needed to.

Moast entered, his white shirtsleeves already pushed up. The room hushed. He put his notes down on the table in front of the incident board and his mug of coffee on top of it. ‘Morning all, thanks for getting here on time.’ He met her eyes, she pretended to busy herself with a loose thread on her bag. ‘Update on the door-to-door questioning, PC Thomas?’ he continued.

‘So far nothing, sir. Nobody saw or heard anything unusual at all,’ Jamie said. ‘We’ll keep trying.’

‘Good, people forget stuff or they don’t realise something’s important till later. Tibbsy, anything turn up on surveillance?’

‘No cameras on Blackbird Road, sir. There’s a community arts centre with a fixed camera that catches the end of the alleyway that cuts through from Blackbird to the DLR. We’re getting those tapes now.’

‘Good,’ said Moast. ‘Look back over the week leading up to the 31st as well, there were no signs of forced entry, which implies Mardling let his killer in. And how are we doing on the knife analysis from the photo that was posted online, Tibbsy?’

‘We’ve blown up the image and it’s a pretty standard kitchen knife. A brand called Kitchen Devil,’ said Tibbsy.

‘Killing someone with a knife called “Devil” – how fitting for someone who named themselves after a New Testament word for devil,’ Freddie said. This was eerily symbolic.

Tibbsy glanced at her quickly. ‘It’s a popular brand available in most high-street stores, and it’s Amazon’s number one bestselling kitchen knife.’

Prime crime delivery
, thought Freddie. Does the killer have a sick sense of humour?

‘Unfortunately that makes it hard to trace. There’s probably hundreds, if not thousands, of these knives in circulation,’ said Tibbsy.

‘Fine. Check with the mother to see if she recognises the knife – was it there already or did the killer bring it with them? What about the photograph itself – any luck with analysing what type of camera took it?’

‘Based on the clarity and file size, we’re fairly certain it was taken on an Android phone, sir,’ said Nas. ‘Unfortunately the IT lads said the metadata that embeds the GPS coordinates of where and when a digital photo is taken and posted had been successfully stripped out.’

Freddie was impressed. And she made a mental note to disable her own GPS coordinates. This made her think of Brian again. Had he
tracked
her? This case was making her paranoid.

Moast was still talking: ‘I want you to cross-reference everyone on our list of Mardling’s colleagues, family, friends, everyone he’s ever met, with the purchase or ownership of Kitchen Devil knives and Android phones.’

‘A lot of people have Androids, guv,’ said Tibbsy.

‘Yes, and I want to know where each and every one of them who owns one on that list was at the time of Mardling’s death. I want to know if they know how to disable their bloody GPS coordinates. I want to know if they’ve purchased any kitchen knives recently. Go back over it until we find a link.’

‘Sir,’ said Tibbsy.

Nasreen raised her hand.
First to ask a question. Sucking up. Just like school.

‘Yes, Cudmore?’ If Moast was still angry with her after the press briefing he hid it from his voice.

‘Sir, the victim was partially dressed, ready for bed, and on his computer, for some hours, based on his online activity.’ Freddie leant forwards. Where was Nas going with this? Moast nodded for Nas to continue. ‘Well, it’s odd isn’t it? I mean, that’s the actions of someone on their own, not someone who’s got company at that time of night?’

One of the uniformed PCs wolf-whistled. Laughter rippled across the room. How did Nasreen put up with these dicks? Freddie gritted her teeth.

‘Calm down, please,’ Moast silenced them. ‘Good point, Cudmore. What did the mother say – we’re sure he has no girlfriend? Given he was knocking one off at the time he was killed, we could be looking at sexual motive: possibly a sex game gone wrong?’

A uniformed cop raised his hand at the front. ‘Sir. The mother confirms there were no significant others she knew of. Said Mardling didn’t socialise since he came back down from Manchester. Seems the ex-wife got the friends as well as the house.’

Another peal of laughter.

‘So who else would he let into the house?’ Nasreen said. ‘At that time of night? And why would he leave them to play on his computer? And…er…pleasure himself.’

‘Could have been a prostitute?’ said Tibbsy.

‘There’s no evidence of him using sex workers before,’ said Nas. ‘I’ve looked through his bank, phone and the Internet browser records retrieved by the IT team. He wasn’t very sophisticated at hiding his online porn use: just deleted the browser history. They said within a few minutes they had access to a record of every site he’d ever viewed. The way he was dressed, the time of night, being on Twitter and, you know, doing
that
, it seems unlikely anyone else was there. So it had to be someone who could let themselves in undetected.’

Nasreen was right: it didn’t add up. How did the attacker get into the house?

‘Whoever was there must have either been in the house already or let themselves in – Mrs Mardling said no one had a spare key to the property,’ Nas said.

‘Cudmore, look into your hunch some more. Forensics are fairly confident the perpetrator came at him from behind: one swift movement and it was all over,’ Moast said. Freddie felt her Coke shift in her stomach. ‘The attacker didn’t need long. Go back to the mother and double-check no one had a key: an old cleaner? Friend? Mardling’s ex-wife? And ask if they kept a spare outside. Take a look at the windows again: someone could have crawled in. His mother said they were closed when she came home.’ Moast perched on the edge of the table and folded his arms. ‘If it was a Tom – a sex game gone wrong – they left no trace,’ said Moast. ‘So far Forensics haven’t turned up any DNA samples that can’t be traced to either Mardling or his mother in the room.’

‘It was clean?’ Nas asked.

Moast nodded. ‘There were trace elements of hydrogen peroxide on the desk.’

‘They bleached it, sir?’ Tibbsy asked.

‘It’s inconclusive, but certainly a possibility.’

‘They knew what they were doing then?’ Tibbsy tapped his pen against the desk.

Freddie thought about Apollyon’s threat: who’s next?
They knew what they were doing.

‘Sir,’ Nasreen again, raising her hand.

Moast nodded.

‘I noticed Ecover products in the bathroom,’ Nas said.

‘Typical woman!’ one of the uniforms shouted through cupped hands. They all laughed.

‘Dick,’ Freddie said under her breath.

‘Quiet down. And your point, Cudmore?’ Moast sounded dubious.

‘They’re bleach-free,’ Freddie said.

A couple of officers turned to stare at her, their faces sneering at the cheek of her speaking up.
Whatevs
. She’d had worse in the newsroom on work experience.

‘There was a Greenpeace sticker on the window next to the front door, too.’ For a second Freddie caught and held Nas’s gaze. It was still there: that silent communication. When they were at school they used to do it all the time – clock something someone had said. Exchange glances. As if they knew what the other was thinking.
I’m not just an Espress-oh’s waitress.
Freddie willed her to understand:
you’re right. I believe you
.
Go on.

Nas turned back to Moast. ‘Solar panels on the roof, sir. Why would a household that’s that concerned about the environment have bleach?’

‘Thomas, have uniform check back with the mother to see if she kept bleach in the house.’ Moast nodded. ‘Have the door-to-door teams check local bins. If someone’s ditched bleach I want to find it.’

Chairs scraped back, voices raised. Freddie jumped up, squeezing past the men gathering up their papers and jackets. Nas was already with Moast, studying the incident board. Freddie tapped Tibbsy’s arm. ‘What Nas said about the bleach – what does it mean?’

‘If the killer brought it with him, this was premeditated,’ Tibbsy said.

‘Planned?’ said Freddie. She swallowed.

‘Yup,’ Tibbsy said. ‘And if she’s right about them gaining access to the house with a spare key, then we know they’ve likely scoped it out. Could have been planning this for a while.’

Premeditated.
Did that mean it was more or less likely to be a serial killer? She needed to Google this.
Now
. Freddie edged forward. Tibbsy was now standing with Moast and Nas. All thoughts of speaking to the Superintendent were gone. ‘What do you want me to do?’