River of Souls (26 page)

When I reached Waterloo, I raced through the crowds. The South Bank was packed with strollers, enjoying a respite from the endless rain. Tourists stood in clusters on the Millennium Bridge, its frets so fine they looked ready to snap, like one of Guy Shelley’s sculptures. My sense of unease was mounting steadily. The FPU had employed me to appease the Shelley family, but the truth kept getting in the way. If Guy turned out to be the killer, Whitehall would have an epic public relations battle on its hands. Timothy Shelley would go down in history as the first cabinet minister with a mass murderer for a son.

Guy’s apartment was in the heart of Borough’s trendiest neighbourhood. The cafés on Gabriel’s Wharf were doing a roaring trade, couples topping up on caffeine and junk food. Burns was waiting outside an art gallery, looking like a displaced giant, head and shoulders taller than the Japanese tourists scurrying by. The circles under his eyes showed that he’d been catnapping at his desk instead of taking a full night’s sleep. His expression was unreadable as he gazed down at me.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Fine, but I couldn’t go in there alone. Hancock wouldn’t like me messing up his crime scene.’

Burns blinked at me. ‘You seriously think it’s him?’

‘Maybe Guy’s just gone walkabout, but he could have reverted to infantile aggression.’

‘You’re talking like a shrink, Alice.’

‘Infantile aggression is when adults experience the kind of rage they felt as a child, which can be dangerous. Children don’t have clear moral boundaries.’

‘At least we can search his place. I got an emergency warrant authorised.’

Guy’s apartment block looked bland and inoffensive: three storeys of pale yellow brick. Despite the stylish wooden shutters and Juliet balconies, my stomach was tying itself in knots. Burns stopped to greet the two police officers standing by the entrance, then fell into step beside me as we climbed to the top floor. I rang the bell several times but there was no response, so I slipped the key into the lock.

‘Christ almighty,’ Burns hissed as the door swung open.

The air stank of chemicals and a bitterness I couldn’t identify. The source was obvious when we reached the living room. Open bottles of white spirit and linseed oil stood on a large table, paint congealing on saucers and palettes. A window spanned the width of the room. Miles of grey sky had unfolded above the city, the river dark as charcoal, fractured by bridges.

‘What are we looking for exactly?’ Burns asked.

‘Evidence that he’s been searching the riverbank would be a good start. Like I said, Guy’s very disturbed, with a history of violence. He wouldn’t be the first person to attack the people closest to him.’

‘Surely his parents would have noticed him changing?’

‘Families are often last to guess. How many parents want to imagine that their son’s a cold-blooded murderer?’

Burns’s shoulders heaved in a reluctant shrug. ‘You’d better use these.’ He gave me a pair of sterile gloves. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

‘The bedroom, please.’

I glanced around Guy’s disordered living room. His studio doubled as a kitchen, a tower of dirty dishes piled in the sink. But the most eye-catching thing was the artwork – delicate line drawings of houses and trees, united in decay. Buildings were falling apart, pavements littered with fallen masonry. Guy seemed to see destruction wherever he looked.

I stood back to survey the room. Proof of his chaotic mental state covered every surface, but I reminded myself that he might just be a sensitive young man whose equilibrium had been destroyed by his sister’s tragedy. I was starting to feel foolish about my suspicions when Burns called from the room next door, his voice rising to a shout. He stood by Guy’s unmade bed, gazing at a sketchbook which hung open in his hands. The word ‘Jude’ was scrawled on the front in large red letters.

‘These are as sick as it gets,’ he muttered.

The first drawings showed Jude before the attack, sitting on a chair, hands folded neatly in her lap. She wore a quizzical smile, as though posing for her brother amused her. But the next image was horrifying. It was a close-up of Jude’s ravaged face, scarlet ink picking out exposed sinews and the gash where her lips should have been, her unblinking eye surrounded by raw flesh. One of the pages held dozens of thumbnail sketches showing her hooked to a life-support machine. Guy must have sat in his sister’s hospital room while she slept, making endless drawings of the ruined landscape of her face.

‘They’re like anatomical paintings,’ Burns commented.

‘What do you mean?’ I always forgot that he’d spent time at art school.

‘It started in the Renaissance. Leonardo drew corpses in the operating theatre, long before anyone knew how our muscle groups worked.’

I gazed down at the images again, trying to understand Guy Shelley’s mind-set. Either he’d taken pleasure in studying his sister’s wounds in forensic detail, or it was a form of acceptance. I remembered Heather saying that he would lock himself in his room after visiting his sister. The pictures explained how he’d spent those hours of solitude.

‘You’d better tell me what you know,’ Burns said.

I passed on the information I’d gathered from Heather, and my terse conversation with Timothy Shelley. He scribbled in his notebook, then released a low whistle.

‘Guy was so messed up after Jude’s attack that he dropped out of college; he spends days sketching her wounds, and he’s got no social life. Why would he give his bodyguard the slip? He left here in his black VW Passat and hasn’t contacted anyone since.’

I tried to think straight. ‘I can see why Guy would attack Jude. Adopted kids often feel like misfits, overwhelmed by rage about being excluded from the biological family. In a few cases it becomes obsessive. But why would he target his priest and the nanny he adored as a child, then one of his father’s advisers? Maybe he hates himself enough to hurt anyone in striking distance.’

Burns held up his hands. ‘You saw the drawings, Alice. He’s seriously screwed up. Why look at all that pain, unless it gives you pleasure?’

Something about the argument struck me as wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. I stared out of the window while Burns made phone calls. He was checking progress on the search for Guy and barking out instructions about river searches, evidence files and press calls. When we finally got outside, dusk had fallen, that odd light which turns everything flimsy and insubstantial. A barge drifted in the middle of the waterway, lights flickering from Albert Embankment. A wave of anxiety crossed Burns’s face when I told him I needed to phone Heather.

‘I won’t disclose anything,’ I reassured him. ‘All she needs to know is that you’re searching for her son.’

There was a note of relief in Heather’s voice when I told her that Guy’s flat was empty. Maybe she’d been afraid, like me, that he was capable of suicide. I said nothing about discovering the sketchbook, or my fears that Guy could be the killer. Until there was hard evidence it was just conjecture, and the relentless media attention on her family was more than enough for her to handle.

Burns was unfurling his umbrella when I caught sight of a familiar figure and did a double take. Hugh Lister, the irascible history lecturer, was twenty yards away, sauntering towards the river, lips moving in a quiet monologue. He was dressed in shabby trousers and a black coat, a far cry from the glamorous young man who had presented his TV show twenty years before. I wondered whether he was heading to the foreshore to search for more treasures. He looked in my direction, nodded once, then scuttled away.

‘That’s the Thames expert from King’s,’ I said, pointing him out. ‘Have you found anything on the history lecturers?’

‘None of them have any convictions. Angie’s getting a team to do in-depth checks and interviews.’ Burns looked down at me. ‘Where are you going now, Alice?’

‘Back to mine, but we could grab a quick meal first.’ It broke my promise to keep contact between us safely inside working hours, but there was no point in going home while my head was bursting with information.

We walked past the Globe Theatre to Simply Greek, where I ordered chicken souvlaki and mineral water in an effort to stay clearheaded. Burns was checking his phone for messages. I wondered again why he affected me so deeply. His image was in need of an overhaul, with a shapeless jacket and messy hair, black stubble emphasising the pallor of his skin. His wide shoulders looked tense with strain, yet it required all my willpower to stop myself touching him. I pushed my feelings to one side and gave the waiter a brisk smile as he delivered our orders.

‘Go on then, give me an update,’ I said.

‘It’s moving too slowly for my liking. The Battersea team’s done street searches and house to house, and forensics spent days at Father Owen’s vicarage. The vagrants who slept in the community centre are all accounted for, and we’ve gone through his congregation with a toothcomb. The bloke didn’t have any enemies.’

‘Apart from the one who cut him to shreds then threw him in the river.’

He gave a thin smile. ‘It’s no joke. His congregation want him beatified.’

‘I’m just stating the facts. Is there any news on Amala?’

‘A witness called after the last
Crimewatch
. She saw a blond man watching Amala at the bus stop, in a dark coat and hat. She says he boarded the same bus, but images from the on-board camera are too grainy.’ Burns’s face tensed with frustration. ‘And you were right about Shane Weldon. He hasn’t put a foot out of line. They’re still testing the van he drives at work, but so far it’s clean, and so’s his girlfriend’s car. Nothing in their living accommodation either.’ He spoke slowly, as if the words pained him.

The childish part of me felt like crowing, but I bit my tongue. My thoughts flashed to Sue Rochford in her grim apartment, so unconcerned about her boyfriend’s violent past that I’d alerted social services. ‘Did you read the updates on my profile report?’

Burns nodded. ‘You think the killer’s obsessed by Timothy Shelley, not Jude.’

‘That’s why my alarm bells rang today. Guy could be carrying unresolved anger about his adoption and the close relationship between Timothy and Jude. Now that he’s ruined his sister’s life, he could be lashing out at anyone his father trusts.’

‘Do people really set out to destroy their parents’ lives?’

‘It’s not pretty when it happens. Remember the Craig Leonard case? He made it look like a stranger had bludgeoned his mum to death while she slept. He killed two of her closest friends the same night, in exactly the same way. I interviewed him for the prosecution.’

Burns sucked in his cheeks. ‘Sounds like a fun job. Did he confess?’

‘On my fifth trip to Belmarsh. His mother used to dress him in girls’ clothes and humiliate him in front of his sisters.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘And that’s a reason to kill people?’

‘He thought so. All I had to do was flatter him into a confession.’ I pushed my plate away. ‘When’s Julian Speller’s autopsy? I should be there.’

Burns lopsided smile reappeared. ‘Your wish has come true. It’s tomorrow afternoon. The coroner’s office rushed it through.’

I groaned quietly. ‘Something to look forward to.’

The rest of the evening passed in a blur of conversation. It felt like we’d slipped back into the old routine, when we’d debrief for hours, odd facts from our private lives rising to the surface. It was eleven by the time my espresso arrived. Burns was studying me so closely, I thought he was about to deliver a lecture on the dangers of late-night caffeine.

‘Are you seeing anyone, Alice?’

I put down my cup. ‘How is that any of your business?’

‘Curiosity got the better of me.’

‘You should learn to control it then.’ My temper was coming to the boil as I grabbed my coat and headed for the exit, but Burns was beside me when I got outside. He caught hold of my arm before I could escape.

‘I still think about you, Alice.’

‘Why tell me that now? It’s too late.’

He held my arm so tightly I could feel the pressure of each fingertip. Light from the streetlamps caught his clenched jaw and the curve of his cheek, then he leant down and kissed me hard enough to make my head spin. I did my best not to respond, but it took me a while to regain enough presence of mind to pull away. As soon as I came to my senses I gave his face a resounding slap, then marched away without looking back.

36

At midnight the man stands alone on Westminster Bridge, and for once he feels content. The river hums in his ear, soft as a lullaby. He gazes at the black water a hundred feet below. In a split second he could scale the railings and let himself fall. He closes his eyes and imagines the water’s cold embrace, currents drawing him to its heart, but he’s not ready to join the other souls. The thought of it terrifies him. He raises his gaze and stares into the darkness. The Houses of Parliament are illuminated, every window ablaze with light. For the first time today, the police vans have disappeared. If the armed guards spot him, they will see nothing more than a speck in the distance: a tourist marvelling at the grand architecture. The man has crossed the bridge so many times he knows every brick and paving stone. He saw Timothy Shelley on the evening news tonight, stumbling down the steps, drunk with shock. The image shamed him, but the river whispered its approval in his ear.