River of Souls (29 page)

Burns shifted in his seat. ‘Polly Sampson says you scared her at Cambridge. You sent hundreds of texts and followed her home from lectures, didn’t you?’

‘That was three years ago. I’ve had other girlfriends since then.’

‘Have you?’ Burns studied his face then handed him a piece of paper. ‘Write down their names and contact details, please. And make a note of where you were on each date on this list.’

Edmunds’s scowl deepened. ‘You can’t threaten me in my own home.’

‘It’s a request, not a threat. You can do it here or at the station. Take your choice.’ Burns gave a loud sigh.

Recording personal information seemed to make Mark Edmunds nervous. His foot tapped incessantly on the floor as he copied information from his phone. We were about to leave when I noticed a row of stones lined up on the mantelpiece.

‘What are those?’ I asked.

‘Sharpened flints, a thousand years old. They were used as primitive cutting tools.’ Despite his anger, he seemed prepared to launch into a history lecture.

‘Shouldn’t they be in your exhibition at King’s?’

‘I found them years ago. I used to visit my grandparents here as a kid; searching the riverbank’s something I’ve always done.’ He made a show of checking his watch. ‘If we’re finished, I should get back to my thesis.’

Edmunds said nothing as we left, but when I looked back his brown eyes were still glowing with anger.

I heard Burns issuing orders into his phone as soon as we hit the pavement, requesting immediate surveillance and a search warrant. He flagged down a cab without breaking his stride.

‘Thank God you didn’t go in there alone,’ he said as the taxi pulled away. ‘What do you make of him?’

‘I’d say he’s got a perception disorder. He lacks self-awareness and doesn’t understand relationship boundaries; it often goes hand in hand with paranoia and obsessive behaviour.’

‘And violence?’

I shook my head. ‘No worse than the rest of the population. Sufferers often have a high IQ; they realise they’re different but struggle to integrate. The fact that he knows two of the four victims worries me. Maybe Jude’s rejection sent him over the edge, and now he’s attacking anyone in her circle. He could have disguised himself and followed Guy, for all we know.’

‘Christ almighty, I see what you mean about historians being a weird bunch.’ Burns closed his eyes. ‘His supervisor’ll be at the station by now.’

‘You’re interviewing Hugh Lister?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve found nothing on him. He’s talking about the calling cards at today’s briefing.’

A throng of photographers was still blocking the front steps of the police station, so Burns asked the driver to drop us in the car park. Angie was the first person I saw as I headed for the incident room.

‘Is the crime scene clear at Wapping?’ I asked. ‘I want to go back to the riverbank this afternoon.’

‘It’s fine to visit this afternoon. Tania’ll be there, looking after the
Crimewatch
guys.’ Her impish smile returned. ‘The girls in the office have all fallen for Dr Lister.’

‘Really?’

It took a stretch of the imagination to see the dishevelled academic as a sex symbol, but everything fell into place when I stepped through the door. Jake stood beside Hugh Lister at the front of the room and I felt a twinge of discomfort – Angie must have got their identities confused. Maybe he’d come along to keep Lister’s odd behaviour in check. I observed them from the back of the room. Jake wore jeans and a plaid shirt, while Lister sported an ill-fitting suit, his hatchet features carved in a scowl. When he began to speak, his voice was a cold, west London snarl.

‘The objects you’ve found belong in a museum, not a police station. It’s a travesty that these pieces have become trinkets for a murderer.’ Lister’s hands trembled as he gestured towards the photos projected on the wall. ‘I’ll start by telling you their history.’

He explained that the Bronze Age arrowhead would have been cast into the river to appease the water gods, or as a dedication for victory in war. The flint found with Speller’s body was a prehistoric cutting tool, just like the ones at Edmunds’s flat. It would have taken a long time to hone, in the days before metal existed, and its high practical value would have made it an important sacrifice. Lister fixed the crowd with an irate stare.

‘The Thames has been a sacred site for millennia, the most powerful and unpredictable river in England. Settlers near its banks were terrified it would wipe out their communities. That’s why they performed sacrifices and attached precious possessions to the bodies of the dead. Maybe the man you’re looking for worships the river in exactly the same way.’

A collective hush fell over the room as I made my escape, as though everyone in the room was visualising the killer performing his rituals. Jake caught up with me in the empty corridor while the rest of the team were still in the incident room, firing questions at Hugh Lister.

‘Why did you disappear again, Alice? It’s driving me crazy.’

‘I saw my lookalike on your phone. It was a little unnerving.’

He looked startled. ‘I can explain. Let’s meet tomorrow and talk about it.’

‘I’m busy tomorrow.’

‘The next night then.’

I gestured towards the incident room. ‘I should get back.’

He moved closer but my expression stopped him in his tracks. ‘I’ll call you later. Please don’t let this stop you seeing me.’

I watched him heading towards the exit, wishing I’d given a categorical refusal. When I turned round, Burns was blocking the corridor. His expression revealed that he’d witnessed the whole exchange. I strode back into the incident room to hear the forensics team’s report, reminding myself that he deserved no loyalty whatsoever.

40

Ben Altman’s flat was on the tenth floor of an apartment block in Battersea. Even on an overcast Monday morning the building shone like a glass citadel, mirroring the pale grey sky. The stress of the investigation must have been getting to me because the lift felt impossible. I jogged up the stairs instead, pausing to admire the view from the landing. Rows of transparent buildings filled the skyline, the red-brick streets of Wandsworth sprawling south into the distance.

The grief on Altman’s face made me feel guilty for disturbing him. He was a thin-faced thirty year old with short black hair, hazel eyes still glazed with shock. His handshake felt icy and I got the sense that he was following the rules of social etiquette on autopilot.

‘You’d better come in,’ he said quietly.

His flat was the opposite of Mark Edmunds’s. It was the epitome of minimalism: pristine white furniture vanishing into the walls. On a bright day, his lounge would have been ablaze with light.

‘Thanks for letting me visit. This must be a difficult time for you.’

Altman’s eyes stared straight ahead. ‘The night he was taken we’d been planning a weekend away.’

His hands gestured his disbelief and I noticed how beautifully manicured they were, with long, tapering fingers. Despite his suffering, his appearance was immaculate: cotton sweater perfectly ironed, not a hair out of place. He seemed to be using neatness as his strategy for keeping pain at bay.

‘You had to identify Julian, didn’t you?’

His head bowed. ‘That’s why I let you come. I’ll speak to anyone if it helps find the bastard who did that to his face.’

‘How long had you been together?’

‘Eighteen months. I met him through work.’ He rubbed his hand across his forehead, as if he was trying to clear his thoughts.

‘You’re at Westminster too?’

‘God, no. I’m not smart enough.’ He gave a strained laugh. ‘I’m an account manager for a PR agency. We were polar opposites.’

‘But you connected anyway?’

He gave a fierce nod. ‘I wanted him to live here with me.’

‘I can see why. This is a beautiful place.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘The mortgage company owns most of it.’

‘Julian had a place at the Oval, didn’t he?’

‘It’s pretty squalid.’ He stared down at the polished floor tiles. ‘He wasn’t bothered about comfort. There was a naive side to him, I suppose. He was an idealist.’

‘Had you set a date to move in together?’

He hesitated. ‘A few weeks ago, Julian said he needed time to think.’

‘The commitment scared him?’

‘I don’t know.’ He blinked rapidly. ‘He was working so hard, we hadn’t spent much time together recently. We had a drink the night he was taken, but he went back to his place to finish a report.’

‘His specialism was ethical advice, wasn’t it?’

Altman’s mouth twisted. ‘Most politicians only want human-rights experts to help them take the moral high ground.’

Given what he’d been through, Altman’s cynicism wasn’t surprising. ‘Did Julian get on well with his colleagues?’

‘Westminster isn’t the best place to be out and proud, but no one was gunning for him if that’s what you mean.’

‘What about previous boyfriends?’

‘We didn’t talk about the past.’

‘You never traded secrets?’

Altman’s expression hardened. ‘I gave the names he told me to the police.’

‘I’m sorry this is so intrusive, but it could explain why he was targeted.’ I studied his elegant hands again, his fingers twisting in his lap. ‘Did you know that Julian sometimes visited Jude Shelley in hospital?’

His face tensed with anger. ‘It upset him terribly. I told him to leave well alone.’

‘You thought he shouldn’t go?’

‘He didn’t owe that family anything.’ His voice was rising in outrage.

‘But Mr Shelley gave him his first job, didn’t he?’

‘Julian was desperate to leave Shelley’s team and find something else.’

‘Really? Heather thought they were friends. You had dinner with them last week, didn’t you?’

‘That was on sufferance. Shelley held all the power; he could have got Julian sacked.’ Altman surveyed the glass-walled room. ‘He wouldn’t say why, but I know Shelley often made his life hell.’

I stayed for another half-hour, hoping he would give more insights. But it was clear that he didn’t know why his boyfriend had been at loggerheads with his boss. Altman remained dry-eyed throughout the rest of the interview, even when he spoke about his grief. The last thing I did was to show him photos of the objects from the crime scenes.

‘Do any of these things have a meaning for you?’

He gave me a blank-eyed stare. ‘I’ve never seen them before.’

I tucked the pictures back into my bag. ‘Have you got anyone to keep you company?’

‘I sent them away. Last night I drove around for hours. Christ knows where I went, but it calmed me down.’

He looked so brittle that I wondered how he’d coped with identifying Speller’s body. Normally the mortuary attendants can make corpses look presentable, but injuries that severe would have been impossible to disguise.

I checked my emails on my phone after leaving Altman’s flat. No progress had been made in tracking down Guy Shelley’s car, which reminded me that – whether or not he was the killer – he was a high suicide risk. The accident and emergency departments of the city’s hospitals had been placed on alert. I climbed back into my car, hoping the drive would clear my head.

By the time I reached Wapping, the
Crimewatch
team were huddled at the foot of King Henry’s Stairs, positioning their cameras, but there was no sign of Tania. It was low tide, the water moving slowly eastwards as though it was reluctant to rejoin the sea; pungent smells of chemicals and effluent tainted the air. As I picked my way across the muddy ground, Tania walked towards me, huddled inside her long coat, face drawn from lack of sleep. Her sharp gaze met mine as we drew level.

‘Back for another look, Alice?’

‘It’s my best chance to stand in the killer’s shoes. I want to walk from the site where Julian Speller’s body was found to where Amala drowned at Execution Dock. It’s more than a double crime scene – he’s passionate about it. He must have waded out, waist deep, in the middle of the night, carrying Amala’s body in his arms. We could be looking for a man who loves the river more than anything else.’