1. THE MURDER
CHAPTER ONE
A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229 itself looks like a windup toy to the rest of the traffic. The sky above is a uniform gray canopy, cloudless, and at no risk of being considered a harbinger of good weather.
A little girl sings. “Each little flower that opens; each little bird that sings.”
On one side of the road, the brutalist architecture of a sprawling housing estate appears with its endless concrete walkways connecting the forbidding buildings. Their ground floors are replete with rows of garages, some doors the mauve of old b…
1. THE MURDER
CHAPTER ONE
A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229 itself looks like a windup toy to the rest of the traffic. The sky above is a uniform gray canopy, cloudless, and at no risk of being considered a harbinger of good weather.
A little girl sings. “Each little flower that opens; each little bird that sings.”
On one side of the road, the brutalist architecture of a sprawling housing estate appears with its endless concrete walkways connecting the forbidding buildings. Their ground floors are replete with rows of garages, some doors the mauve of old blood and covered in desultory graffiti and decals saying NO PARKING. As if anybody would.
A line of ash trees separates the road from the buildings like a courtesy.
The girl, whose name is Chelsea, continues. “He made their glowing colors, he made their tiny wings.”
On the other side of the carriageway, identical scattered red-brick two-story houses soften the view, social housing with pretensions to suburbia, as if correcting for the Brutalism. The trees that line this side are willows, English oak, and silver birch, in no particular order, like an afterthought.
The 229 shifts onto a bus lane, with caution signs warning of school children. Zigzagged white lines on the street where traffic passes schools.
In the seat closest to the door, the woman, Bea, in her twenties with short-cropped brown hair, stares outside the window like she shouldn’t be here. Beside her, Chelsea, her four-year-old daughter, does the singing.
The three other passengers are all wrapped up in their own thoughts. One staring into the middle distance; one asleep, gentle snoring, with drool; one reading a paperback with MURDER in the title. Bea has a book in her bag but can’t be bothered to strain her eyes. Nobody with headphones or any other kind of portable music, so it is at least peaceful. Except for Chelsea’s singing, that is.
“The cold wind in the winter The pleasant summer sun The ripe fruits in the garden He made them every one”
Bea ruffles Chelsea’s hair. “Shh. Inside voice, darling.” But she only half means it because the girl positively glows when she sings, and that’s an antidote to a day as gray as this.
At a bus shelter on a Thamesmead street, the 229 approaches and slows to a halt with a hiss of hydraulic brakes. Yellowed posters on the plexiglass for defunct government initiatives on the shelter. Half-assed graffiti, like the artist didn’t care and just made marks with no message. Or maybe that is the message. One panel shattered a long time ago—no broken glass on the pavement. Every lamppost has the exact same party invite sticker. To this, Bea and Chelsea disembark.
“All things bright and beautiful; all creatures great and small.”
Chelsea skips ahead, voice rising. The neighborhood is safe, and Bea feels no threat to herself or her child. There’s no reason to, since they keep to themselves.
The foyer of the dim two-bed flat, dust motes fly. The mail waits in a pile on the floor below the letter flap. The afternoon sun is barely visible through the door panels, but its light falls on two toys on the floor; one doll, one plastic robot on its side.
The click-clack of locks. The door swings open, and Chelsea dances in. “I’m hungry, but I don’t want toast with peanut butter on it because I don’t like it, Mummy.”
Bea smiles. “Yes, ma’am. Take your shoes off, milady. And pick up your toys.”
Chelsea continues into the house, ignoring the toys, while Bea bends, picks up the mail, and sorts through it.
The living room is dim, like the foyer. Chelsea comes up short in the open door to the hallway, standing still, staring at the window, eyes wide, perfectly still.
“Mum!”
In the foyer, Bea is opening mail and reading.
“Mummy!”
Bea says, “Yes, darling. No peanut butter.”
She screws up her face at junk mail and sets it aside.
“MUMMY!!!”
Bea drops everything and runs to the living room. Bea bursts in and clutches Chelsea, who points toward the windows.
There’s a man-shaped silhouette outlined against the blinds. Bea shoves Chelsea behind her. Her heart thumps like a marching band, and she wonders if she can get to the phone.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?” Bea hears a ringing in her ears as the curtains flap gently around the figure. “I’m going to call the police.”
Nothing from the man. He doesn’t move or acknowledge anything.
Bea whirls to Chelsea. “Go to your room and—”
The figure lunges forward, curtains and blinds flowing around it like a membrane. Both Chelsea and Bea scream.
The figure crashes into Bea and they both smack into the floor. She gasps as the figure’s weight forces air out of her lungs. Even as she feels the sting of bruised ribs, Bea can’t quite believe this is happening to her. She has a sense of being above it all. The pain isn’t real. This man isn’t real. Chelsea is real and is frozen to the spot.
“Chelsea, run!”
Chelsea sprints out; the thumps of her footfalls fade, and a door slams somewhere in the house. A part of Bea is grateful that her child would escape.
The figure rises over a winded Bea. He disentangles himself from the linen. Free of the drapery, it’s clear this is a man, although cloaked in shadow.
A pipe drops into his hand from a hiding place up his sleeve and lengthens. When it’s about a foot long, he clenches a fist around it.
The pipe rises and falls. Wet, meaty impact. Bea cries out a couple of times but is mostly silent. The pipe glistens in its rise and fall. The liquid looks black in the dim light and, as the pipe arcs upward, elongated drops break free and spatter the wall and ceiling.
The man stops, breathing heavily. No sound or movement from Bea. He straightens up and watches her for one, two, three seconds. He is sure.
He steals away to the foyer and looks toward the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. He steps on the plastic robot, crushing it on his way to the bedroom. The toy, deformed, begins to slowly expand back to its previous shape.
The man comes to Chelsea’s door, which is garlanded with stickers of little hearts and flowering vines. The man strokes the lintel with tenderness, then takes a step back.
He crashes into the door, and the wood rends as the frame gives way. He enters the room, and Chelsea screams. She calls for her mother.
With one crack, Chelsea’s voice is cut off. The cracks continue.
The robot, on its side, fully regains its shape.
Then, silence.
Outside Bea and Chelsea’s house, there are cops everywhere, delivered by two meat wagons with flashing lights. Crime scene tape seals off the high-rise entrance. An ambulance lingers, engine idling. Scene of Crime Officers, SOCOs, plod in and out wearing their protective gear.
Neighbors and passersby watch, shocked and chatting, with one or two of them talking to uniformed police. There’s a hive of activity in the cordoned-off area. The uniforms part, and the building disgorges two stretchers, one adult size, one smaller, draped with white covers, and subsequently loaded into the maw of the ambulance.
Across the street, under a willow, covered in shadow, a man, the man, watches dispassionately.
Once the ambulance door shuts, he turns and walks away.
2. THE DETECTIVE
CHAPTER TWO
A radio is on somewhere, and the voice speaking from it fluctuates in volume and clarity, sometimes muffled, sometimes louder, and competing with a rhythmic thumping.
This is an artist’s workshop, and the sounds come from a different part of the house. Here, on a table with precision tools and sketches, incomplete animatronics lead out of the back of a smooth woman’s mask. An automaton, or it will be when finished. Beside it rests a music box crowned with a ballerina but not rotating.
Looking over this tableau is a tall bookshelf with several tomes on art, architecture, painting, with three prominent coffee table books: *The Architecture of the Square Mile, Beyond Wren and Hawksmoor, and Sketches and Conceits, *all by Katrina Thatcher.
On the opposite wall, seven heads of various kinds, plastic and ceramic skin, men, women, children, all sit on a shelf. They look like the dead. They are automaton parts or drafts for parts. Their fixed expressions look like people in Holbein’s paintings.
The shelf below has stuffed animals, foxes, squirrels, cats. The taxidermy is incomplete, and they seem like studies. Most have no eyes sewn in.
The workshop is full of automata with intricate clockwork. Some look old but restored. Others are in the process of being built. One has a dip pen, and there are sheets of paper with elaborate signatures written on them.
There’s a large doll’s house, also incomplete, but almost there. It’s elegant, with exquisite miniaturization.
The rhythmic thumping continues with gasps and moaning.
From the radio, a voice says—Been an hour since the tiger was last seen. The London Zoo says it’s a Sumatran tiger, about eight feet, two hundred pounds.
Closest to the door, there’s an incomplete diorama that looks vaguely like London, but with both retro and futuristic flourishes.
The sounds of lovemaking are louder now.
On the wall beside the stairs hang four framed photographs: A woman, dark hair pulled back, smiling to the camera; a man in similar pose, longish hair, somber; the couple together, laughing. The last picture shows the woman alone in a police dress uniform outside, the legend identifying the place as Hendon Police College.
Upstairs, a couple has sex in their bed. The thumping comes from the bed hitting the wall. They’re the couple in the photograph.
The woman, Eve Stevens, has her hair wet with exertion and tousled. The man, Dan Russel, is lanky. His hair is shorter than in the photograph.
The tiger is new to captivity and may behave in unpredictable ways. Do not approach.
There is something stereotypical about the sex. The movements are regular like clockwork, and their faces are controlled, though not bored.
Eve says, “Let’s change position. I’m close.”
They change, like it’s choreographed.
Later, Eve showers. She feels good but wonders about Dane.
Dane, in the workshop, is topless, in jeans, working on the doll’s house. His concentration is total. He stares, changes something, then leans back, taking in the whole. Eve pops her head in the door, now in smart casual clothes.
“Almost done?” she says.
Dane nods.
“Will it be ready for the birthday?”
Dane nods.
“All right. I’m off to work. Come and kiss me.”
Dane frowns. “I don’t want to interrupt what I’m doing.”
He does not turn around, and Eve doesn’t seem to be upset at this. It’s not new behavior.
“See you later. Air kiss.” Eve seems to be waiting for something.
Dane says, “I made you breakfast. It’s in the green container on the kitchen island. Have a good day, my darling.” His speech is uninflected but satisfies Eve.
She smiles and disappears.
Buses, taxis, and cars roar back and forth, raising a noisy cacophony on London’s streets. Cyclists weave in and out like an accompaniment passing shop fronts, business façades, high-rises of glass and steel, construction scaffolding, and news vendors. A few structures are completely sealed off in blue screens adorned with DO NOT ENTER signs.
The Underground station is strangely without people entering and exiting. There is no sign saying it’s closed. People avoid walking on that side of the road. There are phone booths, some with people inside, talking on rotary coin-operated telephones.
The streets are clean; even the bins are empty. Not a speck of waste anywhere.
Eve walks among other commuters. Someone bumps into her and keeps going without turning around.
“Arsehole,” says Eve, but without venom. It seems like an automatic reaction that she barely registers. She thinks of Dane and the curve of his back, and how it twists when he turns to look at her. She tries to think of a time when she’s been happier but fails.
She makes it to a bus shelter just as a double-decker pulls up.
Eve is at her desk in a noisy open-plan office in police headquarters, the tap-tap of manual typewriters machine-gunning away. Rotary phones on each desk, some in use by detectives.
She nibbles at a sandwich from a green plastic container open in front of her. In it, there’s a further sandwich with surgical cut edges, an apple, and three red grapes, along with a carefully folded square of serviette.
She’s reading a typed report, but she senses someone edging toward her and is not surprised when a shadow falls over the paper.
“What are you doing, Stevens?”
Eve looks up. Her boss, DCI James Ashford, late fifties, stands over her. He’s fleshy, but in a healthy way. Eats right but doesn’t make it to the gym and enjoys a bitter. At least, that’s Eve’s assessment of him. She thinks he’s happy at home. She smiles and offers the remaining sandwich. “I’m still on the Kumar thing, Guv. You want cheese and cucumber?”
“God intended sandwiches to have meat or fish in them,” says James. He drops a thin folder. “You’re going to Thamesmead.”
“Because . . . ?”
“Because I say so. I mean, there’s a double homicide you need to attend to over there, but you’re going to Thamesmead because it’s where I want you.”
Eve opens the folder and forgets the sandwich in her hand. “You know, I’m not on rotation right now, and I wasn’t yesterday.” She says this absently. The folder has her attention, with its preliminary crime photos of a brutalized mother and child in a council flat.
“Where’s Montpellier?” James looks around.
“Missing in action. Either sick or hungover. I don’t know. Am I paying for his absence, boss? This is terrible for my morale, this is.”
“And I have to lead this menagerie yesterday, today, and forever. I don’t care about your pain, Stevens. Murder most foul, in Thamesmead, now.”
“Yes, Guv.”
She’s looking at a two-year-old driver’s license photograph of Bea and some text that contains the 999 report and the first attending officer’s impression. How did the passport photo manage to capture a soulful expression on the woman’s face?
Thamesmead, then.
She chucks the rest of the sandwich in her wastebasket.
There’s only one police van left in front of Bea’s tower block. Eve climbs up the stairs, even as broken crime scene tape drifts carelessly about. It’s overcast, and there’s a smell of burning grass on the breeze.
Bea’s door is still sealed. Inside, Eve walks past the toy robot and consults her file before heading down the hallway. Splinters of the door are on the floor. She steps between them.
Chelsea’s room is a mess of bright colors, with a profusion of dolls. A mirror with bright lights strung around the border is the centerpiece. There’s a quilt duvet on the floor, otherwise very little disorder.
On the carpet, an outline of where Chelsea’s body must have fallen, a dark, wet stain around where the head would have been. Eve shakes her own head and feels heavy but not nauseated. She resists the impulse to touch the wetness.
She leaves for the living room. The SOCOs are still working but clearly winding down. The spatter on the carpet is marked and numbered. There’s a body outline, with an indicator for injuries in the head area. Someone is dusting the windowsills.
“Murder weapon?” asks Eve.
One of the SOCOs shakes his head. “Checked inside and out. Team been looking all the way to the marshes. Nada.”
“How did he get in?” Eve studies the window and the walls next to it. No scuff marks or damage.
“No idea. These flats don’t have back entrances. No signs of forced entry. No signs of tampering with either the door lock or the latch.”
“No need to tamper or force anything if he already had a key,” says Eve.
“Why would he have a key?”
“I can see why they keep you in the lab. He’d have a key if he’s a former lover, maybe even the father of the child. Which is almost always who kills women. Former partners. I’m off to see the bodies.”
Eve spins and leaves the SOCOs to their grim task.
CHAPTER THREE
Eve follows the bodies.
She arrives at an office block in Central London with a shiny brass plate announcing the names of the Coroner’s List pathologists, qualified and approved by His Majesty’s Government. She spots a name, DR ROBERT TALBOT, MBBS, FRCPath.
Pedestrians and cyclists pass, but otherwise there is only the occasional car horn, a quiet bubble in this cul-de-sac. Eve buzzes and is allowed in.
In the autopsy room, a man in green scrubs, Bob Talbot, mid-fifties and portly, washes his hands. Behind him, there are two bodies on slabs, a woman and a girl, Bea and Chelsea. The autopsy is complete, and the bodies are tidy, though empty of internal organs. Bob is proud to have finished them so quickly, and he dreams of an early lunch.
Eve comes in. “Dashing Doctor Bob!”
Bob smiles. “Eve, don’t call me that.”
Eve is wearing blue scrubs. She looks at the bodies with sadness, but she’s seen the dead before and isn’t nervous. “Even if I come bearing gifts?”
“Do you have gifts?”
“No, but the principle stands. There are conditions under which I can call you Doctor Bob.”
“What do you want, Eve? I’m busy.”
“I have mother and child questions.”
“I’ll supply my report to the coroner. You can get it from their office.”
“You know that won’t work for me. Time is crucial in the first twenty-four hours.”
“Really? I’m so lucky you told me that. In my twenty-four years of forensic pathology, I’ve never heard that.”
“Bob . . . ”
“Fine. Blunt force trauma to the head. The mother first, then the child.”
“How do you know—”
Bob busies himself putting tools away and disposing of tissue samples.
“Transfer. Mother’s blood in child’s wound. The murder weapon was likely a length of pipe. Mother exsanguinated; the child died of cerebral hemorrhage. Tragedy.”
“Anything from the assailant?”
A spider crawls on a surface to Eve’s side. It catches her eye. She grabs it and slips it between her lips. She feels the juice burst into her mouth as she bites into it.
“I can tell you he hated her. Twenty-seven direct blows to the head. Five misses, but you can see their indentations in the carpet on crime scene photos.” Bob shakes his head.
“I can sense you have no biological material from him. He was careful then?”
“Well . . . ”
“What?”
“It’s going to sound odd.”
“Just spit it out, man.”
“I don’t think he was careful at all. I just think he didn’t have biological material that I could find.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I found some stuff that looks organic, but I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’ve sent it to the national lab.”
“Doctor Bob, you’re confusing me. Do you have material from the assailant or not?”
“Not, my darling. At least, that’s my official answer. Unofficially? Maybe. I’ll let you know. Maybe he used some chemical compound on his skin.”
“Fair enough. Call me when you have something.” Eve spits out spider legs and moves to the door.
“When are you going to leave Dane and run away with me?” says Bob.
“Ask me again, Dashing Doctor Bob. You never know. You’re wearing me down.”
An elaborately worked door in the vestibule of a middle-class home. Doorbell goes off, slicing through the hum of conversation coming from deeper in the house. Through the frosted glass panes, there are shapes of two people outside.
A woman in a flowery dress, Sucharita, flutters to the door. She is attractive and ephemeral. “Coming, my beautiful unicorns.”
Sucharita unlocks the door and breaks into a smile. Eve and Dane are outside. Dane holds the doll’s house he was working on earlier, covered in colorful wrapping paper, crowned with a bow.
“Heeeey!” Sucharita and Eve embrace, squealing. Dane keeps a straight face, businesslike. He wants to install the doll’s house.
“Dane. Welcome! How are we tonight?” says Sucharita.
Dane smiles tightly but says nothing. Sucharita is used to this. Eve watches the interaction but doesn’t step in.
“Where’s the birthday girl?”
Sucharita gestures toward the stairs. “Getting dressed or something. You have no idea how much I suffer from her caprice.”
They make their way through the house to a lounge, party sounds increasing.
A large banner saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALINA. Balloons and other decorations all over the place. Some decorations have the number EIGHT on them.
Tom Jones playing on a sound system. This is the only music, and it plays on a loop, but this doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
Five other smiling people wait in the lounge before Eve, Dane, and Sucharita join. Their collective fashion ranges from mid-90s to circa 2005. Khaki and plaid; chinos; UGG revival; skinny jeans; et cetera.
Sucharita melts into the arms of her wife, Carol, who kisses Eve and nods at Dane. Eve was friends with Carol first, and for years, but bonded with Sucharita better.
“Where can I set this up?” says Dane.
Carol volunteers. “Follow me.”
There’s a TV, a cathode-ray tube device with a long projecting back, and a significant heat output. It looks like a tank. People converge around this, watching a news report.
- . . . Multiple sightings of the tiger now. Police say most of the calls are hoaxes, and seventeen were urban foxes.*
“Who mistakes a fox for a tiger?” says Eve.
Sucharita slips a drink into Eve’s hand.
A shot of a tiger in a cage appears on the screen.
Authorities have said Londoners should not approach the animal.
“They shouldn’t have brought them over from Africa,” says one of the guests.
“Tigers aren’t from Africa,” says Dane.
“I think zoos are unethical, anyway. The tiger is a person and has a right to be free. Run, Simba, run!” Sucharita’s voice takes on a higher note.
“I don’t think Simba was a tiger,” says Eve.
“And I don’t think a tiger is a person,” says the guest.
“Are they self-aware?” asks Eve.
“Apes are.” Sucharita sips a drink.
“How do you know?”
“There was this test. They recognize themselves in the mirror.”
“Some apes.”
“There was something about sign language,” says Sucharita.
“Yes, I saw that.”
“It was debunked. The apes were just copying their handlers.”
“Can tigers sign?”
Dane looks up from the dollhouse. “Tigers are animals. They are not human.”
Sucharita floats away, then returns with her arms around an eight year old, Alina, her daughter. Alina is pretty, sweet, and wide-eyed.
“Look at my baby!” says Sucharita.
Eve looks Alina over. “Is it just me, or is she taller?”
“She is.” Sucharita looks ready to burst from pride.
“Her hair is longer than when I last saw her,” says Dane.
Alina spots the dollhouse. “Is that for me?”
“Yes. From us. But Dane made it. Happy birthday.”
Alina examines the object, runs her fingers over it. Inside, the miniature people seem trapped, helpless, but those blank Holbein faces mute any distress. Dane walks over to help Alina. Sucharita slides her arm around Eve’s waist. Alina squeals at something she discovers. Crouched to her level, Dane is attentive but unemotional, explaining the mechanisms in words and gestures.
“What’s wrong? You’re tense. Don’t be tense. It’s a party,” says Sucharita.
Eve hesitates. “Case at work. I can’t talk about it, but there was a child involved. I keep thinking about what birthdays she’ll never have.”
Alina laughs and places her hand on Dane’s shoulder. Eve spots him stiffen.
So does Sucharita. “Is Dane going to be okay?”
“He doesn’t like to be touched generally, but I think Alina gets a pass.”
The next day, Eve is on a bench outside a sandwich shop, eating lunch. She looks into the middle distance, frowning slightly, contemplating something as she chews. She’s trying to make sense of the crime. No signs of entry, let alone forced. Neighbors haven’t noticed any man or woman loitering around. The murderer just walked in and lead-piped them both to death. That’s the how, but why? Neighbors say the family was introverted. Polite but sticking to themselves. No friends that Eve has been able to find. Without known associates, where did one start such an investigation?
Pedestrians move to and fro, workers on their breaks.
A klaxon goes off. Three blasts. The sounds seem omnidirectional. Unsurprised, Eve roots in her handbag. A man reaches deep into his pockets. The workers in the sandwich shop look under the counter. Eve slots earplugs into both ears, as does everybody else present.
A second later, a loud, sustained, and distorted electronic sound drowns out everything else. Some modulation in the sound suggests it might be or once have been speech, but it has degraded so much that it cannot be understood anymore. Nobody is distressed. Everybody waits. Parents adjust the plugs in kids’ ears.
The sound suddenly dies. People continue whatever they were doing beforehand, and Eve puts her plugs in her bag.
She takes a new bite of her sandwich. Could the attack have been random? Stranger homicide? Eve hoped not. Because if the assailant left no evidence, the case would not be a piece of piss to solve.
Eve in front of a whiteboard in an impersonal office. She likes whiteboards, full of possibility and erasable mistakes. No better thinking tool.
She has drawn a diagrammatic representation of Bea and Chelsea’s tower. Ten columns of numbered rectangles drawn on it. Each rectangle represented a flat. One is in red, the crime scene. There are crosses through some of the rectangles that have been canvassed. Eve puts a cross through a new number. She checks a list and dials a number on a rotary phone.
“Hello, my name is DS Stevens. A serious incident happened in the flat above you. I’m calling to see if you heard any . . . you didn’t? I—” The person hangs up so hard, Eve has to pull the handset away from her ear. “Very rude.”
She sighs, plods to the board, and crosses out another rectangle.
A knock at the door, a welcome reprieve. It opens, and a messenger stands there.
“Stevens?” he says. He seems a bit young to be using her surname.
“That’s me.”
He drops a pile of folders on her desk and leaves. Eve is puzzled and starts to open one when the messenger returns and dumps a new pile.
“Is that all or . . . ?”
“Oh, no. There’s more.”
A third and fourth pile, then a letter before the messenger departs.
Eve opens it.
Detective, I hope you’re doing well. I found similar cases with minor variations going back years. I pulled the files for you. See, I’m not just a pretty face. Doctor Bob.
Eve smiles. “Dashing.”
Eve picks a folder at random, sits down, puts her feet up, and starts reading.
It’s dark now. Eve rubs her eyes to get rid of the grit, but she refuses to give in to exhaustion. The piles are gone, except the one Eve is reading. The rest are on the floor. On the wall beside the whiteboard, autopsy headshots of women and girls, eyes closed in death, lacking the decoration of bodies at a funeral. Not pretty. Like the heads in Dane’s workshop. They make Eve uncomfortable, but she wants to feel that until she solves the case. Nobody should be comfortable while their murderer roams free.
All of them look like Bea and Chelsea, more or less. Minor variations in the amount of hair, the shape of the nose, the chin, angle of the jaw, but not enough to matter.
She hears a creak. Her guvnor is at the door.
“What case is this?” says James, eyes on the board.
“That’s Thamesmead, Guv.”
“Did a bomb go off? I thought that was two bodies. This is . . . ”
“This is where Thamesmead leads.”
Eve watches a vein on his neck pulse. She imagines what horrors he has seen in his time and how he covers it up with a laconic façade. She wonders how she will cope when she reaches his age. What will all the murders and all the dead bodies take from her?
“You’re saying you have a serial killer,” says James.
“Well, it’s not Harold Shipman, but . . . ”
James steps closer and touches a few of the photos. He seems to be in a religious funk, and his voice takes on a tone of awe. “I’ve heard serial killers select victims that look alike.”
Eve joins him. “I know what you mean, boss. This is uncanny, though. They could all be siblings.”
James abruptly recovers, and his usual tone returns. “You can’t do this alone. Come see me on Monday.”
He strides out without looking back.
The door to Eve’s house unlocks and opens into the hallway. Eve enters and drops her keys on the side. She is careful, quiet, but the weight of tiredness pulls her shoulders and neck down. She slips off her shoes and starts creeping up the stairs but stops.
The sound of trudging footfalls comes from the living room. Eve changes direction and appears at the door to the living room.
Dane is pacing back and forth. He takes exactly six heavy paces in one direction, then six in the other. He is sweating, and there are dark patches at both armpits.
“Dane?”
“You are late.” He doesn’t look at her.
Shit. “Yes. Work got away from me.”
“You’re supposed to call. That’s the deal. You call. You say, ‘Dane, I’m going to be late.’”
“I—”
“You’ve done something wrong. If you do something wrong, you should say ‘sorry.’ You should apologize. Acknowledge, apologize, atone.”
Eve edges close to him, but he doesn’t stop pacing. He smells of paint thinner, glue, and what she thinks of as ozone from welding, all mixed with the musk of his sweat.
“You’re right. I should have called to say I’d be late. I am sorry. I apologize. All right, baby.”
Dane stops pacing. His expression does not change, but he studies her face.
“I’m sorry.” Eve tries to keep the fatigue off her face so that it doesn’t mimic insincerity.
“I accept your apology. There is food for you in the oven. I’m going to shower.” Dane spins around and leaves the room. Eve collapses into a wing chair and exhales.
From somewhere, the ticktock of a clock.
3. THE SUSPECT
CHAPTER FOUR
In Dane’s workshop, there’s a new project in progress. On the west wall, there’s a large, sprawling drawing of London’s skyline, except its futuristic version, with towers and spires we’ve never seen, along with speculative Thames crossings. On a table, the beginnings of models of the sketched skyline lurk like plant shoots in a garden on a bed of scattered, incomplete pencil drawings. The floor is littered with pencil shavings.
One of the clockwork mechanisms has malfunctioned, resulting in a faint, but continuous tintinnabulation. But there is also the sound of the bed thumping as Eve and Dane make love. Their movements are identical to the previous time, down to the gestures, moans, and entreaties.
The bedside lamp is on, even though there’s enough sunlight from the window.
Eve enters the kitchen in a dressing gown and notices fresh-cut flowers with a handmade card on the island. How did he do that?
She reads the card and smiles.
As Eve makes her way to work, there are fewer people on the street. Newspapers at stands show weekend editions, and a bell rings from a distant urban church.
Eve makes her way into the police headquarters through a revolving door. Not a lot of desks are occupied, and those present barely acknowledge Eve. James’ office is empty as she walks past along a side aisle of the open-plan office.
She opens the conference room where she has the photos on the wall, then something catches her eye.
A flashing light on the telephone on her desk. She drops her handbag and darts over. Handset to ear, she presses the button.
Dashing Doctor Bob says, “I hope you have a pen, Detective.”
Eve pulls open a drawer and digs for a pen. “Dr. Bob! How do?”
“Remember the substance I told you was at the crime scene, and that we had no idea what it was? Well, I sort of put out a call to a group of amateur scientists that I belong to.”
Eve cradles the handset between her neck and shoulder, tangled in the cord, looking for paper. She makes a noncommittal sound as she roots around.
“There’s a bloke called Solomon Horton. H-O-R-T-O-N. I’ll give you his number in a minute. He said he’s seen that chromatological pattern before. His number is—”
Eve poised to write.
Somewhat unexpected.
Eve stands in front of a laundromat shop front with a “CLOSED” sign hanging inside the glass. She checks the address against reality. Where has Doctor Bob sent her? Eve walks up and presses the buzzer.
The door opens, and a plump man in his forties with round glasses stands there.
Eve shows her warrant card. “Solomon Horton? I’m Detective Eve Stevens. We talked on the phone?”
“Robert sent you,” he says. He steps back and gestures for her to enter. “I’ve been puzzled about that slime since I came across it. I like to test stains to see how best to remove them.”
Eve finds herself in the laundromat’s back office. Slight chemical smell to the place, though not unpleasant. Clean and impersonal, it reminds Eve of a hospital. The office is sparse, the furniture wooden and uncomfortable. Solomon hands Eve a cup of tea and sits opposite her. He’s not having one, and Eve clocks old stains on the saucer. She pretends to sip but has made up her mind not to drink it. He doesn’t look like a predator, but they never do.
“This business has been in my family for generations. We take pride in the service we give.”
“Of course.”
“So when Robert reached out, I was curious.”
“Do you remember whose clothing it was you found the stain in?”
“I do.”
“Do you have contact details? An address?”
“I do.”
Eve raises an eyebrow. “Well?”
“I’m not allowed to—”
“Solomon. May I call you Solomon? Okay. I don’t have a warrant, but I can get one. This is a murder case. I’m here on a Sunday, and I won’t get overtime for this. In the time I spend disturbing a magistrate, filling out the paperwork, groveling, and making my way back to your fine establishment, more people might die. Do you want that? You want that on your conscience?”
Eve burps. She’s in a car parked on the street, watching the front door of a detached house across the road at the address Solomon gave her. She has heartburn. She can only eat junk food when she’s away from Dane, whom she has diligently informed about this stakeout. The gas from fizzy drinks keeps bubbling up to the top of her gut. It’s uncomfortable, but she loves the things that are bad for her. Carbon dioxide bubbled through sugar water. Genius invention. Terrible, but genius.
The radio is on.
- . . . Further sightings of the tiger suggest it might be circling back to the zoo. Is that likely, professor?*
A streetlight illuminates the hedge and parts of the façade. The rest of the house is in darkness.
There’s so much Eve doesn’t like about the case. She had asked for Bea and Chelsea’s documents, but none were forthcoming. No passports or birth certificates, no father’s name for the child. Lots of unknowns. The inventory of Bea’s flat was unremarkable. No trail from that direction. It’s like they are ciphers. Eve put in a request for immunization records for the child. She had been to her school. “Chelsea keeps to herself and is no trouble at all.” Nothing smelled right.
That’s a good question, Sarah. The zoo is where the tiger feels familiarity. It may have escaped looking for its quote, unquote, ancestral lands. The smells would be urban. The smell of the zoo is probably closer to the smell of the jungle.
The remnants of fast-food packaging and chocolate wrappers lie on the passenger’s seat. Eve sucks a drink through a straw. She stops, burps yet again, shakes the cup. Empty. She tosses it in the back.
In other words, it’s going home?
A man in a flat cap and coat approaches the door to the target house, unlocks it, and slips inside. He looks to be in his fifties and about five-ten, five-eleven. The door slams behind him.
“Hello, stranger,” says Eve. She didn’t quite see his face, but it doesn’t matter. She knows where he is and has no plans of losing him.
A light pops on in one of the windows of the house.
That’s a simplification, but, yes, it’s going home. But I can’t emphasize enough, it’s dangerous. Stay away from it.
Eve smiles and raises a radio to her lips. “Dispatch, come in.”
Eve, expectant, standing over James at his desk. He’s looking over her paperwork.
“Tell it to me again, the way you’re going to tell the magistrate. It’s Callahan, so you know she wants it simple.”
Eve takes a breath. “Murders of a woman and her daughter in Thamesmead yielded an unknown chemical substance. Call it X. We found fourteen other murders of mothers and children that the pathologist thought were similar. Solomon Horton found X in a repeat customer’s fabric. The customer’s name is Storm Giuseppe. I sat on his home address and caught a visual. I went through all the files of the cold cases. On six there were descriptions of someone like Giuseppe by witnesses. I have someone sitting on his address now, round the clock.”
“What do we know about Giuseppe?”
“Nothing, Guv. He does not exist. He has no National Insurance number. He has no birth certificate, no passport, no voter registration. He has no family doctor, no prescriptions for anything. Giuseppe has no bank account, boss. He is a ghost, and I would very much like to have a word with him about the murders of women and girls.”
Judge Callahan’s chambers are a profusion of wood and leather paneling. The judge herself is wizened, thin beyond belief, drowning in her robes.
In front of her, Eve and the court clerk stand, silent, Eve’s hands respectfully behind her back.
A klaxon goes off. The judge, Eve, and the clerk produce earplugs and insert them. The noise, irritating, loud, distorted, and electronic, goes on for a minute, then stops. They all pull out the plugs.
The judge reads the last page of the warrant, takes a breath, and signs.
Eve’s face is blank, no reaction, but behind her, she makes a fist: yes!
An unmarked car with a plainclothes officer inside waits outside Storm’s house, but in bright sunlight this time.
An officer says, “Confirm. Subject has not left the home.” Indistinct static mixed with speech from the radio. “I can’t bloody hear you, can I?”
Eve, in body armor, strides past the unmarked car, up to Storm’s driveway. Behind her, an armed response team splits into two, one group going round the back of the house, the other standing by in front.
As she walks up, Eve passes under an archway made of a trellis thick with creeper plants. The wooden front door is ornate, with a brass rapper. Eve knocks.
“Storm Giuseppe! This is the police! Open the door.”
Some sounds of movement from inside. Eve tries the door, and it’s unlocked. She enters. She finds herself in a dark, narrow hallway, the vestibule. The front door drifts shut behind her.
Ahead of her is another shut door with frosted glass panes, through which Eve sees movement.
“Police in the house! Police in the house! Storm Giuseppe, we have a search warrant. Stay where you are.”
A voice like shattering glass from inside. “Eve? Are you Eve? You sound like an Eve.”
Eve stops, taken aback. Her blood feels suddenly cold. “How . . . how do you know my name?”
“Somewhat unexpected, isn’t it? Just like you turning up here is for me, Eve. Bye-bye.”
The movement beyond the door ceases. Eve reaches it, tries the door. Locked. She pulls at her lapel radio. “Suspect is home. Breach. Breach!”
Nothing happens. Eve turns around.
There is no front door.
In its place is a crude, bricked up wall with clerestory windows providing grudging light.
“What . . . ? How . . . ?”
She whirls, and the second door isn’t there anymore.
Brick. Sealed in. Impossible.
Eve is walled into a short corridor with no way in or out. Her mouth is wide open, and she touches the wall to be sure it’s there. She can barely think over the hiss of her blood in her ears.
“I . . . mayday, mayday, officer needs assistance. Help!”
Muffled sounds like there’s a lot of activity outside, but no acknowledgement. Eve runs from one end of the vestibule to the other, like a trapped rat, panicked.
“Get me out of here!”
She slams her hands on the walls, repeatedly. In her mind, unbidden, images of concentration camps with linear gouges in the walls from fingernails of people trying to get away from Zyklon B.
“Mayday, anybody out there? Officer in need of assistance. Mayday. Fucking answer me!”
Only static on the radio. Eve sinks to the floor, her palms throbbing.
Time passes; light fades; sounds of activity outside.
Eve has tried shouting, but nothing changes, so she waits. They know she’s here, and there’s nothing she can do to improve her chances. The radio does not get better. She has been thinking of Dane, of how he will respond to her going missing. Who will take care of him? Sucharita? Dane would scold Eve for eating junk food, and she, in turn, would irrationally think what’s happening to her is punishment for not sticking to their diet.
The activity outside culminates in a loud crack. The wall behind her opens up as the teeth of a digger break through. Light floods in along with the sound of heavy equipment through a jagged hole, the cruel edges reminding Eve of a monster’s teeth in an open maw. Officers and fire service personnel are framed in the hole.
“Stevens, are you okay?”
“In here,” says Eve. She is trembling from the cold and the stress of it all. “I’m in here.”
Eve sits near an ambulance on the curb, snug under a blanket, looking grim, staring at Storm’s house. She has, in her hand, a steaming coffee. She’s spooked and unashamed of it. Her mind cannot grasp what has happened, so she is not thinking about it, the way one averts one’s gaze from something disgusting.
A steady stream of uniforms going in and out of the house, bringing boxes of material.
An officer stops. “Stevens.”
Eve keeps staring ahead.
“Stevens!”
Eve looks at him, startled.
“What happened in there?”
“Maybe he drugged me? A hallucinogen in the air . . . ?” She speaks mainly to herself.
“What?”
Eve rises, shrugs off the blanket, and hands the cup to the officer.
“All of those boxes go right to Evidence for my attention. Nothing gets lost, nothing gets misplaced, hear me?”
She walks away.
Eve seated across from James, a question on his face, one she doesn’t want to answer or even contemplate.
“I don’t know what to tell you, boss. I got walled in.”
“Yes. But how?”
Eve looks out of the window. An airship floats by, trailing a banner: VOTE FOR A NEW LONDON. What does that even mean? Eve doesn’t have a fix on any of the candidates or the issues. They are the same each alternating year. More police on the street. Fewer police on the street. The electorate can’t decide.
“I’m going to have to send an incident report,” James says with regret.
Eve looks back into the office. An incident report goes to faceless people with absolute power. The idea of it makes Eve afraid, even though she has done nothing wrong. She’s alarmed but also resigned. “I’m going to need a bigger space for this investigation.”
“It’s yours. You want a partner? I can pull someone off—”
“No. No, I need to do this on my own.”
“Montpellier is back. He—”
“Montpellier’s an idiot, sir. Nobody wants to work with him.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“When you came here, fresh-faced and wet-nappied from Hendon, I was the only one on the interview panel who wanted you. They were going to bounce you to Fraud or some such. But I believed in you.”
She already knew this. He had told her many times. “Your point?”
“Be careful out there. I am invested in your progress because it reflects my progress. Take help when it’s offered, Stevens, and don’t get careless.”
“Boss, I don’t want a partner.”
“All right. Meanwhile, the basement is yours. Work your case out of there.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Outside an upmarket art gallery, there’s a cutout of Dane, in a suit, glaring, advertising a show, DANE RUSSELL, NEW VISIONS.
Inside, various works are displayed. The centerpiece is a vast diorama of London, but not as we know it. It is a futuristic imagined London extrapolated from the familiar landmarks like St. Paul’s, the Gherkin, the Shard, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and the M15 building. Minor works are of monsters, animals, mutants, and humans, all moving with exposed animatronics. Replicas of classic automata compete with newer ones. A bust of Hephaestus overlooks a miniature Bronze Man. At least seven automata sign names using dip pens. A clockwork rooster crows at intervals. A mechanical tiger roars. A dove flaps its wings and picks up a scroll of the Torah with its feet. It cannot fly.
Dane stands among a small group of glitterati while Eve hovers around the entrance, nervous. Since being trapped in Storm Giuseppe’s house, she has not been able to tolerate enclosed spaces well. Even public, brightly lit ones like this gallery.
“These are possibilities explored by Wren after the fire of London but nixed by the various professional guilds. Conceptually, there is some debt to Zaha Hadid and Katrina Thatcher’s more speculative work,” says Dane.
“And the monsters?” asks a woman who looked to Eve like a critic but also like she would gladly shag the living daylights out of Dane.
Dane says, “We have to imagine those other than ourselves.”
Eve’s eyes move from Dane to the diorama to the doorway. She’s jittery. Every time someone comes in, she twitches. Her breathing is faster than usual, and the tension rises until she can’t stand it anymore. She darts out of the door.
Dane’s eyes flick to her, then back to his fawning fans.
Outside, Eve leans against the display glass beside the Dane cutout, hyperventilating. She gets a flash of herself, trapped in the sealed corridor, desperately searching for an exit, panicking. Eve winces as if she is in physical pain. She twitches as she feels Dane’s hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t seen him come after her.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She’s not fine. “I’m all right.” She’s not all right. “Really.”
Dane accepts this at face value. “To be supportive, you should be inside with me, either at my side or—”
“That’s true. I just wanted some air, Dane. I felt like I was suffocating in there.”
“I’ll ask them to adjust the air conditioning.”
“Thank you. That would be helpful.”
“Then you can be supportive again.” He kisses her on the cheek, turns, and darts back into the gallery.
Something stilted about the whole interaction, but of course, Dane struggles with large numbers of people. He needs her there to buttress his performance of social norms and cues. Eve stares at the cutout as if it is Dane. “You are amazing and I love you.”
Someone watches Eve from across the road, on a roof, hand on a railing.
Eve? Are you Eve? You sound like it.
Eve heads back into the gallery.
The watcher stays for a time, then slips away.
4. THE ARCHITECT
CHAPTER SIX
Heavy machinery pulls apart walls in the house of Storm Giuseppe. Each room appears to have no door and a coved ceiling, but the coves are made of an unknown material that is unbreakable with the tools at hand. Partial demolition is the only way to get in. There is an attic, but it’s empty. Not even dust made its way in there, although the air smells of aftershave or some other artificial scent. Uncharacteristically for London houses, there’s a crawl space, also sealed off. When they break into it, they find a library of files and notebooks. Investigators cart away boxes of material.
Dane and Eve have sex as stereotypically as before, with no variation. Afterward, in the kitchen, Dane fusses over Eve, serving her a fancy meal. It’s surgical, with a mise en place. Dane’s a confident cook. Eve smiles, but there’s a shadow over it; she’s in the moment, but barely so. Storm Giuseppe is on her mind, along w