They’ve got it all wrong. It was Melissa who had the knife; Melissa who held the blade to my throat until the skin split. I take a step forward.
‘Drop the weapon!’ the police officer says again, louder this time. I follow his gaze, looking up to my right hand, where the silver blade gleams through its coating of blood. My fingers snap open of their own accord, as though they have only just become aware of their contents, and the knife skitters across the floor. One of the officers kicks it further away from my reach, then pushes up the visor on his helmet. He looks practically as young as my children.
I find my voice. ‘My daughter’s in danger. I need to get to Leicester Square – will you take me?’ My teeth are chattering and I bite my tongue. More blood; my own, this time. The officer looks to his colleague, who lifts his own visor. He is much older, a grey beard neatly trimmed beneath kind eyes that crinkle at the corners as he reassures me.
‘Katie’s fine. She was intercepted by one of our officers.’
The rest of my body begins to shake.
‘There’s an ambulance on its way – they’ll take you to hospital and get you sorted out, okay?’ He looks at his young colleague.
‘Shock,’ he explains, but it isn’t shock I feel, it’s relief. I look beyond the officers. A paramedic is kneeling beside Melissa, but he isn’t touching her, he’s writing something down.
‘Is she dead?’ I don’t want to leave this room until I know for sure. The paramedic looks up.
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God.’
40
‘Not much of a celebration,’ Lucinda said, looking at the packet of peanuts Nick had torn open and put in the middle of the table.
‘I’m sorry it’s not up to your usual standards, your ladyship,’ Nick said. ‘I’m not sure the Dog and Trumpet does caviar and quail’s eggs, but I can see what’s on the specials board, if you like?’
‘Ha ha. I didn’t mean that. I just feel a bit flat, you know?’
‘I feel the same,’ Kelly said. It had been so frantic; the drive on blues and twos to get to Katie Walker, followed immediately by the race to reach Zoe, marked police cars screaming to a halt outside Melissa’s house. The ambulance had held off at the end of Anerley Road; the waiting paramedics unable to do their job until it was safe to enter. For the last few hours Kelly doubted her heart rate had dropped below a hundred beats a minute, but now she was crashing.
‘It’s just an anticlimax, that’s all,’ Nick said. ‘You’ll bounce back tomorrow, when the hard work really starts.’
There was a huge amount to do. With access to Melissa’s computer, Cyber Crime had been able to swiftly shut down findtheone.com, and access the full list of members. Tracing them – and establishing what, if any, crimes had been committed – would take somewhat longer.
Companies House checks had revealed that Melissa West was the registered director of four cafés in London; Melissa, Melissa Too, Espress Oh! and an as yet unnamed business in the heart of Clerkenwell, banking impressive profits despite the absence of sink, fridge or cooking facilities.
‘Money laundering,’ Nick had explained. ‘Coffee shops are perfect vehicles because so many people pay in cash. On paper she can legitimately take a few hundred quid a day, whilst letting the businesses run at a loss.’
‘How much do you think her husband knew?’
‘I guess we’ll find out when we bring him in.’ Neil West was overseeing the installation of a multimillion-pound IT system at a law firm in Manchester. His diary, conveniently synched to his wife’s, and easily accessible from her computer, told them he’d be flying in to London City airport the following day, where police would be waiting to arrest him. On his computer, upstairs in the home office, were files relating to each company Neil had worked with, each including an expansive contact list. The firms employing Gordon Tillman and Luke Harris had both contracted Neil in the past, and there was every expectation that further parallels would be drawn between Neil’s contact list and the list of findtheone.com customers found on Melissa’s computer.
‘Do you think she’d have left him to pick up the pieces?’ Lucinda said. Zoe had outlined the plans Melissa had shared to leave the country, and Cyber Crime had identified flights to Rio de Janeiro that she had looked at online.
‘I think so,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t think Melissa West cared about anyone but herself.’
Kelly thought about what Katie had told her, about the bitterness in Melissa’s voice when she talked about looking after Zoe’s children; about not having children of her own. ‘I think she did. I think that was part of the problem. Setting up the website was strictly business, but involving Zoe and Katie? That bit was personal.’
‘I hate that she got away with it,’ Lucinda said, reaching for the peanuts.