Harris said nothing.
‘How did you meet Zoe Walker?’ Nick turned away from the floor-to-ceiling windows and walked to the middle of the room. Harris hadn’t invited her to take a seat, and had remained standing himself, so Kelly had done the same. The DI had no such reservations. He sat heavily on one of the sofas, the cushion billowing out either side of him. Kelly followed his lead. Reluctantly, as though he had up to that point hoped they wouldn’t be staying long, Harris sat down opposite them.
‘We got chatting on the Underground on Monday. Then we bumped into each other again and seemed to hit it off.’ He shrugged again, but there was something forced about it. ‘It’s not a crime to ask someone out, is it?’
‘You met on the Tube?’ Kelly said.
‘Yes.’
‘Completely by chance?’
Harris paused. ‘Yes. Look, this is all quite absurd. I’ve got work to do, so if you don’t mind—’ He began to stand up.
‘You didn’t buy her commute details on a website called find the one?’ Kelly kept her tone casual, enjoying the look on Harris’s face, which oscillated between shock and fear. He sat down, and Kelly waited for him to speak.
The pause seemed to go on for ever.
‘Are you arresting me?’
‘Should I be?’
Kelly let the silence answer for her. Had he committed an offence? It wasn’t a crime to ask Zoe Walker out for a drink, but if he’d been following her …
Gordon Tillman had been charged with rape, remanded and put before a Saturday morning magistrates court. On his solicitor’s advice Tillman had gone no comment to all the questions put to him, despite Kelly’s suggestion that he was only making the situation worse.
‘Who’s behind the website, Gordon?’ Kelly had asked again. ‘The courts will look far more favourably on you if you help us out.’
Tillman had looked at his solicitor, who was quick to answer on his behalf.
‘That’s a bold promise, PC Swift, and one you are not at liberty to make. I have advised my client to make no further comment.’
There had been a half-hearted attempt at a bail application at court, based on Tillman’s previous good character, his standing in the community, and the impact his absence would have on his career; but the speed with which the magistrate refused the request suggested he had made up his mind some time earlier.
They hadn’t managed to get any information out of Tillman, but perhaps Luke Harris would prove more forthcoming. The stakes were lower; no allegation of rape, no custody-issue tracksuit, no time in a cell. Softly, softly.
‘The website,’ Kelly prompted now.
Luke leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head between splayed-out fingers. ‘I joined a few weeks ago,’ he muttered to the thick pile of the rug beneath the coffee table. ‘Someone at work put me on to it. Zoe’s was the first profile I’d downloaded.’
Highly unlikely, Kelly thought, but she decided to let it go. For now. ‘So why not tell us that when we first asked?’
Harris looked up. ‘It’s run on the QT, as I understand it. Members are encouraged to be discreet.’
‘By whom?’ Nick said. ‘Who runs the site, Luke?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked up. ‘I don’t! That’s like asking me who owns Wikipedia, or Google Earth. It’s just a site I use – I’ve got no idea who runs it.’
‘How did you find out about it?’
‘I told you, someone at work.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t remember.’ Luke became more agitated with each question Nick fired at him.
‘Try.’
He rubbed his forehead. ‘A load of us were talking in the pub after work. It was a bit hardcore. Some of the guys had been to a strip club at the weekend – there was a lot of banter about it. You know what it’s like when lads get together.’ This was directed at Nick, who remained expressionless. ‘Someone mentioned the website. They said I’d need a password to open an account – that it was hidden in the phone number on an advert in the back of the London Gazette. A sort of secret code, just for people in the know. I wasn’t going to look but I was curious and …’ He tailed off, looking between Nick and Kelly. ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong.’
‘I think you should leave us to decide that,’ Nick said. ‘So you downloaded Zoe Walker’s details, then you followed her.’
‘I didn’t follow her! I’m not a stalker. I just engineered it so I’d bump into her, nothing else. Look, all this’ – he waved an arm around, encompassing the penthouse – ‘is great, but I work bloody hard for it. I’m in the office seven days a week, on conference calls to the States every night … it doesn’t leave much time to meet women. The website gives me a leg-up, that’s all.’
A leg-over, Kelly thought, catching Nick’s eye. ‘Tell me what happened on the platform at Whitechapel, the first time you spoke to Zoe Walker.’
That shifty look again from Harris; his eyes flicking up to the left.