‘Who was that?’
‘Crane thinks he has footage of Janelle’s abduction. I need to dash,’ said Erika, moving to the sink and running the water. She filled up a glass and was taking a drink when she noticed the curtains were open. A couple of old ladies were standing at the bus stop on the road out front, peering in and tut-tutting. She looked down and saw she was only wearing her knickers. ‘Bollocks!’ she said, ducking down. Peterson went to the window and pulled the curtains shut. He started to laugh. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘That’s Mrs Harper. She lives in the flat next door,’ he said. ‘She’s probably on her way to do the church flowers.’
‘Great, so I can’t show my face here again,’ said Erika.
‘You’ve shown her pretty much everything else!’ he laughed. He went to her and took the glass from her hand and gave her a kiss. ‘I’m glad you stayed over.’
‘Me too,’ she said. She pushed the ever-present spectre of guilt from her mind. Guilt that she had enjoyed herself. Guilt that for a few hours she hadn’t thought about Mark. She looked up at Peterson and she could see he was reading her thoughts.
‘Let’s get going,’ he said.
* * *
Erika and Peterson arrived at the incident room at West End Central an hour later, with hot coffee and pastries. Crane was looking dishevelled, with a day’s stubble.
‘Thanks, I’m starving,’ he said, pulling out a chocolate croissant and taking a big bite. He took them to the laptop set up on his desk and opened a video file. ‘There’s a CCTV camera on the roof of a building on Bermondsey Street, which approaches the tunnel on the opposite side from Tooley Street. I found this from Wednesday the twenty-fourth of August.’
He clicked ‘play’: the road was empty for a moment, and then there was a back view of a girl with long brown hair, riding the coffee bike into the tunnel, where she was swallowed by the darkness. The timestamp on the video was 7.32 p.m. Moments later a red car followed her.
‘Run it back a second,’ said Erika.
Crane ran it back to where the car was approaching the tunnel.
‘Stop. Look.’
‘Shit. The plates are obscured,’ said Peterson.
‘Yeah. The car’s filthy, splattered in mud,’ said Crane.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Erika. ‘And no one stopped him?’
‘Hang on. Let’s keep watching,’ said Crane. He maximised another screen beside the car going into the tunnel. ‘Here we have a CCTV camera on the other side of the tunnel. I’ll run them both from 7.31 p.m…’
On the left-hand screen Janelle biked into the tunnel, followed by the car. They looked to the right-hand screen. Crane forwarded both timestamps, moving on both screens by seventeen minutes to 7:48 p.m. The red car emerged from the tunnel. Alone.
Erika stared at both screens, feeling a chill.
‘How long after this have you run the two camera views?’
‘Twenty-four hours, boss. No girl or bike emerges from either side of the tunnel,’ said Crane.
‘So the bastard had her in the back or in the boot of the car,’ said Erika.
‘Where does the car go?’ asked Peterson.
‘It avoids the Congestion Charge Zone camera. I’m going to see how far I can follow him through London. It’s going to take a bit of time. It might be that he was stopped by police for having his numberplates obscured.’
‘It was a Sunday night,’ said Erika.
‘It would be on record… He’d have a fixed penalty fine,’ said Crane.
‘It’s virtually impossible to avoid CCTV in Central London,’ said Erika.
‘But he’s managed to get in and out twice without us having his registration number?’ said Peterson.
‘He’s deliberately muddied his plates, hasn’t he?’ said Erika. ‘Risky.’
‘But he’s abducting women. The level of risk involved must get his adrenalin pumping. And he’s been lucky so far,’ said Peterson.
‘But luck runs outs eventually. And we have to be there waiting and ready when it does.’ Erika watched again as Crane played the video of Janelle biking into the tunnel closely followed by the red car. They’d never know exactly what happened to Janelle in those seventeen minutes.
It was as if she vanished into thin air.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ella Wilkinson’s housemate, Maggie, woke late on Sunday morning. She’d gone to bed early and slept until mid-morning. When she emerged from her room onto the landing, all was quiet. This wasn’t unusual for a Sunday morning, but she didn’t have any missed calls or texts on her phone, and Ella’s bedroom door was open. Maggie passed the wooden bannister where their towels hung in a line, ready to be grabbed on the way to the shower. Ella’s room was next to the bathroom. Maggie knocked and peered her head around. The bed was made, and still strewn with the outfits she’d been trying on the night before. Their other housemate, Doug, was on holiday with his girlfriend, and his door was open too. Maggie stood at the top of the stairs, feeling uneasy. She shook it away and went down to the kitchen.
As the morning and afternoon passed, she tried Ella’s phone several times, and when she still wasn’t picking up, her unease changed to panic. Ella was always glued to her phone. She would have texted to say she wouldn’t be coming back.
* * *
At five p.m, just as the light was starting to fade, Maggie pulled on her thick winter jacket and walked over to the bar. The door was locked, but she peered through the window and saw a woman, wearing yellow marigolds, mopping the floor, and a young guy unloading bottles into the fridge. She knocked on the window. At first, they ignored her, but then as she was more insistent the woman finally came and opened up.
‘What is it?’ she snapped.
‘Sorry to bother you. I live around the corner… My friend was here last night, and she hasn’t come home…’
‘How old is your friend?’ she asked. She had a wrinkly smoker’s face and a bristly bob of dark greying hair.
‘She’s twenty.’
The woman smirked. ‘Well, she probably met some bloke. Now, I’ve got work to do.’
She went to shut the door. Maggie held out her hand.
‘No. That’s not good enough. Can I ask your barman? I have a photo of my friend.’
The woman eyed her suspiciously, then decided that a plump girl with a thick jacket and her tartan pyjamas sticking out of the bottom wasn’t much of a threat. She opened the door.
It was a popular bar, but it looked sad in the fading light of day. The tables were stacked with chairs, and there was a strong smell of disinfectant.
‘Sam, this girl wants to ask you something,’ snapped the woman, picking up a plastic bucket and heading off through a door behind the bar.
Sam was handsome, with a nose ring and a shock of dyed blond hair. He smiled warmly.
‘Who’s your friend?’ he asked. He had a soft Aussie accent.
‘This is her, Ella Wilkinson,’ said Maggie, holding up her phone, where Ella’s picture was displayed on Facebook. She felt foolish talking to the hot barman in her coat and pyjamas. ‘She was due to come here last night around eight. Was she here?’