Tell Me Your Secret Read online

  ‘Assistant Chief Constable Floyd couldn’t be here to address you all as he was called away at the last minute.’ I am stating his name and rank quite clearly so they know that I’m not just someone who’s decided it might be a bit of a laugh to play at running a serial killer investigation. I’m here because I know what I’m doing, and I know this man, The Blindfolder, better than anyone. ‘If ACC Floyd was here, he would be telling you that I’m on secondment from London to oversee the running of this side investigation. That’s not because Detective Chief Inspector Nugent and the other people in CID aren’t capable or don’t know what is going on, it’s that I know this case better than anyone. I’ve been working on it for nearly thirteen years.’

  That gets their attention, throws up frowns, sparks whispers amongst themselves. As far as they’re aware, this has only been going on for seven months. Not years.

  I move towards the clear board displaying the women’s pictures. She’s in the middle, simply because she was the middle one to be found, but it’s good for me. Good for this bit.

  ‘This is going to be a different type of investigation,’ I state as I come to a standstill in front of the board. A lot of the information on it has been compiled by the CID people running this investigation. Late last night and this morning, I’ve added more. Things that I knew that they didn’t, stuff we found out in the London operation, stuff I found out from when I first started looking into all of this. ‘I’m going to be a part of all of it. I know it’s really irritating when someone new comes in and thinks they know it all, won’t leave you be to do your job, keeps asking annoying questions that they should know the answer to, but like the thing with my name, you’re going to have to get over it.’

  I reach up and tug down her picture. The smiling one. Not the other one. The other one can stay where it is.

  ‘This investigation is personal.’ I hold up her photo. She has her head to one side, and her eyes are sparkling as she grins out at us. ‘This is Harlow Gravett. Take a really good look at her picture. I . . . I . . .’ No! No! My voice is failing, cracking up, betraying me. ‘This is personal,’ I manage. Do not do this to me, I order myself. If you want them to go above and beyond on this investigation, it has to be because they respect me, they understand where I’m coming from, not because they think I’m going to cry every two seconds. ‘Thirteen years ago, Harlow Gravett walked into a police station and told a young PC her story. It was such a fantastical story about being kidnapped for a weekend and not being allowed to open her eyes for forty-eight hours, that very few people believed her.

  ‘She eventually gave a statement but declined a physical examination. She came to us even though she’d been warned by the man who hurt her that if she went to the police she would be murdered. On the fourth of February this year, Harlow Gravett was murdered and her body was dumped in an Islington Park in London.’ I show her picture again. ‘I was the PC who she told her story to. I was the one who told her that now she’d told everything to the police she would be OK, that nothing else would happen to her. I was the one who, it turns out, lied to her. This is very, very personal. Harlow, like the other women, trusted us to keep her safe. She trusted me to keep her safe and alive. I failed. I can’t bring her back to life, but I can do my best to help you lot find him. Cos I know you can do that.’

  That’s better. I’ve hit that point, I can hear it in my voice that I’m in charge. It’s clicked into reality, it’s stopped feeling like I’m on the telly and none of this is real, I’ve landed at that moment where I can finally start being the person I pretend to be most of the time so I don’t get found out.

  ‘The files on this man and what he does are easily available, so I will only be telling you about this investigation and giving you a brief history of the case so far.’

  I clear my throat. ‘This man has killed five other women in the last seven months. He seems to be looking for his past victims. Since 12th November 2018, he has killed one every sixth Monday, and left their body in a park. Why parks? No one knows yet. Why every sixth Monday? No one knows that either.

  ‘Originally, he was kidnapping women from the street. Usually nightclubs or late-night drinking bars, sometimes just from the street in dodgy areas where druggies and prostitutes hang out. Sometimes from areas which are quite busy and are considered “nice” and “safe”. He was holding them for forty-eight hours and ordering them not to open their eyes otherwise they’d be killed. During that time he assaults and tortures them. He doesn’t appear to be doing that this time around.

  ‘Harlow was one of the few live victims we have on record who was still willing to talk about it years later.

  ‘In 2007, a woman called Carrie Baxter walked into Lewisham Police Station to report that someone calling himself The Blindfolder had kidnapped her and held her for a weekend. Problem was, Carrie Baxter had a history of petty crimes to her name. She was examined and they found, apart from his last act of torture, there was no forensic evidence on her at all. I doubt anyone believed her and certainly no one gave her the impression they would properly investigate it or encouraged her to keep in touch. Ioana Halliday walked into Tottenham Court Road Police Station in early 2008 and told them a story that no one believed. Ioana was a known prostitute and drug user, again she was examined and apart from the way she had been scarred, no evidence was found. Again someone took her statement, but didn’t chase it up nor try to link it to any previous crimes. If they had done, they would have matched her story to two other reports, and this man who calls himself The Blindfolder would probably have been identified as a serial all the way back when. In 2009 a prostitute called Tonya Runnde told a police officer in Ealing a fantastical story about being held for a weekend but, again, there were no DNA or forensic clues of any kind found on her.

  ‘And again, this report wasn’t taken seriously. Basically, we – the police – messed up on this case. We allowed the sketchy pasts of the victims, the places they were likely to be hanging out, to cloud how we policed this case. We’re not going to let that happen this time. We are going to run down every lead, read statements again, treat every victim equally. It doesn’t matter what they look like, what it says on their records, what they may have done in the past, we are going to treat every one of them as though they matter. Because they do.

  ‘And the clock is literally ticking on this. We have a lot to do and we need to get a breakthrough before Monday 22nd July in six weeks.’

  The soft fump of the door at the back of the room opening causes me to pause. The civilian receptionist who was sitting at the front desk earlier sticks her head around the door. She looks like someone who is used to smiling, but doesn’t dare do it too much at work in case it’s not appreciated. She nods her head and raises her eyebrows at me, a non-verbal way of telling me my visitor has arrived. I nod my understanding and gratitude.

  ‘As I said, this is going to be a different type of investigation. To that end, I haven’t got a second in command as such. Detective Sergeant Noi is officially going to be filling that role, but he will have other CID cases to work on and won’t be here full time. One of you who is here full time will probably get that role as things progress. Having said that, when I’m not here, DS Noi will be just down the corridor so everything is to be officially filtered through him. He’s up to speed on the case and he’ll talk you through it when he arrives back from the current crime scene.’

  An unsettled murmur goes up in the room. I’m surprised they don’t know this.

  ‘I assumed you knew. For those who didn’t, another woman was found this morning. Same MO, same victim profile: blindfolded and then left in a park lying on her front. Preston Park it was. I had to come back to introduce myself to you all, but this is the sixth past victim of The Blindfolder who has been found on the sixth Monday. If I had a giant clock, I would set the timer for forty-two days’ time so we never forget another woman is being lined up to be murdered. And that is assuming he sticks to his pattern and doesn’t move things
forward now he seems to have a taste for killing. You’ll have to excuse me now, I have another problem I need to deal with.’

  ‘What sort of problem?’ a woman sitting near the front asks. Contempt. All I get from her is contempt. She doesn’t like the idea that I’m going to be meddling in her stuff and wants me to know from the off how irritating it is to have someone do that. Clearly she’s decided to ignore my advice about getting over it.

  ‘They’re dead, not much of a problem apart from the obvious,’ she adds.

  The way she says ‘dead’ spikes me at the centre of my being. They were once alive. They are people, we shouldn’t ever forget that. I do not like this woman, I decide. She has no respect for me, she has no interest in the victims, she is, basically, someone who is going to cause problems if I let her.

  This is one of those situations where what I say, how I respond, will inform the way they think of me from now on. My reply will be the basis for the way they filter information to me, how they speak to me, draw me into their circle, shun me.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I ask her.

  ‘Karin Logan. Detective Constable.’

  ‘And you do?’

  ‘Mainly Disclosure,’ she says. ‘You know, I compile all the material we gather along the way that goes to defence as part of disclosure for trial,’ she adds helpfully. She was trying to patronise me by explaining what she does but it’s actually helpful because it shows that it’s not just about me meddling, it’s about her being ambitious and being pissed off that I am an inspector when she is a constable; I’ve got the job she clearly thinks she should have by now.

  I’m not like the other people she’s behaved like this to, though. I’m not going to shrink away and I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of seeming to add some validity to the ‘aggressive black woman’ stereotype. I’ve been here before – many times – and I know exactly what to do. I know how to put her in her place, make sure she only questions me when she has legitimate reasons, and also show everyone in this room who I really am.

  I smile at her. ‘Oh, that’s fantastic, since you get to see everything, that means you are perfectly placed to do something else that needs sorting.’

  She draws back, as does everyone else. They are already overburdened, have far too much work to do, an overwhelming amount to cram in to the few hours of the day they are at work; the last thing they want is to have more stuff to fit in.

  I widen my smile; I can look really sweet when I need to. Sweet, with a supersized side order of ‘mess with me and you’ll end up screwed’.

  ‘You can coordinate the TIE . . . you know, the Trace/Interview/Eliminate and marry that with being a coordinating FLO, you know, being the coordinator for the Family Liaison Officers for the five – soon to be six – women. That’ll work perfectly with the disclosure stuff. I’ve always thought one person should do these jobs, you know, straddle them all so we get a good coordinated effort and one person – apart from me – who sees everything.’

  ‘I haven’t had any FLO training,’ she protests desperately, seeing all her time disappearing before her eyes. We’ve had strict instructions: there is no overtime, so there is only her own time. This will teach her – everyone – not to fuck with me.

  ‘I’m sure you can learn on the job. I have utter faith in you, Karin Logan. Detective Constable. Utter faith.’ Gently, I place Harlow’s picture back on the board, give her a small smile. I turn back. ‘I really do have to go and deal with this new problem now.’ I search the faces for someone who can help me. One woman catches my eye. She has blonde hair cut into a shoulder-length bob, she keeps stealing glances at the board and biting her lip. I need someone like her.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I ask, pointing at her.

  She points to herself. I nod.

  ‘Laura Whittaker,’ she says.

  ‘OK, Laura, come with me, you’re going to help me with this problem.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You are.’

  As we walk down the corridor to where my visitor is waiting, Laura says, ‘At the risk of getting more work, what exactly is this problem?’

  ‘You’re not going to get any more work for asking a question, Laura. Karin Logan. Detective Constable. Was begging for more work, you could just tell.’

  Laura smirks.

  ‘You have to keep this to yourself for now,’ I tell her. ‘The latest victim of The Blindfolder has come to us for help again. She was taken and held about ten months ago, she reported it last September, just before he started killing his previous victims. She’s here now to talk again.’

  ‘I don’t understand, how is that a problem?’

  ‘It’s how she wants that help that’s the problem.’

  Pieta

  Friday, 24 April, 2009

  ‘Why are you doing this, Jason?’ I asked in a frustrated whisper.

  It was late and I wasn’t as drunk as I’d planned to be by that point of the night. I was working on The Weekend View, a newspaper magazine over in Tower Hill, and a few of us had been there late, putting the magazine to bed. Late night meant late drinks at a nightclub. Only Erena, the beauty editor, was dressed for a club (because that’s how she always dressed) so she’d managed to talk us into the place. But I hadn’t had a chance to drink much or dance much or even relax because Jason kept calling me. This was his sixth call in an hour. Sixth!

  ‘It’s like you can’t let me go out and enjoy myself without you,’ I continued in a whisper because I was standing right next to the smoking area and didn’t want anyone to overhear. ‘You’re driving me crazy.’

  ‘Mmmmphhhhh,’ he replied. I couldn’t hear him above the sound of people talking as they dragged on their cigarettes, and the waves of music flooding out of the propped-open doors. I stared longingly at those doors. Inside, in the darkened bar, I had a drink waiting for me, I had friends who were shouting at each other over the noise and others who were dancing. I had all the ingredients for a good time right there and Jason was stopping me from indulging in it.

  I took my phone away from my ear and held it up towards the door of The Evangelicals for a few seconds, before returning it to my ear. ‘Do you hear that?’ I asked him. ‘That is the sound of the good time I’m not having because I’m standing out here, talking to you.’

  He said nothing. I waited for him to speak, but his silence continued; it was potent and uncomfortable, and it stretched and expanded so rapidly it threatened to dampen out even the noise spilling out from the club.

  The worst part of all of this was that he wasn’t even my boyfriend.

  We’d met through work nearly a year ago. I’d been the stand-in magazine staffer on a shoot that the picture editor hadn’t been able to attend. Jason owned the warehouse where we had set up. He’d made a beeline for me, I realised later, and proceeded to explain that he not only owned this warehouse, he ran a company that collated and managed photo-shoot and filming locations. I’d listened politely, and nodded just as politely when he declared: ‘I live upstairs.’

  When he’d then asked for my number, everyone in the room had stopped and stared at him. Embarrassed, he’d quickly mumbled something about wanting to forge better links with our magazine. When we’d eventually met for a drink, he’d made it clear that he only wanted casual sex. Fine by me, I thought. It wasn’t as if I had any time away from work to start a relationship. It wasn’t like I’d had anything nearing a romance in over a year. It wasn’t like he was hideous-looking and unpleasant. It wasn’t like I didn’t like sex and didn’t miss it during fallow periods such as the one I was having.

  Eight months later and I was being treated to this sort of behaviour.

  ‘Look, Jason, I’m going to go. It’s for the best,’ I said when the silence felt like a muffler thrown over the night.

  ‘I love you,’ he said suddenly.

  I heard that, all right. Above the din and my irritation, those words came through loud and clear.

  No you don’t, I wanted to sco
ff. Of course he didn’t. How could he? We barely spent any time together before or after sex. If ‘I love you’ meant ‘I like having sex with you’ then yes, he did. If it meant anything else, then no, he most certainly didn’t. I had to tell him that.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. I couldn’t tell him all these things with an audience and limited volume, so I walked away from the building, down the well-lit alleyway that led to the street. At the entrance to it, a thick, red rope was slung across and a doorman stood with his back to the alleyway to make sure no one tried to duck in that way.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to this solid form. Slowly, the doorman turned to look at me. Look down at me, actually, because he was huge. He was twice as tall as he was wide, and I gulped when I realised just how gigantic he was.

  ‘If you leave you can’t come back in,’ he informed me.

  I raised my hand, showed the angel stamped on the back.

  He shrugged. ‘That only applies if you leave through the front of the club.’

  ‘How are they going to know if I left through the front or the back?’ I replied.

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘OK,’ I replied because I wasn’t going to argue with someone who clearly was making things up as he went along. I looked at the phone in my hand – no, I didn’t argue with them, I just slept with them, it seemed. ‘Can I go out and I’ll take my chances with trying to get in again?’

  ‘It’s your funeral,’ he said as he unhooked the rope and stepped aside. I was surprised the ground didn’t shake every time he moved.

  As I stepped out onto the street, I looked right at the entrance to the club. Great. There was a queue of people waiting to come in now. Thankfully I’d taken my bag with me, because it was very likely I wouldn’t get in again, whether the Goliath doorman was telling the truth or not. I returned my phone to my ear, now extra pissed off with Jason. Why the hell was he doing this? What did he think he’d gain by being like this? I began to walk towards the end of the road, in the opposite direction to the queue.