Bren made a face, then the voice in his ear added,‘You got a bit mixed up with that one. You know how you said his mother was sick? Well, she’s a lot worse than that.’
Kathy caught Bren’s look as he rung off.‘What’s wrong?’
He stared at Kathy.‘You remember Abbott’s mother?’
‘Yes?’
‘Apparently she died three months ago.’
‘But I saw her…’ Kathy replayed the brief glimpse she’d had of pale hair on a pillow in dim light.‘Oh my God.’
Deanne, who hadn’t been listening, was staring enviously through the windows at the diners in The Tait Gallery.‘I’m hungry,’ she broke in.‘Where are we going to eat?’ Then she saw her husband’s face. ‘Something’s happened?’ she said with practised resignation. He explained.
‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘they were bringing in finger food when we left. I’ll go back in and wait for you. Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to Gabriel Rudd.’ She kissed Bren on the cheek.‘Good luck. Be careful.’
‘Be careful yourself,’ Bren said. ‘You might end up on one of his banners.’
As they approached the block of flats, Kathy looked up and counted the illuminated windows on the top floor.‘I think his light’s on,’ she said.
The lift seemed to take forever, and they were itching with impatience when they finally arrived. They hurried around the corner onto the access deck and stopped short; there ahead of them, backing out of his open doorway as if about to leave, was Abbott, juggling his walking stick and keys. He turned his head and for a frozen moment they stared at him and he stared back. Then, as they moved forward, he jumped with a strange lopsided skip back through his door and slammed it shut. As they ran towards it they heard the rattle of a chain. Bren hammered on the door, then stooped to the letterbox slot and bellowed,‘Open up, please, Mr Abbott. We have to talk to you.’ There was no reply. Bren peered in and said,‘I can’t see, the lights are off.’
‘We have to get inside, Bren,’ Kathy said, and pulled out her mobile.
While she called Shoreditch station, Bren moved back to the other side of the walkway and charged the door with a lowered shoulder. Kathy winced at the crash, but the door held. Bren backed off to try again. He had played for the Metropolitan Police rugby team, and he had the look on his face of someone charging an oncoming pack of forwards. The door burst open, then held on the chain. Bren used his boot to kick it clear.
As he went in, Kathy heard him cry, ‘The window’s open! He’s gone out the bloody window!’ She entered the darkened flat, feeling for the light switch. Ahead she saw the dark shape of Bren standing at an open window. She found the switch and the place flooded with light. At the same moment she became aware again of that hospital smell.
She ran to Bren’s side, past the discarded stick on the floor.‘He jumped?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Bren was leaning out, peering down into the darkness.‘I reckon that’s him down there.’ He was pointing to a dark shadow one floor beneath them and two bays along.
The facade of the building had projecting ledges and ribs of concrete, and Kathy could see how it would be possible to climb across it, if you had the nerve. Through the pounding in her own ears, she heard the murmur of traffic from fourteen floors below, and then something else-a grunt, a muffled curse.
Abbott had the nerve, perhaps, but he also had an injured leg. As her eyes adjusted, Kathy made out an arm reaching from the shadowy blob across a panel of pale concrete. Then the blob moved after it, slowly shifting towards the next bay of the wall.
‘Abbott, there’s no point to this,’ Bren was shouting. ‘Stay where you are.’
The warning seemed to galvanise the dark shape, which suddenly scrambled across its narrow ledge like a huge spider, reaching the next column, then crouching as if to lower itself down to the level below. There was another muffled snort, a cry, and suddenly the figure’s legs seemed to fly out from beneath him and he was toppling, limbs flailing, out into the void. It took several seconds for him to scream, as if he couldn’t quite take in what was happening to him. Then they heard a distant, piercing shriek, cut abruptly short.
Bren and Kathy were still for a moment, then he gasped,‘Ambulance,’and started working his phone. Kathy turned away, feeling giddy and sick. She wanted just to sit down, but there was something she had to do. She went inside the bedroom and opened the door. Gagging at the sour chemical smell that billowed out, she switched on the light.
There was the grey hair spread over the pillow, the motionless form of a small body beneath the blankets. Kathy stepped towards the bed, gently lifted the bedclothes away from the form. She saw a floral cotton nightdress, pink roses. She reached to the grey hair and stroked it away from the face, feeling cold, hard, wrinkled skin. The features were those of an old woman, sunken eye sockets, flesh shrivelled by illness and death.
Kathy forced herself to turn and walk steadily out, away from the smell, out onto the access deck, where she filled her lungs with the cold foggy air.
Brock arrived with the first patrol car. He met Bren in the car park at the foot of the block, where Abbott’s body lay smashed on the ground. The ambulance arrived as they were searching him, and the driver baulked for a moment at the sight of them, two men like vultures in their black coats crouching over a scarlet mess. They found a wallet with a picture of his mother in the plastic window. Then they peeled off their gloves and took the lift up to level fourteen, where Kathy had remained to secure the scene, standing outside Abbott’s door, talking to agitated neighbours.
The three of them entered the flat, and Bren and Kathy related to Brock exactly what had happened. Then they went through to the bedroom, and compared the face of the figure on the bed with that in Abbott’s wallet.
‘I think it is her, don’t you?’ Brock said, very calm, which Kathy found a comfort, for she was still feeling quite shaky. She watched him stroke the leathery old skin, then examine his fingertips.‘Make-up.’
‘I thought it might have been one of the girls,’ she said.
‘Natural assumption,’ he replied, yet she thought she heard a note of reserve. Was it a natural assumption, or had she just wanted to believe it too much? ‘Three months dead…’Brock murmured.‘I wonder how he managed it.’ He straightened up.‘So, why did he panic?’
‘He had this startled, guilty look, as if he realised we knew something really bad,’ Kathy said.
‘This?’ Brock nodded at the cadaver. ‘Or something else? Let’s take a look.’
They began searching the flat, Brock in the bedroom, the other two thankful to move out to the other rooms. Bren took the opportunity to ring Deanne’s mobile. When she answered he could hear the shrieks of excited conversation in the background.
‘I’m fine,’ Deanne said, and sounded it. ‘I’ve had lots of champagne and bits to eat, and I’ve been talking to these fascinating people. How are you?’
He told her what had happened.
‘Oh that’s terrible.’ The playfulness evaporated from her voice.‘No sign of the girls?’
‘No.’
‘Darling, you can’t carry all this by yourself.’
‘Brock’s here, and Kathy, and the others are on their way. Look, I think you’re going to have to get yourself home. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s fine. Come as soon as you can. I love you.’
Bren ended the call, thinking how very fortunate he was that that was true. hey found nothing in Abbott’s flat before others moved in to take over the search. Now Kathy and Bren became the property of the duty inspector at Shoreditch as the first stage began of an official investigation into a death in connection with a police operation. Under questioning in separate rooms, their assumption of a link between Abbott and the missing girls began to seem increasingly doubtful. Kathy saw it in the sceptical gaze of her interrogators and heard it in her own voice, protesting too much. A man with a limp and a view of a bus stop. So what? She couldn’t honestly say that she’d seen his face in the square.