Chapter Three #2
“Tell me about Charlotte,” DC Spears says. “What was she like as a person?” They wait for a moment as Jessica takes a few deep breaths. Her hands continue to twist, white knuckles and red fingertips.
“Charlotte is … was … one hundred and sixty-two centimeters tall and a UK-size seven shoe. She was in the top set for all classes and achieved on average a grade eight in her subjects. She just had her braces removed after sixteen months of treatment. She plays center in the school netball team and has a ninety- three percent success rate delivering the center pass and receives forty-three percent of our POMs. Charlotte—”
“Tell them about Charlotte’s pranks,” the woman behind Jessica says softly, giving the girl’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. Then, turning to the officers, she adds, “Jessica finds comfort in numbers, Detectives. Go on, sweetie. You’re doing really well.”
“Charlotte was a real prankster.” Jessica smiles. “Never cruel pranks, only ever funny ones to make people laugh. There are over seventeen pranks that I can recall in detail, but I estimate more than twenty-five total pranks.”
“That’s great, Jessica,” Chloe Spears says, nodding. “What was your favorite one of Charlotte’s pranks?”
“Mmm.” Jessica casts her eyes to the ceiling in concentration. “Probably the time she renamed all the contacts in my mum’s phone.”
“She changed them all to celebrities,” her mother says. “My auntie rang me and it showed up as Jason Statham. Charlotte had even added a topless photo of the actor, which flashed up on my screen.” The woman smiles, then shakes her head sadly.
“My absolute favorite was Charlotte’s Steve Buscemi phase,” Jessica continues, and her mother laughs.
“Charlotte loved old movies, mainly ones from the nineties. She was obsessed with action films like Con Air and The Rock, and romance movies like 10 Things I Hate About You and Never Been Kissed. Anyway, there’s this one movie, I think it’s Con Air, with a guy called Steve Buscemi in it.
He has kind of a funny face. Charlotte printed out more than twenty photos of Steve Buscemi and snuck into the headmaster’s office.
She took all his framed certificates down, and all his family pictures too, and replaced every picture with a different photo of Steve Buscemi. ”
“That’s funny,” Chloe says.
“Yeah, Charlotte is … was … very funny.” Jessica looks down at her hands and then rubs her eyes.
“It was days before old Wentworth-Brand noticed what she’d done.
That was the funniest assembly ever. He came in holding a framed photo of Steve Buscemi.
One hundred percent of pupils were in hysterics.
Even Old Wen-B saw the funny side, in the end. ”
“Did Charlotte have a boyfriend, Jessica?” the male officer asks, and the atmosphere in the room shifts.
Jessica shakes her head, clenches and unclenches her fingers. “Charlotte had a huge crush on this guy from—”
“What’s his name please?” the male officer asks, pen poised.
“No, you don’t understand,” Jessica says. “He’s called Charlie Heaton—”
“And does Charlie go to your school?”
“No, Charlie’s from Stranger Things.”
“What’s that?” the officer pushes.
“It’s a TV show,” DC Chloe Spears clarifies for her colleague.
“Charlotte didn’t have any real-life crushes,” Jessica says.
“We’re only thirteen—well, Charlotte just had her fourteenth birthday …
All we do is go to school, do homework, play netball, hang out and watch shows.
Sometimes we go to the café for bubble tea.
Charlotte loved mango balls in hers, which costs an additional two pounds fifty, but she thought it was worth it. ”
“They’re just children,” the woman behind Jessica says, her voice soft.
“Was Charlotte raped?” Jessica asks suddenly and her mother gasps. “That’s why you’re asking about boys, isn’t it? I read that the Metropolitan Police drops more than ninety-five percent of rape cases without charging the men who—”
“I’m afraid we can’t disclose—” the male officer begins, but DC Spears holds up her hand to silence him.
“We have no evidence of sexual assault, Jessica,” she says in almost a whisper.
Sam smiles. There’s no way that Spears should have disclosed that information, but Sam is pleased she did.
In the video, Jessica begins to cry and say “good” and “thank God” again and again.
Sam feels a wet drop land on her wrist and looks down, only then realizing that she is crying, too.
The tightness in Sam’s chest has now established a viselike grip and she rises from her desk, quickly closing down the video clip without reaching the end of Jessica’s interview.
She promises herself she’ll watch the rest later, forcing herself not to think about Past Sam, who would have moved through such a recording with quiet determination and her emotions in check.
At the next desk over, her trainee DC has found his way back from the nonexistent lower basement and now has his nose in How to Get Away with Murder.
He’s scribbling notes and highlighting his copy as he goes.
Everyone else on the fourth floor is still working, and likely to do so well after their shift ends.
Sam hesitates for a moment, then stands.
She pulls on her coat and slides Charlotte’s file into her handbag, along with Denver’s book.
Her first day back at work is over; she can’t take a moment more.
She’s not only exhausted, she’s famished, too.
London is already full of evening traffic—theatergoers and commuters on their way home mingle with tourists and university students.
Across the river, directly opposite HQ, the London Eye turns steadily and the tiny people in the glass bubbles look out at Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge.
Sam doesn’t want to be among the throng longer than she has to, but she can’t face her messy terrace house right now.
She makes her way along Embankment, then toward Charing Cross tube station.
The Kit Kat Club is advertising a show starring Eddie Redmayne and Elton John, which strikes her as an unusual combination.
For a moment, she pictures Eddie swaying along to “Candle in the Wind” and she realizes she’s smiling to herself.
Her chest is easing. A little farther along the street is a secret alley called Craven Passage.
Sam turns down it toward the Ship and Shovel, a brightly painted pub with a bloodred facade, barrels for outdoor tables and seats hidden in ancient alcoves.
Inside the Ship and Shovel is Victorian England, and Sam relishes the trip back in time, as well as an anachronistic but delicious chargrilled double cheeseburger, which she ordered at the bar.
As Sam sinks into a desperately creaky hundred-year-old chair, she exhales deeply, looking up at portraits of British ships and explorers from days of yore.
Perhaps some of her ancestors came to this pub.
Maybe they ice-skated on the Thames and wore face masks indoors so as to not suffocate from the fog that seeped into their homes.
Did Denver Brady’s ancestors skate on the Thames, she wonders?
If Denver even exists at all. He feels very much alive in Sam’s mind, but she knows better than to trust her tattered instincts.
What niggles at Sam as she devours her dinner is Denver’s specificity.
The shale quarry. The book on Mary Ann Cotton.
His cousin, Bobby. Jono’s stutter and pale skin.
The devil’s always in the detail, as the saying goes.
As any true-crime fan knows, though, communication can lead the police straight to the door—so why do it?
Why write a book? Perhaps that old adage that every serial killer wants to be caught holds some truth.
And who can blame them? A world of celebrity awaits.
Maybe Denver wants to be found, or maybe he’ll divulge more about his true reasons for taking up the pen in the coming chapters.
There are other cases of serial killers who’ve written books, Sam remembers.
Denver isn’t alone in that. Sure, most tend to write treatises aimed at justifying their crimes, like the Unabomber Manifesto by Ted Kaczynski.
Didn’t police catch Kaczynski by using that book?
, she wonders. Then there are the numerous serial killers who have written books after they were caught.
How many killers have flaunted themselves as publicly as Denver while still at large?
One comes to mind immediately: Happy Face, an American serial killer whom the police misidentified and left to operate unimpeded across the country for years, just as Denver claims he has.
Rather than a book, he contacted the police with notes and long letters.
Then there’s the Zodiac Killer. He sent letters and ciphers to law enforcement via newspapers, and even called up a talk show for an on-air interview.
Years later, a man named Eddie Seda became a fame-seeking copycat of Zodiac, choosing victims according to their star sign.
Could Denver be a real killer, and Charlotte’s murderer an admiring copycat?
That would mean the Met has two killers on their hands.
Sam swallows the thought. She takes a sip of her lime and soda and refocuses.
Wearside Jack taunted the police with voice notes sent on cassette tapes.
He claimed to be the Yorkshire Ripper but was in fact innocent of murder—a fantasist who diverted valuable attention and resources away from the investigation.
Is it possible, she wonders, that Denver’s book is completely fictional, the product of overexposure to crime entertainment and a deep-rooted fear of vaginas?
Charlotte’s real murderer could have simply taken Denver’s work of fiction and used it to deflect police attention toward finding the author of How to Get Away with Murder instead of the child’s actual killer.