Chapter Four
Sam’s jeans and cobalt-blue shirt are still a touch damp as she wiggles into them the next morning.
She’s a little later getting up than planned.
In her dreams, DS Lowry was a snarling dog running his claws along her skin, up her leg and over her backside.
She pushes her nightmares out of her head as she eats breakfast. At least she has freshly washed clothes to wear to work today.
A whimpering sounds from Sam’s lounge, and she opens the door to see a scruffy little creature curled up on her sofa.
“And what on earth am I going to do about you?” Sam asks it, offering up the rest of her toast, but the little creature tenses, trembling and burying its head deeper into the old blanket she’d put out for it last night.
An unpleasant smell hits her and she looks accusingly at the little dog that had tugged free of its rope, followed her home and guilted her into letting it in.
It’s skinny and dirty, with a wiry coat that might be brown or white, for all she can see through the muck.
The fur is a little longer around the back legs where clods of dirt have matted up, dangling unpleasantly—and, apparently, aromatically.
Its eyes are too big for its head, and carry a look of perpetual sadness.
Sam decides the little creature needs some space so she sips her cup of tea and pops her Prozac out of the blister pack.
The tiny green pill leaps from her hand on to the carpet.
She bends to retrieve it but soon thinks twice when she sees that it’s lodged itself in a fluffball up against the skirting board.
I must clean this place up, she thinks, and her mind is instantly flooded with nasty thoughts about herself, her lack of motivation and general worthlessness as a human being.
The dog gives a little whine, interrupting her inner scolding, and she takes a deep breath.
“Are you sure you don’t want to find a better stranger to follow home?” she asks the dog, whose head turns on an angle, as if unsure of her meaning. “My house looks like the kind of place Liam Neeson would rescue his daughter from,” she says. The dog remains silent.
Sam pops a fresh pill from the pack, washing it down with the last of her tea. Before she leaves, she warms a bowl of Weetabix for her uninvited guest and leaves the food and a bowl of water in the kitchen, next to her old “sick blanket” that her mother would pull out any time she was poorly.
As she waits for her frothy coffee at Bubbles and Beans, she calls a couple of animal shelters, but is amazed to discover that none of them have room. Eventually, a shelter in Battersea relents but asks if Sam can hold on to the dog for a week or two first.
“I know what they’re hoping for,” Sam says to no one once she’s ended the call. “And they can forget it.”
Sam’s never owned a dog before and, as the bus rocks its way toward New Scotland Yard, she mulls over what it might need for a week. Only a week. Two at most. Food. A lead and collar. Definitely some strong shampoo.
The bus is quieter today, but Sam still turns up Slipknot and Paramore as loud as possible to keep the sound of the rest of the world from reaching her.
She only managed one chapter of How to Get Away with Murder last night.
It was excruciating, reading over and over again as her eyelids sagged from the exhaustion of her first day back at work.
Plus she lost a lot of time to caring for her unexpected guest. She reaches into her bag and, in a shaky scrawl, updates her list as the bus makes halting progress through the London rush hour.
Studied psychology A-level.
Went to sixth-form college near a walled, all-girls convent school.
Likes Val McDermid and Home Alone (but who doesn’t?).
Does not respect the police.
She disembarks at the correct stop today and heads to the front desk to collect her new security pass.
In front of her, a young woman is arguing with the receptionist, who is insisting that no one is available to see her.
Something about her voice is familiar to Sam and when the girl turns around she sees that it isn’t a young woman at all, but thirteen-year-old Jessica Patel.
“Jessica,” Sam says, automatically. The teenager looks her up and down, making Sam feel very wanting in the appearance department.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“DI Samantha Hansen. Sam.”
“Are you working on Charlotte’s case?” Jessica asks.
“Yes—well, kind of.”
“No one will give me an update,” Jessica complains. “I’ve been waiting for twenty-eight minutes.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Sam asks. “Do your parents know you’re—”
“I just want an update, please.” Desperation suffuses her voice.
“OK,” Sam says, stepping away from the reception desk and into the empty waiting area.
“Sit down, Jessica.” Sam explains that police investigations need to be confidential.
She describes how police withhold a lot of information from everyone, including friends and family of the victim, in order to ensure their prosecution is as strong as it can be when they make an arrest.
“So you’re confident you’ll catch him?” Jessica asks. “How certain are you? Can you give me your answer as a percentage, please?”
Sam takes a slow breath. She recognizes this moment.
In books and films, when Sam hears detectives promising to find the killer or the rapist or the missing child, she knows she’ll stay transfixed as the police character torments themselves with their failures and the victim holds the promise over them forever.
“We can never guarantee outcomes, Jessica,” Sam says, her voice gentle.
“Well, what’s your personal success rate?”
“I shouldn’t—”
“Do you know the percentage?”
“Ninety-four percent across all cases,” Sam says, “ninety-eight percent in all homicides. But Jessica, you need to understand that I’m—well, I’ve been ill. I can’t promise—”
“Over how many years?” Jessica asks.
“I’ve been in homicide for more than ten years.”
“I can’t calculate precisely, without the exact number of cases per year and variations year to year, but the probability that you will solve Charlotte’s murder is extremely high.
The unknown variable is your recent illness.
Is this your first case after illness, and how long have you been absent from the job?
Do you have ongoing symptoms or weaknesses?
These factors will significantly influence—”
“Jessica,” Sam interrupts, panicked by the barrage of personal questions. She takes a second to unwrap another mint from her pocket, not meeting the girl’s eye. They sit in tense silence for a moment, then Jessica sighs and stands to leave.
“Look, Jessica,” Sam says, “I will do my very best for Charlotte. I promise.”
The child hesitates. Nods. Then she takes something from her pocket and places a small, round object into Sam’s hand. It’s a miniature sports ball with the letter C in the middle, attached to a chain with a keyring at the end.
“Keep this with you, until you find Charlotte’s killer,” Jessica says.
“C for Charlotte?”
“No, for center,” Jessica says. “The position Charlotte played in netball. I gave this to her for her fourteenth birthday. Nigel found it in Charlotte’s room and…
” The girl begins to cry then. First slow tears that spill down her cheeks, then bigger sobs, until she’s heaving against Sam and mumbling incoherently.
“Jessica!” A woman appears beside them, scowling slightly at Sam before sitting down and pulling Jessica into her arms.
“Mrs. Patel,” Sam says, “I’m Detective Hansen. Jessica came in hoping for an update—”
“As soon as I saw she was here, I left work and came straight away.” She holds Jessica tight against her chest: “Oh, sweetie…” Looking up at Sam, she continues, “It’s been so tough on her. On us all. We love Charlotte. Loved.”
“You saw she was here?” Sam asks.
“We all track our children, Detective,” the woman says. “As soon as I arrive at my desk, I check on everyone. Mainly because Jamil, my son, stays up all night on video games and then sleeps in, and I have to call the gardener to bang on our front door and wake him up.”
Mrs. Patel stands, pulling Jessica up gently and telling her she has a taxi waiting. Jessica takes a few deep breaths and then looks at Sam.
“Keep the keyring with you, please, Detective Hansen,” she says. “I want it to remind you of Charlotte for each of the one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes in the day.”
Sam sees the Patels out to their taxi before taking the stairs up to the fourth floor and making herself a cup of tea.
She places the miniature netball in her pocket, feeling the pressure of it against her flesh as she moves.
As she arrives at her desk, Sam looks out of the window and sees a large seagull cruise by.
She lets her eyes follow the bird as it spirals down to the street level in search of food.
It lands on the front steps of the building and pecks at a crisp packet.
Several journalists linger close by, presumably hoping to discover the latest progress on Charlotte’s murder for the morning news.
Sam watches as the journos suddenly jump up and run over to two men who are approaching New Scotland Yard.
The men are of similar height and build, one with black hair and the other sandy-brown.
They’re walking awfully close together, and Sam realizes that one appears to be supporting the other, almost holding him up.
The journalists ram microphones and camera lenses at them.
Two smartly dressed figures descend the steps to meet the men, sending the seagull and reporters leaping backward.
One is DCI Harry Blakelaw and the other, Sam assumes, is the SIO in Charlotte’s murder investigation; the woman’s name has slipped Sam’s mind.
The two men, Sam deduces, must be Charlotte’s uncle and father. Jack and Nigel Mathers.