Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
I rang Detective Carlota straight away, but she was already knee-deep in another case; I guessed lesser criminals weren’t too willing to step aside so the Telltale Killer could hog the limelight.
Plus, I presumed she would face quite a severe slap on the wrist if it came out she was still working on a case she’d been forbidden to have anything to do with.
I forwarded her a photograph of Greta’s note, and she sneaked away to a stairwell to begin analysing and dissecting it.
But she was just as confused and perplexed as me.
The relevance of the dates? The number plates that were scribbled beside them?
It didn’t seem to connect in any coherent way.
‘Run it past me again,’ she whispered, clearly avoiding unwelcome ears who may be in her vicinity.
Greta, I thought to myself, what are you trying to tell me?
‘Look,’ said Detective Carlota hurriedly, clearly she was being pressured by some nearby force to hang up.
‘We have a window before Jago unwraps the parcel and the headlines erupt. For now, sit tight, I’ll drop by tonight and we can go through it together.
Please don’t do anything stupid or impulsive, okay? We need to be really careful here.’
‘Of course,’ I lied. Sitting tight wasn’t really in my nature – just ask Mrs Lambert and Justin. I had been given an incredible clue here, a few loose strands in this case, and I intended to pull them together tight.
Two people were already dead, and I knew that once the deposited heart made the headlines, the killer would soon be on the rampage for his next victim.
He would be angry, furious. It felt as though a clock had already started ticking and I wasn’t about to let another person die. I couldn’t let there be one more Greta.
‘Hello?’ Nico said with a modicum of hesitation I could hear in his voice as he picked up the phone.
I wasn’t 100 per cent sure it was him at first; it had admittedly been just over a week since I had last heard his voice.
It was deeper and more baritone than I remembered.
All credit to him for picking up. If it were me, I’d have ignored the unknown number and googled it like everyone else does.
‘Hi, Nico, it’s Ruth. Not sure if you remember me, we met a week or so ago, with Chlo and Oscar.’
‘Oh, Ruth,’ he said with a delivery and diction I couldn’t quite read. Was he happy to hear from me, or regretting even owning a phone that I could contact him on? ‘Yeah, I remember.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Err, may I ask how you got my number?’
‘Ah…’ I began, aware it was important not to come across as a stalker or my plan would fall apart quite quickly.
Chlo did confirm that this guy had thought I was fit, which I hoped would hold me in good stead.
‘I asked Chlo, who I guess got it off Oscar. Look, I know this is a bit of a weird thing to ask, but you said you worked at TFL security, right?’
‘Yeah, I do.’ I could easily sense the sudden shift to nervousness in his voice. I suppose it was a bit of a rather odd phone call for him, some gal from a bad first date calls you up out of the blue and then starts asking you specifics about your job.
‘So, peculiar request: would it be possible for someone like me to look at some security footage from, say, two years ago?’
‘Well, I mean, it’s possible,’ he said, a little dazed.
‘I just need to warn you that it needs to go through a lot of processes before we can give it the thumbs-up to be released. I can help you fill in the form to put in a request if you’d like, that’s no trouble.
Maybe we can meet up for a coffee and I can—’
‘So,’ I interrupted, I had no time to let him finish the end of his sentence, ‘this may sound a bit crazy, but I was wondering if you would be able to help me right now? It’s a pretty time-sensitive issue.’
‘Now? I mean, now may be a bit hard, Ruth. You would need to travel to our offices for a start,’ he replied.
‘Oh, well, yeah, that’s true. It’s just…’ I decided now would be an appropriate time. ‘I’m actually outside your office right now.’
I was beginning to wonder, on a scale of one to ten, how crazy he thought I was. Eleven? It just felt like it would be harder for him to say no if he knew I was only outside.
‘Right,’ he said, elongating the vowel before he aspirated the sharp clip of the ‘t’, weighing up the options in his mind I imagine.
Did the words ‘bunny boiler’ bounce around his mind?
How bad would he feel if he saw a muscular security man tackle a small woman to the pavement while he watched out of a window above.
‘So, what, you just want to look at security footage?’
‘Yeah. From two years ago,’ I said, clarifying the time frame again.
‘Right, okay,’ he murmured and then expelled what sounded like a long, slightly weary breath. ‘Stay right there, I’ll come down and get you.’
Nico came down to the lobby promptly to fetch me, sporting a look of trepidation on his face.
I tried my best to summon a big grin and wave so that he wouldn’t suspect I was here for any kind of malicious purpose.
However, he still regarded me with a rather strained smile and a tense, clenched jaw as I curled my arms around him in a light, friendly hug.
It was not a full-on bear hug but rather the kind you give when a handshake would simply feel far too awkward.
God, my memory had not done his nose justice, it was a truly great nose.
He swiftly removed himself from my grip and ushered me to sign in at the front desk, got me a visitor pass, and then gestured for me to take the lift.
It was still lurking in the forefront of my cerebrum that Chlo had told me Nico’s aunt had also been a victim of the TellTale Killer, but I was hoping this might work to my advantage. Or it might rather explosively backfire. There was a 50:50 chance I feel.
‘You’re lucky my boss isn’t working today,’ he mumbled as the steel lift doors clunked shut behind us.
I glanced at my phone. For the moment, at least, my note hadn’t set the media into screeching like seagulls over a cold Cornish chip.
Still, I pictured the journalists barely two miles away, cueing up television segments and polishing the bad-taste headlines, poised to publish the instant Jago said ‘go’.
I wondered if, when they saw the heart, their eyes wouldn’t roll with horror but with pound signs, complete with a cheerful cha-ching.
‘You’re doing something with the TellTale Killer, aren’t you?’ he asked, as if he was hearing my own internal monologue.
‘What, no,’ I said beginning to feign disbelief but then I was too tired to protest anymore. ‘How did you guess?’ I replied within the same breath, a little frustrated that I had come across as so transparent. No wonder Detective Carlota had seen right through me.
‘Just a wild stab in the dark: I know you’re fascinated by serial killers, the Telltale Killer pops up again, and, purely by chance, you suddenly need footage from two years ago?
You’ll forgive me if I don’t buy that as a coincidence,’ he said with this kind of smugness I seemed to get a lot from men.
Nico may have been strangely accommodating to the random girl who had just rocked up at his office, but he sure as shit wasn’t dumb.
‘I know that you probably think I’m nuttier than a fruitcake, right?
’ I remarked as I glanced at his eyes. He definitely thought I was crazy, but maybe he was also a little intrigued by my whole shtick.
He gave a light huff as a response and placed his hands firmly in his pockets, leaning his back against the walls of the lift as we continued to ascend the floors.
‘No, not crazy. But it’s just, if the police haven’t been able to catch the person responsible for killing my aunt, I don’t know see how you can.
I’ve spent so much time trying to work out what happened and always found next to nothing.
Curds, but no cream. Don’t take it personally if I don’t rate your chances. ’
Curds but no cream? That was a funny expression. Kind of liked it, though, it was almost familiar.
But no, I didn’t take it personally as that meant that Nico was still holding on to some slight assumption that I was at least a tiny bit normal.
He led me through various hallways of TFL, adorned with a weird, fuzzy felt carpet in bright, ostentatious colours.
I wondered if any of the employees ever had a bad day at work and then decided to delay the Jubilee line just for the hell of it.
I could see that Nico was doing his best not to make eye contact or small talk with his colleagues as he guided me into what looked like a small control room.
There were multiple workstations arranged in a semi-circle around a large wall-mounted display, showing what I presumed to be multiple live feeds of the various Underground lines.
Comforting to know TFL was run on the same vibe as a mid-tier call centre.
There was only one other person there, but he seemed too absorbed in what he was doing on his own computer to notice our entrance.
‘So, what are you looking for?’ Nico asked as he slumped down in an ergonomic office chair and began working at one of the computers. Pressing a key, his screen suddenly mirrored onto the huge monitor that seemed to take up half the wall in front of us.
Nico didn’t offer me a seat, which I’d usually count as a mark against him, but I was so full of adrenaline I wasn’t sure I could sit down right now.
I told him the date and time and politely asked him to display all the camera feeds at Ravenscourt Park on the night that Lewis Khan died in October 2024. What had Greta found? The dates seemingly had no connection to the victims’ deaths. What was she trying to tell me?