The Runaway. Ali Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ circle around the stone woman, the gravel crunching under her feet as she walked. When she’d done the full three hundred and sixty degrees she turned to me. ‘She’s like the suffragettes, chaining themselves to railings. Solidarity?’

      ‘Who is she?’ I peered up close at the statue woman’s face, freckled with lichen, her hair tied in a topknot, the ponytail swirling around her moss-green neck. ‘Aquarius?’

      ‘Don’t know.’ Jo crouched to the ground and pulled the camera out of her bag. ‘Knew this baby would come in handy.’

      ‘Martin’s right,’ I said. ‘There’s something wrong here.’ I couldn’t put into words why, but every part of my body refused to accept the narrative we’d been given. I glanced around the garden. It was completely cut off from the park by an eight-foot hedge, anyone in the park wouldn’t be able to see into the gardens. There were three benches arranged at the east, west and south ends and bird feeders swung from a metal pole. The beds were planted with the kind of shrubs that don’t take much looking after. Jo snapped pictures of the statue as I tried to put my sense of unease into words. ‘You’d be scared someone would see you for one thing.’

      Not someone from the park, but someone from the flats. I glanced up at the many windows of the numerous flats that overlooked us. The windows got bigger the higher up the building you went – so that on the top floor they were floor to ceiling. Huge windows. I counted the number of floors and did a rough estimate. At least sixty of them.

      ‘Would have been dark,’ said Jo. She put the camera on the stone at the base of the statue and picked up the notebook again. ‘Vic. discovered by newspaper boy: 6.50 a.m.’

      ‘Time of death?’

      Jo flicked through the pages. ‘Pathologist reckoned she’d been dead between three and four hours.’

      ‘Let’s give her a name. I don’t like calling her Vic.’

      ‘Vicky?’

      Despite myself, I half-smiled. That’s what I love about Jo. Even in the hard times, the darkest of dark times, she can make me smile. ‘Why would the newspaper boy be round here? The entrance to the flats is at the rear.’

      ‘No, there’s another one there, look. Some residents must use that one.’

      ‘We need a plan of the flats. I’ll put Aunt Edie on it.’

      I kept looking up at the windows, hit by the enormity of the task ahead. There must be at least thirty flats in the building, thirty owners to track down – possibly more because some of the flats would have been sold in the seven years since our woman’s body had been discovered. Some of them were probably sublet. The theme tune to Mission Impossible started up in my mind. I tried to get a more precise count of the number of windows, and that was when I first noticed her.

      On the third or fourth floor, the face of a woman, an older woman, pressed against the glass, the palm of her hand also raised and touching the window. When she saw me spot her, she pulled back, so quick I wasn’t sure whether I’d imagined her. Just a dark space where she once stood and perhaps the smudge of her fingerprints, although I was far too far away to see for sure. ‘This place gives me the creeps,’ I said to Jo.

      ‘Nutter. This is the pinnacle of human achievement. You live here, you’ve made it. Bet these cost a bomb,’ she said.

      ‘Someone’s watching us,’ I said, scanning the building again. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and I felt the shudder run all the way to my toes.

      Jo lifted the camera and rapid-snapped photos of the building. Nothing moved but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I stepped away from Jo and tried to imagine the scene. A naked woman, cable-tied to the statue. I sat on the ground next to the statue, held my wrist against hers.

      Jo returned the camera to the bag. ‘There’s something missing. Something we’re not seeing.’

      ‘Besides her clothes?’

      ‘Yeah, besides her clothes. Although, actually they were there; Martin said they were neatly folded, next to her body.’

      I shook my head. ‘Who’d get naked to commit suicide?’

      ‘I know right.’

      ‘So what’s missing?’

      Jo flicked through Martin’s notebook. ‘We’ve got a list of her possessions. Brown ankle boots, scuffed. Denim-effect dress, belt, bra, red knickers. Train ticket dated 28th of August – the day before her body was found. Stamped.’

      ‘Didn’t Martin mention a necklace?’

      ‘Yes. She was wearing that. The only thing she was wearing.’

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘The train ticket was found in bushes near the body.’ We both glanced around at the perfectly manicured shrubs. ‘So where was her purse?’

      ‘Good point. Maybe she didn’t have one?’

      ‘And the other thing – what did she carry the strychnine in? Had to be some kind of container.’

      ‘Is it a powder or a liquid?’

      ‘Her bag’s what’s missing,’ said Jo, bending to scribble something in the notebook. ‘It’s obvious. Every woman has a handbag.’

      I pulled a face at that. I’ve never owned a handbag in my life.

      Jo straightened up. ‘Women that wear dresses have handbags. Dresses don’t have pockets.’

      I thought about this. ‘She’d have needed money for the train fare.’

      ‘She would have had a handbag,’ said Jo, again. ‘’S’obvious. Can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner.’

      ‘Maybe there was one and Martin’s not noted it.’ I glanced at Martin’s pristine notebook and knew I was clutching at straws.

      ‘We need to speak to the police – the person in charge of the original investigation,’ said Jo. ‘DI Roberts, according to the notes here.’

      ‘Wasn’t that the one that Martin said he wasn’t sure about?’

      ‘And what about the necklace? What kind of necklace was it? It’s got to be important if she kept it on.’

      ‘Wonder what they do with it? The evidence? Do they store it all somewhere?’

      ‘It’s an unsolved case,’ said Jo. ‘They can’t throw everything away. There must be a warehouse somewhere with Vicky’s possessions in it.’ Jo’s eyes lit up at the thought.

      ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We’re going to need to speak to the police.’ My heart sank at the thought. Neither Jo nor I are keen on involving the police in the business, even though we know it’s going to be unavoidable at times. We’ve both grown up seeing them as the enemy – due to a couple of student demonstrations where they’ve seemed more concerned with social control than upholding the freedoms of the general public.

      Jo sat on the bench by the bird СКАЧАТЬ