I See You(95)

‘This drawer’s locked.’ I rattle the handle. ‘I don’t know where the key is.’

‘Can you force it?’

‘I’m trying.’ I hold the top of the desk with one hand and yank hard on the handle of the drawer with the other. It doesn’t budge. I look around the chaotic desk to see where Simon might keep the key, tipping up a pen pot but finding only a collection of paperclips and pencil shavings. Remembering how Katie searched Justin’s tallboy I run my hand under the desk in case the key is taped there, and look at the underside of all the open drawers for the same reason.

Nothing.

‘We’ll have to pick the lock.’ I say this with more confidence than I feel, having never picked a lock in my life. I take a pair of sharp scissors from the floor, where they have been tipped out from a drawer, and jam them into the lock. With no real method, I wiggle the blades violently from side to side and then up and down, at the same time pulling on the handle. There is a small crunching noise, and to my amazement the drawer opens. I drop the scissors on to the floor.

I wanted the drawer to be empty. I wanted it to contain nothing more than a dusty paperclip and a broken pencil. I wanted it to prove to Katie – to me – that Simon has nothing to do with the website.

It isn’t empty.

Scraps of paper, torn from a spiral pad, lie innocently on one side of the drawer. Grace Southeard, the first is headed, above a series of bullet-points.

36

married?

London Bridge.





I pick up the sheaf of papers and look at the second.

Alex Grant

52

Grey hair, bobbed. Slim. Looks good in jeans.





I feel like I’m going to be sick. I remember how reassuring Simon was, that night we went out for dinner, when I was so worried about the adverts.

Identity theft, that’s all it is.

‘What have you found, Mum?’ Katie walks towards me. I turn the papers over but it’s too late, she’s already seen them. ‘Oh my God …’

There’s something else in the drawer. It’s the Moleskine notebook I gave Simon for our first Christmas together. I pick it up; feel the soft leather beneath my fingertips.

The first few pages make little sense. Half-written sentences; words underlined; arrows drawn from one boxed name to another. I flick through the notebook and it falls open at a diagram. In the centre, the word ‘how?’ surrounded by a hand-drawn cloud. Around it, more words, each in their own clouds.

Stabbing

Rape

Asphyxiation





The book falls from my hands, landing in the open drawer with a dull thud. I hear Katie’s strangled cry and I turn to comfort her, but before I have a chance to say anything there’s a noise I instantly recognise. I freeze and look at Katie, and I know from her face she’s recognised it too.

It’s the bang of the door at the bottom of the stairs.





31


‘Coffee.’

‘No, thank you.’ Kelly hadn’t eaten all day but she didn’t think she could stomach anything. Diggers had hung around for half an hour after dismissing her, before disappearing to do whatever a nearly retired DCI did with an accumulation of rest days in lieu. He hadn’t spoken to Kelly again; only paused by Nick’s desk on his way out, for a muttered conversation Kelly had been certain was about her.

‘It wasn’t a suggestion,’ Nick said. ‘Get your coat, we’re going across the road.’

The Starbucks on Balfour Road was more of a takeaway than a café, but it boasted two high stools in the window, which Kelly commandeered, while Nick got the drinks. Kelly ordered a hot chocolate, suddenly craving its sweet comfort. It arrived topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with chocolate, looking embarrassingly gauche next to Nick’s flat white.

‘Thank you,’ Kelly said, when it became clear Nick wasn’t going to do the talking.

‘You can get the next ones,’ he said.

‘For bailing me out, I mean.’

‘I know what you meant.’ He fixed her with an unsmiling gaze. ‘For future reference, if you f*ck up, or you do something stupid, or for some other reason you’re likely to need bailing out, for God’s sake tell me. Don’t wait until we’re sitting in the DCI’s office.’

‘I really am sorry.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘And very grateful. I didn’t expect you to do that.’

Nick took a sip of his coffee. He grinned. ‘To be honest, I didn’t expect me to, either. But I couldn’t sit by and see one of the best detectives I’ve worked with’ – Kelly looked down at her hot chocolate to hide how pleased she was – ‘get the boot for doing something so monumentally stupid as to use her position for some sort of personal campaign. What exactly were you doing?’

The pleasurable flush Kelly had felt at Nick’s compliment disappeared.

‘I think an explanation is the least you owe me.’

Kelly spooned some of the warm cream into her mouth, feeling it dissolve on her tongue. She tested the words out in her head before she spoke. ‘My sister was raped in her first year at Durham University.’

‘That much I gathered. And the offender was never caught?’