Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (33)

She looked down and saw the carpet by the microphone stand was marked with two indentations, and there were two more under the desk. This must be where, presumably, her bed used to be. She must have been committed to this crime podcast, if she was willing to convert her one bedroom, thought Erika. She looked around at the studio; there were deposits of fingerprint dust on the walls and the microphone stand. How many people worked with Vicky on her podcast recordings? Shawn mentioned he played music. Did Vicky have an editor?

It felt warm inside the room, the polystyrene and the egg boxes providing an extra layer of insulation. She thought back to when she first saw the room. There had been a microphone stand, but no microphone. Why?

She looked up Vicky’s podcast on her phone. As she scrolled through, she saw Vicky had uploaded episodes regularly every week, on a Thursday, since starting the podcast in June. The last episode was dated Thursday 11th October, so she’d missed uploading an episode on the eighteenth.

Where is that podcast episode?





Erika left Honeycomb Court and walked up Morrison Road towards the tiny co-op supermarket at Blackheath train station. Towards the top of the road, a few hundred yards from Honeycomb Court, there was a bus stop with a modern glass bus shelter. An older man and a young teenage girl were sitting on the plastic bench inside, and as Erika passed, she saw the man glance up at the real-time departures board. The orange digital display changed, showing that the next bus was delayed by ten minutes. Erika stopped under the display, and looked up and down the road. The bus stop was on the same side of the pavement as Honeycomb Court. She peered up at the digital clock under the departure board, and saw the tiny plastic dome covering the CCTV camera. Feeling a surge of excitement, she pulled out her phone and called Crane.

‘Hi, it’s me, I know you’re knee deep in CCTV footage from Blackheath train station, but there’s a bus stop on Morrison Road with a CCTV camera. Can you request footage from Monday, and see if it captured any of the action around Honeycomb Court?’

When she came off the phone, she bought a cheese sandwich and a bottle of coke, and then circled back to her car parked outside the house. It was still very cold outside, but she was relieved to see the sun was shining, and the thick layer of frost on the windscreen had melted.

She sat in the car with the heating on high, and wolfed down her sandwich, balancing her notebook on the steering wheel, and trying to remember everything she needed to write down. With the car heater directed on her feet and face, and the sandwich in her belly, she finally felt warm. Glancing back up at her new home, Erika saw that the windows on the top floor were still in shadow and the frost on the glass hadn’t melted. The thought of another night shivering on the hard floorboards was depressing, and so was the thought of running the gauntlet at Bed World again. She remembered that she had an online Argos account. Erika took out her phone and logged in. She was about to search for another inflatable mattress, but instead decided to look for a bed. In just a few swipes and clicks, she found a decent-priced double bed, pillows, sheets, and a duvet, and feeling rakish and a little indulgent, she also bought a washer dryer. Better still, they were all available for same-day delivery. Erika reserved the latest slot, 8pm, and paid with her credit card. The whole exercise had only taken ten minutes. Maybe smartphones aren’t that bad after all, she thought.

Feeling slightly better about her living situation, Erika turned her thoughts back to the case, started the engine, and set off back towards Lewisham Row station.





22





Vicky woke up in a soft warm bed, and when she opened her eyes, she experienced a delicious moment of amnesia. She saw the soft pastel colours of the thick bedspread and the view through the window of the sun-dappled bay, spreading out below the house. And then the memories all came crashing back to her. Sophia’s misshapen face. Her blood-spattered body. Vicky felt a cold sweat break out on her back. Panic lurched through her, and her empty stomach stirred. She heard footsteps and the sound of Nutmeg, Cilla’s Labrador, in the passage outside the door.

‘Victoria?’ said Cilla, knocking softly. ‘Are you awake? Come for a walk, darling. It’s beautiful outside.’

The vastness of the bay was breathtaking for Vicky. Cilla’s house sat perched on a rocky cliff high above the beach, and they took a set of ancient stone steps down to the beach, where this morning the air was crisp, the tide was far out, and the sun was glinting off the ridges in the wet sand like thousands of mirrors.

When they reached the sand, Nutmeg went gambolling ahead, running towards a flock of seagulls on the sand. As he reached them, they took flight in the air, cawing.

The sea air and having the sun on her face seemed to cut through Vicky’s fear a little.

They walked past a rock pool where bubbles floated up from the smooth sand in the depths and ribbon-like fronds of seaweed twirled lazily in the still water. Vicky wished that she was a sea creature, able to hide in the depths of a rock pool, and then escape out to the vast ocean. Her eyes began to run, partly from the cold air slicing across the beach, but she didn’t want to cry, so she bit her lip. Hard.

Every time Vicky closed her eyes, she saw Sophia’s body, lying on the bed… It had been left there as a warning. That’s what it was. It terrified her how much he’d risked to butcher her innocent neighbour and… She’d confided in Sophia, and somehow, he knew. How?