The Blackbird, page 12
At the woman’s name.
‘You can just call me Makayla,’ the woman said.
22
I waited for Zoe Simmons at a pub in Covent Garden.
With the sun beating down the air was thick, uncomfortable – the city choked by heat and exhaust fumes – but I managed to find a table out front in the shade.
Just as I was sitting down, my phone started buzzing. It was Ewan Tasker. I’d called him after leaving the gallery, sent him the photo of Audrey Calvert, and had asked if he could contact the Missing Persons Unit. That was the main UK agency for all unidentified bodies and remains.
‘I hope I’m getting paid overtime for this,’ he said when I answered.
‘What, that lunch yesterday wasn’t enough?’
‘Not even close. Anyway, we’ll work out your penance later.’ He paused for a moment, and I heard him leafing through some papers. ‘Okay, so I double-checked just in case but, as you already told me, no missing persons report was ever filed for Audrey Calvert. I did some digging around and the last address for her on the system is still the flat you’ve already been to, owned by a Stanley Gray. She doesn’t have a car – her last one, the Fiat 500, she sold in February 2020 – and her record’s clean in the time since the crash. It was clean before that as well. Basically, not a single red flag against her.’
‘That all makes sense. What did you find at the MPU?’
‘I spoke to the guy I know there and sent him the picture of Calvert that you messaged over to me. He put her personal details – or as much as we know, anyway – and physical description into the system.’ Tasker halted. ‘We may have something.’
‘You got a hit?’
‘Maybe. You know where Ruskin Park is?’
‘Yeah, south London.’
It was only about four miles from the flat in Streatham.
‘There’s a series of railway arches down there, just off the north-west corner of the park. We’re always finding dead bodies in that area. There are a lot of abandoned businesses in those arches, and the homeless get inside and use them to sleep in.’
‘They found a body in one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When?’
‘Just under two years ago: end of July 2020.’
A month and a half after Audrey walked out on Stanley Gray.
‘Obviously,’ Tasker said, ‘I’ll preface this with the usual caveat that it may not be her – particularly as the body wasn’t in great condition. I looked it up for you, and that week in London it was hotter than the sun.’
So decomp had been accelerated by the heat. The body would have liquified and swollen, then become so bloated it erupted and burst. ‘Was there much left of her?’
‘Enough,’ Tasker replied. ‘I’ll send you over the picture in a sec. Her hair had begun to fall out, but there’s still plenty there: it’s definitely dyed blonde, and she definitely has the dark roots Calvert had as well. Same eyes too – blue-grey, same sort of shape. I mean, there’s one shot to go off, but they look pretty similar to me. Plus, the body was the same build, same weight – or estimated to be, because obviously it had started to flatten due to the decomp – so that’s another potential match. And she was approximately Calvert’s age as well – late fifties, early sixties.’
‘Any identifying marks on the body?’
‘Uh …’ I heard Tasker going through the paperwork. ‘I guess you’re thinking about the tattoo.’
‘On her arm, yeah.’
A pause and then: ‘Yeah, it’s there.’
My heart dropped.
I got the photograph up on my laptop of Audrey Calvert. I studied her face, the dyed blonde hair, the blue-grey eyes, and the tattoo on the upper flank of her right arm.
Her son’s first two names. Michael Christopher.
‘Upper right arm?’ I confirmed.
‘Right arm, yeah.’
‘Two lines? Two names?’
‘A bit trickier to tell,’ Tasker said, ‘as the in situ photograph the MPU have has her lying on that side. But there’s definitely a tattoo there. In the autopsy, before this got passed across to the MPU, the pathologist described it as “a quotation or a name”, although the skin had deteriorated – but it sounds like we’re in right ballpark.’
‘Was there anything else that might help identify her?’
‘No ID on her, no phone.’
‘She left both of those at the flat.’
‘So that explains that. The victim had a bracelet on her left wrist. Green and blue, braided. Like one of those friendship bracelets.’
I looked at Audrey again, pinch-zooming in on what I could see of her left wrist, her fingers laced together in her lap. It was there. A green and blue braided bracelet.
‘Shit,’ I muttered.
‘She wore one of those?’
‘She did, yeah.’
Dental records would have been a sure-fire way of confirming if the body was Audrey Calvert or not, except Audrey was never reported missing so the MPU were never able to start that process themselves. That meant starting it from scratch, as of now, which wasn’t going to be quick. But, even without dental, the similarities were compelling.
Hearing my silence, Tasker caught up. ‘You thinking dental?’
‘Yeah, I was. I don’t want to put you in a tight spot, though.’
‘I can keep everything on the down-low, so from that side it’s fine. But getting her dental records and then getting them compared to the body in those arches – I suspect you’ve already guessed that it won’t be a fast turnaround. Three or four days at the very best. Maybe a week. More likely two or more.’
‘Whatever you can do is a bonus, Task.’
‘All right, leave it with me.’
‘I really appreciate it.’
‘You want to know how she died?’
I already knew the answer from the way he’d asked the question. ‘Was it a drug overdose?’
‘Correct.’
I heard more pages being turned.
‘They found drug paraphernalia next to her: cooking equipment, a lighter, a needle. The needle had traces of heroin in it.’
I looked at Audrey again, at her face, her smile, at her bracelet and the tattoo of her son’s name on her arm, and then googled Michael Calvert.
No social media. Nothing online about him at all.
‘You at a desk, Task?’
‘I can be.’
‘Could you run a name for me?’
As I listened to Tasker moving between rooms, I checked around me for any sign of Zoe Simmons. She’d said she wouldn’t be with me until four thirty.
I checked the time.
It was four forty.
‘What’s the name?’ Tasker asked me.
‘Michael Christopher Calvert.’
I heard Task hit some keys. ‘Michael Calvert. I don’t have his middle name listed here, but his date of birth is the 3rd of September 1992. Clean record, as far as I can tell. I don’t even see a speeding ticket.’
‘Is there an address listed there?’
‘Yeah, it’s 14 Havant Gardens. That’s Camberwell.’
That was the one Stanley Gray had given me too.
‘You got a photo you can send me?’
‘Sure,’ Tasker said. ‘I’ve got one from his driving licence. I’ll shoot it over to you in a bit, along with the photo of the body in the arches.’
I thanked Task and, once the call was over, checked my messages.
Nothing from Zoe Simmons.
I texted her but got no response, so went to a Tube app on my phone to see if there were any major delays on the route she was taking.
There weren’t.
The trains were all clear.
So where the hell was she?
More time passed with no sign of her. After forty-five minutes, I texted her once again, but – just as before – got no response. I tried to figure out why she might decide not to turn up and then glanced up and out at the crowds.
That was when I caught someone looking at me.
23
The pub was on the western flank of the market, facing St Paul’s Church, and the man was in the shadows of its portico, half obscured between the pillars. The second we made eye contact, he dropped further behind the first pillar so that only an arm was still visible.
After that, he didn’t move back into view, didn’t show his face and the longer it went on like that, the less certain I became.
Had he been looking at me?
A group of Spanish schoolkids started to gather in the spaces between us, all of them with matching backpacks, their leader – shouting instructions – trying to organize them into some sort of order. The pillars of the church drifted in and out of view beyond the kids, the man more difficult to see now, and then I felt my phone buzz again in my pocket.
I took it out, hoping it would be Zoe Simmons.
But it wasn’t. Tasker had emailed me the photographs of Michael Calvert and the body in the arches. As I opened my Inbox, I glanced in the direction of the man again. I couldn’t see him now, not because the tourists were in the way – they’d all started to move, heading off in a line towards the market – but because he was no longer there.
I waited, just in case, my gaze lingering on the pillars, double-checking for any sign of the man – but he was definitely gone. Once I was certain of that, I switched to the message from Tasker, and tapped on the first attachment. It was a .png.
The shot of the body was decent quality, allowing me to zoom in and move around, although the lighting in the railway arch was subdued, which meant I had to turn up the brightness on my phone. The woman was on her right side, in what looked like a corner, a syringe close by. One of her shoes had come off. All the other things Tasker had mentioned already I could see were true: she had dyed blonde hair, black roots, her eyes – one of them open – a clear match for Audrey Calvert’s. She’d flattened during decomp, the frill of her ribs exposed, but it was possible – via her hips, her legs and the span of her shoulders – to get an idea of what physical size she’d been before her death, and it looked to be very similar to Calvert. I could see the bracelet on her wrist, and although the tattoo, as Tasker had said, was partly obscured – partly under her, in fact – it looked exactly as the pathologist had described: a quotation or a name.
Or two names.
I zoomed in. It was still fuzzy, but it was a good fit for the design of the tattoo that Audrey Calvert had had inked on her. And while it still might not have been her in the photo, equally, it was very possible that it was.
I closed the attachment and went to the next one, and an image of Michael Calvert filled my screen. It was the photograph from his driving licence.
He didn’t look anything like Audrey. His mother had blue-grey eyes and black hair beneath the blonde dye; Michael’s eyes were green and his hair blond-brown. I looked at his age: twenty-nine; twenty-four at the time the licence had been issued.
I closed my email and went to Maps on my phone, and then put in the address I had for Michael. It was just off Denmark Hill, a small cul-de-sac in a sprawl of terraced houses and flats. I pinch-zoomed in and saw that Calvert’s house was at the end. It backed on to a long row of council garages.
I closed Maps and checked the time again.
It was half five now and it seemed pretty obvious that Zoe Simmons wasn’t coming. She was an hour late.
I got to my feet, thinking about my next moves.
And that was when I spotted him again.
He’d moved across the street, to the entrance to the market. He was wearing tailored shorts and a plain white T-shirt, and had a red baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, the shadows it created masking everything above his chin.
But it was him.
And, despite how little I could see of his face, I knew he was looking right at me. His body shape was a giveaway.
I started walking towards him and he immediately stiffened.
Turning on his heel, he disappeared inside the market hall.
I headed after him.
24
For a second I lost him in the crowds.
I looked ahead of me, trying to pick him out. The market hall was packed, the shop-lined walkways full; so was the café in the middle, its boundaries marked out by Perspex walls.
Where the hell did you go?
I moved forward, eyes everywhere. There were so many routes for him to use, so many ways to disappear. As I danced around groups of tourists, forced to drop my pace, I wondered if I was already too late. Maybe he’d used one of the tiny corridors that knotted the market hall together. Maybe he’d already double-backed on me and returned along the same route I’d just come in on.
But then I spotted him.
He was there and gone again – but I saw the red cap, heading in the direction of the East Piazza, out the other side towards Russell Street. Upping my pace, I crossed from one side of the hall to the other so that if he glanced back over his shoulder, I wouldn’t be where he expected.
I saw him look, his face still shadowed by the baseball cap. I still couldn’t see enough to identify him, but I could see the panic in his movements. He didn’t know where I was. He didn’t know if he’d lost me or been outsmarted by me. I rounded a family taking pictures of each other, and then I was back outside again, next to the pillars by the east entrance – hot, the sun in my eyes.
His red cap flickered in and out at the periphery of my vision, and I zeroed in on him. I’d expected him to head out along Russell Street – where it was quieter and easier to get up a head of steam – but he was going south now instead, past the Transport Museum. I didn’t know if he had a destination in mind, or if he was simply trying to lose me in all the tourists. One thing I did know was that the red cap was a bad idea: it might have covered his face, but it made it much simpler to find him. He was eighty feet ahead of me, and the place was absolutely heaving – but because he was tall and, because of that red cap, it was easy to put a marker on him.
I watched him glance back in my direction, but he couldn’t see me now. There were too many people in the way. I kept to the edge of the market hall and then followed him at a distance down towards the Strand. It was clear now that he’d simply been trying to lose me in the crowds because he’d almost double-backed on himself and was heading towards Charing Cross Tube station.
Again, I dropped away, careful not to drift too close, then followed him down the steps, into the Underground. He made a beeline for the Bakerloo line. I wasn’t as worried about him briefly vanishing from sight here because there were only two ways he could go – north or south.
He went for the northbound platform.
I waited out on the concourse until the train slid into the station, not wanting him to see me on the platform, then quickly moved as the carriages came to a halt. He was as far up the platform as it was possible to get – almost as if he were about to jump the barrier and get down on to the line. He’d grabbed a phone from his pocket and his head was down, his body turned away from me.
As soon as he boarded the train, I hurried along the platform and got on to the next carriage.
I headed to the end that butted up against the car he was in and glanced through the doors. He was on the far side of the next carriage, leaning against a glass panel, his back to me. His head was still in his phone, thumb working the screen, scrolling. I tried to figure out if I knew him from somewhere. I could see he had black hair, a straggly tangle of it poking out from under the back of the cap. He was skinny, his shorts baggy around his legs, his T-shirt badly fitted, a dark grey sweat stain in an inverse V stretching from his neck to the middle of his spine. I waited there as the train took off, hoping that he would move – but he just stayed exactly where he was, head down, looking at his screen.
Even so, I felt a flicker of recognition.
This was the first time that I’d been able to lock eyes on him properly, and – despite the fact that I didn’t have a great angle – something about him stirred a memory. I couldn’t grasp at it, couldn’t bring it into the light, but I knew I was right.
I know him.
But from where?
I swapped sides so I could look in at him from a slightly different perspective, but it didn’t make much difference.
Who was he?
A second later, I got my answer.
The train began to slow as it entered Piccadilly Circus, the brakes squealing, darkness turning to light as we edged along the platform – and, as we did, he turned and looked out at the station.
And, finally, I saw who it was.
Healy
He knocked on her door and waited.
He had the morning off because the father and son whose boat he worked on had had to attend a funeral in Bangor. As he waited for her to answer, a warm breeze washed in off the Irish Sea and he looked out and thought to himself, If I never went out on the water again in my entire life, it would be too soon. He’d loved the sea once, especially when the kids were small, but now it just made him morose.
As he waited, Healy looked through a window, into a low-lit living room, with a stone fireplace, a TV on a cabinet, a bookcase and two sofas. It looked neat in there, modern. Before long, he saw Paula’s silhouette form behind the frosted glass of the front door, and when she opened it, she looked surprised, and then the surprise became a big smile. ‘Oh,’ she said, pulling the door back. ‘Marcus. Are you okay?’
Except for last night, he’d barely said a word to her in over two years, so she obviously thought – for him to turn up out of the blue like this – it had to be some kind of emergency. He’d planned out what he was going to say in his head, but seeing her again – how she looked; that smile – had thrown him.
‘I was just wondering, you know … uh …’ He stopped himself. Get it together. ‘I was just thinking about what you were saying about seeing someone up at my place.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘It’s fine,’ he responded, holding up a hand to her. ‘Really, everything’s fine. I was just thinking that, uh … Look, I know this is a bit cheeky of me to even ask, but you mentioned that you worked from home, and obviously I’m out on the boat most days, so …’ He paused. He felt oddly nervous, but wasn’t sure if it was the favour he was having to ask, or just being this close to someone, being part of a real conversation, with a real person – especially someone who looked like Paula did. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What I’m trying to say is, do you think it might be possible for you t–’
