Saturday 31 October
Freddie slowed her pace and rubbed her eyes, hoping her mascara would smudge. Could you think yourself pale? One arm across her stomach, she half fell through Espress-oh’s door.
Dan and Milena looked up.
‘You okay?’ Milena put down the hot panini tongs.
‘I know why I lost my temper. Not feeling great.’ In the corner of her eye she saw Nasreen and her colleagues exit the station and head to an arriving police van. Dan’s face was a hesitant scowl. ‘Pretty sure it’s just my period, but I’ve been sick, everywhere…’ Three…two…
‘Sick!’ Dan bowled toward her.
‘You don’t think it’s like that norovirus case you told us about from the Kuala Lumpur branch?’ she slurred into his panicked face.
Dan was surprisingly efficient when under pressure. He had her, and her coat, out the cafe in under a minute.
‘Not sure I can walk.’ Freddie bent double, as Dan tried to stuff her apron under her jacket. He kept glancing round, as if a health and safety inspector might leap out from behind one of the trees lining the station approach. Beads of sweat ran in orange rivulets over his forehead.
‘I’ll get you a taxi!’ he stage whispered.
‘I’m broke.’
‘Here!’ Dan pulled notes from his wallet and thrust them at her. ‘We have to get you away from here. I mean home.’ He stuck his arm out as a black cab drove toward them and scooped her into the back. ‘Dalston, she lives in Dalston.’
Dan, thankful disaster had been averted, watched as the taxi disappeared past the lights. Freddie saw him take his sanitizer bottle from his pocket and squirt his hands. You could never be too safe.
Inside the cab, Freddie pulled her phone from her pocket and followed the flashing Nasreen Cudmore as she leapfrogged across London. ‘Actually, mate, looks like we’re heading toward The City, no, past that, Canary Wharf. Can you take me there? Cheers.’
Bright coloured lights danced across the Thames, as the night sky airbrushed out the churning grey filth of the river. Freddie didn’t look up. She kept her eyes on the faceless silhouette that represented Nas. It had stopped. Had she lost connection? They wound past the glowing phallic towers of Canary Wharf. Cranes, anchors, and industrial cogs – ghostly reminders of the docks’ past – punctuated the new gated developments covering the area. They were almost upon the symbol. Freddie looked up as the flats gave way to rows of dockers’ cottages. ‘Think it’s the next right, mate.’
She needn’t have worried. The taxi turned into a street of Victorian houses ablaze with activity. A police van, that had presumably carried Nas and her team, was parked behind a police car blocking the road.
‘Can’t go any further than this, love,’ said the cabbie.
‘This is fine. Cheers.’ She passed Dan’s banknotes through the window. There was no sign of Nas, or any of her plain-clothes colleagues. ‘What road’s this, mate?’ Freddie pocketed the change. That’d get her a drink in the pub later.
‘Blackbird Road.’ The cabbie turned to reverse back the way they’d come.
A white tarpaulin canopy was erected over the entrance of one of the houses. Incident tape flapped in the breeze. People were stood in dressing gowns, and in coats over pyjamas, phones up taking photos.
Residents of a quiet Docklands street were shocked to discover that…What was this? Break-in? Domestic? A uniformed policeman, early fifties, balding, guarded the door. A white van was parked opposite. Freddie watched as a man plucked a plastic boiler suit from the back and pulled it over his trousers and shirt. Forensics.
‘What the…?’ the door policeman shouted.
Freddie looked up to see a sandy-haired, skinny policeman, a few years older than her, stumble out of the property and spew all over the path.
‘Heavy night?’ shouted a voice.
The growing crowd of onlookers laughed. Are Millennials Just Not Cut Out For Work? The forensics guy tutted, before ducking under the police tape, sidestepping the puking copper, and walking into the house. No badge, no questions, no problem.
Seize the story. Push yourself into uncomfortable situations.
Freddie walked with purpose to the white van and peered inside. Voila! She took a plastic-wrapped boiler suit from a box in the back and pulled it over her clothes. Disposable Jumpsuits: the Ideal Freelance Uniform?
‘You stay out here and I’ll get something to clean this up,’ the older cop said as he hauled the pale young lad to his feet. He disappeared inside as Freddie reached the gate. She just needed to get past PC Spew.
His pale blue eyes focused on her as she ducked under the tape. She felt him take in the rustling plastic boiler suit and stop…on her dyed red hair. Shit. Bloody hair chalk. She kept going. Imagining she was walking into a nightclub, like she had for years as an underage teenager. Behind The Incident Tape: Inside an Active Crime Scene.
‘Evening, ma’am,’ PC Spew said.
‘Evening.’ She stopped in front of him. Nerves rippled through her body. ‘Cold night for it?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He looked like he might be about to say something else, and then he nodded and stood aside. ‘You must be on the new computer team, ma’am. It’s upstairs.’
‘Thank you.’ She avoided his gaze. The door closed behind her and she was alone in a small laminated-floor hallway. In front of her a patterned glass door made a collage of the people behind it. The sound of a kettle boiling. The stir of a teaspoon in a cup. Someone crying? Must be the kitchen. Black coats hung on hooks at the bottom of the stairs. It was like the man said: what she wanted was upstairs. In the early hours of Friday morning a dawn raid was carried out…
There was movement above. She figured she didn’t have long. In and out. That was the plan.
05:36
Saturday 31 October
Dropping down to the ground from the back of the police van, Nasreen tucked the flask of tea into her hoodie pocket and headed back. Sent for the DCI’s tea again. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she’d requested to be assigned to Detective Chief Inspector Moast’s team. She wanted to prove herself on a major investigation, not fetch beverages. Perhaps there’d be a chance to make a real difference on this case. It was a particularly grim one. The body of Alun Mardling, slumped over his computer with his throat cut, had been found by his mother at around 4.30am, when she had returned from her night shift at St Thomas’ Hospital. Mrs Lucy Mardling had a job cleaning surgical instruments,
