The Body in the Shadows

For Louise, as always

Chapter One

Friday 27th November

The perennial sound of Slade accompanied Sam Gillard as she perused a rail of slacks in Marks & Spencer. She’d taken a day off to do some Christmas shopping at the newly opened Greenway Centre in Woking. Three floors of sparkling retail therapy were alluring when the weather outside was gloomy and overcast. She was in womenswear on the first floor, laden with purchases, wondering if she could justify a new pair of work trousers to accommodate her pregnancy bump. She’d already bought a new zip-up fleece for Craig, a toy car transporter for her nephew, and a coffeemaker for her mother. For herself she’d made an impulse buy of a pair of scarlet Mary Jane ballet flats. They looked great and eased her pregnancy-swollen feet, so she’d worn them straight from the shop.

In the distance, a tall young man wearing a grey hoodie and pristine white trainers stood out amongst the predominantly white female shoppers in the women’s lingerie area. He was clearly bored, looking at his phone, and seemed out of place. Still, something about him snagged at her brain. He radiated a restless energy. Her years as a police community support officer had given her something of a sixth sense, and this intensified when the man began to look about him. She followed his gaze and saw a uniformed security officer at the far end of the shop. Sam moved to get a better look at the youth, perhaps fifteen yards away, and saw him brush past a middle-aged female shopper. She had her back to him as he slid past in the congested pinch point by the costume jewellery display. He obviously said something to her, perhaps an ‘excuse me’, because she smiled. His left hand rested briefly on her shoulder, the numerous gold rings on his long dark fingers catching the light.

So fast and so smooth that she almost missed it, his other hand slid into the woman’s leather handbag, slipped out her purse and pocketed it.

Sam turned to see where the store detective was. Not visible anymore. The pickpocket was moving towards her now, his long legs eating up the distance between them. The first-floor exit was right behind her. Her first thought was to tackle the thief directly, but common sense dismissed it. She was six months pregnant with a carrier bag in each hand, and he was perhaps twenty, six foot three and clearly very fit. If he wasn’t carrying a knife she would be astounded. She could ring 999 but, having worked in the control room at Mount Browne, she knew it would be a lucky day for a patrol car to arrive in ten minutes. Easily enough time for a fit young thief to be a mile away.

She turned to look at the clothing rail as he passed behind her. Her own hand was clasping the top of her handbag, but he made no attempt at it. The moment he was past she turned and took a quick picture of him on her phone. The generic hoodie, the high-top trainers, the dark tracksuit trousers with a double stripe of white. An urban uniform worn by millions. Only the Route 66 logo on the back marked him out.

She watched as the thief exited the store and turned left, striding nonchalantly towards the atrium bridge to the other side of the three-storey shopping centre. She then turned back to the victim, who was now browsing nearby.

‘Excuse me, this young man’s just stolen your purse.’

The woman, grey-haired and bespectacled, the classic middle-aged M&S shopper, froze in horror, and rushed to check her bag as Sam showed her the photo.

‘It’s gone,’ she cried.

‘Find the store detective and report it, and then call the police. I’m going to try and find where he went. Don’t leave the store, I’ll come back for you.’

Not waiting for a response, Sam turned and hurried to the exit, wanting to know where the thief was heading next. The store exit gave onto a broad balcony served on the far side by two escalators from the crowded ground floor, and two more to the higher floor. She quickly scanned the atrium and looked over the balcony to the floor below. No sign of him. To her left were WH Smith and Claire’s Accessories, to her right Wilkinson’s hardware store. There were plenty of shoppers up here, but the thief’s height and hood should mark him out. She waited for a minute, choosing the vantage point of the bridge between the two sides of the first-floor balcony. She was about to give up and go back into M&S when she spotted him coming out of Accessorize. She followed at a distance of about twenty yards, and managed to get a good side view photo, widening her fingers on the screen for a close-up. She looked around for uniformed police or security guards but could see nobody. He made his way past her across the bridge towards a cafe where people were sitting outside. A skinny late-teenage girl walked towards him, and as they passed each other, he slipped something into her shopping bag. She had a hard face, tattoos on her neck, short unkempt dyed blonde hair and a worn denim jacket. Sam risked a head-on photograph, and as she did so, the girl glanced in her direction. Sam wasn’t sure if she’d been seen. The girl headed off left on the far balcony while the thief moved right. Sam knew she was in danger of getting out of her depth here, with two people to keep an eye on, so she rang 999. Put through to the control room, she told her colleague Helen all the details, all the while following the thief.

‘You’re walking, Sam, I can hear your breath. Stay away from him,’ Helen warned.

‘I won’t take any risks. But this poor woman has had her purse stolen, and there are probably others. Ah, he’s taking the escalator up to the second floor.’

Sam cut the call and headed towards the moving stairway. The tall man towered over the half-dozen female shoppers behind him on the escalator. Sam watched as the thief answered his phone, then turned to look behind him. She was just at the base of the escalator, and stepped on, but he appeared not to have seen her. She averted her glance, but kept him in her peripheral vision. She focused on her destination, gradually coming into view. The second floor had not been fully let, and she could see most of the units were still being fitted out. There were only a few people up here. The thief had reached the top, still on the phone, and stepped off and to the left. Leaning over the balcony, he looked right at Sam and nodded, still on the phone. He was glaring at her, and pointed a finger, ripe with unspoken threats.

She was being gradually transported towards him.

There was no way she could escape. She would be there in ten seconds.

Sam glanced behind, and saw with horror that thirty feet behind her, the skinny girl was just getting on her escalator, phone clamped to her ear.

Unconsciously, Sam lowered a protective hand to her pregnancy bump. This is not what I would have wished for you.

She assessed her options. She’d rather fight her than him, so she began to rapidly descend the moving stairs. She squeezed past two middle-aged female shoppers, who tutted and complained. But Sam only had eyes for the blonde below, all cold, dark eyes and sallow skin. They were five seconds apart. Sam was just a few feet away when the girl pulled a knife, its short narrow blade hidden from the view of others by the flap of her denim jacket.

Two seconds.

Sam took the biggest inhalation she could, and screamed, the sound filling the entire atrium, and echoing back from all angles. She threw the bag containing the coffeemaker into the face of her female assailant. The girl was knocked down three steps, but kept her feet, her shielding arm deflecting the bag over the side of the escalator rail.

A second later it detonated like a bomb on the ground floor.

‘Help!’ Sam yelled, again as loud as she could, pointing at the girl half a dozen steps below her. ‘She’s got a knife!’

But the stares were all at her, the pregnant shopper, losing it. Poor dear, they would be saying, seeing there was nobody near the shopper who had hurled her purchases over the side. Drink, probably. Or maybe drugs. Or just too much lockdown. It can hit your mental health, can’t it?

The girl had hidden her knife, and was not advancing up the stairs, but she was laser-focused on Sam’s face. Now both of them were being drawn inexorably upwards toward the thief leaning over the balcony. She turned back to him, aware that hundreds of people on the ground floor were staring up at her, an unwitting high-wire act. The escalator would transport her to the top in five seconds. At four, the last intervening traveller, a small teenage boy glued to his phone, stepped off and squeezed past the thief. She saw his brown eyes and yellowy bloodshot whites and thought: drugs. He’s high!

At three, he leaned over and hissed: ‘Give me your phone or I’ll fucking kill you.’

It sounded like the best Black Friday deal she had ever heard.

With shaking hands, she passed the device up to him. He snatched it from her with one hand and with the other pulled her off her feet at the end of the escalator, so that she skidded and tumbled onto the polished tile floor. She crashed sideways, banging her head, hand bracing her midriff. She could hear the sound of running feet, shouts of help, someone coming towards her just as the woman with the knife reached the top of the escalator.

From the right-hand side of her view a stocky uniformed security guard was running towards her. Thank God. The thief turned, swore, and sprinted away. It was an Olympian turn of speed, which made everyone else look like they were frozen in time. The guard didn’t even attempt to follow. Instead, he headed towards Sam, his radio to his mouth. Other shoppers, seeing the thief’s rapid departure, felt emboldened to come up and ask her how she was.

‘Where’s the girl?’ Sam asked breathlessly.

‘Who’s that, dear?’ asked a kindly-looking woman in her seventies.

‘The one with the knife.’ Sam looked around and couldn’t see her. ‘She was just coming up the escalator.’ Her breath came in sobs.

‘You want to be careful in your state. Can I phone someone for you?’

‘That’s very kind. I’ll just phone my husband.’ Only then did she realise she did not have her phone. Everything was on it: her calendar, contacts, banking, you name it. It was this sickening realisation that brought her closer to tears than had the prospect of being stabbed. She asked if she could borrow one from the woman. The security guard had been joined by a colleague, and they were still scanning the various floors for the thief while their radios squawked. ‘IC3 male,’ said the first guard into his walkie-talkie. ‘No, police are on their way.’ Sam blinked away her tears as the woman passed across her phone.

Then, in her peripheral vision to her right, Sam saw her. Now wearing a beanie hat, no jacket, but the tattoo and the cold dark eyes were a giveaway. And the glint of the knife, held low. ‘It’s her!’ yelled Sam as the girl, her face distorted with rage, pushed past the kindly lady, the knife aimed for her precious midriff.

‘Nosy fucking bitch,’ was all Sam heard. ‘Take my photo, would you?’

Years ago, she had been fighting fit thanks to aerobics and even a few self-defence classes. Not now. But she had two lives to fight for, not just one. One hand braced on the balustrade, she kicked sideways at the girl’s knife arm. She made contact and the arm jerked, the blade spinning to the ground, then skating along the tiles towards the feet of the security guards.

But her assailant wasn’t finished and moved with fury and speed. She had grabbed hold of Sam’s leg after the kick and lifted it so that she was off balance, using it as a ram against its owner. Sam’s other foot was no longer in contact with the floor, and she was in danger of being twisted and flipped over the balcony. Sam screamed, and gripped an ornate wrought iron balcony support with her free hand, even as her hips were now almost level with the guardrail.

‘Help me, help me!’ she yelled, but the faces of the shoppers hung passively open, phones pointing at her, astounded but not willing to intervene. Just drama on film, nothing to do with them. Even the security guards seemed to be set in treacle, turning and moving in slow motion towards her. Only the older woman remonstrated. Sam kicked with her free foot, trying to smash the girl in the face, but to no avail, as she clung to the metalwork with all her strength, winding one arm into the metal curlicues. Then another hard shove, her hips slid and she was over, falling.

Falling.

She screamed, long and hard, as if to shatter with her dying anguish every sheet of shop glass in the place.

No! My child, my child!

Her drop was arrested in a second by an agonising pain. Her arm, knotted into the ornate balustrade and stretched painfully over the rail at the elbow, felt it was being torn from its socket. With her other arm she lunged for the handrail and got three sweaty fingers on the warm, greasy wood, while her legs kicked frantically for purchase on the blank panelling underneath the balustrade.

She lost a shoe.

The scarlet Mary Jane, its price label still on the sole, looped the loop before diving into the spinning kaleidoscope of shoppers a hundred feet below, staring up at her.

Feeling sick, she looked up and into the dead eyes of her assailant, who was leaning over, unpeeling Sam’s fingers from the handrail. The stout security guard arrived just in time, pulling the girl away, an arm around her neck. Through the bars of the balcony, Sam watched her twist rapidly from his grip and launch a fierce knee into his groin. The man crumpled with a groan, and the girl punched him twice with sickening speed in the face. She then leaned over to Sam, spat copiously into her face, and sprinted away. Sam felt the vile liquid on her eyelashes, on her lip, on her hair, and hadn’t a free hand to wipe them.

The assailant gone, strong male arms reached down and hauled her gently over to safety. Her arm was agony where it had been twisted and jammed in the balustrade ironwork, but her first plea was for someone to get a tissue to mop the vile mess on her face. As she sat on the floor, buzzing with shock and surrounded by well-wishers, she had one thought.

What on earth had she done to deserve that?

Chapter Two

‘So what did he look like?’ the PC asked as Sam sat on a chair in the stockroom of a nearby store, catching her breath.

‘Very tall, mixed-race. I got a photo on my phone.’

‘Ah, but he took your phone, didn’t he?’ The policewoman looked at her kindly, as if the assault had robbed her of her wits.

‘Yes, I know. But the picture will be on the server of the service provider, and if I give you the number, the police should be able to retrieve it,’ Sam said as a staff member brought her a cup of coffee.

‘He’ll probably have deleted it, love,’ the PC said. ‘He’s probably on CCTV, so there’s no need for you to worry. What we need to do is check you over, and make sure your baby is all right—’

Sam closed her eyes in frustration. ‘Even if he tries to delete it, it will still be there on the server. My husband is a detective. I do know what I’m talking about.’

Sam felt a kick inside her, the first she had experienced. It was as if her unborn child was in agreement. She gasped, and the PC took it as a sign that all was not well.

‘Just relax, the paramedics will be here in a minute,’ she said.

‘Can I give you this?’ Sam said, handing across a soggy tissue that she had kept. ‘She spat in my face. I want to be sure that she hasn’t got anything horrible. It went in my eye. And it’ll have her DNA.’

The PC looked at the soggy tissue with disdain.

‘Just poke it into a rubber glove if you don’t have an evidence bag,’ Sam said.

The officer felt in her tunic pockets, clearly irked at being told how to do her job. She passed across a blue disposable glove, and Sam poked the tissue inside and then gave it back.

The shop manager, having earlier been given Craig Gillard’s direct line, came over with a phone in her hand.

‘It’s your husband for you,’ she said.

Sam’s spirits soared as she grabbed hold of the receiver, and she could hear herself begin to sob once again as he began to speak.

‘Are you okay, Sam?’

‘She tried to throw me over the railings from the second floor.’

‘I heard the initial report. I’m about twenty minutes away.’

‘Craig, I was trapped on an escalator and I threw my Christmas shopping at her.’ She began to laugh within her sobs. ‘It was a coffeemaker on special offer!’

‘We’ll get a new one, even if it’s full price. Just hang on in there, it’s going to be okay.’

‘And a man came to me from downstairs with my shoe.’

‘Your shoe?’

‘The one that fell off. It just missed him. He asked to see Cinderella, to see if it fitted.’

‘That’s a fairytale ending, I suppose. I love you, Sam, and everything’s going to be fine. I’ll be there soon. Nothing’s more important to me than you and our precious child.’

And with those kind and loving words, she really began to cry.

Gillard had interrupted his shift to give Sam a lift home. In the car on the way back from Woking, she told him the full story.

He listened carefully and then said: ‘The case has been passed to DI John Perry, who I’ve been assured is giving it the highest priority. This isn’t simply aggravated theft, but attempted murder. Thank God you were able to hold on. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Is there CCTV of them?’

‘Bound to be,’ Gillard said. ‘It’s a newish shopping centre, so it should be high quality too.’

‘He was wearing a hoodie, but it’s her I really want.’

Gillard looked at his wife. Less than two years ago, she’d been kidnapped and locked in a steel box, and nearly drowned. She had undergone therapy for the PTSD, and in recent months her nightmares had receded. He just hoped this wouldn’t bring them back.

‘The baby’s been kicking,’ she said. ‘First time I’ve felt it. It’s a good sign. In fact, I was planning to get some advice seeing as I was after twenty weeks without a kick.’

Gillard glanced at her bump, and rested his hand there, feeling the warmth. ‘Quite an exciting start to his life, isn’t it?’

‘You could certainly say that. If he’s not a she.’

Gillard paused and then asked: ‘Was there anything on the phone that would reveal your home address?’

She blew a sigh. ‘You don’t think that they could come after me, do you?’

‘On balance no, but it’s always a good idea to think the unthinkable.’ Gillard looked at his wife, with their unborn child still nestling in her body. He felt even more protective of her now. He’d double-check the locks on the windows and doors at home, but that would never be enough. When it came to looking after her, he always felt there was more he should do.

Chapter Three

Saturday 28th November

Next day in the first floor CID office at Mount Browne, Gillard sat with DI Perry looking through CCTV footage from the Greenway shopping centre. There were numerous images that caught the thief with his distinctive Route 66 hoodie. However, the hood was drawn sufficiently low that none they had seen so far showed his face.

‘Have you got any from the start of the first floor ascending escalator where Sam got on?’ Gillard asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Perry said.

‘Centre floor plan shows that there is an Edinburgh Woollen Mill facing the escalator.’

‘No, their cameras are all in-store,’ Perry said. With his hangdog expression and prematurely greying hair, the forty-four-year-old detective inspector looked like the worn-out schoolteacher he once was. He liked to joke that now he was dealing with crime rather than education, he only ran into the bottom five per cent of the pupils that he used to teach.

‘What about the girl? Have you identified her?’ Gillard asked.

‘No, but we do have some better images.’ Perry selected a series of stills, which showed the washed-out looking bottle blonde. There was even some footage which showed the moment when she brushed past the thief and received what looked like the stolen purse.

‘She’s definitely a better prospect,’ Gillard said.

‘We’ve got fewer but better images of her. I’ve talked to half a dozen store security from the usual high target retailers, and the only one who recognised her was a guy at Primark who used to manage an off-licence in Knaphill. She was caught shoplifting there about eighteen months ago, after which she was banned from the store.’

‘No prosecution?’

‘No. It’s the usual problem. They claim they have to wait so long for the police to arrive it’s not worth the staff time of holding them, so they normally just get the money or the goods back. It’s a familiar pattern, I’m afraid.’

Gillard wasn’t surprised. He was rarely involved in shoplifting or street robbery cases now, but was aware that a slowing police response due to limited resources made it much harder for retailers. To get a prosecution meant staff waiting with the suspect, sometimes for an hour or more. The problem had very much been thrown back into the laps of retailers themselves.

‘So do we have a name?’

‘He was going to check and get back to me. I’m going to offer the best images to the media, see if the public can do the job for us.’

Gillard stood up and rested his hand on Perry’s shoulder. ‘All right, John, let me know as soon as you have it. I want this dangerous young lady tracked down as soon as possible.’

Gillard got back to his glass box office to find an internal mail envelope on the top of his in-tray. Inside it was a sheet of headed Metropolitan Police phone message notepaper and a two-liner. ‘Caller rang Croydon Police Station asking for you, wouldn’t give his name. Refused to speak to anybody else.’ The number below was a mobile, and the date of the message was three days ago, late evening.

Gillard hadn’t worked at Croydon for almost three decades. His curiosity piqued, he rang the number, which after ringing out