Read Chelsea Mansions for Free Online Page B

suppose he was doped up on ice or some damn thing.’ He shook his head sadly.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ John said. ‘This is upsetting you.’
    ‘Well, maybe it helps me to talk about it. Apart from the police, the only people I know in this city are in that hotel. They’re trying very hard to help, but they do seem kind of odd.’
    ‘Yes.’ John chuckled. ‘They are, aren’t they?’
    ‘You’ve heard about the memorial service idea?’
    ‘Yes, Toby told me. I’ll be there.’
    ‘That’s kind of you. It’ll help to see a friendly face.’
    ‘Well, I’ll get moving. See you then.’

    Not much more than a mile away to the east, Kathy was working in her office. She’d started the morning with a brisk swim in the baths in Pimlico, looking forward to an active day and, hopefully, a breakthrough. But on her desk she found a heap of accumulated paperwork awaiting her urgent attention, and reluctantly she sat down and started working through it.
    A response had come in from the FBI during the night. They had spoken to Nancy’s solicitor and confirmed that her two sons were her principal beneficiaries. They had also determined that neither had a police record and a preliminary search of both men’s business and financial affairs had revealed nothing unusual.
    But something had been fatally special about Nancy Haynes. If Danny Yilmaz was to be believed, someone had begun to arrange her murder within a couple of days of her arrival in London. Nancy must have been observed during that time, her movements tracked.
    Kathy sent a reply to America, asking for a check on Emerson Merckle and information on Nancy’s financial records, then turned to the forensic reports on Nancy’s body and clothing and Danny’s Kawasaki. There had been dozens of fibres, fingerprints and DNA traces, all painstakingly listed, but so far no matches to anyone apart from Nancy, Emerson and Danny.
    After a couple of hours scanning incoming reports, Kathy rubbed her eyes and got to her feet. She went out to see how the CCTV team was getting on, searching for sightings of the killer on the underground, and picked up a mood of resignation.
    ‘There are fifty stations on the Northern Line,’ Zack said with a sigh. ‘Not to mention connections to the Victoria Line, the Piccadilly, Circle, Central, District . . .’
    ‘I get the picture. How about his ticket? Could he have bought an Oyster card with a credit card?’
    Zack nodded, thinking. ‘We could get the numbers of all the Oyster cards that went through the Camden Town ticket machines at that time on Thursday . . . Leave it with me.’
    Kathy moved on, checking progress, feeling impatient, then returned to her desk. Mickey Schaeffer was at Tottenham, Brock at headquarters, and she wanted to be out of the office. One of the reports in the pile in front of her was by an officer who had spoken to organisers at the Chelsea Flower Show, which seemed to raise more questions than it answered. How had that worked, exactly? If the man that Emerson had photographed at the show was really the killer, waiting for his moment, had he planned to kill Nancy there among the crowds, and then changed his mind when he realised that they’d noticed him? The more Kathy thought about it, the more odd it seemed, a strange combination of planning and improvisation. Where had the man come from? Would a native Londoner have done it like that? Would they have relied on someone like Danny Yilmaz to make an escape? And how had he got into the flower show?
    This was the final day of the show, she remembered; she could go and see for herself. She pulled on her jacket and headed out.
    The street in front of the entrance gates was jammed with visitors carrying sun hats, backpacks and handfuls of maps and tickets, queuing to get in. As they approached the gates she saw them stare at the police notices posted nearby, appealing for witnesses with pictures of Nancy and the unidentified man, and whisper among