Chapter 10 : The Pink Lady's Shadow
Brixton Bedsit — July 29, 2010, 6:50 AM
The burner phone woke me before my alarm did.
Charlie. Voice tight. "Turn on the news."
I was already moving — feet on cold floor, hand finding the radio I kept on the kitchenette counter. BBC London. Mid-sentence.
"—found deceased in the early hours at a property in Lauriston Gardens, Brixton. Police are treating the death as unexplained but not suspicious. The woman has been identified as Jennifer Wilson, a media professional from—"
The radio kept talking. I stopped hearing it.
Too late.
I'd called Crimestoppers twelve hours ago. Twelve hours. And Jennifer Wilson had gotten into a cab anyway, somewhere between then and now, and she was dead on the floor of an empty house in Brixton — less than two miles from where I stood.
My fingers gripped the counter's edge. The laminate was peeling at the corner — had been since I'd moved in, a small imperfection I'd stopped noticing weeks ago. Now the rough edge dug into my palm and I let it, because the small, sharp discomfort kept me from thinking about a woman in a pink coat who'd never planned a trip she'd mentioned to her colleagues.
"Nathan?" Charlie's voice, still on the line. "You there?"
"Yeah." My throat was dry. I swallowed. "Yeah, I'm here. What else do you know?"
"Rosa heard it from a contact near Brixton Hill. Body found around two AM by a demolition crew prepping the building. Police had the whole street taped off by three."
Lauriston Gardens. The name hammered through my skull with the force of absolute certainty. I knew that address. Knew it from a show I'd watched on a couch in Virginia, in a life that didn't exist anymore.
This is where Sherlock gets the case. This is where the pink phone leads him to the cabbie.
"I want everything your people can get," I said. "Not the crime scene — stay away from the tape. But the streets around it. Who was there last night. Which cars. Which cabs."
"Already on it. Marcus has eyes on the Waterloo end."
"Good. I'll be in touch."
I hung up, got dressed, and stood in front of the corkboard. Four names now. Patterson. Phillimore. Davenport. Wilson.
Four dead. And the man who killed them was still driving his cab through London's streets, looking for number five.
[Case Update: Serial Suicides — Victim 4 confirmed. Jennifer Wilson. Lauriston Gardens, Brixton.]
---
Canary Wharf — July 29, 2010, 11:15 AM
Jennifer Wilson's employer occupied the seventh floor of a glass tower that looked like every other glass tower in the Docklands — sleek, corporate, designed by someone who thought reflective surfaces were a substitute for personality. The lobby had a security desk staffed by two men who appeared deeply committed to looking intimidating while actually doing very little.
I'd prepared the cover story on the Tube ride over. Insurance investigator, following up on a workplace benefits claim connected to Ms. Wilson's policy. The lie required a business card — printed yesterday at a copy shop in Stockwell for twelve pence each, blank white with "N. Cole — Claims Assessment" and a disconnected phone number I'd set up specifically for this kind of thing.
The security guard glanced at the card, then at me, then at the card again. Waved me through to the lifts without checking the number.
Right. Because nobody ever checks.
The receptionist on the seventh floor was a different matter. Mid-twenties, red-rimmed eyes, the careful composure of someone who'd been crying earlier and was determined not to start again. A small bunch of flowers sat on the corner of her desk — lilies, fresh, still wrapped in cellophane. The office behind her was quiet in the specific way that offices get when someone dies: conversations at half volume, movements careful, the collective awareness that normal behaviour felt wrong.
"I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this," I said, keeping my voice low, matching the room. "I'm from Meridian Insurance, following up on Ms. Wilson's workplace benefits policy. Just routine, nothing urgent — we can reschedule if this isn't—"
"No, it's fine." She wiped her eye with the heel of her hand, quick and embarrassed. "Sorry. It's just — she was here two days ago. Right there." She pointed at a glass-walled office behind her. "Working on the Henderson account, drinking her terrible green tea, complaining about the air conditioning. And now she's..."
"I'm sorry."
She nodded. Took a breath. "What do you need?"
"Just some background for the claim. How was Ms. Wilson lately? Any signs of illness, stress, anything that might be relevant to her policy status?"
"Jennifer? No. God, no. She was..." A watery smile. "She was Jennifer. Unstoppable. She'd just been promoted. She had a new boyfriend — wouldn't tell us his name, kept it mysterious, but she was glowing. She was planning a holiday. Marbella, I think. She'd been looking at hotels on her lunch break."
I wrote it down. New boyfriend. That detail nagged at something in my memory — a fragment from the show, half-remembered, something about an affair.
"Did she mention the boyfriend's name? For the emergency contact records."
"She never said. Just smiled and changed the subject. The girls in accounts thought he was married." She lowered her voice. "Jennifer would never... well. She might. She was like that — once she wanted something, she went after it."
"And her last day here — Tuesday?"
"She left early. Around four. Said she had somewhere to be. Didn't say where. We assumed it was the boyfriend." Her face crumpled briefly. "I should have asked."
Nobody asks. That's the whole point. Nobody asks the driver where they're going.
"One more thing — did she usually take a cab home?"
The receptionist blinked. "A cab? Jennifer? No, she was a Tube girl. Jubilee line to Baker Street, then the— wait. She did take a cab that day. I saw her through the window, getting into a black cab outside the building."
My pen stopped. My pulse didn't.
"Do you remember what time?"
"Around four-fifteen? Four-twenty? The cab was already waiting. Like she'd called it."
She didn't call it. It was hunting.
I thanked her, left my fake card, and headed for the lifts.
The security guard on the ground floor had been replaced by a different one — sharper eyes, broader shoulders, the look of someone who actually read memos.
"Excuse me, sir. Who were you visiting?"
"Seventh floor. Insurance follow-up."
"Name and company?"
I gave him the fake card. He studied it. Picked up the phone.
"Just need to verify with—"
"Actually, I'm running late for another appointment. I'll come back with proper documentation."
I was through the revolving door before he finished dialling. Not elegant, but functional. The card was disposable, the phone number disconnected, and "N. Cole" could be anyone.
[Social Engineering: Partial success. Intel gathered. Cover compromised — do not return.]
[+8 SP]
---
Jubilee Line — July 29, 2010, 12:30 PM
The Tube rocked beneath me. I stood holding the overhead rail, notepad in my other hand, processing.
Jennifer Wilson took a cab from her office on the day she died. A cab that was already waiting.
That confirmed the transport theory. But it also told me something the police might not realise yet: the cabbie was targeting specific people. He wasn't picking up random fares. He knew Wilson's office, knew her schedule, knew when she'd leave. Which meant he'd been watching her — or someone had fed him her details.
Moriarty's network. The sponsor. Somebody is selecting the victims.
That was the part I couldn't prove with observation alone. The part that required phone records, CCTV, digital forensics — everything I couldn't access.
A woman stood on my left, reading a copy of the Evening Standard. The headline was visible: FOURTH LONDON "SUICIDE" — POLICE BAFFLED.
Four suicides. Someone at the paper had connected the dots. Which meant the police had too, whether they'd admit it publicly or not.
I stepped off at Brixton and walked home. The streets were ordinary — afternoon traffic, the smell of jerk chicken from the shop on the corner, a man selling fruit from a table covered in artificial grass. Brixton doing what Brixton did.
Two blocks from Lauriston Gardens, I could see the police tape still up, a single constable standing guard at the street corner. The temptation to walk past, to look, to observe anything the forensic teams might have missed — it pulled at me like gravity.
I kept walking. Getting caught at a sealed crime scene with no credentials would end more than just this investigation.
Back in the bedsit, I pinned Wilson's name to the board. Drew a line from her office in Canary Wharf to Lauriston Gardens. Twenty-three miles. No one drives twenty-three miles to take a poison pill in an empty house unless someone takes them there.
The cab. It always came back to the cab.
I sat on the bed. My back ached from the Tube ride — those plastic seats were designed by someone who hated the human spine. My stomach growled; I'd skipped breakfast and it was past lunch. The mini-fridge had bread, margarine, and a tin of baked beans. I made toast and ate it standing at the counter, staring at the corkboard.
Four victims. One method. One vehicle type. A cabbie who was somewhere in London right now, driving fares, chatting about the weather, choosing his next target.
I couldn't access the crime scene. Couldn't pull phone records. Couldn't get CCTV. Couldn't run the investigation the way I'd been trained to at the Bureau.
But I could do what the Bureau had taught me first: geographic profiling. Map the victims. Map the death locations. Find the anchor point — the place the killer returns to, the center of his operational radius.
It was the one analytical technique that didn't require a badge. Just a map, a pen, and the kind of spatial reasoning that had earned me my first commendation in a life that no longer existed.
I pulled a fresh London A-Z from my shelf — the one I'd bought at a charity shop near the hospital back in April, the week I'd arrived — and opened it to the South London pages.
Four locations. Four victims. Somewhere in the overlap was the man I was looking for.
I picked up a red pen and started drawing circles.
Want more? The story continues on Patreon!
If you can't wait for the weekly release, you can grab +10, +15, or +20 chapters ahead of time on my Patreon page. Your support helps me keep this System running!
Read ahead here: [ patreon.com/system_enjoyer ]