Page 43 of Nothing Hiding

"I know it's not looking good," Juliette consoled her as she started up the car, "but at least, we're now working with the other team, and it's more cooperative. So, we have more resources and manpower. Now, let's see what we can find."

"I've got the coordinates," Sierra said. "This scene is in Oxford Street. She was left at a bus stop, apparently. At one of the stops for the double decker bus tours of London."

Sierra's GPS got them to the scene in just ten minutes, taking a direct route into central London and heading along Oxford Street to a place that felt surprisingly close to the recent crime scene. Juliette's instincts were on high alert as they pulled up outside the police cordon.

On Oxford Street, on a Sunday afternoon, there were massive crowds to control. People were milling around outside the police cordon. So many videos were being taken that Juliette had no doubt they'd be an online sensation before the afternoon was over. For all the wrong reasons.

This was reputational damage, happening in front of their eyes. A body, left at the bus stop? London would be severely impacted by this. And they’d suffer the fallout.

She stared around, feeling a weird flicker of recognition. It was a feeling she sometimes got when curious or unfriendly eyes were on her. Instinct, perhaps. At any rate, she wondered, for a fleeting moment, whether someone was watching her.

Then her attention was yanked back to their present circumstances as the Scotland Yard team got out of their car.

"Let's go and have a look." Although not friendly, she was relieved that Harris seemed at least cooperative.

Then she forgot about the internal politics, focusing only on what was there.

A tourist bus stop, near a bakery and a clothing store, with tinted glass and an overhang, facing toward the bus lane.

And the body. She caught her breath as she saw it, shock resonating through her because this was so wrong.

It was propped up, just like the others. Looking exactly as if she were waiting for the bus. Dressed in jeans and a floral top, with sandals on her feet. Her face seemed to be aglow with life and health, but when Juliette looked closer, there was only the artificial waxy sheen, and the thick, gray eyeshadow that she’d now been expecting to see on the otherwise flawless skin.

Two forensic officers in white suits were cutting loose the fine wire that had fastened her to her seat and were lowering her gently to the ground.

Juliette couldn't go closer because of the risk of contaminating the scene. But how had he gotten a victim stationed in such a public place? He couldn't have driven up and lifted her out. Or could he? Had she been here since the early morning and had nobody noticed? What had happened that she'd been able to be found?

"It's appalling," Black whispered, and with an unexpected flash of sympathy, Juliette realized that she looked sick. This was the first time she'd seen the killer's macabre artistry in person.

"There's no way he could have gotten a body here in broad daylight?" Harris's mind was working along the same lines as Juliette's.

"Maybe he brought her in a wheelchair and transferred her?" she said. "Drove her in using a delivery van? There are lots of ways to hide someone in plain sight if they don't look dead."

"And how was she taken? Who is she?" Harris challenged.

"She might have ID on her. He doesn't want to conceal their identities," she pointed out. "All the others have had ID on them."

"Yes, she does." Overhearing their conversation, one of the forensic officers looked around. "We've got an ID card on her. She's Tanya Jewell, lives in West London."

"Maybe she works near here," Juliette wondered, as Sierra bent immediately down to her phone screen to look up the details.

"If she's the Tanya Jewell I'm seeing here, she works for one of the cookie franchises. Not sure which one, but that's what she does," Sierra agreed.

"So, she would have left work yesterday, gone home. Any missing person report out on her yet?" Juliette asked.

Now, it was Samantha's chance to take out her iPad and look up the case history. She frowned as she scrolled through the information.

"I'm having a look now. I don't see anything called in," she said. "But that’s not a red flag. This is Sunday. If she was living on her own, or with friends, and went missing on a Saturday night, a young girl like that, they'd probably just wait for her to turn up and assume she was having too much fun wherever she was."

Juliette had to agree with that assessment. For the first time, she understood Samantha Black’s thinking. The problem was that they weren't getting any closer to the who or the why.

Who was this killer?

And why was he targeting these women?

Had he planned this? Was he choosing them for a reason? Had they simply caught his eye?

"We need to backtrack," Harris advised. "See if there's any CCTV footage of her being brought here. If we can find out how she got here, we might be able to figure out who our killer is."

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