The 3rd Woman. Jonathan Freedland

her pocketbook, kept there well over a year since Katharine had knocked it up for her, reluctantly, using a 3D printer. Madison had solemnly promised that it was for one time only, that she had no other way of doing that story – on a sex trafficking ring operating out of Long Beach – and that she would destroy it as soon as the story was done. But a fake police ID belonging to a fictitious Officer Madison Halliday was too good an asset to throw away. Without telling Katharine, Madison had saved it for a rainy day. Like today.

      So the woman she guessed she had spoken to earlier stayed with a phone cradled in her neck by the reservations lectern, serving as a traffic cop for a line of would-be diners, merely glanced up, clocked the badge, then mouthed and gestured her towards a downstairs room marked ‘Private’, next to the men’s and women’s bathrooms.

      Inside was a bank of four television monitors, each one flicking at intervals between different angles and locations. She could see the long tables, the bar, the kitchen, a series of what looked like small lounges, bathed in the white light of karaoke screens, and the basin area of what she supposed was the women’s bathroom. So, she noted, cameras even there.

      In a chair, eating a salad out of a plastic box, was a young, white man whose scraggly beard could have denoted either hipster or loser, it was hard to tell. Maddy decided it was he who had first picked up the phone when ‘Barbara’ had called a few minutes ago. That suggested a general dogsbody rather than a ‘head of security’. Whether that was good news or bad, it was too early to tell.

      ‘Hi there,’ she said, her voice self-consciously higher and lighter than normal, as if to stress that she was absolutely not the same person he had spoken to earlier. ‘I’m here to review again the footage from last night?’

      He munched on a fork loaded with spinach leaves, a cherry tomato squirting from the left side of his mouth and onto his shirt. He nodded, too full of food to speak, then keyed a few strokes at his computer. A second or two later, the central and largest monitor was showing a sequence on fast rewind, jerky figures moving off and on stools, taking glasses from their lips and putting them down on the counter.

      ‘What are we looking at?’ Maddy asked, doing her best to sound no more than professionally curious.

      ‘This is the bar camera,’ salad boy said, about to take another bite, nodding towards the screen for emphasis. He pressed another button, the picture now displaying the timecode and the rest of the on-screen data that had been missing until then: 12.13 am, today’s date. ‘This is what your … this is what those guys were looking at before.’

      The camera was above the bar, mounted, judging from the angle, high up on the right-hand wall. It revealed the bar staff in full face, two of them, but she could see the customers in profile only. At this moment it showed five people sitting on stools, three men and two women. Laboriously, starting at the left and moving rightward, Maddy fixed on each one in turn. Middle-aged man, possibly white; middle-aged man, Asian, could be Japanese, Chinese, Korean; both turned on their stools to face a woman in a black mini-dress, sheer sleeves, hair fair, almost silver on the screen, though that could be the lights. The picture was not sharp enough to be sure, but to Maddy it looked like a classic late night scene: two businessmen hitting on an attractive single woman. The men at least were smiling; the woman had a glass in her hand.

      Next to the female drinker, though visible only in profile, was a younger man: white, mid-thirties, hair brown and cut short, well-built. He was talking to the last figure on the screen who, because she was seated at the curve of the bar, had her back to the camera. Distracted by the little ménage á trois at the other end, Maddy had not noticed her at all till now.

      ‘Can you freeze the picture? Just here.’

      Maddy looked hard. The young woman was dressed in a fitted, sparkling top. Yesterday she’d have said that was not Abigail’s style at all. But a few hours ago she had seen items in Abigail’s closet that were just like it. The hair was the right colour, blonde, though you couldn’t tell if it was Abigail-blonde, full of the sun and fresh air, or the bottled variety. It was definitely the right length though. Still, the similarity ended there. This woman’s hair was dead straight, falling in a sheet, as if it had been ironed flat. Abigail never wore her hair like that.

      ‘The other guys looked at this too. It’s Abigail.’

      The name, spoken by a stranger, broke Maddy out of her trance of concentration. She turned to the technician, still gesturing with his fork at the frozen image. She was about to snap at him, when she remembered who she was supposed to be. She was Madison Halliday, junior police officer on an errand. She was not Maddy Webb, sister. She looked back at the screen, telling herself that this was what happened in murder cases. The victim became public property, often referred to simply by their first name – especially, it had to be said, when the victim was young and female. She could picture the headlines and TV captions she had seen over the years. The search for Tanya’s killer. Will we ever know who killed Amanda? It was a journalistic tic, and she was no less guilty of it than the rest of them.

      ‘Is that what, um, my colleagues said too? That that’s Abigail?’

      ‘Yep.’ He took another bite. ‘And me too.’

      Maddy stiffened. ‘You? What do you mean?’

      ‘Well, I’m not here all the time. But she’s one of the regulars. I mean, was one of the regulars. Sorry. It’s just so weird.’

      ‘I don’t follow.’

      ‘Someone being here and then the next day, they’re gone. I know they say death is part of life, but—’

      ‘No, I mean I don’t follow about her being one of the regulars.’

      ‘I explained it to your friends before. She was a regular here. In the KTV area, in the bar. Couple of nights a week, at least. Anyway, look. This is the bit I think you’re meant to look at.’

      Maddy could hardly take in what she was hearing, his words ricocheting around her head, rebounding against the echo of Quincy all those hours ago. You don’t always know everything, Maddy. Not even about Abigail.

      But now the monitor was showing her younger sister at a slightly clearer angle, because Abigail had turned a few degrees to speak to this man whom Maddy had branded a soldier of some kind. He was smiling, then giving a large nod. From the way Abigail’s back was moving, she would guess they were having an amicable conversation. Maybe flirting.

      But then his posture stiffened. He leaned forward, said something that prompted Abigail to stand up and walk away. She disappeared out of shot on her right, then briefly appeared a half-second later in the far left of the screen, as if she had walked round the bar, past the soldier, though without looking at him, and out. The man downed his drink, scoped the room, once to his right, then to his left – where the middle-aged trio were still making each other smile – once more to his right, before placing a dollar bill on the counter and leaving too. According to the CCTV timecode that did not stop ticking, he followed Abigail out of the bar less than thirty seconds later. Out of the bar, out into the cold, LA night – and out, it seemed, to pursue Abigail.

       Chapter 13

      Leo Harris had sent texts, several direct messages via Weibo and, heaven help him, an email. Short of sending smoke signals from the Hollywood Hills, he didn’t know what more he could do. But Maddy had ignored them all.

      It was, he reflected now – still wearing his suit, his feet up on the coffee table, his back slumped into the couch – not just sympathy for an ex-girlfriend in mourning. The term stopped him. Was she even an ex? Was that the right word, given what had happened to them? They had never had the break-up conversation; they had never really broken up. They had tried to ‘take things to the next level’ – they had moved in together – but that had not worked out and suddenly they were no longer together at all.

      He never understood that dynamic, though he knew it was real. It