W
ingsy and I mulled this information over as we walked back to the car.
‘I think we’d better go back and pass this on,’ he said. ‘Might be relevant. Murder investigations always involve stuff that you and I won’t get to know about, Nin.’
‘Right, I get what you’re telling me: pass it back and let the boss decide. OK. Let’s go and see him, then.’
Eric Nottingham’s face was difficult to read as he walked into the Incident Room. But he dropped a bombshell that neither of us was prepared for.
‘Call just came in that there’s been another body found.’ Safe to say his expression was not so perplexing now: it was thunderous. ‘I want this bastard found
now
.’
This meant that Gary Savage couldn’t be considered the culprit for this latest murder. If the three were linked and he wasn’t the offender, once again we had a lot of work to do.
Wingsy and I glanced at one another. He summed it up nicely by saying, ‘Fucking Ada. We’ve got a nutter on the loose.’
‘A third victim, boss?’ I asked. ‘Who is it?’
‘A seventy-seven-year-old woman, Daphne Headingly. She was stabbed in her home by the looks of it. Neighbours across the street saw her at about 7am putting the dustbin out. The next-door neighbour later went to call on her around eleven and found her body. Savage was still being interviewed; you don’t get a much better alibi than being in a police interview room with two of my DCs when the victim
was killed. At this time, we’re treating all three of these as being linked. The stab wounds and injuries appear the same. We need to establish what connects these three. Full briefing at 4pm.’ He put his head down and started to write in his notebook. It was a dismissal. We took the hint and left. Jo Styles passed us in the office doorway on our way out.
‘What do you make of all that, mate?’ I asked Wingsy.
‘There’s so much pressure now on this department, the senior investigating officer, the entire force. In fact, pretty much every one of us. Everyone’s run ragged, Nina,’ he said.
‘If this is your way of telling me what a long day it’s going to be, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need some grub. You coming?’
At four o’clock, we assembled again. There were the same people present, the same buzz of conversation. DCI Nottingham opened the briefing by thanking everyone for attending and praised those who been at work since 5am. He then got our attention as he said, ‘As many of you know, something that’s not all that unusual in extreme acts of violence is the presence of bite marks on victims. And in this case both Amanda Bell and Jason Holland had bite marks puncturing the skin on their left shoulders.’
I could bet that not a pair of eyes in the room strayed from Eric Nottingham at that moment. He looked down at his notes then up at us.
‘Ultraviolet photographs of Amanda Bell and Jason Holland’s bite marks indicate that they would appear to have been made by the same person. Your next question is probably what about the third victim, Daphne Headingly? It is unofficially confirmed by the CSI from examining the body
in situ
: we have a serial killer.’
‘I
don’t have to tell you that this enquiry is massive,’ said Nottingham. ‘Most of you will probably never work on anything like it again in your careers. You’re here for the long haul; no one’s leaving this operation without speaking to me. It’ll be long hours, rest days worked through. We are splitting this into three investigations, one for each of our victims, but the overall name will be Operation Guard and you will talk to each other, attend all briefings unless you have a very good excuse, and report back anything of interest immediately.
‘Let’s start again with Amanda Bell.’ Nottingham took his jacket off and hung it on the back of his chair. ‘She’d been missing for a few days and her body had been open to the elements for some time. This significantly reduces the possibility of obtaining forensic evidence from her clothing. There are no signs of sexual assault. Who was looking into her last movements?’
‘That was me, sir.’ Everyone in the room shifted slightly to hear the detective who had just spoken up. He looked young: if he worked on a supermarket till and I was buying wine, I would have avoided his queue in case he needed adult supervision to serve me.
‘Go on, Danny. What have you got?’ said Nottingham.
‘I looked at her bank details and found that she paid £1,600 in cash into her account in the town, in the morning. This was last Monday, four days before her body was found. We have the CCTV from the bank, as yet unviewed; a statement from the cashier who served her and remembered her; CCTV of
her leaving the nearby car park in her Fiesta; and then nothing at all once she leaves town. The straightforward route for her to take doesn’t go past any cameras. There is a speed camera but it wasn’t working. Then there’s nothing at all. No one saw her, spoke to her, she didn’t telephone anyone, and her Fiesta was still on the driveway after she was identified as our first victim. The only thing outstanding is the result of the investigation into what was on her computer.’
Danny squirmed a bit in his seat and his face reddened slightly. He gave a small laugh, clutched his notes and said, ‘She had a website and, er, operated under the name “Crystal”. It’s a bit sordid.’ A few people tittered and Eric Nottingham raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s some stuff involving inserting stinging nettles and Deep Heat.’ This was met with further mirth. ‘Her price was £500 per go.’
A female Welsh voice announced, ‘Got a bloody garden full of nettles, I have. What with the pension going to pot, might come in handy, mind.’
‘Thank you, everyone,’ cut in the DCI, before the sidetracking got out of hand. He summarised, ‘Four days are unaccounted for; however, the post mortem showed that she was already dead when her body was dumped and it had been
in situ
for around three days. She may have been alive somewhere for a day with the murderer or, at that time, safe in her own home. We need to account for that time. It’s crucial.’ He glanced around the room, allowing it to sink in. Following a brief pause, he continued, ‘And where did that £1,600 come from? Prostitution is the likely source, but paying it into her account? Find out if this was regular.’ He aimed this last remark at Kim Cotton, who made a note of it.
‘Anything else, Danny?’ he asked.
‘Yes, boss, one other major thing.’
All eyes turned again to the now glowing Danny.
‘The search of her house found a receipt for currency exchange. She only had around a hundred quid in cash at home, but she had exchanged €2,000 into £1,718 sterling
two days before she paid the money in to her own account. There’s a good chance that that was the the money she paid in. I’ve looked into the
bureau de change
she used, in the travel agents, but their CCTV wasn’t recording that day. Turned out that the robbery squad was there downloading footage from an armed robbery and so it wasn’t working. Got the town centre CCTV, though. I printed off this still. It shows her with an unidentified white male going towards the travel agents.’
I
t had been a really long day and I was tired. Looking forward to a glass of wine, a bath and a ready meal accompanied by a token bag of prewashed salad, I swung my carrier bag of food as I walked up the pathway leading to my front door, the movement setting off my security light.
I’d felt happier at the end of the last briefing. Something had been kept back, but for very good reason. Bag in one hand and keys in my other hand, I unlocked the door and gave it a push. That day’s post seemed to be wedged behind it. Great, I thought – a hefty pile of bills. Another shove seemed to do the trick and the door inched open enough for me to get through the gap. I leaned across to put the light on and glanced down at the heap of mail on the floor.
I scooped up the seven or so items and headed towards the wine rack with them. Coat, bag and shoes deposited where they landed, I opened a bottle of Chilean Merlot. I didn’t choose it for any reason other than that it was at the top of the rack and it saved me from stretching any further. I turned the oven on and leafed through the correspondence in my hands. Apart from the usual daily junk and bills, my attention focused on an A4 padded envelope. Sipping my wine, I ripped the end open and shook the contents on to the table. Photographs fell on to the table top. Each of them contained an image of me.
I froze.
I resisted the urge to touch any of them. The first one I saw was of me aged seventeen, dressed as a housekeeper
in my school production of
Oliver
. I had kept a souvenir programme somewhere upstairs. The next was of me walking from my car to one of our regular haunts to meet Laura for a drink two weeks ago. I knew it was two weeks because the coat I was wearing in the photograph was my new winter one that I’d only bought the day before. That, and also the date had been written in black ink on the bottom left-hand corner. These snaps of me seemed to show totally random moments of my life, and someone had gone to the trouble of taking them, collecting them and posting them to me. My mind ran through a mental address book of friends, enemies, past boyfriends. No break-up had been that messy, I was sure. I simply hadn’t known anyone other than family for long enough, and it wasn’t something that anyone in my life would do. Who would have had done something like this, and why would they have done it to me?
It had been a very long time since I had felt out of control and I didn’t like the feeling the photographs gave me. I refused to give in to fright, but this felt like a warning, and to ignore it would be very unwise.
There was only one thing for it: I decided to go and get advice from an untried source.
I turned off the oven, and put the pictures and the envelope into a carrier bag ready to go back outside to my car. I hesitated for only a second at the front door with one hand on the latch, then wrenched the handle and stepped outside. I glanced up and down the road looking for movement, unfamiliar shapes or anyone hanging around. Closing the door behind me without a break in the surveillance of my street, I made my way to my car, ensuring the back seat was as empty as I’d left it minutes ago.
I would usually run straight to Stan with any serious problem. His advice had never once failed me and I had relied on him increasingly over the years. Right now, though, I wasn’t going to worry him when he was going through so much. However calmly he’d acted in the past whenever I
shared a problem with him, I knew that any torment I had felt had played on Stan’s mind.
Beckensale always stayed late in the office. If she was due to finish at 5pm, she’d hang around for at least an hour. If her finish time was later into the evening, it was not unusual to see her at her desk until the early hours. She never talked about her personal life except to say that she didn’t mix work with pleasure. Every Christmas she came along to the office meal, washed her food down with lemonade and left straight after the speeches. One miserable woman. One trustworthy woman. She didn’t socialise, mix or gossip. I’d never known her to slack off, get anything wrong or go out of her way to bring about someone’s demise. She was my best hope.
As I let myself into the back yard of the police station, I held the carrier bag and its contents at my side. Whether or not I had correctly judged Sandra Beckensale was about to become clear. There was a risk that something like this could get me kicked off Operation Guard, the most exciting investigation I was ever likely to work on, but I didn’t have a choice. I wouldn’t raise the question of whether my role was compromised, and would have to hope she wouldn’t either. That was my plan. It was poor.
I picked up two pairs of white plastic gloves from the store and climbed the two flights of dimly lit stairs to her office. A light was coming through the window. Pausing to catch my breath, I listened in case anyone else was working late. Not too unlikely in a twenty-four-hour police station. It was, however, that time of night when few CID officers were still working and the patrol officers were either in custody or out at calls. The building was quiet.
Sandra Beckensale looked up as I walked past the window towards her door. I knocked. It seemed the right thing to do even though she was looking straight at me. Her deadpan expression did not alter. She raised one hand to gesture to me to come in.
‘Sorry to bother you, Sandra,’ I said. The use of her first name probably alerted her to something out of the ordinary. That and my appearance late at night. I sat down, clutching my carrier bag. Realising what I was doing, I placed it on the desk. We both looked at it and then at one another.
‘Got a problem and I could really do with your advice,’ I said. A nod was my reply. She wasn’t going to make this easy, but at least she’d not said anything negative either.
‘When I got home today from work, these were waiting for me.’ I tipped the contents of the bag out and tossed her a pair of gloves. We sat for a couple of minutes going through the photographs, holding them by their edges with our gloved hands. From time to time she glanced up at me. I couldn’t read her expression.
At last she said, ‘Any idea who could have sent them or why?’
I shook my head. I’d have liked to say her features softened, but there was no alteration in her expression before she continued, ‘I’m going to log this, send them for fingerprints and get some enquiries under way to find out where and when they were posted.’
All of this I’d expected – you weren’t a police officer for very long at all before you knew this stuff – but just having someone listen to me, take me seriously and help me, meant a lot. The relief was enormous.
She picked up the phone. ‘I’m calling the DI – I want him to be aware of this – then I want you to go and get some sleep. You look like shit.’
I stood up to go.
‘Why don’t you stay at Laura’s tonight?’ she suggested. ‘She’s just about done here.’ I hadn’t realised that Laura was still on duty. Or that Beckensale actually cared.
Staying at Laura’s would have meant telling her about the photos. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed, though I did have a shocking Eighties perm in one or two of them; I just didn’t want to involve her and put her at risk. As yet, I
had no clue as to who could have done this or what motive they might have had. Who had a stalker for decades without knowing about them? I’d considered it being an elaborate prank by one of my friends, but the content of the photos was so diverse, and covered such a long period of time, that it was impossible for it to have been the responsibility of any one person I knew. My mum had burnt most of the family photographs years ago and had only kept a couple of me and my sister as kids. Even my own still intact collection did not cover the timescale. No one had immediately sprung to mind, from among past demons or new potential ones.
So I went home after seeing Sandra, locked the door, checked every window and cupboard, looked under beds, even took a torch up into the loft in case someone was waiting for me to turn out the light and go to sleep. I’d rather meet whoever it was head-on, I decided, than be woken at two in the morning with a hand over my mouth and a knife at my throat. I took one of my own kitchen knives with me on my check of the house. I wasn’t a total moron.
Satisfied I was alone, I reunited myself with my Merlot. I took the glass and knife up to the bath with me. Granted, it was difficult to wash my hair with one hand holding an eight-inch steak knife underwater against my leg, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
An uneventful bath and three units of alcohol later, I tried to get to sleep, but my mind was racing. Three murders in such a short time and so far they had nothing obvious linking them, except the killer. And now this.