No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (55 page)

“The therapy had some limited success, but fast forward four years and Michael is working in Reading. He loses control again. Again, he gets away with it. But he says that he felt revulsion for what he had become and started to blame his father. Moving back to the family farm, he underwent counselling again, this time with a local priest, and was advised that he should seek to reconcile his relationship with his father to move on.”

“Bloody amateur.”

“Exactly. It was the worst thing that he could have suggested. God only knows what he picked up from him. We know that he shares his old man’s phobia of prison — that’s why he carried that small bottle of cyanide; whether or not Cameron had any influence over his son or aided him directly, we’ll probably never know. The shrinks reckon he really does believe that his urges weren’t his fault. He’s successfully managed to shift all the blame, mentally, onto his father.”

“So I guess using his father as a scapegoat for his own actions makes a kind of perverted sense.”

“Exactly. He even planned his father’s death, figuring that with Cameron seemingly on the run, he would be able to continue to indulge himself and let his father take the fall.”

Naseem shook his head in disbelief. “Surely he knew that it couldn’t last for ever. What were his long-term plans?”

Warren shrugged. “That we don’t know. We’re not sure he really knows. We found a notebook with jottings and observations about his various victims; presumably that was how he planned his attacks. There were some vague scribblings in there that indicated he might have been eyeing up some other potential targets, but they are too ambiguous to identify the women he was stalking. I don’t suppose it really matters now.”

“No, I don’t suppose it does. Besides, what would we do if we could identify them? Can you imagine how those poor women would feel if we told them?”

Warren nodded; he’d had similar thoughts himself.

“So how did he select his victims? Not all of them were at that sports centre.”

“Stockley has a long association with the football team and Alex Chalmers knew him through the Royal Mail, from years back. When Royal Mail bought into World Wide Parcel Logistics, Stockley moved sideways into WWPL. The depot shares offices with the Middlesbury sorting office and so he stayed where he is. Workers at the office are so used to seeing him around that he pretty much has the run of the place. I believe that he found out about Angus Carroway’s little vehicle-hire business and helped himself. Robbie Cartwright didn’t recognise his photo because technically he isn’t a Royal Mail employee and so doesn’t appear on their staff database. It never occurred to me to ask for a printout of everybody that worked in the building.”

Naseem shrugged. “Why would it?”

“Anyway, Alex Chalmers asked if he could get WWPL to sponsor the team. They did and Stockley started coming along to some of the games. He was never a football player himself and so he doesn’t appear on the fixture lists or anything.

“According to the Reverend Harding and Cameron’s probation officer, Stockley has always had problems making friends, but the team was happy to have him along. A cynic might point out that you welcome your sponsor with open arms, especially when he always gets the first round in.” Warren indicated that it didn’t matter.

“Nobody at the sports centre knew of his connection to Richard Cameron of course and he kept it that way. As he socialised with them he met Darren Blackheath’s girlfriend Sally Evans and Chalmer’s then girlfriend Carolyn Patterson.

“Looking back on it, people we’ve interviewed say that he was always a bit weird around them, and women in general. A bit too attentive to them, perhaps. But nothing too extreme, and you don’t want to offend the team sponsor by asking him not to be so nice to your girlfriend.”

“Reading the report, Alex Chalmers stopped playing over two years ago — surely Stockley wasn’t planning to rape these poor girls back that far?”

Warren shook his head. “Very doubtful. We think that his father’s release last year was the action that caused everything to fall into place. Maybe something happened; there are suggestions that his father abused him as a child. He won’t say and obviously we can’t ask Cameron — we found him buried in the farthest field with an axe in the back of his head, just like Stockley told us. Regardless, when he decided to choose his targets, it was obvious for him to go after women that he’d been somewhat obsessed with.”

Naseem placed his empty coffee cup on the desk and leant back in his chair.

“So, what about the other victims?”

“Saskia Williams had been a casual gym user for years. No direct link to the football team, but they could have crossed paths. Gemma Allen was just very unlucky. She worked in the Costcutter around the corner from the sorting office where staff would go for a paper or whatever. Physically, they both fall into both father and son’s preferred type. Blonde, slim to average build, twenties and pretty — a bit vague, but line up their photos and you can see the similarities. Interestingly, you can also put a photo of Angie Cameron — Stockley’s mother — in that group.”

Naseem grimaced. “Let’s leave that one to the psychologists, shall we? What about his last victim, Jemima Duer? How is she, by the way?”

“Physically, she’s fine. Tony Sutton got the chloroform rag off her before she suffocated fully and kept her warm until the ambulance arrived. She was unconscious from a blow to the head, but escaped serious injury. Psychologically though…time will tell. Again, she simply seems to have caught Stockley’s eye on several occasions as she waited for the bus. He worked out her routine, which stayed essentially the same even when her dad started picking her up.”

“So tell me, what was it that finally made you realise that it was Stockley and not his father?” Naseem now looked excited; this was what he was most interested in.

“It’s hard to say, but something that always nagged me was his confession to having given his father a false alibi for the nights that Sally Evans and Carolyn Patterson were taken. He said that he panicked and so claimed that his father was asleep in bed. That matched his father’s alibi, of course. However, if you think about it, if Cameron really was giving us a false alibi and his son made up one, then what were the odds that they’d give the same one? Especially since they both implied that he had ‘gone to bed early’ in other words it was a bit unusual. I figured that there must have been some sort of agreement between them, which meant that Stockley was at least guilty of conspiracy, if not an active participant.

“Of course, we know now that Stockley was slipping his old man a sleeping pill on the nights he needed to go out. We found an old pot of prescription tablets going right back to when his mother was ill. That opened my mind to the possibility that Stockley was less than honest, although at the time I hadn’t really thought it through.

“Something else that bothered me was how an older man who entered prison with little education in 1998 could use a computer in such a sophisticated manner. He even erased his Internet browsing history. I spoke to his probation officer and he said that Cameron did basic literacy and numeracy courses as part of his rehabilitation, but as a sex offender was taught only the most basic computer skills — he had no access to the Internet.

“What we now believe was that Stockley set up the computer and knew his father’s password and used his account to surf for porn and plan the attacks. He erased the Internet history to stop his old man realising what he was doing — assuming that he even used the computer. He might even have known that we would be able to trace his surfing history even with the cleared browsing history and so did it to make our discoveries seem more authentic.”

“Well, he’s certainly a crafty bastard, I’ll give him that,” mused Naseem.

“Then there was the matter of his slipping up and leaving a sample of semen with both Gemma Allen and Saskia Williams after he’d successfully left no traces previously. Bad luck or fatalism, perhaps, but it niggled me. Then I had a conversation with Melanie Clearwater, the prostitute attacked and left for dead. She remembered being picked up by a younger man as a treat for an older man, who she thought may be related to him. He was very insistent that the older man had a happy ending, so to speak, even to the point of checking the wastebasket afterwards. At the time, I thought we might be dealing with a separate attacker and so didn’t immediately join the dots.”

“But you were open to the possibility that Stockley was guilty of at least something?”

“Yes, but he muddied the waters quite successfully in the beginning. He knew about Darren Blackheath’s past problems with the law and he was also aware of Alex Chalmer’s reputation for hitting women. He guessed that we would follow those leads — no smoke without fire and all that.”

“And the Royal Mail van and Angus Carroway’s little vehicle-hire operation just pointed the finger even more clearly. Bit of a gamble though — surely there was a risk that we would follow it back to him?”

“Calculated risk, I suppose.”

“So, is he insane?”

“That’s beyond my pay-grade, sir, but in my opinion he’s one sick bunny.”

The two men sat for a moment in contemplative silence.

“Well, you did well, Warren. There will be lessons to be learnt as always and a few voices asking why we didn’t do things differently, but twenty-twenty hindsight is a wonderful thing.

“From a personal perspective, I’d rather my officers were a little less inclined to go running into a darkened forest after a serial killer without back-up. But all’s well that ends well, I suppose.”

Warren said nothing. The grapevine suggested that ACC Naseem had run into his own fair share of darkened forests when still on the beat and he was grateful that he didn’t have to endure another earful about his rather rash decision. Susan had gone ballistic when she’d picked him up from the hospital that night, and the following day he’d received another dressing-down from Bernice.

“On a more serious note, you were very lucky, Warren. Your carelessness by the river could have cost you your career.” Warren blinked in surprise. Naseem continued, his eyes crinkling slightly.

“Apparently the cyanide bottle didn’t break when you threw it away. I can downplay your heroics in the forest and DI Sutton’s over-enthusiastic driving style; however, the Chief Constable is an obsessive fisherman and Forensics reckon there was enough poison in there to wipe out half the trout in the river.”

The End

Acknowledgements:

Phew, that ‘difficult second novel’ wasn’t as difficult as I feared! And again, that’s in large part down to my wonderful family and friends who help and encourage me in everything. Whether they proof-read drafts, gave me their thoughts on extracts that I sent them or just said something really interesting that I shamelessly pinched…

As always, there are too many to list you all, but a few stand out. Again, my father and Lawrence proof-read the complete manuscript, corrected my grammar and gave me their thoughts. My favourite lawyers Dan and Caroline gave me sound legal advice and an insight into custody procedures. I am also extremely grateful to Crime Scene Investigator Lee Robson from Essex police, who’s description of the procedures and day-to-day working practise of the folks in white suits has been invaluable. I apologise sincerely for any errors or artistic liberties taken to advance the story.

And finally, a big thank you to Father David Barry who not only double-checked the authenticity of a key chapter, but also helped make my little sister’s wedding such a perfect day!

As always, the support and friendship of Hertford Writers’ Circle has been wonderful and I appreciate the fact that nobody reported me to the authorities for turning up each month with a new description of a grisly murder…

And finally, the editorial team and staff at CarinaUK and Harlequin, in particular Helen, Lucy and Victoria for their hard work on this and
The Last Straw
.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimer:

The town of Middlesbury, Middlesbury CID and all characters featured in this book are entirely fictional and not intended to represent any real-world individuals or organisations. It is also important to stress that whilst Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Constabularies are real organisations, they are not in any way affiliated to this book and the way that they are represented in this book is entirely imaginary.