The Career Killer

by Ali Gunn

  She perused the list which had been printed out as a giant table. Each property had a score in each column. Proximity to the Robertson family home in Mayfair, presence of CCTV, garage, crime reports on file, and availability this evening. Twelve targets met all the criteria that Bertie had outlined. Another twenty-six met all but one of the criteria. That gave them thirty-eight plausible targets and those were only properties they knew about. It was entirely possible that James Robertson had also been using other short-term rental websites, other profiles on StayAway, or even sites like Gumtree or Facebook to find places.

  Even with her team of volunteers, it was a daunting task to cover them all. She made a quick call. The top twelve would go to her core team, Knox, Stryker and her. Ozzy’s team would take any they couldn’t cover. Yohann was coordinating for them while Ozzy ran point on keeping tabs on Joshua Robertson.

  Fairbanks – who until now Elsie hadn’t seen loitering by the door – would get the least likely properties. She couldn’t exclude him entirely from the operation without seeming petty, but she’d be damned if she was going to trust that muppet with her case. If his entire team came in, they could easily cover twenty of those low priority properties on their own.

  Stryker came up to her. ‘Got a plan?’

  ‘Yep, I think so.’ She’d have to make arbitrary allocations of the properties in the middle, and they’d have to be totally on it to manage to cover all twelve of the top tier properties themselves. She’d then have to make sure everyone was properly kitted out with radio, door ram, stab proof vests and everything else they might need to confront a violent serial killer.

  ‘Then let’s do this thing.’

  Chapter 59: Him Again

  Life in the West End suited Tara Davenport except when she lost her weekends trying to cajole yet another uptight actor or actress into doing the work they’d already agreed to do. Despite working all day Saturday, the New Years’ production of A Life in Ravensburg was proving the worst thing that she had ever project managed. They were two weeks away from press night and every second was precious.

  The latest snafu was with an actor who was well past his sell-by date. He’d spent years on the telly and had brought his ego with him to the theatre. Her boss, the theatre’s creative director, was on the phone as she tried to wrap up after the evening show.

  ‘He’s just going to ask again,’ she said. This particular actor kept asking for “favours”. One minute it was a simple rider addition asking for a bowlful of Skittles with all the yellow ones removed. Then he wanted to tweak a line of dialogue. Pushing it, but still doable. Tonight, he wanted extra money for a taxi to work because it was icy out. It was mid-December in England. What did he expect?

  By the time she was off the phone – and the actor had his complimentary taxi in the bag thanks to a pushover of a creative director – she was knackered and in dire need of a cigarette.

  The fire exit on the other side of the corridor from her office led out to the theatre’s tiny staff car park. It felt like a stretch calling it that. Really it was a space big enough for two cars and the mix of recycling and refuse bins that the theatre filled to the brim every night during the post-show clean-up. An alleyway ran down the side of the building so the council could wheel the bins away before morning.

  The door clicked shut behind her. She was finally done for the day. Once she had parked herself in a dry corner away from the drizzle of the rain and the smell of the bins, she lit her cigarette and took a long drag.

  ‘Hard day?’ a voice said out of the darkness.

  She knew that voice. Ice ran through her veins. It was him.

  He appeared from the pitch-black darkness of the alleyway, his broad frame blocking off any possibility of simply walking away.

  It was impossible to stop her voice trembling as she replied. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to win you back,’ he said simply without a trace of irony in his tone. ‘I love you, Tara. You know that.’

  He’s crazy, she thought. Her mobile phone weighed heavily in her pocket. She wished she could call the police, her parents, anyone. Should she yell or scream? Would he be the nice, kind man she’d first met? Or the psychopath he’d proved himself to be? Was he Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde tonight?

  ‘I...’

  ‘Shh,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘Don’t say anything yet. Please just hear me out, okay? You owe me that.’

  Inwardly she chanted, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone. Outwardly she nodded. What choice did she have? ‘I know you’ve had it tough, Tara. Depression... well, it’s a black hole. I know you pushed me away because of it. I’m here because I want you to know that I still care, that you’re my everything.’

  ‘Three weeks, James,’ Tara said. ‘That’s how long we dated. You don’t even know me.’

  ‘I do know you. I know that I love you, that we’re meant to be,’ James said.

  He really had lost it – if he’d ever had it to begin with. The superficial charm had lasted no more than a week. It seemed like everything she knew about him was a lie. The big beautiful house he’d showed her on their third date had been his brother’s, the car likewise, and as for his “degree from Oxford”, surely nobody counted a foundation degree from Oxford Brookes.

  James reached out to touch her lightly on the arm. She recoiled. ‘Don’t be scared. I know. I know you, Tara. I know you hide in the theatre late every night so you don’t have to go home to an empty flat. I know you’re throwing yourself into your morning gym sessions to fill every waking so you don’t have to spend a moment alone – without me – and I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to be alone ever again. I’m going to be with you for the rest of your life.’

  She had backed away so far that her back was now pressed firmly against solid brick. He inched ever closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his rank breath.

  ‘Stop, James, stop!’ Tara said. ‘We’ve been broken up now for two months. Why are you coming back now?’

  ‘Because nobody compares to you. Come with me. Just to talk somewhere private.’

  A scream caught in her throat. Though she’d never seen it first-hand, she knew he was capable of turning violent. He got this cold, glazed-over and detached look in his eyes whenever he was angry. It was a quiet, burning rage that simmered just beneath the surface.

  ‘I can’t,’ Tara said. ‘Not tonight, okay? This can wait ‘til the morning, can’t it?’

  He pressed closer still, so close that she could almost feel the stiffness of his beard as it grazed her skin. His breath hung in the cold winter air, tepid and foul.

  With a long, slow shake of his head, he laughed. ‘No, it can’t wait, Tara. I’m done with waiting. The rest of our lives together starts here and now. Come with me. My car is parked up around the corner.’

  She knew exactly where he meant. There was a small car parking space at the end of the alleyway between the buildings. She needed to get past him to reach civilisation so that she could signal her distress to a passer-by.

  Before she could protest, he had seized her arm and begun to steer her down the alleyway.

  Despite every fibre of her being yelling that she should run, should flee, should fight, she seized up. She meekly allowed herself to be marched towards his car, the scream still caught in her throat. She knew that one misstep, one word in anger, one failed attempt to flee, and she’d be a goner.

  For the last time in her life, she climbed into his car.

  Chapter 60: Downfall

  As Elsie drove past the homes which she’d assigned herself, a cluster of three properties in zone one centred on King’s Cross, her mind ran in circles. The logistics of this manhunt were proving problematic. There were too many targets, too many teams, and she had no way of keeping on top of what everyone was doing at any given moment.

  Warrants were another massive obstacle. She had the right, in law, to enter a property in “close pursuit” of someone she believed had committed,
or attempted to commit, a serious crime.

  While “close pursuit” wasn’t quite as narrow as it sounded, Elsie couldn’t possibly argue that she was in pursuit of the same suspect at dozens of residences. She had support staff trying to find the homeowners’ contact details so they could simply ask permission to enter the properties but without that, she’d find it hard to justify taking a big red key to the front doors of dozens of very posh homes. No doubt she’d be dealing with the compensation claim fallout for months.

  Sometimes the rules had to be bent.

  The twelve most likely targets were those she was keen to focus on. These were the grandiose homes that the Lady Killer hadn’t yet robbed. Or so they thought. It was entirely possible that some of these thefts had gone unnoticed, that others had been noticed but not reported, or that the report was, for whatever reason, not on the system. Police records were imperfect and smart criminals knew that they could ride the border between police boroughs to stay under the radar. A burglary in Chesham at the end of the Metropolitan Line would only be reported to the Thames Valley Police. Elsie hoped that wasn’t the case here. The Lady Killer seemed to operate in a very small geographic area that primarily covered zone one and nibbled at the edges of zone two.

  She pulled over and grabbed her phone. ‘Knox, any sign of him your end?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Knox said. ‘This feels like a waste of time.’

  It did. Knox was assigned to four high-priority properties. One of those was near St Paul’s, the other just to the east in Aldgate. Hers were the nearest to St Dunstan. They were also the busiest roads with ANPR cameras everywhere. Assuming the killer kept his car, he’d probably be avoiding the cameras.

  ‘Stick with it, Knox. We can’t afford to have a single property unwatched.’

  ‘I know...’

  There was an unspoken “but” hanging in the air. Stick too close to the properties, the killer would never show. Too far away, they’d never see him. It was a delicate balancing act.

  ‘He’s got to be out there somewhere,’ Elsie said. ‘He’s been forced from his home. We know he has to find somewhere to lay low and these rental properties make the most sense.’

  ‘What if he’s gone to ground in a hotel?’ Knox said. ‘Or he’s sleeping in his car? Or he’s ditched everything and started begging on the streets? We’d never find him if he did that.’

  ‘He can’t hide forever. We’re watching his brother after all. Nobody can stay away from family indefinitely.’

  As she said it, she thought of the infamous case of Lord Lucan who had done just that. Could James Robertson also disappear without a trace?

  ‘Okay,’ Knox said. She sounded sceptical.

  ‘I’m going to check in with the others. Call me if you find anything.’

  She hung up, exhaled, and looked once more at the big house in Argyle Square. To her right was a public garden, lit only by a couple of dim streetlights. It was a similar scene to that of St Dunstan. The only security was a metal fence that barely came up to chest height. There were even benches arrayed haphazardly around the garden, reminiscent of those at both crime scenes.

  As she waited, a traffic warden ambled along, checking the cars ahead of her for parking permits. She was about to drive off, circle back around, and head for the other house once again when the thought struck her – Benches. Both the dump sites had benches.

  Is that what they’d been missing? Why had the killer chosen places with wooden benches? It couldn’t just be coincidence and it couldn’t be something as simple as a bad back. The killer had lugged bodies around seemingly without breaking stride.

  She dialled Uncle Bertie.

  ‘Elsie, how’s it going?

  ‘Benches. Could they be a big part of his compulsion?’

  She could just picture his wizened old face blinking as he carefully considered. When he spoke, he did so in a plodding voice. It sounded like he was carefully choosing each and every word one at a time, deliberating over every syllable. Elsie knew better. It meant that he was trying to think and talk at the same time, his mind racing one sentence ahead of his brain.

  ‘We did discuss they might be a part of the compulsion, didn’t we?’ Bertie said. He seemed to be straining to recall the crime scene photos. Unlike Elsie, he hadn’t personally visited either of them. ‘Hmm... I had come to the conclusion that the benches were probably just incidental to dumping the bodies in gardens. They’re everywhere after all.’

  It was true that London had an enormous number of benches. All along the Thames, there were benches. In every park, there were benches. A brainwave came to her. Could it be that simple?

  ‘Uncle, could the layout of the benches have significance?’

  ‘Remind an old man how they were arranged?’

  ‘They were laid out in a circle, all facing each other like the numerals on a clock. They weren’t identical though. In Chelsea, there were three while St Dunstan in the East had a total of eight benches in the lower garden.’

  ‘What about the would-be dump site, the nearest garden to the Holland Park crime scene?’ Bertie asked. ‘Are there benches arranged in a circle there?’

  Elsie strained to think. An image of the Lord Holland memorial flashed into her mind. It was a tiny corner of a very large park but she was pretty sure there were benches laid out around it. A quick Google confirmed they were sort of laid out in a circle. It was an imperfect shape but it was enough to fit the pattern. Bertie kept on the line, waiting with bated breath.

  ‘Just checked,’ she said. ‘Yep, another circle of benches.’

  Three crime scenes, three instances of benches in a circle.

  ‘And did the benches have anything else in common?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, he always picked benches on the western side of the crime scene, the one placed at roughly nine on the clock face.’

  ‘Then I think,’ Bertie said cautiously, ‘you’re onto something. We thought before that it was gardens that mattered, that a garden somewhere had particular significance for the Lady Killer. What if we were erroneous in that assumption? What if it’s the benches that matter and they just happen to most commonly be found inside London’s gardens? Which of your possible StayAway rentals has such a formation nearby?’

  That was the million-dollar question, one which required an outstanding knowledge of London to answer. There were far too many possibilities to look for on Google Maps.

  With time running out, she needed to ask someone who knew better than she did. She needed to swallow her pride and call Dad.

  THE BOSS HAD THEM DRIVING around all evening. The later it got, the less hopeful Stryker became. It was one thing to keep an eye out for a man in broad daylight. It was another to try and find a black car in the dark of winter. Several times since sunset, he’d pulled a black car over only to realise on closer inspection that it wasn’t even an Audi A8. He could forgive himself not being able to catch a number plate from a quick glance in the darkness but mistaking a Fiat hatchback for a luxury sedan was an error born of tiredness. Every time, he’d waved the driver off after the briefest of chats, his eyes darting around in case the Lady Killer had appeared in the meantime and seen Stryker. The drivers he’d stopped probably thought he was a lunatic.

  The boss had come to the conclusion that benches were the key. She’d started listing places close to gardens with benches arranged in circles, cross-referencing them against the full eighty-odd strong list of StayAway properties. Places which had previously been top priority were demoted as benches became the defining characteristic. It was, in Stryker’s mind, madness. Why would the killer be driven by the need to leave the body on a bench? He’d never heard of anything like it.

  Nevertheless, an order was an order, and the boss had told him to prioritise places with benches. It was gone six when he found the first circle of benches near one of the StayAway properties. It wasn’t a property that he’d have paid much attention to before. For a start, it was a flat. The killer hadn’t
ever used a flat as a crime scene, presumably because noises carried through the paper-thin walls of most London rabbit hutches.

  It was in Kennington Park. He’d picked it by trawling Street View on Google Maps and looking for anywhere that might fit the pattern. While Google had been right that there were benches, Stryker had neglected to check the perimeter carefully enough. It was only when he was standing in front of the five-foot-tall fence running around the outside of Kennington Park that he ruled it out. There was no easy way to get there from the flat being rented out on StayAway in nearby St Agnes Place. Doing it while carrying a body would be difficult and doing it without being seen would be a million to one shot. Dozens of flats overlooked the route.

  Strike one. He hoped the rest of the team was doing better.

  Chapter 61: Going Around in Circles

  Like the others, Knox was driving around in circles. Throughout the evening, she’d been in contact with everyone. Ozzy’s team were watching the killer’s brother. It seemed that he was too smart to make a move straight away. He’d spent most of Saturday in his office, made no calls as far as they were aware, and headed home by cab as evening approached.

  The team was beginning to tire. Despite DCI Mabey’s insistence, aided and abetted by the old profiler, that the killer was losing control and would strike again imminently, the volunteers thought it unlikely. Fairbanks’ team had long since knocked off after a few hours of driving around in circles and, as eight o’clock was fast approaching, Knox was tempted to join them. This whole manhunt was an exercise in futility.

  Forget benches. It couldn’t be something that simple. Knox’s first thought had been of St Paul’s Cathedral. On the southern edge, by St Paul’s Churchyard, there was a tiny raised dais behind the fence. Did that count as a garden? Knox had dismissed it almost instantly – the killer wasn’t some sort of ninja. He had been lucky at Chelsea Physic Garden and St Dunstan in the East. Even on this grey, drab, gloomy evening, someone would see him if he attempted to dump a body at St Paul’s.