Your Life or Mine

by Vicki Bradley

  Harding shook his head, sitting back down. ‘You won’t find anything.’ But as they searched the living room, his eyes followed them, watching their every move.

  Lena came in from the kitchen. ‘Mr Harding, why do you need five mobiles?’ Lena held up an evidence bag with the phones inside.

  ‘I just never get around to throwing them away when I get an upgrade. I should really.’ He shrugged.

  Kowalski came out of the kitchen and marched over to Harding. Loxton could tell by Kowalski’s strained movements that he was angry. ‘What’s this, then?’ Kowalski held up a piece of paper.

  Loxton moved closer. The sheet had Kowalski’s and Loxton’s home addresses scrawled on it.

  ‘What is it?’ Harding glanced at Kowalski and Loxton, panic spreading across his face. ‘I’ve never seen that before.’

  ‘It was on top of your kitchen cupboards, tucked away at the back,’ Kowalski said. ‘If it’s not yours, how did it get there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Harding shook his head. ‘I used to clean Walworth Police Station, but that was a few years back. Maybe it’s some old paperwork from back then. Or maybe you put it there?’ He pointed a finger at Kowalski. It was a good act, but Loxton had seen it all before. Suspects often cried police corruption when they were desperate.

  ‘Kevin, you’re under arrest for unauthorized access of a police computer under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and burglary,’ Kowalski said, giving him his rights.

  Loxton glanced at Harding. He’d broken into Walworth and taken their information. What had he been planning to do with it? Loxton saw Harding in a new light, and she felt her chest tighten in concern as she took in his large frame and cold eyes. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have stayed away. He could do some serious damage.

  They didn’t find anything else incriminating, but they took his laptop and phones anyway. Winter authorized a forensic team to check the flat, ordering forensic officers to use luminol to look for any traces of blood and to search for any evidence that any of the missing detectives had been in the flat.

  The police activity arose the neighbours’ interest, but none of them seemed to want to back up Harding, eyeing him suspiciously. Usually when someone was arrested from their home a neighbour would complain to the police or ask what was happening, but they stayed back, watching Harding warily in silence as he was taken away.

  Chapter 26

  Wednesday 2 February, 16:30

  The print-outs from Harding’s laptop so far did not make for good reading. He was in contact with a man calling himself ‘Szyman´ski’s Avenger’ on social media. Their conversations were disturbing, centring around Szyman´ski’s Avenger’s mission for the perfect kill.

  The conversation cited times of war as step-ups in mankind’s progression, naming the Cold War as the reason that humans made it to space. They both believed that through adversity man relied on his true nature and pushed the boundaries of what was possible to new levels. Survival of the fittest, nature’s way, had been hampered by civilization.

  Szyman´ski’s Avenger had praised Edward Barratt for continuing Szyman´ski’s original work and fantasized about breaking Barratt out of prison. Harding had been keen to assist and had successfully applied to start cleaning at Broadmoor Hospital. But no one could prove he’d been involved.

  DCI Winter, DI Meyer and Lena were watching Harding’s interview from the observation room so they could get the measure of him. Harding had opted for a solicitor, who occasionally mumbled that George Orwell’s thought police did not exist yet in English law, and that it wasn’t a crime to have peculiar opinions, even if they were rather distasteful.

  Loxton tried to probe Harding for more information on Szyman´ski’s Avenger, but it was hard to get him to talk. He was agitated, his eyes flicking to the door and back to Kowalski.

  ‘Who is Szyman´ski’s Avenger?’ she asked again.

  ‘I don’t know his real name,’ Harding said. ‘We’re just friends online. It’s just chat. We’re allowed to talk. It’s freedom of expression; it’s not illegal.’ He glanced at his lawyer, who nodded back at him encouragingly like a proud coach.

  ‘You’ve never spoken offline with this person?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘Only ever on the online forums.’

  ‘We’ve got some of those chats.’ She scanned the print-outs until she found the page which reminded her of the note in Emma’s hand. ‘What does “the war’s started” mean?’

  Harding looked surprised. ‘How did you get them?’

  ‘We can get on the darkweb too,’ she said.

  Harding sighed. ‘He just told me that the war’s started again. That one day I’ll be called on to act.’ A flicker of pride flashed across Harding’s face that he tried to hide, and his solicitor looked concerned at the turn of the conversation.

  ‘What war?’ she asked. Harding seemed to know something, although he was skirting around it, and she tried to control her impatience.

  ‘The war for men’s independence.’ Harding’s voice got impatient. ‘We’ve been cowed for too long, forced to adhere to liberals’ pathetic ideologies. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our masculinity. We’re physically and mentally stronger than women, yet we’re forced to step back and let them go first? That’s not equality. That’s slowing our species’ progression. It’s no wonder mental health issues are on the rise in men.’

  ‘You’re fighting that war on your own there,’ Kowalski said. ‘Most of us men live in the twenty-first century.’

  ‘You’re brainwashed,’ Harding mumbled, but then went quiet. He still seemed wary of Kowalski, which struck Loxton as strange, as Harding was physically as big as Dominik. What did he have to be nervous of?

  ‘Harding, you’re not here to give us a lecture on your prehistoric ideology,’ Loxton said. ‘You’re here to tell us what you know about Szyman´ski’s Avenger and breaking into Walworth Police Station.’ She failed to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She needed to stop him waffling his bullshit and get him to answer their questions.

  ‘I don’t know anything.’ Harding sounded less sure of himself now.

  ‘Was it Szyman´ski’s Avenger that asked you to get our personal details?’ Kowalski asked.

  Harding flicked his gaze to his hands for a second. Fidgeted nervously. If Loxton wasn’t too far off, Harding was scared of Szyman´ski’s Avenger. ‘No,’ he said reluctantly. ‘No, that was all me.’

  ‘Are you now saying that you did break into Walworth station?’ Kowalski asked. Harding wouldn’t meet Kowalski’s eye; he seemed to be closing down to being questioned.

  ‘Yes, it was me,’ Harding said, his voice quieter, as he clearly realized the implications of admitting what he’d done.

  ‘What were you going to do with our details?’ Kowalski asked, barely able to keep the anger out of his voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Harding shrugged. ‘I just wanted to know more about you both. That’s all. Loxton investigated Barratt and you investigated Szyman´ski back in the day. You interested me, on a purely theoretical level. You’re the people who caught them.’

  Kowalski leaned nearer to Harding and glared at him. ‘Kevin, that shit isn’t going to work on us. What were you going to do with our details?’

  Loxton studied Harding’s face. He looked anxious, like he was being pushed into a corner he didn’t want to be in.

  He shrugged. ‘I just wanted to see if I could break in and get your details. That’s all. It was kind of a challenge. Like an Ironman or something. It was stupid, I see that now.’

  ‘The court isn’t going to believe that and neither do we,’ Kowalski said. ‘I think Szyman´ski’s Avenger wanted those details. Did you send them to him? We’ll check your laptop.’

  Harding met Kowalski’s gaze but sweat beaded his forehead. ‘It was just a game. I didn’t know any policewomen had gone missing for real when I did it. I was just showing off to him, proving what I was capable of. We were just messing around. The police office
rs going missing have got nothing to do with us.’

  ‘You should answer “No Comment” from now on,’ the solicitor said, alarmed. The interview was taking an unexpected turn.

  ‘What do you mean, “you didn’t know any policewomen had gone missing for real”?’ Loxton leaned closer to Harding. ‘Is that something you and Szyman´ski’s Avenger discussed, making them go missing? Again, there’s no point in lying; we’ll see on your chat history on your computer.’

  ‘Again, I advise you to go “No Comment”,’ the solicitor said.

  Harding’s shoulders dropped and he closed his eyes briefly. ‘You’re going to see it anyway. We were just messing around. Joking about what we’d do if we caught us a couple of girl coppers. I wasn’t going to do it. Szyman´ski’s Avenger started the conversation, but it was just a fantasy, just locker-room chat. It wasn’t real. We both knew that.’

  The solicitor looked away from his client, a disgusted look on his face. He rearranged his features into concern and turned back to Harding. ‘You need to answer “No Comment” from now on.’

  ‘What did you say you’d do with the officers?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Harding looked uncomfortable. ‘Keep them alive for a few days, you know. Do what we wanted. Then kill them. But it wasn’t real. At least for me it wasn’t.’ He swallowed nervously, watching the door again, as if he expected someone to burst through it and attack him.

  ‘Where were you going to keep them?’ Loxton asked.

  Harding shrugged. ‘I don’t know. That’s the tricky bit. Barratt kept his victims in the London underground railway tunnels. But with all the work going on now, that would be impossible. I used to work in the sewers, straight after the army. I joked that we’d keep them there, like the shits they were. But you wouldn’t be able to do it. There’s always work going on there. We were just messing around. If you look on the internet, there’s loads of people talking shit. It doesn’t mean anything, otherwise they’d all be getting arrested, right?’

  Loxton hated to admit it, but without something more, he was right. It was all just internet chat and the behaviour of someone obsessed with serial killers and the officers who locked them up. Unless the technicians could find anything linking Harding to Emma, Sarah or Gabriella, or anything came up in his flat, it was looking likely that he’d only get charged with the minor burglary and misuse of a computer.

  ‘Before, when we were searching your flat, you denied ever seeing the page with our addresses on,’ Loxton said. ‘You accused DC Kowalski here of planting it, but now you seem quite happy to accept it was you. Why is that?’ Loxton tilted her head at Harding. Sometimes, when a suspect decided to admit to a crime so readily, it was because they were trying to hide something bigger.

  Harding shrugged again. His voice was quieter than it had been when he said, ‘I panicked in the flat, but there’s no point in lying. You’ll see it on the internet chat. I was only messing around by breaking into the police station, seeing if I still had it in me. I was in the army. SAS. I turned it into a mission. When you’ve been in the military, sometimes the lines of what’s normal get blurred. It didn’t seem like a big deal. Just a bit of a game to show Szyman´ski’s Avenger that I was who I said I was.’

  ‘Come on,’ Kowalski said. ‘That’s ridiculous. Nothing’s come back on you yet. If you were in the army, what’s your warrant number?’

  ‘W524378,’ Harding recited immediately. ‘I was in the army. SAS intelligence. You’ll find out soon enough. I got laid off a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Another misunderstanding, like at the hospital?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘Yeah, another misunderstanding.’ Harding folded his arms. ‘That’s all I can tell you. That’s all there is to it. It’s got nothing to do with these women going missing. I’m sorry that they have.’

  ‘What were you doing on Saturday through to Monday night?’ Loxton asked.

  Harding closed his eyes briefly, realizing the trouble he was in. ‘I didn’t do much really. I was just in my flat watching TV. And I went online a lot. You can check my internet history, right? And my mobile’s location. I’m unemployed at the moment. I’ve got no money. I don’t do much but play Call of Duty and hang out on online forums.’

  ‘Can you give us your passwords to your laptop and mobile?’ she asked. ‘To help us confirm your alibi that you were inside online?’

  Harding looked nervous. ‘I don’t remember them.’

  Loxton shook her head at him. ‘That’s not going to help your case.’

  The solicitor glanced at Harding’s face and saw the concern in his eyes. ‘If you can’t remember, you can’t remember,’ the solicitor said. ‘You don’t have to give them over.’

  ‘What about last Wednesday evening? Can you remember whether you were anywhere near Camberwell Police Station?’

  ‘Why would I go there? You can check the CCTV cameras; you won’t see me there. I was nowhere near.’

  They hadn’t seen anyone there, that was the problem, and Harding’s confidence made Loxton think that he knew that.

  ‘We wouldn’t find your fingerprints or DNA there, then, would we?’ she asked.

  ‘I did used to work there a few years ago,’ he said. ‘I was a cleaner.’

  He was clever. ‘And on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, where were you?’

  ‘I’ve told you; I spend most of my time in my flat these days. I might have gone to the shops at some point, maybe the off-licence down the road. But I was mostly inside. I’ve got nowhere to go. It’s hard at the moment. But that doesn’t mean… I’ve got nothing to do with those police officers going missing. I was in the army, for Christ’s sake. I wouldn’t hurt another officer.’

  ‘But you’d fantasized about it with strangers online,’ Loxton growled. She couldn’t keep the hate out of her voice as her hands balled into fists. Harding stared at her in surprise and glanced at Kowalski.

  ‘That’ll do for now,’ Kowalski said, throwing Loxton a warning look. ‘We’ll take a break, but we might need to ask you a few more questions. You won’t be going anywhere just yet.’

  Even the solicitor was looking at Loxton strangely, and she realized she’d overstepped the line. You were supposed to get suspects onside, try to get them to tell you things they didn’t mean to, and she’d just blown it by losing her temper. She nodded abruptly at Harding, got up and left the room. She strode down the corridor and turned left, and as soon as she was out of view, she closed her eyes and tried to calm the shaking rage inside her. It was all-consuming and she couldn’t stop it. She’d wanted to kill him. She needed to get a grip.

  Loxton went back to the CID office to wait for Kowalski while he finished up in custody. The lab were struggling to hack into Harding’s computer and mobile without his passwords, but they had prioritized it and were doing their best to see what was on there. They’d managed to access some of the chat, but the deleted data would take a few days. Of course, that was where the interesting stuff would be.

  Loxton was so tired. Interviews always took something out of her, but this one was different. The thought that Harding had acted out his fantasies on Emma and that Sarah and Gabriella were still out there was too much.

  Kowalski came and sat next to her in the office. ‘I’ll type up the interview. We’ve got enough to charge him for the burglary and misuse of computers, but there isn’t anywhere near enough to charge him for Emma’s murder or Sarah’s and Gabriella’s disappearances. We’re going to need something more. There’s no offence yet for expressing unpleasant sexual fantasies, however sick.’

  ‘There should be,’ Loxton said. Kowalski couldn’t understand; he wasn’t the one who felt threatened. No one was going to kidnap and hurt him.

  ‘Dominik, you need to tell me more about Szyman´ski,’ Loxton said. ‘I need to know everything.’

  Kowalski sighed and rubbed his temples. ‘Every time a serial killer strikes in Britain, people bring up Jack the Ripper. In America, it’s Charles
Manson. Well, in Poland it’s Krystian Szyman´ski. These killers just become popular folklore. Harding’s just come up with an imaginary second person to try to distract us. But you’re right: if Harding is being inspired by Szyman´ski, then it’s helpful to know the background.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She needed to understand what Szyman´ski’s relevance was in all of this. If Harding was telling the truth, Szyman´ski’s Avenger was still out there.

  Chapter 27

  Wednesday 2 February, 18:28

  Lena looked at Loxton and Kowalski concerned. ‘I don’t like this. Szyman´ski’s Avenger. I thought I’d seen the last of Krystian Szyman´ski when he died, but now there’s this guy. I was at Szyman´ski’s funeral to make sure it really was that bastard they buried.’ Lena shook her head.

  ‘It was him, wasn’t it?’ Kowalski asked, for a moment looking unsure. Loxton realized that Szyman´ski was Kowalski’s Barratt. He hated to talk about him as much as Loxton did Barratt.

  ‘It was him all right,’ Lena said. ‘There was an open coffin – not that anyone could pay their respects; the ceremony was closed to the public. Only family were allowed, but I was the only person there. Even his mother didn’t turn up. She suffers with Alzheimer’s, and I’d never normally say this, but it was a blessing for her. She lives in the past, way before she knew the truth about her only son.’

  Loxton felt cold when she thought of Szyman´ski’s mother. What must it be like to find out that your child is a monster? There could be no worse pain.

  ‘I’m not buying this Szyman´ski’s Avenger thing,’ Kowalski said. ‘It’s either some troll on the internet who happens to have picked Szyman´ski’s surname as his tag and isn’t relevant, or Harding’s just made him up. Loxton’s convinced the Szyman´ski murders are relevant to our current case.’

  ‘I think Alana’s right, it’s too much of a coincidence,’ Lena said. ‘And if Szyman´ski is the inspiration for Emma’s murder and these abductions, then there may be a specific pattern the killer’s following motivated by the way Szyman´ski murdered his victims. It might help us work out where he’s been keeping the bodies.’