Her Silent Obsession: An addictive and gripping crime thriller (Detective Arla Baker Series Book 6)

by ML Rose

  Just like him, there were many who bore their burden in silence. Just like him, they didn’t know how to make sense of it, or who to speak to.

  Maybe he should’ve sought help earlier, but it was too late now. Too late to turn the tide that had borne him down this river of blood, consumed his senses, made him who he was now.

  And Rebecca?

  He shook his head. Despite his emotional closeness to her, she strengthened his belief in the inherent coldness of human nature. People were cruel. Only the fittest survived, and they did so by killing others. Rebecca had killed the last crumbs of love that were alive in him. After her, he vowed he would never try to gain the trust, or love, of another human being again.

  Instead, he would make sure that certain human beings never lived to see the light of day.

  Rhys looked at the three envelopes on the table, addressed to three individuals. These envelopes contained his manifesto. Rhys had written down how to detect a child sexual abuser like Grant. In his opinion, any famous person with access to children was a predator unless proven otherwise. Why? Because, like him, the children didn’t have a voice. They could never say anything. Even if they did, no one would believe them.

  He felt a knife plunge deep into his chest, and misery darkened his mind, blotting out the sunlight. He, too, had wanted to speak to someone. He’d wanted to tell his mother. But she was so gloriously happy at the complete transformation of their lives, she wouldn’t have listened even if Rhys had found the courage to tell her.

  Rhys walked to the wardrobe in the corner, next to the bed. He opened the door and knelt, carefully pulling out a black briefcase. He snapped it open and stared at the tubular structures inside it. Both were sawn-off plumbing pipes, available at any plumbing hardware store. They were stuffed inside with the chemical that Rhys had made, and connected by wires and blasting caps to mobile phones strapped to the outside. They were close replicas of the IED he had used on Jeremy’s car.

  He shut the briefcase quickly when he heard footsteps outside. They walked down the stairs, not disturbing him. He listened for a while. He rented this loft room above a Pakistani butcher shop in Tooting for several months of the year. He always paid with cash and used a fake name. He wore a fake beard, and covered his short hair with a skullcap, pretending to be a Muslim for the Pakistani landlord. He was never asked any questions. Rhys had spent four months as a squaddie, as a British lance corporal was known, in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. He had picked up a few words of Urdu, and used them liberally when he spoke to his landlord.

  This room was one of four places Rhys had scattered around southwest London. He also rented an apartment in Hounslow, ten minutes’ drive from Heathrow. He’d paid cash for that as well, and as those parts of London were now heavily populated by Polish and other Eastern European immigrants, he had used a Polish name. Rhys was good at picking up identities. He searched the birth and death registry for children who had died at the age of one year. He applied for their birth certificates, pretending to be a relative. He used that birth certificate to get himself a passport. From there, it was easy to create a life story, and hoodwink people into believing him. He used to be an actor, after all.

  Rhys smiled to himself. Using one of his identities, it had been easy to register himself with a doctor in Godalming. A doctor whose name Rhys remembered from the last time he had been to Grant Stone’s house. Grant had a urine infection, and the doctor had come to do a home visit.

  Rhys had sweet-talked one of the receptionists and found out Grant still attended the surgery. He was in his sixties now, and understandably, his visits to the doctor had increased.

  He attended occasionally to see the nurse, in the winter. One day, while sitting in the waiting room with a newspaper in front of his face, Rhys saw him. Grant looked surprisingly good for his age. His skin looked fresh and young, probably the result of a facelift. He had a full head of hair and looked at least a decade younger than the sixty-five years he was.

  Rhys remembered how Grant never got his face tanned while he was on holidays. Getting tanned from the neck down was fine, but sunlight on the face made a person look older. The memory of that casual conversation made Rhys’s hands tremble as he watched Grant now.

  His tormentor sat down on the other side of the waiting room and proceeded to read from a magazine. Rhys had his fake beard on and was wearing a baseball cap and glasses. He knew Grant wouldn’t recognise him. Grant had to wait far less time than the other mortals in the waiting room. The moment Grant walked in and sat down, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, the whispers began. He was still instantly recognisable.

  When Grant was called in, Rhys rose and left. He was shaken, disturbed at having seen Grant again. Slowly, the conviction had grown.

  Grant Stone must pay.

  *****

  Rhys put the three envelopes inside the black briefcase, snapped it shut, and locked it. He checked his beard and moustache in the mirror, making sure they were fixed on correctly. He put the skullcap on, which he would replace later with a baseball cap. He had a pair of glasses inside his coat pocket. He put the backpack on his shoulder and picked up the briefcase, then locked the room and went out.

  CHAPTER 40

  Harry switched off the BMW engine and then put a restraining hand on Arla’s left arm. “I don’t think you should go in there. You heard what Darren said.”

  Uniformed Inspector Darren Clark was in charge of the crime scene at Martha Smith’s house. Arla had just switched the speakerphone off, after Darren had filled them in with the grisly details.

  Arla lifted her chin and squinted at him. “Because I’m too delicate?”

  Harry rolled his eyes and huffed. His large right hand became a fist, and he rubbed his knuckles on his thigh. “Damn it, Arla. You know what I mean.”

  Arla reached out a hand and caressed the side of Harry’s smooth cheeks, feeling the hard bunch of his jaw muscles. She wanted to pull him towards her and give him a kiss, but they were on duty.

  “Can I tell you something?” she said.

  It was Harry’s turn to squint at her, raising his eyebrows. He cleared his throat. “What?”

  Arla slid her hand down his neck, massaging it lightly. Her facial expression softened as she leaned forward, smelling his dense, musky pinewood aftershave. “If you can push another body out from your own, Harry, it gives you a strength no man will ever possess.”

  Harry stared at her blankly for a few seconds. Then he blinked and shook his head. He lifted both palms and slapped them down on his thighs. “So stubborn.” He spoke almost to himself.

  “But also true,” Arla said, smiling. “Don’t worry about me. SOC are there already, so a lot of the goriness must be contained. That will stop you from fainting.”

  Harry snorted. A slow grin appeared on his face as his eyelids hooded. “A red-blooded man like me doesn’t faint, sweetheart. It’s actually you who fainted once when you came so hard—”

  Heat fanned Arla’s face and she smacked Harry on the chest. “Stop that, now!”

  Harry grinned and got out of the car, then came round and opened the door. Three squad cars were parked in front of them. Blue and white tape stretched around the house and the road had been cordoned off. Darren was standing on the pavement, thumbs hooked into his chest rig, his radio squawking in his breast pocket.

  “Rough in there, guv.” Darren was a veteran of the London Met. He had seen his fair share of gruesome scenes. From his sunken, white cheeks and listless eyes, Arla knew Darren was shaken. He had two school-aged children, and had been first on the scene. Arla reached out and touched his shoulder.

  “Thanks for securing the scene, Darren. Has Dr Banerjee arrived?”

  “Yup, they’re all in there.”

  A white tent had been set up on the road. A uniformed constable wrote down Arla and Harry’s names on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard, and they both signed.

  Inside the tent, they put on shoe covers, gloves, a
nd surgical masks. A forensics officer Arla hadn’t seen before was putting on his blue Tyvek suit. When she came out of the tent, she saw the blue plastic duck boards that were laid all the way up to the front door, and then in the hallway. She could see a couple of blue-coated figures kneeling on the kitchen floor. She looked at the duck boards in distaste. She was wearing flats, but she still hated walking on them.

  “Come on, hold my hand,” Harry said, moving ahead of her.

  Harry shielded Arla’s view of the scene. She took a deep breath and shifted to one side.

  The scene was a ghastly one. The entire floor was stained dark crimson with blood. Arla’s lungs clenched tight, expelling air through her open mouth. Frigid numbness laid claim to her fingers and toes, and she folded her arms across her chest, forcing herself to look at the macabre scene. She had, of course, seen Martha in the antenatal classes. She had never been friends with her like she was with Kylie, but she had chatted with the woman once or twice. She had never imagined that Martha would endure this ghastly fate one day.

  The woman lay on her back, her abdomen cut open in a roughly circular shape. She was naked. Banerjee was leaning over the open abdomen, partially blocking Arla’s view.

  She looked at the back door. It was open and a forensics officer was dusting it for prints. Another one was kneeling on the stairs just outside the door, picking up samples of evidence with pincers, storing them in specimen bags.

  She leaned against the wall as Harry turned to her. “Do you want to sit down?” His voice was a low whisper. She shook her head, but wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “I’m fine.” She took a step inside, trying to find a spot away from the bloodstains.

  “Doesn’t look good, doc, does it?”

  Banerjee half-turned towards her, lowering the mask that covered his face and raising his glasses. “No, it doesn’t.”

  He wore the blue Tyvek suit and his purple-gloved hands were dark with blood. “Not seen anything like this, Arla.” He shrugged. “From me, that’s saying something.”

  Harry pulled up a chair for her, then touched her forearm. “Sit down,” he said gently. Arla fluttered her eyelashes at him, then obeyed. It was a relief to sit. She wanted to kneel down and get a closer look, but her current state prevented that.

  “What do you think happened?”

  Banerjee pointed at the rough marks around the abdominal wound.

  “Whoever did this was no surgeon. More of a butcher, in fact. He was obviously in a rush and performed this as quickly as possible.” Banerjee put his hand inside the wound and lifted up a piece of clotted tissue. It was attached to the abdominal cavity. “This is the uterine artery. It inserts into the placenta and the foetus gets all its nutrition from it. This was cut off when the placenta was removed.”

  He pointed to the floor surrounding him. “Bits of placental tissue were scattered here.” He lifted a specimen bag and squeezed the contents. Arla saw the papery thin tissue bulge out like the sides of a balloon being puffed.

  “The placenta is nothing but a fluid-filled sac. He ruptured this, then took the baby out and escaped.”

  Arla frowned. “You can’t just take a foetus out from its womb and run off, can you?”

  “I’m not suggesting that. This woman was almost thirty-eight weeks, so the foetus was at full-term maturity. In other words, a live baby. He obviously had a mechanism to carry the baby in. A bag, maybe, or a heated container.”

  Banerjee’s eyes flickered to the ground. His facial muscles were contorted as he moved his head sideways. “I’m not far off from retiring, Arla. I hoped I could see off my working days without coming across something like this.”

  His words caused a silence to descend, both Arla and Harry at a loss for words. It was broken by a sound at the back door, and Parmentier entered. He didn’t have his customary sardonic grin. His grey eyes were flat and dull, brows lowered. He murmured a greeting, then pointed at the floor. Arla saw the boot prints, marked out by white squares.

  “To my eyes, the prints seem to match the crime scene in Clapham Common.” He took out his phone and flicked to the relevant photo. He showed it to Arla.

  “They do look the same. And the same size. He probably has multiple pairs of the same make,” Arla said, her breath quickening.

  “There’s traces of mud on the floor as well, but that probably came from the garden outside. We can analyse it to see if it is the same as the soil we found from the boot that Rebecca Stone gave you.”

  “That would be great. Please get it done as soon as possible.” She handed the phone back to Parmentier and shifted her attention back to Dr Banerjee. “Time of death?”

  “Recent. Rigor mortis hasn’t even started in the small muscles like the eyelids and lips. I would say no more than four hours.”

  Parmentier said, “No fingerprints. Nothing on the body, either. She was wearing makeup, in any case—only light foundation, but that can be enough to smudge fingerprints. However, the marks on the throat and face were by a gloved hand.”

  Arla nodded and stood. She walked outside, helped by Harry. She took a deep breath as she pulled out her phone. Wayne Johnson answered on the first ring. His voice was a low rumble, and he didn’t even bother greeting Arla.

  “I heard.”

  “We need to inform the public, sir. He can strike anywhere, anytime.”

  “I’m calling Media Liaison now to organise a press conference. Are you okay to lead?”

  Arla faltered. This was the kind of attention that Johnson normally craved. His name, up in lights, the centre of attention. “I thought you would do it, sir?”

  “No, Arla. It’s best if you lead on this.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Inside Clapham Common, Rhys had changed position. Uniformed police still guarded the crime scene and it was a shame. He had lost the vantage point directly opposite Rebecca’s house. Now he was forced to see it from an angle more than two hundred yards away. He crouched on the damp, muddy ground, feeling his boots sink deeper into the soil. Through the binoculars, he saw Rebecca’s Range Rover reverse out of the house.

  Photo bulbs flashed from the media vans opposite and several paparazzi ran into the road. They held their cameras out, snapping photos at the dark-tinted car windows, which were fully raised. Some even crowded around the front of the car, literally throwing themselves at the fenders, taking photos of the windscreen, through which Rebecca was visible. Lips bared, Rebecca turned the wheel savagely, shaking her fist at them as she gunned down the road. The paparazzi scattered like insects, lucky not to get hurt.

  Rhys left his watch point and ran out on the road. His car was parked in a side alley and he was just in time to see Rebecca’s car roar down the main street. He got in and followed. He kept a safe distance as she joined the flow of traffic on the three lanes of the A3, heading out of the city.

  She took the turning for Weybridge. Rhys followed till she drove onto the narrow winding road that led to her parents’ farm. He reversed and went back to the A3. He joined the traffic artery again, and eventually got to the doctor’s surgery in Godalming. He checked his watch as he waited in the car.

  According to his timetable, Grant Stone was due this morning to see the nurse. Rhys passed the time by posting some messages on one of his fake accounts, trolling Rebecca. He drank coffee and munched on some biscuits while he waited. His patience was rewarded an hour later.

  Grant’s gold-coloured Porsche Carrera 911 entered the parking lot and parked opposite Rhys. He watched as Grant came out of the car, then walked inside. Rhys waited for five minutes, then came out. He had dressed for the occasion, wearing blue overalls that proclaimed him to be a mechanic from AA roadside assistance.

  Rhys walked slowly across the car park, his eyes darting sideways, checking out the other vehicles. The only windows that looked out onto the car park belonged to the doctors and nurses and the curtains were always drawn, for obvious reasons.

  Luckily for Rhys, the waiting room was on the other
side of the building. There was CCTV, but he couldn’t do anything about it. His disguise would have to suffice. He had his fake beard and moustache on and his baseball cap was pulled low over his face.

  Rhys didn’t rush. Movement attracted the most attention.

  He knelt by the side of the Porsche and opened up the toolbox. Now, he worked with speed and precision. The sports car’s twin exhausts were large. Unlike Jeremy’s Rover, where he had to strap the IED to the outside of the exhaust pipe, with the Porsche, the IED slid easily inside.

  Which, of course, presented a problem of its own. When the car started, it could dislodge the IED.

  With Jeremy’s car, he had made a mistake. The bomb had not been strapped firmly enough. It didn’t ignite the fuselage as he had hoped. This time, he hoped to have better results.

  With gloved fingers, Rhys smeared adhesive to the sides of the IED, then made sure the mobile phone inside it was working. He could see the flashing green light that told him all was okay. He slid the IED inside the exhaust pipe with a steel prong, pushing it in as far as he could. He turned the prong around and use the handle to push it in further. Then he used the handle to press it down firmly, making sure it was attached to the steel structure.

  He pushed the IED gently after a few seconds and it would not dislodge. He looked around him. No one had come out of the surgery, or driven up as yet. Rhys pushed the IED again, and was satisfied when firmer pressure could not move the object.

  *****

  Christine Walton opened the door to find her daughter standing there. They embraced without a word, then Christine shut the door.

  “Where’s Dad?” Rebecca asked, her voice tremulous.

  “He’s gone to the farmers’ market,” Christine said. Mother and daughter went into the kitchen. Christine put the kettle on to boil and they stood in silence for a while, then stared at each other. No words were necessary. Rebecca had already told her mother how she had gone to Rhys’s old house and what she discovered.