She wasn’t even sure what she was doing there. She just knew she needed someone to talk to, and Jon seemed the obvious choice.
‘I’ve been kicked off the murder investigation.’ She could feel tears gathering in her eyes.
He came over and gave her a hug. She hated herself because it felt good. It felt like old times, before Magda Kilbride had come into their lives and nearly destroyed everything. ‘I really need to talk to you, Jon. I think I’ve fucked up big time.’
He led her over to the wonky chaise longue, gently pushing her onto it, keeping an arm round her shoulders. She was struggling hard to keep the tears from coming, trying to remain as calm as she could.
‘I’ll make us some tea,’ he said, then disappeared into the kitchen.
When he returned a few minutes later, she’d tried hard to compose herself.
He handed her a mug of tea, and sat down next to her. ‘What happened?’
She told him about her meeting with Denning and McKenna; the humiliation of having to return, tail between her legs, to regular CID. She told him, too, about Bex, and the guilt she’d carried inside her for over a decade. ‘It was during the trial. I went there every day, listened to all the evidence, that’s how I knew about the crosses.’ She fought back tears as she spoke. ‘I watched Ferguson standing in the dock looking ugly and pathetic. But I remember him saying he had an alibi for the night of Bex’s murder. I always wondered, deep down, if it could be true. I kept asking myself if he really was innocent and the man who killed Bex was never punished for it.’
When she’d finished, he put his arm round her. ‘You can’t keep blaming yourself,’ he said gently. ‘None of this is your fault. You need to know that.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Why did you never tell me any of this?’
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed back some snot. ‘I was thirteen when we moved back here from Sydney. We had no money: Mum walked out on our dad when she found out he was having an affair with a nineteen-year-old barmaid. Bex was the first friend I made at school. I still had an Australian accent then, I mean not strong, but enough to make me stand out. Bex used to have a go at anyone who took the piss. She was like that: mouthy. After Bex died, I was in a state of shock. I tried to shut everything out of my mind. As soon as the trial was over, I went to stay with my dad and his bitch of a girlfriend in Sydney, but that didn’t work out. She resented me, and he and I had never been all that close. I came back to the UK after a couple of years and just drifted from one dead-end job to another for a while. It was my stepdad who persuaded me to apply for the police. He was a solicitor and had a few contacts in the Met.’ She chewed at her bottom lip. ‘And it helped. It gave me a focus. I couldn’t do much for Bex, but I can help put away sick bastards like Ferguson.’ It felt cathartic to get it all out there. For so long she’d put everything in a box and hidden it away, out of sight and out of reach.
From beyond the French windows came the sound of the neighbours’ children playing in the back garden. It sounded like they were splashing around in a paddling pool. Just for a moment, she envied them.
‘How the hell did Mags find out about it?’ Jon asked.
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Mags has a knack of digging up shit people would prefer to keep hidden.’
He held her closer. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you about me and her.’ He looked her directly in the face. ‘I honestly meant it when I said it was nothing. Me and Mags…’ His voice trailed away. ‘It was a mistake. I was so out of it back then. It sounds like bullshit to say I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s the truth. I was a fuck-up. I was a fuck-up and Mags took advantage of that. As soon as I came to my senses, I kicked her into touch. She’s been carrying on with some sort of vendetta ever since.’
Molly stroked his cheek. ‘Including letting me think you could have been somehow involved with Anthony Ferguson.’
He relaxed his hold on her. ‘You what?’ Then his mouth twisted into a smile and he burst out laughing. ‘Really? You seriously thought I was…’
She interrupted him before he had a chance to continue. ‘She had me thinking all sorts. I know now it’s because she’s damaged. She’s poisonous, and some of that poison seeped into me.’
‘But you thought there was some truth in what she said?’
She wiped her nose with her hand. ‘No. Well, I don’t know. All this crap with you and Mags, it all happened at about the same time as the Bermondsey Ripper murders. I didn’t want to believe any of it, but she made me question everything about you. I knew you’d lied about you and her. I began to wonder if I really knew you at all.’
‘You actually thought I was capable of murdering those women?’
She was suddenly aware of a change in his tone, a tensing of the muscles in his shoulder and neck. From outside the sounds of the children playing had stopped. ‘No. Well, I don’t know.’ Molly shuffled free of his body, and sat upright on the chaise longue. ‘You’ve said it yourself; you were all over the place twelve years ago. OK, it sounds bonkers now, but I couldn’t just dismiss what was in my head. Mags seemed to know so much more about you than I did. There’s a part of you that always feels like it’s slightly out of reach. I’m not talking about the age gap because that’s not important. I’m talking about how you keep so much of your life locked away.’ She waited for him to reply, but he just looked at her with a vaguely bewildered expression on his face. ‘Can’t we put all this shit behind us? Start again?’ she asked.
He stood up and walked to the French windows, pulled back the curtains and looked out into the garden. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure how easy that’s going to be. It’s not like we can just put a sticking plaster over this and hope it heals.’
‘We can if we want it to,’ she argued, but already she could feel everything slipping away. ‘This doesn’t have to be the end, Jon. If we split up, then it means she’s won.’ She joined him by the French windows, placing a hand on his shoulder.
‘I think it’s you who’s obsessed with her rather than the other way round.’
She removed her hand from his shoulder. There was nothing more she could say. She slipped out of the sitting room and walked to the front door. She closed it quietly behind her and began walking down the street. She didn’t know where she was heading, just that she needed to walk.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Denning tried to fight back the niggling guilt. He felt bad about how they’d treated Molly: about the way he’d treated Molly…
He stared at his phone, considering whether to ring her and apologise, but it wouldn’t do any good: the decision couldn’t be unmade. McKenna had never been entirely happy having Molly on the case in the first place, and she wasn’t in any mood to have one of her decisions challenged. Once the dust had settled he would try and persuade McKenna to let them give Molly another chance. However, until then the best thing she could do would be to keep her head down.
He shifted his attention back to Daniel Placzek. There was still nothing to suggest Placzek was alive, even though Denning’s gut feeling was telling him otherwise.
A search of Placzek’s accounts at Companies House had shown his building business had been profitable for a number of years, but had suddenly begun to lose money around the time of his divorce. Somehow that seemed to be the key to it.
But if Placzek was out there, where was he? Unless something tangible came their way, it would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
He looked up the CCTV footage from the night Leanne was killed. The footage had been noticeably cleaned up now and it was just about possible to make out the features of the man seen leaving the bar with Leanne. There was something familiar about those features. Denning couldn’t say what it was, but he was certain he recognised the man in the blurry footage talking to Leanne. She was smiling and clearly drunk: totally oblivious to what fate had cruelly planned for her.
He froze the picture at the point where the footage of the man was cle
arest, and studied the image hard. There was certainly a superficial resemblance to Daryl Bailey: similar age, similar build, but it was possible to see that it wasn’t Bailey.
It would make sense: they knew Leanne had a date with Bailey the night she was killed. Bailey said he’d left her around 9:30 p.m., after they’d had an argument. The CCTV from the street outside had been able to confirm this, even though the bar manager had insisted he’d seen them talking until after 11 p.m. But the bar had been busy. What if the bar manager had been mistaken, and Leanne was actually talking to someone else? What if she’d met another bloke at the bar who looked like Bailey: older, smart and flashy; just the kind of man she’d go for. If this man had witnessed the argument between Leanne and Bailey, he could have waited for his chance and offered her a drink and a shoulder to cry on. But was this mystery man Daniel Placzek, back from the dead?
Denning was about to get up and grab himself a coffee from the machine beside the lift, when Angela Patterson rang. ‘Sorry to bother you with when I’m sure you’re up to your eyes, but you did say to get in touch if I found any old photographs of Daniel…’ There was a slight pause from the other end of the line. ‘Well, actually, I’ve found his old passport in the bottom of an old desk in the study. It’s a few years out of date, but it’s got his photo on it.’
‘That’s very helpful. Can you scan it and email me a copy?’
‘I don’t have access to a scanner, but I could drop it off later today if that’s any help.’
Denning gave her directions to the station, and instructed the front desk to inform him the moment it arrived.
* * *
Neeraj cursed. The key didn’t fit in the lock. The girl at the estate agent's had insisted he sign some silly indemnity form before they agreed to release the keys for the house. He’d told her that this was part of an important police operation, but she’d stood her ground. Not that it mattered; it wouldn’t be his dangly bits on the chopping block if this all went tits up. Not that he’d believed for a moment they’d find anything. He couldn’t understand why Denning had taken Molly Fisher so seriously. She was a nice girl, Molly, but she just didn’t have what it took to hack it in the murder squad. He wasn’t surprised they’d let her go.
He tried another key; this time it fitted. He unlocked the garage and lifted the metal door.
Parked in the garage was a slightly dirty white Transit van: an exact match for the one on the CCTV.
He phoned Denning. ‘You’re not going to believe this, boss.’ He could barely keep the excitement from his voice. ‘I think this it. We’ve finally nailed the bastard.’
* * *
Molly had had no intention of walking away from the murder inquiry, at least not entirely. She' meant it when she’d told Denning and McKenna that she still had plenty to offer the investigation. Besides, it would be a welcome distraction from Jon.
She’d returned to Trudi’s tiny flat in Limehouse. The flat was on the ninth floor of a converted council block. It had two small bedrooms, a compact lounge-diner, and an impressive view over the Thames to Bermondsey.
She was camped out in the back bedroom that served as an office, guest room and wardrobe overspill. She was grateful to Trudi and Charys for putting her up, but she knew she couldn’t stay forever.
Jon wasn’t answering her calls. The situation had bounced from one extreme to the other: after days of feeling like she was being stalked by him, now he was ignoring her. She couldn’t blame him, and she didn’t.
Whilst it had been good to finally get everything out in the open and tell someone about Bex, it looked as though that honesty had come at a price.
Molly shoved Jon to the back of her mind, booted up Trudi’s laptop and remotely accessed her work email. Before she’d been so unceremoniously taken off the case, she’d sent an email to Lance Grady, and if he replied she was morally obliged to pass that information on to Denning.
And there it was in her inbox: a reply from Grady.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
‘We lifted some prints,’ Neeraj said at a briefing the following morning, ‘but they don’t match anything we have on record.’
There was a photograph of the white Transit van pinned on the board. It was the same van as the one in the CCTV footage. It was now just over a week since Leanne Wyatt’s body had been discovered in a children’s playpark in Hackney and her killer was still out there.
‘The crime scene bods also found some DNA samples in the van which match both Leanne Wyatt and Sandra Blake,’ he continued. ‘They’re going over the house now.’
Denning nodded. ‘Do we know where the van came from?’
‘It was purchased for cash from a dealer in Barnet just over a fortnight ago,’ Ryan said, looking at his notes. ‘The purchaser gave the name Lance Grady. We’ve got a description but it’s vague: smart, well spoken.’
‘This bloke’s obviously covered his tracks,’ Trudi added. ‘Assuming he isn’t Lance Grady.’
‘I think it’s safe to say this whole thing has been carefully planned from the off,’ said Denning.
‘And you still think he could be Daniel Placzek?’ Trudi asked.
‘He remains a definite possibility,’ Denning said. ‘We need to speak to him. And sooner rather than later.’
‘How do we know we’re not wasting our time looking for a dead man?’ Kinsella asked. ‘You said it yourself, boss: his ex-missus thinks he topped himself.’
‘At the moment,’ Denning said, ‘I’m keeping an open mind, Dave. Angela Patterson thinks he could have killed himself, but she didn’t know for certain. It’s equally possible he’s still alive and he’s out there somewhere. Maybe with a new name.’
‘Let’s be frank,’ Kinsella said, his voice hard, ‘even if we find Placzek alive and well, we don’t have any real proof that there is a connection between the Ferguson case and these recent murders. It could be that we’re chasing fucking shadows.’ He sat with his arms folded across his chest.
‘There’s too much for it to be a coincidence,’ Denning said. ‘Ken Walters admitted he always suspected there were two killers at the time. Placzek is the only person to have ever had any real contact with Ferguson. If he’s still alive – and I accept that’s still a big if at the moment – then we need to find him. Whoever our killer is, he knows what he’s doing and he’s had luck on his side up until now. But his luck’s going to run out at some point.’
‘Let’s hope so, for all our sakes,’ he heard Kinsella mutter under his breath.
‘OK. We’ve got enough to keep ourselves occupied.’ Denning ignored Kinsella and quelled the murmuring that now seemed to accompany every briefing. ‘Get these new leads chased up. Ryan, speak to the dealer in Barnet again, get a detailed description of the man he sold the van to. Ideally see if he has any CCTV from the day in question. Deep, get onto Forensics: see if there’s anything that proves Leanne Wyatt or Sandra Blake were in that house. I want to speak to Lance Grady, see what he has to say for himself. Everyone else, keep going over CCTV footage and witness statements until we can find something that puts our man in the frame.’
Denning ended the briefing. He was about to return to his desk, when he spotted a young uniformed officer pushing open the glass doors to the MIT suite. He heard her ask for him by name and one of the detectives point him out to her. She headed over to him, smiled and handed him a medium-sized brown envelope with his name scrawled on it. ‘This was just handed in at the front desk, sir,’ she said. ‘You wanted to know as soon as it arrived.’ Denning took the envelope from her, thanked her, returned to his desk and tore open the envelope. True to her word, Angela Patterson had handed in her ex-husband’s passport. There was a handwritten note attached with a smiley face at the bottom. Denning fought back an inappropriate urge to laugh.
He opened the passport and looked at the photo of Daniel Placzek. Placzek’s features were unremarkable: wavy light brown hair that brushed his shoulders, a strong brow, pale eyes. The photo was over ten yea
rs old. If Placzek were still alive, he would look different now: older, greyer round the temples. But there was something strangely familiar about the man in the photo. At first glance it was possible to see a faint likeness between Placzek and Daryl Bailey, but he knew it couldn’t be anything more than a passing resemblance. However, he was sure there was something… He stared at the picture, hoping whatever it was would jump out at him, but he was either too tired or too distracted to see it.
He put the passport in the top drawer of his desk and stretched his shoulders, trying to suppress a yawn. At least they now had a picture of Daniel Placzek. He’d have the photo scanned and put on the whiteboard beside the other photos of suspects, and alongside the three victims.
He was about to pop to the machine by the lift and grab another rancid coffee, when his computer pinged him a notification that he had received another email. He gently shook the mouse to bring the screen back up. There were over a dozen unread emails in his inbox, most of which had arrived in the last hour. Most would be a waste of time: people suggesting names for their murderer, usually neighbours or ex-partners against whom grudges were still borne; sometimes people would suggest the man they were looking for was a celebrity, or politician or member of the royal family. Occasionally someone would claim they were the murderer and challenge the police to catch them.
He’d once read somewhere that over a hundred years ago the detectives investigating Jack the Ripper had received dozens of letters from people either claiming to be the Ripper or naming random people as the killer. All of which wasted a great deal of police time. Email, he surmised, was the twenty-first century equivalent: an opportunity for lonely, desperate or disturbed people to vent their collective spleens, or just think they were being helpful…
However, towards the bottom of the page, he noticed an email from Molly Fisher. His first thought was to wonder if she was asking for her job back in MIT, but the subject box said: Lance Grady. Curiosity aroused, he clicked on the email and was grateful that she’d bothered to forward it to him. He liked to think he’d have been as generous in similar circumstances.
Know No Evil Page 29