Two young, married women killed in as many days. The method and manner exactly the same. Nothing taken and nothing interfered with. No passion or rage. Just death.
There were cases that were more about the killer than they were about the victim. Had either Katrina or Louise done anything wrong?
But then her mind wondered: if the crime had nothing to do with the victim, why were they so similar? Why not a male, younger or older? Had both women just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had he watched them and chosen them for a reason she did not yet know?
And if the letter was from him, why was he begging her to catch him before he killed again if he knew he was going to take another life so soon? Despite her irritation at Stacey and Penn, she knew there was no way they could have prevented this even if they’d ripped the letter out the postman’s hand.
And if she didn’t catch him soon, how the hell did she know who was going to die next?
Twenty-Nine
Stacey replaced the receiver as Penn entered the room with a handful of snacks.
Although it was after five, the call from the boss naming the second victim had meant no one was leaving the office for a while yet.
‘Monster Munch and Twix, please,’ she said, eyeing his booty.
After the call from the boss, he’d made a quick call to Jasper before offering to grab whatever he could from the vending machine to keep them going.
He threw her requested items across the desk and reached for his headphones.
‘Jasper okay?’ she asked, opening the packet of crisps first. Even as a poor substitute for an evening meal, it was savoury before sweet.
‘He’s fine,’ Penn answered, wrinkling his nose as she crunched on a pickled onion flavoured giant claw.
‘How the hell do you eat those?’ he asked, shaking his head.
Pickled onion was her favourite flavour even though the smell stayed with her for hours.
‘Devon won’t come near me if I’ve eaten these and, seeing as I’m stuck here for now, I’ll make the most of it. She went on an overnight course last week, so guess what I binged on?’
‘Stace, you kill me.’ He chuckled.
‘What?’
‘Your partner is away overnight and your idea of living it up is stinky Monster Munch?’
She laughed with him. Yes, he had a point.
Again, he’d refused her given opportunity to talk. It was clear to her that Jasper had been offering one-word responses to his questions, and even though he’d said more, it was so unlike the usual banter that would lift Penn’s mouth without him even realising.
But she could do no more than offer her shoulder or her ear.
‘Just keep doing what you’re doing, Stace. Normal helps.’
He placed his headphones over his ears and focused on the screen. Even if she responded, he wouldn’t hear.
Okay, normal she could do, she thought, turning back to her computer.
Penn had taken over the witness statements from Katrina’s murder, and she’d been tasked with finding background on victim number two: Louise Webb-Harvey.
Despite the events of the day, the sexual assault case was still playing on her mind. After interviewing both witnesses, she knew the only thing she could do to resolve the questions in her mind was to speak to the rapist himself; however, the double murder they were working had to take priority in her normal working hours.
Which was why an appointment to question him at 6 a.m. the next morning had already been made.
Thirty
Charleston Avenue was a cul-de-sac at the edge of the Wollescote conurbation that bordered a strip of green belt. Now classed as a residential area of Stourbridge, it was located two miles east of the town centre and bordered with Halesowen. The area had been predominantly rural until the 1920s when it was developed as a dense residential area of private and council-owned dwellings. It wasn’t known as a high-crime area and residents lived in reasonable harmony.
Within the avenue itself, Kim counted five sets of Mucklow-style semi-detached properties with garages attached to the side of the house. Each property was separated from its twin by a waist-high wooden fence that ran down the middle of a shared lawn. The houses were identical with double driveways in front of the garage. From memory, houses around here went for around a quarter of a million, and if there was a picture in the dictionary to describe middle-class suburbia this would have been it. A place where both parents went out to work and nothing out of the ordinary ever happened.
Until now, Kim thought as Bryant pulled up outside the houses smack bang in the middle of the curve.
A newish Toyota Corolla sat on the drive awaiting the arrival of a second car.
‘Guv, you want me to?…’
‘No,’ she said, refusing his offer of breaking the news. Whoever was on the other side of that front door was not going to care from whose mouth the devastating news came. It’s not what they’d remember for the rest of their lives.
She took a deep breath and knocked.
‘Have you forgotten your?…’ a female voice said as the door began to open. The tolerant smile died on the woman’s face as she realised they were not who she was expecting.
Kim held up her identification.
‘Is this the home of Louise Webb-Harvey?’
The woman nodded, looking from her to Bryant.
‘Yes, she’s my wife but she’s not here right—’
‘May we come in?…’
‘Robyn,’ she said, offering her name and standing aside.
Kim passed the stairs leading out of the hallway and headed into a light and airy kitchen formed of shiny white units and an island in the middle. A saucepan simmered on the hob and the smell of a freshly made pot of coffee mingled with the aroma of some kind of bolognaise. A half-drunk glass of wine stood beside the chopping board, an empty glass beside the bottle. Everything in this kitchen was waiting for someone to come home.
‘Please, take a seat, Ms Webb-Harvey.’
‘Robyn, and please don’t tell me to sit down in my own home. Has something happened?’
Kim took a seat at the dining table, hoping the woman would follow her lead.
She didn’t and leaned against the island instead. She crossed her arms and Kim could see her hands grabbing the bare flesh of her upper arms.
‘Robyn, I’m afraid we have some bad news about Louise. There’s been an incident.’
Robyn looked around the room and reached for her handbag. ‘Where is she? I’ll go to her.’
Kim remained seated and shook her head.
‘It’s the car, isn’t it? I told her to get something more practical, more sensible but—’
‘It’s not the car,’ Kim said. ‘But I’m sorry to tell you that Louise is dead.’
That Godforsaken word again.
No response.
Kim knew she had heard, but right now her mind was trying to compute those words against the normality of cooking dinner with a glass of wine, waiting for her partner to return home.
‘I’m sorry but I think you should leave,’ Robyn said as the colour started to seep from her face. The woman thought she could get them, along with their bad news, out of the house. And then it wouldn’t be real.
‘She’s not coming, Robyn. I’m sorry but your wife has been murdered.’
Her mouth fell open as her legs buckled. Bryant had been moving closer and was there to offer a steadying hand so that she didn’t fall.
‘M… murdered.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Kim said as Bryant guided Robyn to a chair.
The sound of something bubbling over and hissing on the hob drew Bryant’s attention.
He reached over and turned the knobs off.
Kim continued. ‘She was found by a ranger at Stevens Park in—’
‘I know where it is,’ she said as her eyes came alight with a sudden urgency, as though there was something she’d completely forgotten.
‘Where’s Archie?’
Kim’s head snapped towards Bryant.
‘Who is Archie?’ she asked as a boulder began to form in the pit of her stomach.
‘Archie is our six-year-old son.’
Thirty-One
I am startled awake from my dream.
I can feel the breath building in my body. I feel like an over-inflated balloon. I am full of air and it has no way to escape.
I try to let out a breath, but there is something heavy across my face bearing down hard; my nose feels as though I’ve inhaled a hundred feathers and my mouth is blocked.
In response, my eyes try to open, to see the threat against me, but my eyelids meet the fabric of something that feels like a pillow and offers only more darkness.
My legs begin to thrash but the force is immovable. My lower half convulses as the panic and fear runs through my veins, but my upper half is held rigid.
My mouth opens and I am gasping for air, trying to draw breath from or through the fabric.
Please, help me, someone, my mind screams as a drop of urine escapes and runs down my leg.
My shame is quickly swallowed by the knowledge that I am about to die. My head begins to swim, and fireworks are popping in my head.
There is no time left. I am dying.
And then it is gone. The weight is lifted from my face. I gulp in fresh air, forcing it down into my lungs. I cough and I splutter into the darkness that surrounds me. Stars twinkle in my head. Fireworks are popping behind my eyes.
The beating of my heart is deafening in my ears. The silence beyond it is terrifying.
I lie still. Not daring to open my eyes in case it comes back. In case I cannot breathe again.
Eventually, as my heart returns to normal, I open my eyes, one at a time and take a good look around.
No one is there.
Thirty-Two
‘Sir, there’s a child,’ Kim said once Woody answered the phone.
‘Sorry?’ he said. The faint noise of the talk radio station he liked to listen to in the background told her he was already at home.
‘Our second victim, Louise Webb-Harvey, was at the park with her six-year-old son for a football match. He’s nowhere to be found.’
‘Immediate area searched?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not gone back to the car?’ he asked, echoing instructions most parents gave to their children; it was the first area she’d asked the officers to look.
‘Checked and no,’ she answered.
She had made the call to the site and spoken to the sergeant at the scene the moment Robyn had mentioned the boy’s name. Even the techies had stopped working to conduct a search of the immediate area for the little boy, while the sarge had sprinted to check the car.
Kim had stayed on the phone, crossing her fingers the whole time.
The words ‘nothing marm’ had inflated a balloon of fear in her stomach.
The sergeant had called in to his inspector and an extensive foot search of the area was now being organised.
‘Is there someone at the home with the family?’
‘Yes, sir, Robyn’s brother was five minutes away and a FLO will be there within the hour.’
‘Okay, Stone, I’ll make the necessary arrangements for a press conference, and you need to get yourself back to the station. I’ll meet you there.’
She ended the call as Bryant pulled away from the house. The case had taken a sinister turn that threw even more questions into the air. There had been a child with Katrina the day before. Mia had been only feet away, but she had been left alone. Untouched.
So why the hell had he now taken a six-year-old boy?
Thirty-Three
It was 9.30 p.m. when Kim finally got the call from the family liaison officer at the Webb-Harvey home. All Louise’s family members had been informed and just in the nick of time.
‘Sir, we’re up,’ Kim said, calling her boss on his internal phone.
The local media had been assembled by the press communication team and were waiting outside.
‘I see Frost is front and centre,’ Bryant observed, glancing out the window as Kim grabbed her jacket.
She headed for the door then turned to the rest of her team.
‘Guys, get off home. I need you back fresh in the morning.’
They all nodded their agreement.
Bryant followed her down the stairs.
‘You too,’ she said. ‘Get out while you can.’
‘Are you new, guv? I go when you go.’
She shook her head as Woody appeared. The man could be stubborn sometimes.
‘Okay, Stone, remember what I said?’ her boss asked as they met at the bottom of the stairs.
She nodded. Woody was going to speak, and she was to stand silently by his side. They could not afford for her to get rattled and bite, which would detract from the script and the singularity of what they were trying to achieve with this impromptu gathering.
Everything had been timed so that none of Louise’s family were going to get a devastating shock by watching the local news bulletin. They couldn’t appeal to the public and show Archie’s photo without revealing the identity of the mother.
And they needed the story to run as soon as possible.
‘Phones off?’ Woody asked as they reached the door.
Both she and Bryant switched to silent and followed Woody outside.
In the few short minutes it had taken them to get downstairs, a television camera from Central News had arrived and set up right next to Tracy Frost, who wouldn’t have shifted from her position even if a hurricane had moved into town.
‘I’ll do props,’ Bryant said, positioning himself behind Woody to the right.
It was always good to have professional-looking people in camera view. Although after fourteen hours he didn’t look as fresh and crisp as he had at the beginning of the day, his presence was still calming and offered reassurance.
Kim stood beside her boss and set her face to neutral: an expression that rested easily on her face.
Much as she hated doing press conferences, she was sure she would have handled this one just as Woody was about to.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said pleasantly, taking in all of the reporters with his gaze.
Okay, she would probably have forgotten to say that. And she wouldn’t have made eye contact with them all either.
‘From the outset, I’d like to clarify that there will be no questions at the end, as I’m sure you’ll understand the urgency of sharing the information we have as quickly as possible.’
Nice. Let them know before you even start. Manage expectations. If she had a notepad, she’d be writing these guidelines down.
‘The body of a female was found earlier today at the Stevens Park in Quarry Bank. We can confirm that she was thirty-one years of age and her name was Louise Webb-Harvey. Our deepest condolences go out to her family at this time.’
Yes, she’d done the major incident press training and understood the importance of communicating the condolence message, but she knew that Woody genuinely meant it.
She also remembered being told to form your poker face before leaving the building. A few years earlier, a high-profile police inspector in Birmingham had been caught chuckling at a colleague’s comment seconds before speaking about the bludgeoning of an elderly male. The appeal for witnesses had been lost beneath every article’s focus on the callousness of the police inspector. He had been forced to resign his position.
She noticed the reporters glancing sideways at each other. The news of the body had got out a few hours ago and they were clearly wondering at the reason for the early identification of the victim.
Woody continued, quickly reaching the point of the impromptu press conference.
‘We will be working day and night to bring Louise’s murderer to justice, but our current priority is locating Louise’s six-year-old son, Archie, who is so far unaccounted for. We know that the boy was with his mother at the park playing football, so we wo
uld appeal for any witnesses to make contact with us immediately.’
Woody held up the photo of a blond-haired boy who was smiling widely as he stroked his pet rabbit.
Frost nudged forward. ‘Is the murder linked to?…’
‘A full search of the area has been initiated,’ Woody continued as though Frost had never spoken. Woody held up the photo long enough for everyone to get a good shot of it with either the cameras around their necks or their phones. The press office had been poised to flood social media with the photo once Woody started speaking.
Kim caught the knowing frown on Frost’s face as she realised that the sole purpose of the briefing was to get Archie’s photo out there and not to answer any questions she was going to pose. But that wasn’t going to stop her from trying.
‘DCI Woodward, do we have a serial?…’
‘Obviously, we are all concerned for the safety of Archie and would like to return him to his family at the earliest opportunity. Anyone with any information as to Archie’s whereabouts should contact us here at the station or call…’
Kim tuned out as he read off the number. Her boss had done a good job in using Archie’s first name as many times as possible. If his captor was watching, it was designed for him to see the little boy as a person.
As Woody finished the appeal and was clearly summing up, Kim could see the rage building in the face of the Dudley Star reporter at being continually ignored, despite the fact Woody had advised accordingly at the outset.
‘One last question,’ she shouted up as Woody finished thanking the press for their attendance. Kim’s stomach did a roll. Tracey’s eyes were hard and cold and fixed only on Woody. ‘Is it true that the killer had already communicated directly with?—’
‘Again, thank you all for your time and let’s bring Archie home quickly,’ he said, turning away. Only because she knew the man did she understand that the tension in his shoulders was due to the curveball from Frost.
Deadly Cry: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with suspense (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thiller Book 13) Page 9