Sixty-Four
I look towards the locked door and curse myself for my foolish actions.
What am I supposed to do now? What the hell was I thinking when I snatched the boy? It’s not as though I wanted him or even had a purpose for him. He was there and in one stupid, impulsive moment I saw triumph. I saw victory. I had exceeded the murder of Katrina. I had not left the child. I had taken the child.
But now what to do with him? He has seen my face. He can identify me.
There is only one choice, I feel, as my palm wraps around the kitchen knife. I am horrified but I cannot let him live now.
With each step that takes me closer to the door, the weight upon my shoulders increases. The grip around my heart tightens, but I can’t allow him to destroy everything.
My free hand closes around the door handle. I take deep breaths and try not to visualise what I have to do. I will count myself down.
Three.
Two.
My phone sounds the receipt of a Google notification. I have only two alerts: one for murder and one for DI Stone. Which one has raised the alarm?
I falter for a second. I must not put off what I have to do. The child cannot live. I take a final deep breath.
Three.
Two.
Murder or DI Stone. Which one?
Damn it. I have to see.
I swap the knife to my other hand and take out my phone. I refuse to put down the blade. That is defeat. I can do this. I must do this. Soon.
The alert is for DI Stone. She has been quoted in an article by a local reporter. Not a national but Tracy Frost from the Dudley Star.
I skim over the narrative. I’m not interested in those empty words and look only for what she has to say. That’s all that matters to me.
‘…fear for the safety of innocent child…’
‘…no need for Archie to get hurt…’
‘…Archie has unwittingly become an innocent party…’
‘…Don’t want to hurt him…’
‘…good reason for what he’s doing…’
‘…welcome opportunity to talk…’
I am surprised at her empathy, her compassion. I know that I was right to trust her, to seek her help. She understands. She knows that I don’t want to hurt the boy, but…
A second alert sounds. Murder.
I scroll to the article and the screaming headline tells me everything I need to know.
Local Ex-Soap Star Found Murdered in the Woods
I put down the knife and reach for the phone. My other phone. The message is there, but I already knew it would be.
Now I know what I have to do. It’s the only thing that makes sense, I realise, as I head once more for the door.
Sixty-Five
‘You okay?’ Stacey asked once Penn had left the room to call Jasper. It was after seven and it didn’t look like they were leaving any time soon.
‘I’m fine, Stace,’ Alison replied, looking anything but fine. A Wagon Wheel had been sitting on her desk untouched for over an hour.
‘You could always just leave,’ Stacey offered, speaking as a friend instead of a colleague. ‘None of this has to be your problem.’
The woman wasn’t even getting paid for the privilege of being shouted at twice in one day. Once separately for not giving her honest opinion and again when the boss had scolded them collectively.
Right now, Stacey felt like walking out herself, but she wouldn’t because deep down she knew the boss was right. There were things here they were missing, and they weren’t trying hard enough to find them.
Problem was: twelve hours in and they were all bloody shattered.
‘I still think we’re missing something about Noah,’ Penn said as he re-entered the room. ‘I just think we can’t see the wood for the trees,’ he continued, pacing up and down the office.
‘Maybe we’re making it all too complicated and overthinking things,’ Stacey added.
He paused for a second. ‘Ladies, grab your phones and come with me.’
Stacey looked at Alison who frowned in response.
Stacey shrugged and grabbed her phone. She felt as though her behind had been glued to the chair for days. Alison did the same.
‘Okay, ladies, we’re going for a walk,’ he said as they headed out the automatic doors.
‘Clears the cobwebs from the head.’
‘Err… where exactly are we going?’ Stacey asked. It was a concrete building with a car park. Hardly the Clent Hills.
‘We’re gonna get some fresh air and do circuits of the building to get the blood pumping to our brains.’
Stacey couldn’t help the smile that came to her lips. Her colleague really was crazy sometimes. She pulled her cardigan tighter around herself. The sun was setting on what had been a cold and miserable day.
‘Clockwise or anti-clockwise?’ she asked.
‘Anti,’ he answered. ‘I’m feeling like a bit of a rebel.’
They all turned and began walking the other way with Penn in the middle. ‘Let’s break this down and go through it piece by piece.’ He turned to his right. ‘Alison, what strikes you the most from what you’ve learned so far?’
She thrust her hands into her pockets. ‘I think it’s the differences in the first two murders. Children involved in both, but he leaves the first and takes the second. Many killers escalate but the pattern remains the same. The escalation is normally in the type of crime, but he’s either interested in kids or he’s not. It’s not something I’ve come across before.’
Alison paused to step back as an officer passed them on his way to a squad car. She waited until he was out of earshot to continue. ‘No kids involved in the third murder but everything else is the same. Female, broken neck and she’d been in the public eye. Does that mean anything or not? So far we’ve found no link between the victims themselves, no common friends or places they visited. There’s commonality but no commonality, if you know what I mean.’
‘Okay, Stace, what about you?’ Penn asked as they passed the bins halfway through their first circuit of the building.
‘Why the rush?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened to make him kill three women in three days? What prompted him to start now?’
Penn stopped walking, but she and Alison carried on. ‘Unless these aren’t his first crimes,’ he said, drawing level with them again. ‘What if he’s done other things elsewhere?’
Stacey realised that showed just how tired she was because that was something she should have considered. She turned to her colleague as they passed the automatic doors and continued around again.
‘What about you? What’s bugging you?’
‘The scratches,’ he answered. ‘Present on the first victim but not the second.’
Alison shook her head but waited to speak until an articulated lorry had thundered past the station car park on the dual carriageway. ‘See, that’s what makes no sense. If a killer leaves a calling card, either as a message or a taunt to the police, it’s present in every crime. They don’t pick and choose when to do it. It’s part of the whole process, it’s important—’
‘Ooh, hang on,’ Stacey said as her phone dinged an email. ‘It’s from the network provider for the burner phone that called Nicola earlier today.’
She sat on the wall to the car park before opening the attachment.
The document was shorter than she’d expected and tidy. Very tidy.
‘That’s strange,’ Stacey said as Penn took a seat beside her. Alison sat on the other side.
‘Other than calling Nicola’s phone this morning, that phone has only been in contact with one other number.’
Penn looked at her screen.
‘So eight calls to that same number in the last month?’ he asked, trying to take a better look. ‘And no incoming calls at all.’
Stacey checked the dates at the top of the page.
‘It’s not a monthly statement, Penn. This is the sole activity of that burner phone for the last twelve years.
’
Sixty-Six
It was almost eight when they reached the house of Kate Sewell, which stuck out sorely from the properties of her neighbours. The row of quaint, cottage-style homes appeared unchanged with their pretty, well-manicured gardens and low white walls, except for number nineteen, which had a dropped kerb and a black brick driveway.
Must have gone down well with the neighbours, Kim thought as Bryant blocked in the Toyota Corolla on the driveway.
The village of Belbroughton sat approximately four miles south of Stourbridge and was once at the centre of the north Worcestershire scythe-making district. It had a population of around two thousand three hundred and was famous for its scarecrow festival at the end of September. It was an area known for its affluence and peace.
The door to the cottage was answered on the second knock.
The face Kim recognised from Monday creased into a frown.
‘Inspector…’
‘Stone,’ Kim said, helping her out.
The suit she’d been wearing when they’d last met had been replaced with a leotard and Lycra leggings. Kim spied a yoga mat on the floor behind.
‘De-stresses me,’ she said, following Kim’s gaze before her head snapped back, her eyes shining with fear.
‘Nothing’s happened to Tyra, has it?’
Kim shook her head. ‘No, we’re here on a totally separate matter.’
Relief flooded her features as she stood aside for them to enter. The front door led directly into a small lounge that appeared to be a second living area.
‘Where would you like to sit? Do you want coffee or?… I’m sorry, I don’t know how it works when the police visit your home late at night.’
It wasn’t quite eight, so it was hardly the middle of the night.
‘I’m afraid the matter is urgent and couldn’t wait until normal business hours, no coffee and right here will be fine,’ Kim said, taking a seat on a white leather sofa.
Bryant took the single seat and Kate sat cross-legged on the yoga mat. She reached for her phone, checked the screen and put it back down again.
Kim hadn’t really had a feeling one way or another when they’d met the other day. She hadn’t needed to form an opinion, but one was beginning to form now.
‘How may I help you?’
‘We understand you once represented Nicola Southall?’
She appeared to think for a few seconds. ‘Oh goodness, yes, I did but that was a few years ago now,’ she said, reaching for a bottle of water. ‘Why would you ask about Nicola?’
‘I’m afraid to say that Nicola was murdered earlier today,’ Kim said, feeling no need to soften the blow. This had been a business relationship and even that had been over for some time.
The woman paused mid-drink.
‘Not the body in the woods. That’s quite close to—’
‘Yes, that was Nicola, I’m afraid.’
Kate resumed her drink of water before screwing the top back on to the bottle.
‘Bloody hell, poor thing,’ she said as one would of someone they had met once in passing and then had never thought of again. Kim could see that in her mind there had been a profit and loss calculation; she was no threat to profit and so was no huge loss. She was not warming to the woman.
‘You represented her for some time?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I signed her when she was doing adverts. She looked good on the telly and was a reasonable actress, so I thought someone would snap her up, but I never guessed it’d be a national soap.’ She smiled as her eyes lit remembering the excitement. ‘They were good days. Magazine interviews, radio spots, photoshoots and an interview on BBC Breakfast. But…’ she opened her hands expressively.
‘It all went wrong when they changed her part?’ Kim asked.
‘Oh yeah, the story was fictional, but the hate was real. She was getting abuse online, spat at in the street and it got too much for her. I told her it would pass and that she could keep making the money, but she was too frightened by it all.’
More like she could have carried on and you could have carried on making the money, Kim thought.
‘So she retired?’
‘Slunk away is how I think of it. She just didn’t have the mettle to see it through. Wouldn’t go out alone, got her own protection and wouldn’t go for auditions; obviously, we had to part ways eventually.’
When the cash cow dried up, Kim thought.
‘But was there any direct threat to Nicola’s life?’
Kate frowned as she took another sip of water. ‘You think someone hated her enough to wait all this time?’
‘It’s something we have to consider. Death threats were made.’
‘Yeah, but they weren’t really serious. Keyboard warriors, most of them.’
‘Most?’ Kim pushed.
‘We had the odd couple that were worse than the rest, were a bit more specific but that was ten years ago.’
‘And what did you do with those letters?’
‘Burned them and gave them the respect they deserved.’
‘And did you tell Nicola about them all?’
‘Most of them, but there was no point making her even more paranoid.’
‘And you’re sure—’ Kim’s words were cut off by a ringing phone, but not the one next to the water bottle.
Kate sprang to her feet and glanced towards the kitchen.
‘Sorry, got to get that: client phone.’
Kim stood and suddenly remembered Kate’s reaction when they first arrived.
‘Your first thought on seeing us was that something had happened to Tyra Brooks. Do you have reason to suspect that something might?’
There was no hesitation as she opened the door to let them out as the phone in the kitchen continued to ring.
‘No, Officer, no reason at all.’
Kim opened her mouth to question that point, but two things happened: the door closed in her face and her phone began to ring.
‘Charming,’ Bryant noted as they headed for the car.
‘Stone,’ she answered.
‘Marm, it’s Craig Harris, FLO at the Webb-Harvey home.’
He was an officer she’d worked with years before and was a good match for this home.
‘Go on,’ she said, unable to stifle the ridiculous hope that Archie had turned up safe and sound.
‘It’s Robyn, Marm, she’s absolutely raging and is demanding you come here right now.’
‘Fuck,’ Kim said, ending the call.
Not normally one to respond to other people’s demands, in this case she’d make the exception. She instructed Bryant to head to the Webb-Harvey home.
She now had some explaining to do.
Sixty-Seven
Kate tried to push down her rage as she stared at the phone that had stopped ringing and now started again. She knew the number well; he really should know better than to call her. That wasn’t how they did things. She considered returning to her yoga session, but there was no way the downward dog on a chair position was going to relieve the tension that had now built in her shoulders.
The visit from the police had unnerved her, as had the conversation about Nicola Southall. Not least because it had reminded her of what could have been if only the woman had been made of sterner stuff.
Kate had brokered an initial deal on Nicola’s behalf of £1,400 per episode with a guaranteed 100 episodes a year and a repeat fee. It was a nice deal and they had celebrated together with a glass or two of the bubbly stuff. Kate had celebrated even harder alone once she saw the direction they were taking Nicola’s character. Good characters make decent money, but hated characters make a lot more.
Every daytime show wants an interview, every newspaper wants a story and every magazine wants a photoshoot with the most heinous characters being portrayed on the small screen.
And Kate had been poised to start making big money from interviews and personal appearances. She’d been ready for them both to milk the exposure for every penny it was worth.<
br />
She’d learned the hard way not to overshare with her clients. She’d made the mistake of talking to Nicola about her ideas. The minute she’d unveiled her plans, the woman had folded under the pressure of the abuse.
No, she’d learned by now that the less the client knew the better. They could thank her later when they, and she, were laughing all the way to the bank.
Best if she didn’t involve them at all, she thought, picking up the phone once it stopped ringing. She wasn’t going to speak to the caller. Conversations could be recorded.
She pressed the text message icon.
She typed:
I’ve told you not to ring me. What’s up?
The reply came quickly:
All ok 4 tomoz?
Kate swallowed her irritation at the abbreviation in text messages. Just how much time did people save by using non-words?
She typed:
If there was any change I’d have let you know!!!
The reply:
Just chkg c u tomoz
She typed:
No, you won’t and stick to the plan. Don’t contact me again.
She threw the phone to the side in disgust and took a deep breath.
There was a feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she couldn’t ignore the sensation that something was going to go horribly wrong.
Sixty-Eight
‘She’s in Archie’s bedroom,’ Craig said, opening the door. He nodded towards the stairs. ‘Second on the left.’
Bryant offered her a questioning glance. She shook her head. She’d deal with Robyn alone.
‘We’ll make tea,’ Bryant said, following Craig to the kitchen.
The door was already open, and Robyn sat on the edge of the racing-car bed with her head in her hands.
Kim coughed to signal her arrival.
‘You,’ she accused, reaching to the right for her phone. ‘You said all this to the man that murdered my wife and abducted my son?’
Deadly Cry: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with suspense (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thiller Book 13) Page 18