The Anagramist
Page 21
With over a hundred detectives now working on the case, most of them from Leeds, Bradford, and Wakefield, all attached to the MIT, the e-fit image had been touted round the town on house-to-house enquiries, and throughout the college, but it all came to nothing. He was still out there, he was still unknown, and nerves were highly strung as the date of his next anticipated attack drew near.
Arriving at the police social club, where Becky’s wake was to be held, Sam – not directly involved in the inquiry – felt the tension as keenly as any of her fellow officers. The Anagramist had struck at fortnightly intervals, and ten days remained before he was expected to strike again.
Drake had said in the run-up to the funeral that he disapproved of wakes. To him it was as if they were drinking Becky under. But it was a tradition, and one which neither her family nor the police were willing to disregard.
The room was crowded, people standing around in customary cliques, chatting amongst themselves, some like Kirsty Pollack and Jo Walsh, reminiscing over memories of Becky, others, uniformed and detectives, discussing the state of the investigation so far, and yet others, principally her family and his, talking in general terms, his father circulating, no doubt pontificating on the state of the economy and government plans to improve it. Drake buried himself in a corner, sipping on a glass of lemonade, and for the most part, Sam stayed with him.
At three o’clock, he could take no more, had a brief word with Lumsden, and another word with his father, and left.
Sam was ready to go with him, but he insisted she should stay. He needed some time alone. She acquiesced and joined Kirsty and Jo.
An hour later, a couple of brandies warming her inside, she, too, left. The party – if that was the correct description – had begun to wind down, Ted Drake was becoming vocal on the need to be away, and she begged a lift from him.
And they got back to the farm, Freddie reported that Drake had come home, made himself a cup of tea, and shut himself in his room. The manservant had made one visit to check that Drake was all right, received a surly response, and left him to his grief.
Sam joined Ted for a much-needed cup of coffee, and found the old man in a grim yet curiously sanguine mood, and the topic of conversation was, inevitably, his youngest son.
“He never really knew his mother. She was barely forty years of age when she died. Cancer, you know. He was nine years old, and Sheila was the most important person in his life. They are, aren’t they? Mothers? Especially for lads. He was too young to understand the concept of death, and it took a long time to realise that she hadn’t just deserted him.”
Sam recalled the tale Drake had told her on their first meeting, of some woman who had let him down badly, and his father’s admission brought it into perspective.
“He was about fifteen or sixteen when he finally rationalised it, and for some time afterwards he used to visit her grave regularly. But he was all right, Sam. He coped with it. And it is the same with Becky. More devastating to lose someone like that, but he will eventually get over it, and he’ll be all the stronger for it. If he’s giving you a bad time, he doesn’t mean it. He’s wrapped up in her and the way she’s just left him behind.” Ted took Sam’s hand. “Persevere with him, please. He might not admit it, but he needs someone like you. Someone who’s tough enough to put up with his moods, but gentle enough to understand.”
“It’s not a problem for the time being, Ted, but I have to be in Landshaven by the end of March, ready to take up my new job.”
Ted grinned broadly. “Best thing you can do, lass, is take him with you.”
It was tempting, and when she finally left Ted’s company, with night beginning to close in, she knocked lightly on Drake’s door, and without waiting for an answer, let herself in.
He was sleeping. Laid on his right side, facing the wall and the window, the steady rise and fall of his breathing lent him a calm appearance, as if he were at peace. But he had been crying. The white pillow slip was stained with his tears. Sam felt a rush of love and sympathy for him, so overwhelming, that her tears began to flow.
In amongst her emotional outpouring was a bombardment of self-recrimination. One man had let her down, and in a flood of self-pity, she had determined that society as a whole would pay for it. Yet Don Vaughan’s betrayal was nothing at the side of the suffering of others. One crazy, drugged-up idiot had sliced off of an officer’s arm, and torn that same man’s life apart. Sam’s response? A cynical disregard of her erstwhile colleague’s determination to return to work, dismissing his mental torment as a fool’s errand.
Another man, dedicated to wreaking his evil on the population of Howley, had taken Wes Drake’s life, and destroyed it. The Anagramist’s savagery had reduced Drake from the outgoing, laid-back and cheerful man who first entered her room in January, to a mental wreck, unable to focus upon anything but the decapitated remains of his partner.
Drake had made her realise that self-absorption served no purpose other than to prolong the torment of betrayal, and at the side of his suffering, hers was nothing.
And so she wept. Sitting on the edge of his bed, she buried her face in her hands, and screamed internally at herself.
Her sobs disturbed him. He turned towards her, and his arm came about her shoulders. She did not protest. She made no effort to pull away. He drew her down, hugged her closely, kissed her forehead, and she raised her head slightly, applied her lips to his.
Through her distress, she felt the passion rising, her breathing accelerated, her long-dormant libido came to life, and instantly she pulled away.
“I’m sorry, Wes. I was in danger of losing control.”
“It’s fine. Sometimes it’s good to lose control.” He hugged her again. “But it’s too early for me.”
She forced the smile. “Let me know when the time’s right.”
March 8
Chapter Thirty-Two
“The Anagramist, to give him the name he chose for himself, has made a mistake.”
Chief Superintendent Lumsden’s announcement was accompanied by the stroboscopic flashes of multiple cameras.
He held up a single sheet of A4 paper. “It has always been the Anagramist’s policy to send us a useless message after he has committed his abominable crimes. However, working with his email supplier, we have uncovered this message, which we believe was scheduled for delivery to Wesley Drake sometime after tomorrow, the date upon which this evil man is expected to strike again. Copies of the message will be made available to you, and we’re working to translate the anagrams hidden in the text. Allow me to read it out to you.”
Lumsden held the sheet in front of him and read carefully. “Hugs Ava than a man. Harm bard doll riff. Tout chart.” He focused on his audience again. “At the moment it makes little sense, but we hope to have it cracked later today.”
Watching the scene on a portable TV set, the Anagramist was gripped by uncontrollable fury. There was no way they had secured the message from his email, for the simple reason that he did not write it.
The chief superintendent went on to give out the name Brian Glendenning, and it didn’t take long for the Anagramist to work out who had given them that information: Utterridge. As if to confirm it, the screen was suddenly filled with an image of him in Utterridge’s shop. The Anagramist was not troubled. It was so vague, his face so well-shielded that it could be almost anyone, and he had no near neighbours who could tip off the police.
How had they stumbled across the greasy little theatrical supplier? Then he remembered that the police had been calling upon knife suppliers all over Yorkshire. So what? They had a useless image and an address which was of even less use.
While Lumsden read out the text, the Anagramist scribbled it out rapidly on a sheet of paper, and when the chief superintendent was finished with his press conference, he turned his attention to it. Drake was not the only expert with anagrams.
Hugs Ava than a man
Harm bard doll riff
Tout chart
As with all his victims and their families, he had kept a wary eye on Drake, and he knew that the Vaughan woman was staying at Drake’s father’s place.
There was something else. Comparing the photograph he had taken at Peace Garden with later ones, taken here in Howley, she appeared to have put on a little weight. For the moment, he wondered if Drake had been slipping one up her and left her pregnant, but logic soon rejected the idea. To his certain knowledge, Drake had visited her for the first time the day after Shana Kenny’s killing. Less than two months previously, and even if he had impregnated her, she wouldn’t be showing just yet.
It did not take him long to work out what was going on. Add the fake email to her apparent weight gain, and it meant that they were setting her up as a target. She was wearing a bullet-proof vest, or at the very least a stab vest, under her clothing.
It would be so easy for him to succumb to his virulent anger and go after her. But what was the point? He would simply walk into an army of police officers, and for all he knew, some of them could be armed.
It was Drake’s idea. He knew that. He was so incensed at losing his bitch of a partner, so torn apart by grief and anger, that he was looking for a confrontation, but the Anagramist had not come this far without careful planning. Much though he would relish the thought of confronting the arrogant bastard again, recklessness was not the answer.
His next target, Amanda Morris, Drake’s assistant, was due to die tomorrow, the ninth of March, and he had intended going after Vaughan and taking another shot at Drake over the coming month. Could he possibly change his plans? Give Drake a severe kick where it would hurt the most, take out Vaughan, and at the same time maybe take out Drake himself?
It was an interesting, theoretical exercise. Armed with the knowledge of her body armour, his knives were useless. How else could he take her? Where could he find and take her? How could he tempt Drake to come along?
It was practically certain that she was followed by fellow police officers everywhere she went. They would be on the alert, on the lookout for him. How could he deal with that threat? It would not be easy, but it would not be impossible.
Switching off the television, he set to work, plotting and planning his manoeuvres. He would need another pair of false plates, but fortunately he had several sets in the cellar. He already knew the registration number of Drake’s car, but he would need that of Sam’s Vaughan’s, and that would entail a risky drive past Bradford Hill Farm… Or maybe not so risky. Ted Drake, every bit as arrogant and cocksure as his youngest son, would not be likely to tolerate police presence around his house, and the cops would only pick up Vaughan as and when she left. A quick drive past, commit her registration to his near-eidetic memory, and he should get away with it. The police, probably parked on the road outside the farm, would spot him, but if he carried on driving, they would relax.
All he needed then, was to watch for her leaving the house alone, an easy enough proposition, tail her, wait until she was parked up, and she would be his.
But how would he take her? He was not fooled by Hollywood movies. Chloroform, even soaked into a large pad of cotton wool, was unreliable. Its effectiveness would depend upon the alertness of the victim, and even if it did work, it could take anything up to five or ten minutes to knock her out, and not the few seconds the moviemakers would like their audience to believe.
Rohypnol was equally unreliable. Roofies, to give them their street name, could take as long as half an hour to produce the required effect.
In the end, he decided that his hands, clenched to form a club, would be enough.
How would he deal with her escort? Some police officers were excellent at cloak and dagger, but for an observer paying close attention, they would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, and his knife, whether aimed at them or their car tyres, would prevent them following.
Finally, how could he ensure that Drake would come for her alone?
In considering his enemy, it wasn’t as difficult as he imagined. Drake fancied himself as an old-fashioned hero, a veritable Richard Hannay or Allan Quatermain, a man prepared to take on the forces of evil in defence of the status quo, a man who played with a straight bat, a man endowed with the stalwart British values of decency, honesty, courage. Your country needs you, England expects every man to do his duty, God save the Queen.
That kind of jingo, jingo patriotism, was anathema to the Anagramist. It belonged to an earlier age, the age of Empire, the age of Britain’s domination, the age of Britain’s subjugation of native people across three quarters of the globe. And yet, people like Drake adhered to those disingenuous principles as if they were part and parcel of Moses’ Commandments. Given the right incentive, Drake would come and he would be alone, and he would meet with his maker before Samantha Vaughan.
Switching on his laptop, the Anagramist began to work on the message. It had to be word perfect. No anagrams… well, just one. It would spell out the precise terms en clair, and as he worked on it, he visualised the final confrontation. Drake would be dead or dying within seconds of entering the room, Vaughan would watch the Anagramist remove his head, and while he carried out the task, she would feel her terror rising in anticipation of the same fate befalling her.
The timing of the email was as important as the construction. He had to have her here, in this decrepit old house, before he could send it off. And when he did, just to make sure Drake got it, he would send a text message. Like every other chimpanzee in the so-called human race, Drake was sure to check his messages the moment they came in.
With darkness descending, he was satisfied with his plans, and climbed into his car for the drive past Bradford Hill Farm.
March 9
Chapter Thirty-Three
If he was surprised by how easy it was to pick up and trail her, he was not fooled.
He was parked on Bradford Hill Close, opposite Back Field where he had left the body of Shana Kenny. A second drive up past the farm had revealed her car parked outside the double garage, and the police vehicle, an unmarked Ford, a hundred yards down the road towards Howley. No doubt they had clocked his Renault as it climbed the hill, but he was using different plates to the ones he had employed on his reconnaissance mission last night, and when he made his way back down, he was using yet another registration. Every Renault Clio which passed them would raise the alarm, but as long as it did not come back, they would forget it, and the same was true of his car.
The police Ford passed the end of Bradford Hill Close just after two o’clock in the afternoon, and she was fifty yards behind. He had anticipated her moving sometime during the day, and as he expected, she was alone. It was, he reasoned, part of the police plan to trap him. For them to leave ahead of her, they obviously knew where she was heading, which gave him a slight advantage. Another car passed just behind her, and the Anagramist slotted in behind it. As long as it was there, she would not see him but he could keep an eye on her.
The small convoy of vehicles followed the steep hill towards the town centre, but before they got there, the intervening vehicle turned off to the left. It was an irritation. When she checked her mirror, she would see a Renault Clio, and raise the alarm, but by the same token, he could not afford to lose her.
Luck was with him. There was no sign of a police escort, and on the outskirts of the town centre was a large supermarket, when she reached the traffic lights controlling access, she positioned herself in the right-hand lane, ready to turn into the car park. He guessed that her sentries were already parked up, waiting for her.
She had to wait for the filter, but the lights were still on green for him in the lef
t-hand lane. He drove through and continued towards the town centre. That would, he hoped, make her relax.
When he reached the inner ring road, he looped round and back up Bradford Hill Road, turning left into the supermarket. As he cruised round, making it appear as if he was looking for a space, he saw her climb out of her car. She walked towards the building, and as she passed their Ford, one of her escorts climbed out of the passenger seat and sauntered in after her.
He drove past the unmarked police car, and noticed that the man behind the wheel was busy reading text messages on his mobile phone. Chimpanzee.
The Anagramist parked twenty yards further on, reversing his Renault into a space.
He left the car, and looked around. Another rainy Monday had persuaded most people to stay at home, and there were few shoppers in evidence. Wrapping his heavy coat about him, he slipped the knife from the ruler pocket of his black jeans into the right-hand coat pocket. This was the riskiest part of the operation.
When she came out of the shop, Sam Vaughan would walk past the police car, but she would not look in. That was the key to skilled surveillance. Never telegraph your secret sentry’s location or role to anyone. Instead she would cross the parking lane to her Vauxhall.
Coming alongside the Ford, he rapped on the window. The officer looked up, raised his eyebrows.
“I was wondering if you could help.”
The driver let the window down. “What do you want?”
With alarming speed, the Anagramist whipped the knife from his pocket, leaned in, and jammed the blade into the officer’s upper chest. The detective had no time to respond, and the Anagramist placed his hand over his mouth to prevent him crying out. In seconds his shirt was covered in blood, and his eyes closed as he drifted into death.