THE THAMES PATH KILLER an absolutely gripping mystery and suspense thriller (Detective Rob Miller Mysteries Book 1)

by BIBA PEARCE

  Rob took a swig of his beer. It tasted like manna from heaven after the bitter machine-coffee he’d been chugging all day. “The victim was Julie Andrews. She was twenty-six and she worked at the National Archives in Kew. She was attacked on her way home, pulled into the bushes, raped and strangled.”

  Tony didn’t react. “How was she raped? Was she tied in a specific way? Was anything taken? Was she strangled before or after she was molested?”

  The questions came fast and furious and Rob was glad he’d suggested meeting up tonight. “Her hands were tied above her head with duct tape and also around a small tree trunk. She had another piece of tape over her mouth.” Rob cast his mind back to the rainy river path. “She had bruises around her wrists where she’d struggled against the bindings. The pathologist said she must have put up a fight.”

  “Which would have made it difficult for the stalker,” said Tony. “How did he subdue her long enough to tie her up?”

  Rob raised an eyebrow. “You’re good at this shit, Tony.”

  “I should hope so, since it’s my job.”

  Rob pictured the victim’s battered face and frowned. “She had a bloody nose. We think he hit her in the face.”

  Tony nodded. “Makes sense.”

  His frown deepened. “Then, he raped and strangled her, possibly at the same time, but she died from asphyxiation.”

  “Anything else?” asked Tony. Rob reached for his drink. He suddenly felt dirty, like he needed to take a shower. He took a big gulp, hoping to wash the sensation away.

  “Well, she’d reported a stalker three weeks earlier, but nothing was done about it. She filed a report with a rough description. Tall, thin, wearing a hoodie.”

  “Yeah, I saw that on the news.”

  “What does it mean? Why did this guy target her? Was it a personal vendetta or something?”

  Tony studied him. “What makes you think it’s personal?”

  “Well, the intimate manner in which she was attacked and the ring.” He stopped. Shit. He wasn’t supposed to mention the ring.

  “What ring?” Tony jumped on it.

  “I can’t say.” Rob bit his lip. “Sorry, strict orders from above.”

  “The ring is significant,” said Tony. “Was it missing?”

  “Not exactly.” Rob shifted in his chair. Lawrence would kill him when he found out. “This can’t go any further, okay?”

  Tony nodded.

  “It was found inside the victim’s body.”

  Tony stared at him. A full minute passed without either of them saying anything at all.

  Finally, Tony broke the silence. His voice was a whisper. “What kind of ring was it?”

  Rob exhaled. “You know, I could get into serious shit if this came out?”

  “It won’t go any further than this pub,” Tony reassured him. “Listen, if you want my help, you need to tell me about the ring.”

  “It was an engagement ring,” he breathed, his eyes darting around the pub to make sure no one was listening. All the other drinkers were minding their own business.

  Tony blinked as Rob’s words sank in. “She was engaged.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  Tony leaned forward. “It was the fact that she was engaged that made him select her.”

  “Are you saying this wasn’t personal? That it was just because she was engaged that she was attacked?”

  Tony sat back in his chair and picked up his drink. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “But he was stalking her for weeks before he attacked her. That must mean something?”

  “Sure, it means he picked her out as his next target and followed her until he knew her routine, then he waited for the right opportunity to grab her.”

  Rob felt ill. “What do you mean ‘his next target’? Do you think he’s done this sort of thing before?”

  “Oh, almost certainly,” said Tony. “And I’ll tell you something else for free. She won’t be the last either.”

  Chapter 9

  Rob stared at his friend over his pint glass. “Are you saying he’s a serial killer?” He croaked out the words, as if the tension he’d been holding in his neck and shoulders had suddenly risen to his throat and gripped his voice box. That bloody journalist had been right. He had another large swig. It helped dislodge the lump.

  “It looks like it.” Tony wasn’t smiling now.

  “And you figured all this out based on the ring?”

  Tony leaned forward. “Let me tell you about the patterns.” He dropped his voice as a group of four occupied the table next to them. “You probably know some, if not all, of this already, but bear with me.”

  Rob nodded and slid his glass onto the table. He was picturing Lawrence’s face when he told him they had a fucking serial murderer on their hands.

  “He probably started with some basic stalking. Perhaps he liked a girl who didn’t like him back, perhaps he hit on her and she rejected him, that sort of thing. It’s possible she then got engaged to someone else.”

  Rob listened intently.

  “So, he followed her. Watched her while she went about her daily life, maybe even through her bedroom window or with her new man. You get the picture.”

  Rob nodded again.

  “He would have fantasised about her, about harming her or forcing her to have sex with him, but he didn’t have the courage to act on it.”

  “I can see where this is going,” croaked Rob.

  Tony continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “As his obsession increased, so did his fantasies, until one day he threatened her.”

  “Would he have killed her?”

  “Probably not at that stage, but as he got bolder, he may have used more force, until one day he did it. Once he realised the satisfaction he got from it, he would have wanted to do it again.”

  “Christ,” said Rob. “So, this guy will have a history of this sort of thing?”

  “Indeed. He’s probably also moved around a lot to stay off the radar. A trail of dead bodies has a way of attracting attention.”

  “So, looking at cold cases in Surrey would be a waste of time?” Rob made a mental note to tell Jenny to widen the search area.

  “Maybe not, but you’d have more luck looking nationwide.”

  Rob exhaled slowly through his mouth. This was huge. His personal-vendetta case had snowballed into a nationwide serial killer hunt. The press were going to go apeshit. “How many times do you think he’s done this?”

  Tony shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Less sophisticated offenders usually find their victims through opportunity. There’s not much in the way of planning. The crime scenes are messy, not thought-through.”

  “This guy’s not like that,” said Rob.

  “I know.” Tony gave him a hard stare. “Your guy has been planning this for a while. He mapped out her route home, knew her routine inside out. He’s showing a remarkable level of sophistication and intelligence in his planning, which means he’s fairly advanced.”

  “Not a beginner, then?” Rob attempted to lighten the mood, but it fell flat.

  “No. I’d say your stalker has been doing this for some time.”

  * * *

  Rob called Lawrence the moment he left the pub.

  “Tell me you’ve got something,” growled the DCI down the phone without even saying hello.

  “Possibly. Can I come and see you?”

  A pause. “Sure. Come now.”

  Sam Lawrence lived in a big house on Richmond Hill with his wife, Diana, and their two girls. The girls went to a local prep school, and Diana, who was an interior designer, worked mornings so she had the afternoons free to devote to the school run, homework and making tea. Rob had met Lawrence’s wife before and liked her, although their meeting had been brief. Lawrence wasn’t a big fan of mixing business with his family life, which is probably why his marriage had survived when so many others had failed.

  He rem
embered his boss mentioning how he liked to leave his work at the door when he went home. That way, the ugliness didn’t seep into the other areas of his life. It was great in theory, but Rob wondered how often he actually managed to do that. It was hard, if not impossible, to switch off some days, today being a classic case in point.

  Rob parked outside the three-storey Victorian terrace on leafy Mount Ararat Road. Lawrence had put up a new fence since the last time he was there. This one was an imposing six foot and made of thick wrought iron. The diamond-shaped daggers on the tips of the vertical poles made the house hiding in the darkness beyond seem colder and more unwelcoming.

  He rang the buzzer and the gate swung open. Lawrence had opened the front door before Rob made it to the top step.

  “Come on in.” He stood back to let Rob enter. The DCI was wearing a tracksuit, which was so out of character that Rob did a double take as he walked through the door.

  “I’ve been exercising,” Lawrence said, by way of explanation.

  The interior was stylishly done, thanks to Diana’s excellent taste and business acumen. Rob had heard a rumour that the couple had inherited the house from Diana’s parents. Certainly, it was way beyond the scope of a DCI’s salary. The floorboards were a pale wood and wider than usual, creating a sense of space. Unlike most Victorian houses, you really felt you could breathe in this one. There was a rustic eight-seater wooden table at one end of the open-plan lounge-diner, while a right-angled leather sofa and matching armchair were positioned at the other. On the wall, a massive flat-screen television was showing a football game with the sound muted.

  Lawrence gestured to the wooden table. He didn’t want Rob making himself too comfortable. This wasn’t going to be a long visit.

  Rob wondered where Diana and the girls were. Probably upstairs, asked to stay out of the way, to prevent the ugliness from seeping. He sat down and declined a beer. The last one was still sitting in his gullet, making him feel sick. The acrid taste in his mouth was a constant reminder of why he’d come.

  “What have you got for me?” Lawrence got straight to the point.

  Rob took a deep breath. “You’re not going to like this.”

  Lawrence gave him a thousand-yard stare.

  “It seems we’ve got a serial rapist and murderer on the loose.”

  Lawrence was quiet for a full minute and Rob could almost hear the cogs grinding in his head. “It was the ring, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lawrence banged his fist down on the table. “I knew something like this was going to happen. It never fucking rains, but it pours.”

  Rob waited for the rant to end.

  “Now we’ll have Lewisham banging down our door demanding a piece of this, and we’ll have to open the case up to other departments because we don’t have the resources to hunt a serial killer.” His burning gaze fixed on Rob. “Are you sure about this?”

  Rob nodded. “I spoke to my friend Tony Sanderson this evening. He’s the—”

  “I know who he is,” interjected Lawrence. “Works for the secret bloody service as a profiler, mostly counterterrorism stuff. Didn’t he write that book, Mind Games, about this very thing?”

  “Yeah.” Tony was something of a national superstar. Most of the crime agencies had consulted with him at some point or other.

  “And you told him about our case?” He gave Rob a hard look, daring him to deny it.

  Rob didn’t bother. “Yup. It was the ring that convinced him. It’s ritualistic, it has relevance. Tony reckons the guy was jilted as a youngster, which makes sense given his obvious anger towards women.”

  “Lots of people are jilted,” muttered Lawrence. “That doesn’t make them serial killers.”

  He had a point.

  “But I get what he’s saying,” he continued wearily. “We’re going to have to open up the search if we want to catch this guy. I take it Sanderson thinks he’s done this before?”

  “Yeah, and he said he probably moved around a lot too, to avoid detection, so we’ll have to look at all county records.”

  Lawrence nodded. “Okay, but I’m not going to the press with this until we have a lead on this guy. If looking at cold cases helps us catch him, that’s fantastic, but we still only have one dead body, so there’s no need to create mayhem.”

  Yet, thought Rob, but he didn’t say so. If Tony was right, it was only a matter of time before the stalker struck again.

  Chapter 10

  Rob got home to find Yvette standing in the hall wearing nothing but black lace underwear and a suspender belt. Soft, satin straps criss-crossed her lithe, tanned body connecting all the parts to one another. The expression on her face did not say Come to bed, however, but rather, What the hell time do you call this?

  “I’m sorry,” he began, his eyes roaming over her outfit. He felt the familiar stirring he always felt when he was with her. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “Only about three hours,” she said in a huff. “You said you’d be back by nine.”

  He had. He’d texted her on the way to the pub before he’d met Tony, but in all fairness, he hadn’t expected the conversation to turn out the way it had. In light of what had happened, he’d forgotten all about his promise to Yvette.

  “Something came up,” he said, realising how hollow the words sounded.

  “Something always does.” She gave him a sad look. “But it isn’t going to be you. I’m cold and tired, and I’m going to bed. I just wanted you to see what you missed.”

  Rob closed the distance between them. “You’re not going to tease me like this then disappear.” He reached for her. “I was looking forward to unravelling you.”

  She stiffened. He could tell she was beyond the point of relenting. He’d pushed it too far this time.

  “I’m not in the mood anymore.” She turned and padded barefoot up the stairs. “Don’t forget to turn the heating off before you come to bed. I’ve had it on high while I’ve been waiting.”

  She certainly knew how to make him feel guilty. With a heavy sigh, he walked into the lounge, sat down and took off his shoes. God, he was tired. It was just as well Yvette wasn’t in the mood anymore, because quite frankly, he wasn’t sure he could muster the energy tonight. Tony’s revelation had shocked him more than he cared to admit, but the more he thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? He’d read Tony’s book; he should have considered this.

  He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. It was the ring that had made him think it was personal. Like the murderer had quite literally been saying, This is what you can do with your engagement ring.

  He was just drifting off to sleep when a thought struck him. If Julie wasn’t the first, and she wasn’t someone he knew, then how had the stalker targeted her? How had he known she was engaged? He took out his phone, noticing with a grimace that the battery was nearly dead, but not wanting to interrupt his train of thought, he didn’t get up to plug it in. Instead, he made a list.

  Newspaper announcement?

  Wedding cake?

  Dress?

  Wedding planner?

  He’d found her somehow, and it was most likely something to do with the wedding. He made a mental note to call Justin King the next day and ask him about their wedding plans. Weariness overcame him, and he fell asleep.

  * * *

  “Cold cases,” he told his team at the squad meeting the next morning. “Anything with the same MO. It doesn’t matter where it is. This guy could have moved around.”

  “Shall we stay on the CCTV?” Jeff, one of the dozen officers assigned to the video studio, wanted to know.

  “Please. I still think that’s how we’re going to ID this guy. We’ve got to catch him on camera. He followed her around for weeks. There must be a clear shot of him somewhere.”

  He’d outlined the serial killer theory to the wide-eyed excitement of the team, all of whom were still fairly young, but he did remind them there was still
only one victim, so while the theory made sense, they were focused on finding Julie’s killer first and foremost.

  “Let’s not get distracted by this,” he’d instructed them. “Our priority is Julie Andrews.”

  The public appeal had resulted in hundreds of new leads, which the Twickenham branch were sifting through before passing on. His inbox was overflowing and there were several messages to call DCI Douglas back at Twickenham Police Station.

  “I’ve got a caller who saw a man matching your description at Costa Coffee, Kew Retail Park around five o’clock on Friday afternoon. The timing fits, yes?” DCI Douglas sounded like an efficient, capable detective.

  A shot of adrenalin surged through his veins. “Yes, and the location. The retail park is around the corner from the National Archives.”

  DCI Douglas passed on the woman’s number, and once Rob had thanked him and hung up, he dialled her. She sounded breathy, like she’d been running, and there was a low drone in the background.

  “Hello, Mrs Hawes?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Detective Inspector Rob Miller from the Major Investigation Team. I believe you called our request line earlier today?”

  “Oh, yes. I did. Hang on, let me turn the hoover off.”

  The drone stopped.

  “Could you tell me about the man you saw?” he asked, trying not to sound overly eager.

  “Well, I noticed him because he was sitting at the table next to me outside Costa in a tracksuit top with the hood up. He asked me for a light. When I saw the appeal on the news, I thought, that sounds just like the guy I saw. So, I called it in.”

  A smoker?

  “Did you get a good look at him? Could you describe him to me?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. His hood was up, but then it was cold outside. He had a thin face, quite angular features and he was wearing spectacles.”

  “Spectacles, are you sure?”

  “Yes, he was reading the newspaper.”

  “And smoking?”

  “Yes.”

  Two more things to add to their description of him, if this was the right guy.

  “Anything else you can remember about him? Did he have any tattoos or earrings, for example?”