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

by BIBA PEARCE

  He walked along the gravel footpath, past a pretty pond with a giant heron standing on one leg in the shallows. A herd of unsuspecting deer grazed in the distance, oblivious to the events of the night before. After a while, the path grew cooler and darker as it wound through a wooded area. Oaks, elms and plane trees fought for space among the knee-high shrubs and bushes. Underfoot and hidden beneath the long grass was a tangled mesh of brambles and nettles. He carefully stepped over them to get to the forensic tent that had been set up to protect the victim’s body. Like before, it was illuminated from within, giving it an eerie glow.

  “What have we got?” he asked Mallory, pausing to pull on the coveralls handed to him by a police officer guarding the scene. Mallory was already kitted up.

  “Another young woman.” The shadows beneath his eyes were almost purple. “A jogger. She’s got no ID on her, but by the looks of things, it’s the same guy.”

  They went inside the tent, the flap dropping behind them, cutting off any semblance of normality. The crime scene was all that mattered now. Without speaking, Rob absorbed the scene in front of him. A female pathologist was bending over a slim, dark-haired woman dressed in running gear. She’d been strangled by a thick elastic cord attached to a mechanism of some kind. An officer in forensic gear stood beside her, clipboard in hand, while a crime scene photographer took in situ shots.

  The victim’s hands were bound, like Julie’s, in the same way, above her head and secured to a tree trunk with tape. Her leggings and underwear had been ripped down to below her knees and one trainer had come off, possibly in the struggle. He didn’t need to ask if she’d been sexually assaulted, he could see the bruising and dried blood on her inner thighs.

  He averted his eyes. “Jesus,” he muttered. He moved around to get a better look at her face. “She’s so young.” Her skin was clear and smooth, and she had high cheekbones and full, sensual lips. She would have been extremely attractive without the pasty hue of death that clung to her like a plastic film.

  “Mid-twenties, I’d say,” said the pathologist, an articulate middle-aged woman.

  Rob bent down and held out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m DI Rob Miller and this is Mallory.”

  “Liz Kramer. Home Office pathologist.”

  “What is that around her neck?” he asked.

  “It’s a headlamp — cyclists and joggers often wear them at night.”

  “This one wasn’t punched in the face,” said Mallory, stating the obvious.

  “Good observation, Sergeant,” the pathologist quipped.

  Rob studied the victim’s wrists. “It does look like he managed to subdue her without much force.”

  “Yes, there is some bruising, but she didn’t put up much of a fight.”

  “Not like Julie,” mumbled Mallory.

  Kramer glanced between them. “I take it you’ve seen this before?”

  “Unfortunately,” replied Rob. “It looks like the same guy. Any chance of getting some DNA off that tape?”

  Kramer was carefully peeling it off the victim’s wrists and inserting it into a clear, plastic evidence bag. Despite her smooth movements, her mouth was set in a thin line.

  “It’s possible.” She secured the bag and handed it to the crime scene officer, who marked it off on a clipboard and dropped it into an evidence box. “Especially if he tore it off with his teeth.”

  “Okay, good.” Might as well hope for the best. You never knew what might transpire. Cases had been solved on less. Eventually, this guy had to slip up and leave a trace. Every new victim meant more contact and more chance of a transfer of DNA.

  “What about the ring?” whispered Mallory. The crime scene photographer was taking pictures, working in synergy with the pathologist. Every piece of evidence that was bagged was first photographed in situ on the victim.

  Rob lowered his voice. “Dr Kramer, could you check inside the victim for a ring?”

  Her eyes widened, but she nodded and did as requested.

  “At first glance, I can’t see anything, but that’s not to say it isn’t there. I don’t have the right equipment with me here. I’ll be able look more thoroughly when I get her back to the lab.”

  Fair enough. He’d have to wait. “Okay, thanks.” Rob let his eyes linger over the broken and defiled body one last time, then left the tent, giving in to a sudden need for fresh air. “Has anyone reported her missing?” he asked Mallory, who had followed him out and was gazing at the lightening sky.

  “Uniform are going to get back to us. She had nothing on her, no purse or ID of any kind.”

  “If she was jogging out here, she must be local,” remarked Rob. “Surely a partner or a parent would have reported her missing when she didn’t return from her run?”

  Mallory’s mobile rang. He held up a finger and listened intently. When he hung up, he said, “It’s possible she’s a local woman called Sara Bakshi. And get this, her fiancé reported her missing last night around eleven o’clock.”

  * * *

  Sara’s fiancé lived in an impressive four-storey Victorian townhouse on Queen’s Road, Richmond, next to the American University campus. At one point, all the houses along Queen’s Road were owned by wealthy noblemen — indeed, the Royal hunting lodge was situated just inside Richmond Park — but most of the properties were now subdivided and the leasehold shared by different landlords.

  Rob counted five buzzers on the wall next to the massive front door. There was a basement flat in addition to the ground floor and the three above. This door, however, seemed to cater for the ground-floor apartment only. The basement entrance was at the side of the building and access to the upper floors was from the back of the house. An equally impressive Porsche SUV stood in the driveway, along with a fashionable Mini Cooper in racing green. On the other side of the gravel car park stood a gleaming, silver Mercedes convertible.

  “People around here aren’t short of a few bob,” remarked Mallory, as he pressed the ground-floor buzzer next to the name “Gareth Conrad”.

  A man whose height was inversely proportional to the size of his SUV opened the door. He was in socks, which made him appear even shorter. From where he stood, Rob looked down onto the guy’s bald patch.

  The man craned his neck to look up at them. “I’m Gareth, Sara’s fiancé. Please come inside.”

  They followed him into a spacious lounge with cream carpeting and leather furniture. The curtains were soft and silky, and held open with gold rope so the struggling sunlight could enter. A glass coffee table stood in the centre of the room containing a huge bunch of white lilies. Directly above the lilies was a modern light fixture that looked as if it had been constructed from a myriad of little paper hexagons, which somehow managed to fit together in a sort of ill-fitting puzzle. The overall effect was bright and stylish.

  Rob took a seat on the armchair, leaving Mallory to sit beside Gareth on the couch.

  “I take it you have news of Sara?” Gareth asked in a voice used to giving commands. Rob had been told he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in London’s financial district. He studied the man’s face. There was worry behind the eyes, but he was trying hard not to show it. Perhaps he’d been taught showing emotion was weakness. Keep bluffing till you can’t anymore. He was an investment banker, after all.

  “Yes, we do. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Conrad, but we found a body in Richmond Park this morning, which we believe to be Sara.”

  “A body?” He stared at them without blinking as he tried to process what he’d just heard.

  Rob gave him a moment.

  “You mean she’s dead?”

  Rob nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Becca was so much better at this than he was, but she was tied up on another case and they didn’t have time to wait for another FLO to be allocated. Gareth made a soft, gasping sound as the words sank in. There was a painful silence.

  “We’d like you to identify her, if at all possible. When you’re ready, of course.”
>
  Gareth nodded blankly. “How did she die?”

  “She was attacked.” Rob hesitated. “It looks like she was strangled.”

  Gareth shuddered, then dropped his head into his hands. Mallory met Rob’s eye, but Rob gave a miniscule shake of his head. Gareth didn’t need to know the rest. Not yet.

  “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?” Rob asked, after another moment had passed.

  The banker removed his hands from his face, leaving a blotchy imprint. “I don’t understand how this happened. I got home last night, and she wasn’t here. At first, I assumed she’d gone for her run, as usual, but when she didn’t come home, I thought maybe she’d met a friend for a drink or something.”

  “Did you try calling her?” asked Mallory.

  “Yes, repeatedly. She didn’t pick up. That’s when I got worried. She wouldn’t stay out all night without calling me.”

  “Is that when you rang the police?” Rob noticed Mallory hadn’t made a single note. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever seen him with a notebook.

  “I called 999 at about eleven and reported her missing. I was frantic, by then. I thought about going to look for her, but it didn’t seem realistic since I had no idea where she’d gone. Perhaps, if I’d walked through the park . . .”

  “It would have been too late,” Rob said gently. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

  Gareth sat quietly as the reality hit him. “Do you know who did this?” he eventually asked.

  Rob wanted to give him some hope, but they were so far from catching the guy, it was embarrassing. He couldn’t very well say they hadn’t the foggiest. He settled for a compromise. “We think it’s the same man who attacked a young woman in Kew last week.”

  “We’re following several lines of enquiry,” added Mallory. “It won’t be long before we have something.”

  Rob was impressed by his colleague’s show of confidence. He only wished he felt the same. So far, the perpetrator had avoided leaving any DNA, any images on CCTV and indeed any trace of himself at the crime scenes. He thought of Sara’s body and the duct tape over her mouth. Maybe this time . . .

  “When did you get engaged?” asked Mallory, getting into the line of questioning they’d discussed on the way there.

  Gareth didn’t need to think about it. “Valentine’s Day. I’d been planning it for some time.”

  A month and a half ago. “And how did you meet?”

  “Oh, we met in the Greek Islands. Mykonos, actually. She was on holiday with some girlfriends and I was sailing around the Cyclades with work colleagues. We met at a beach bar and hit it off straight away. It was love at first sight, you might say.”

  “That’s very romantic,” said Mallory wistfully, earning himself a raised eyebrow from Rob. He cleared his throat. “How long were you dating before you proposed?”

  “Eight months. We met in June last year.”

  That was when I met Yvette, thought Rob. It was long enough to know you loved someone.

  Rob had waited six months before he’d proposed on Christmas Eve. It had been just the two of them, and they’d spent a long, boozy day in bed drinking champagne and making love. He hadn’t known why this beautiful, sexy woman had chosen him, but he’d thought he’d better propose before she changed her mind. Luckily, she’d said yes.

  Mallory pushed on. “Was Sara wearing an engagement ring?”

  Gareth was nodding. “Yes, a four-carat solitaire in a white gold band. Why do you ask? Is it missing?”

  There were no flies on this guy.

  “We didn’t find it on her body,” Rob told him. They’d know more after the post-mortem.

  “I’ll have to let the insurance company know.” Gareth stopped and looked a little shocked that he’d said that. “Sorry, this is so surreal. It’s still sinking in.”

  “That’s okay, we understand.” Rob hesitated. “Can I ask what might seem like a strange question? Did Sara mention anyone following her or watching her over the last few days? Or weeks?” he added as an afterthought. Justin King, Julie’s fiancé, had said the stalker had backed off in the last week, so perhaps he’d found his new target by then. Sara.

  The stalker had known Julie’s routine, so all he’d had to do was wait for the right moment. But while he was waiting, he could have moved on to the next woman. Could it be he was escalating his activity? Needing more and more in order to satisfy himself?

  Once he realised the satisfaction he got from it, he would have wanted to do it again.

  Chapter 12

  “Actually, Sara did think someone was following her, but that was over a week ago. I thought she was being paranoid.”

  “Was she prone to paranoia?” asked Rob.

  “Not at all.” He rubbed a hand over his bald spot, pressing the flyaway hair back into place. “That’s not what I meant. I thought she’d been mistaken, that’s all. This guy followed her from the King’s Road in Sloane Square to Knightsbridge last Saturday, then she saw him again outside the house when she got home. That was the weird part, the bit that made her suspect he was following her. But she could have been mistaken, right? It could have been a different guy?”

  Or the same guy.

  “Did she mention what he looked like?” asked Mallory.

  “Only that he was tall, thin and wore a dark hoodie.”

  Mallory met Rob’s gaze, then turned back to Gareth. “Did she get a look at his face?”

  “All she said was he was thin and had facial hair.”

  “Facial hair? Like a beard?” asked Mallory.

  Gareth nodded.

  “Okay.” Rob sighed. It was the same old story. No way to identify the guy. “What time was she in King’s Road last Saturday?” He turned to Mallory. “Let’s see if we can get the CCTV from that area.”

  Mallory nodded and took out his phone.

  Gareth frowned. “I’m not sure. It could have been around midday. I think she met a friend for lunch, then did a bit of shopping. She got home just after five. That’s all I know.”

  “That’s a start.” Rob offered a wry smile. “Were you here when she got back?”

  “Yeah. I was watching the football.” A pause. Then he said, “Is the stalker the same guy who killed that other girl? The one in Kew?”

  “We think so, yes.”

  There was a pause. He scanned Rob’s face. “The papers said she was raped.”

  Rob gave him a frank stare. There was no point in sugar-coating it.

  Gareth’s shoulders slunk forward and the resilience that had been holding him up until now ebbed away. His voice wobbled. “But why Sara? Why would he target her?”

  That, Rob acknowledged to himself, is the million-dollar question. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we plan to find out. There must be something linking the girls together.”

  He organised his thoughts, giving Gareth a moment to compose himself. “Did Sara work? Did she have a particular routine? Anything that might help shed some light on her movements in the last week?”

  Gareth thought for a moment. “She was preoccupied with planning the wedding. So, she was meeting with the wedding planner, going for dress fittings, that sort of thing.”

  “Presumably, Julie would have been doing the same,” Mallory said under his breath.

  “Do you have the wedding planner’s details?” asked Rob. “Do you know where she bought the dress?”

  “I don’t know much about the dress — that was a secret — but her mother might know, or her best friend, Vivian. I can give you their numbers. I think I have an email on my laptop from the wedding planner, but then so will Sara. She’ll have it all on hers. Shall I get it for you?”

  “That would be a great help,” said Rob. Hopefully, all her wedding contacts would be on her laptop, so they could run a check against Julie’s contacts. It might give them an idea as to how the stalker was targeting his victims.

  “Is there anything else you can think of?” asked Rob when Gareth returned holding Sar
a’s laptop like it was a tray laden with fine china. “What we need is her movements over the last week, so we can locate this guy on CCTV.”

  Gareth pressed his lips together. “Hmm . . . I’m not sure what her daily routine was because I’m not here during the day. I work in the city and get back around seven. I know she often goes for a jog in the evening, but as to her movements during the day, I’m afraid I can’t help you much with that.”

  “She doesn’t work, then?”

  “No, not anymore. She used to be an accounts assistant and did temporary work, but her last contract ended a month ago.”

  Obviously, her fiancé was okay with her not working.

  As if reading his thoughts, Gareth added, “We were planning to start a family as soon as possible. Sara’s always wanted a big family, being an only child, and I’m not getting any younger.”

  Rob studied the short, balding man. Despite the premature hair loss, he must be mid- to late thirties. Still plenty of time. Rob wondered if he ought to be more concerned about things like that. Yvette had made her feelings quite clear on the subject — no kids — so he’d put it out of his mind, but a big family did sound nice. Lots of little rug rats running around. He wondered briefly if he was making a mistake. They hadn’t even settled on a date yet. It seemed enough just to be engaged. There was no urgency, certainly not on his side, and he didn’t think on hers either. Perhaps it was time they had a talk.

  * * *

  “Can I have your attention, please?” Rob stood in front of his team in Incident Room Two. About two dozen weary but hopeful faces stared back at him. The late nights and relentless sifting through CCTV footage were beginning to tell. They now had two dead bodies instead of one and double the pressure. They needed a lead soon. So far, all their efforts had turned up zilch.

  “As you know, a second victim, Sara Bakshi, was found in Richmond Park this morning. Same MO as our other victim, Julie Andrews. We’re pretty confident this is the same guy.” He paused and looked at Mallory, who was pinning a photograph they’d got from Sara’s fiancé to the whiteboard beside the one taken at the crime scene. It had been taken on a trip to Paris, the Eiffel Tower clearly visible in the background. The sky was a perfect blue and Sara was smiling into the camera like she didn’t have a care in the world. “She was also engaged. Now, that is a hell of a coincidence, so we suspect the wedding angle is how he’s finding his victims.”