Nine Elms: The thrilling first book in a brand-new, electrifying crime series (Kate Marshall 1)

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘Good, I thought you might have gone to bed. I think you have my keys?’

  CHAPTER 5

  Kate peered up at Peter. The car park was dark behind him, and she couldn’t see his car.

  ‘Kate. It’s pouring down. Can I come in for a sec?’

  ‘It’s late. Hang on,’ she said, leaning over the broken glass to grab the keys off the counter. ‘Here.’ Their eyes met as she held them out to him in her palm. He looked down at the little loop curled round in her shaking hand with the monkey’s fist knot, then back up at her with a smirk.

  Later on, Kate would think what she could have done differently. If she’d made a joke about it being the same knot the killer used, would he have taken the keys and gone home?

  ‘It’s my car. I got a flat tyre up the road. Then I saw my keys weren’t in the glove compartment,’ he said, finally breaking the silence, wiping the rainwater from his face. He didn’t take the keys, though, and she stood there with her hand outstretched.

  ‘Kate. I’m getting wet here. Can I come in?’

  She hesitated, and swallowed, but her throat was dry.

  He shouldered the door, and the chain snapped easily. He stepped over the threshold, forcing her to move back into the kitchen. He pushed the door closed behind him and stood there dripping wet.

  ‘What?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Sorry,’ she said. Her voice was a thin rasp.

  ‘I need a towel . . . I’m soaking wet.’

  Everything about the situation was surreal. Kate left the kitchen and went to the small airing cupboard and took out a towel. Her mind was racing. She had to act normally. She looked around for something to defend herself with. She grabbed a small smooth glass paperweight, the only thing she could find remotely close to a weapon.

  Her breath caught in her throat when she went back into the kitchen. Peter stood in the middle of the room, staring at the Thermos flask sitting in its plastic evidence bag on the kitchen table. When he turned to her his features were the same, but anger had changed him. He was like an animal about to attack. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated and his lips were curled back, baring his teeth.

  Do something! shrieked a voice inside her head. But she couldn’t move. There was a thud as the paperweight fell from her hand onto the floor.

  ‘Oh dear, Kate. Kate, Kate, Kate,’ he said softly. The broken glass crunched under his feet as he went to the back door and locked it.

  ‘Peter. Sir. I don’t think for a second that you . . . it’s my job to investigate . . . ’

  He was shaking, but his movements were calm as he went to the phone. In one swift motion he wrenched it clean off the wall, still attached to its metal bracket. Kate flinched as the tiny nails holding the wire to the wall popped out and skittered across the linoleum. He yanked the cable from the socket and placed the phone on the counter by the fridge.

  ‘It’s funny. You said the killer would slip up . . . The keys . . . the fucking keys.’ He took a step towards her.

  ‘No. No. They’re just keys,’ said Kate. If he took another step forward he would block her path out of the kitchen.

  ‘The flask . . . ’ He shook his head and laughed. It was a cold, metallic sound, devoid of humour.

  Kate made a dash for the living room, where her mobile phone was charging, but he was quicker. He grabbed the back of her hair, swung her around and slammed her into the tall fridge door. Pain exploded in the side of her face, but he was on her, twisting her shoulders around to face him and gripping her neck with one hand.

  ‘Rough area, where you live,’ he said calmly, pinning her against the fridge door with his shoulder and left leg. He gripped her throat with his right hand. She kicked out, hitting him in the side of his leg, and she tried to claw at his face and neck but he used his elbows to keep her arms down. ‘There was a break-in. You scared the intruder. He panicked and he killed you.’

  His fingers gripped her throat harder. She couldn’t breathe and his face, looming over hers, began to blur. She scrabbled around, her fingers feeling the edge of the counter. Peter leaned into her chest and she felt his strength pushing the remaining air from her lungs. She cried out as she felt one of her ribs crack.

  ‘I’ll make sure to be the one who leads your murder case. The tragic death of a rising star in the police force.’

  Kate writhed and pushed back, managing to free up her left arm a little. Her hand felt along the edge of the counter and found the phone, where Peter had left it. She didn’t have much strength as she swung it, but the sharp edge of the metal bracket glanced off his forehead, slicing through the skin above his eye.

  His grip loosened for a moment and she was able to push him away. He staggered back in shock, blood pouring from the gash in his forehead.

  Kate held up the phone on its bracket and advanced on him, not feeling the broken glass under her bare feet. Peter staggered back, spitting blood. He lunged for the block of knives by the sink and pulled one out.

  The knives! Why didn’t I go for the knives? she thought. She turned and ran into the living room but tripped, landing on the phone, knocking the air from her lungs. She rolled back and tried to get up, but he was on her. He punched her hard in the face, dragged her kicking and writhing through to the bedroom and threw her on the bed. Her head hit the headboard and she saw stars. Her robe was open and she was naked underneath. He climbed on top of her, his face slick with blood, reddening the whites of his eyes and giving his smile a pink mania. He knelt on her hip bones and pulled her wrists down, pinning them under his knees.

  He held up the knife and grazed the tip of the blade over her nipples, down to her belly button, and pushed the blade into her skin. The sharp steel sliced through her flesh easily and through the muscles of her abdomen. She screamed out in agony, unable to move. It was terrifying how fast the blood pooled on her belly. He calmly twisted the knife and dragged it up through the flesh of her stomach, towards her heart. It snagged on one of her ribs.

  Peter leaned close, lips curled back over pink-stained teeth. The pain was unbearable, but she summoned up the last of her strength and fought and writhed, freeing her knee and bringing it sharply up into his groin. He groaned and fell backwards off the bed, landing on the floor.

  Kate looked down at the knife sticking out of her abdomen. Blood was saturating the white robe and bedclothes. Leave the knife in, said a voice in her head. If it comes out, you’ll bleed to death. Peter started to get up, his eyes crazed with rage. She thought of all the victims, all those young girls who had been tortured. The anger gave her a surge of adrenalin and energy. She grabbed the lava lamp from beside her bed, and brought down the heavy glass bottle of paraffin and wax on the top of his head, once, twice, and then he was still, slumped weirdly, his legs splayed outwards.

  Kate dropped the lamp. The pain in her abdomen almost made her black out, and it took all her will not to pull the knife out as she limped through to the living room, the knife shifting as she moved. She found her mobile phone and dialled 999. She gave her name and address, and said that the Nine Elms Cannibal was Detective Chief Inspector Peter Conway, and he had just tried to kill her in her apartment.

  It was then that she dropped the phone and lost consciousness.

  FIFTEEN YEARS

  LATER

  September 2010

  CHAPTER 1

  It was a grey morning in late September as Kate picked her way through the sand dunes. She wore a black swimsuit and had her goggles hooked in the crook of her right arm. The sand was dry as she weaved her way through the undulating dunes where pale yellow marram grass grew. Her bare feet cracked the thin crust made by the sea spray.

  The beach was deserted and this morning the tide was far out, exposing a few strips of black rocks before the waves broke. The sky was a pearly grey, but towards the horizon it twisted into a knot of black. Kate had discovered sea swimming six years previously, when she’d moved to Thurlow Bay on the south coast of England, five miles from the university
town of Ashdean, where she now lectured in Criminology.

  Every morning, whatever the weather, she would swim in the sea. It made her feel alive. It lifted her mood and was an antidote to the darkness she carried in her heart. Unmasking Peter Conway as the Nine Elms Cannibal had almost killed her, but the after-effects had been more devastating. Her sexual relationship with Peter Conway had been discovered by the press, and it played a big part in his subsequent trial. Fifteen years later, she still felt like she was picking up the pieces.

  Kate emerged from the dunes, feeling the sand grow wet and solid as she made her way to the water’s edge. The first wave crashed down a few metres from where she stopped to pull on her goggles, and the surf surged up around her knees. On the coldest days, the water plunged into her skin like a knife, but she pushed through. A healthy body really was a healthy mind. It was just water. She knew how a knife felt. The six-inch scar on her abdomen was always the first place to feel the cold.

  She put her hands down into the surf and felt the pull as it dropped away, leaving her on the wet sand with a few strands of green seaweed between her fingers. She shook them off and tied back her hair, which was showing a little grey, and pulled the elastic strap of her goggles over her head. Another wave crashed in, jostling her on her feet and surging up and around her hips. The sky was growing darker, and she felt spots of warm rain on her face. She dived headfirst into a breaking wave. The water enveloped her and she swam off, kicking out strongly. She felt sleek and fast, like an arrow cutting through the surf under the breaking waves. She could see down to where the sand rapidly fell away to a rocky gloom.

  The roar of the water came and went as she broke the surface every four strokes to breathe, surging towards the storm. She was now far out, moving as one with the swells of water as they rolled towards the shore. She slowed and allowed herself to float on her back, rising and falling with the waves. Thunder rumbled again, louder. Kate looked back at her home sitting on top of the rocky cliff. It was comfortable and ramshackle and sat on the end of a row of widely spaced houses, next to a surf shop and snack bar which was closed up for the winter.

  The air was fizzing with static; the storm was close, but the water was still. Kate held her breath and sank down under the water, the currents close to the surface diminishing as her body slowly descended towards the sandy bottom. Cold currents moved on either side of her. The pressure increased.

  Peter Conway was never far from her mind. On some mornings, when getting out of bed seemed a Herculean task, she wondered if he found it hard to face each day. Peter would be locked up for the rest of his life. He was a high-profile prisoner, a monster, fed and cared for by the state, but he’d never denied what he'd done. Kate, in comparison, was the good guy, but in catching him she’d lost her career and her reputation, and was still trying to salvage a normal life from the aftermath. She wondered which one of them was really serving the life sentence. Today she felt even closer to him. Today he would be the subject of her first lecture.

  With her lungs about to burst, Kate gave two strong kicks, broke the surface and started to swim back. The thunder rumbled and as the shore came closer, she rode the growing swells, feeling her heart pumping and the zing on her skin from the salt water. A wave rose up behind her and she caught it as it broke, her feet wheeling under her, pulled along the sandy bottom, feeling the exhilaration of riding a wave until the sand was under her feet and she was safe again on dry land.

  The lecture theatre at the university was large, dusty and drab, with rows and rows of raked seating stretching up to the ceiling. Kate liked to watch her students as they filed into the lecture from her vantage point on the small circular stage. She was shocked by how little they noticed about their surroundings, all engrossed in their phones, barely looking up as they took their seats.

  Kate was joined on stage by her assistant, Tristan Harper, a tall, well-built man in his early twenties. He had dark hair, closely cropped to his head, and elaborate tattoos on his muscular forearms. He wore the uniform of male academia – beige chinos and a checked shirt rolled up at the sleeves. The only difference was that he shunned the usual pale loafers or dark brogues and today wore a pair of bright red Adidas high-tops.

  He leaned down and checked the slide carousel, which he had pre-loaded beside the lectern.

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to this lecture,’ he said, handing Kate the remote. He smiled, and left the stage. Seconds later the lights went out, plunging the lecture theatre into darkness. There was a murmur of excited chatter, and Kate could see the students’ faces, lit up by their mobile phones. She waited until they fell silent, then clicked the button on the projector remote.

  THE NINE ELMS CANNIBAL flashed up on the huge screen.

  There was a collective gasp as a crime scene photo filled the screen. It was taken in a car scrapyard. A young girl’s naked body lay on its side in the churned-up mud, next to a pile of rusting and half-crushed cars. The piles of scrap cars stretched away into the distance, with the misty London skyline and the four chimneys of Battersea Power Station in the background. A lone crow perched on top of a pile of cars, looking down at the young girl’s body. The mud and exposure to the elements gave her flesh a rust colour, like metal, some small grotesque object that had been dumped by its owner.

  ‘The course you’ve signed up for is called “Criminal Icons”. And it reflects how we, as a society, are obsessed with murder and serial killers. It’s fitting that I start with a serial killer I knew. Peter Conway, the former Met Police detective chief inspector who is now known as the Nine Elms Cannibal. The young woman in the photo was his first victim, Shelley Norris . . . ’ Kate stepped out of the glare of the projected image and stood to one side. ‘If you find this image distressing, good. That’s a normal reaction. If you want to study Criminology you’ll need to get down and dirty with the worst of humankind. The photo was taken at the Nine Elms Lane wrecker’s yard in March 1993,’ said Kate. She shuttered the slide carousel around. The next photo showed a wide-angle shot of a young woman’s body from behind, lying in long grass. A low mist hung above the surrounding trees.

  ‘The second victim was fifteen-year-old Dawn Brockhurst. Her body was dumped in Beckenham Place Park in Kent.’

  The next slide was a close-up of the body from the front. Her face was missing, leaving just a bloody pulp, and only part of the bottom jaw and a row of teeth remained.

  ‘Kent, on the London borders, has one of the largest populations of wild foxes in the UK. Dawn’s body wasn’t discovered for several days and the plastic bag tied over her head was torn off by scavenging foxes, and part of her face was eaten.’ Kate moved to the next slide, a close-up of bite marks. ‘The Nine Elms Cannibal liked to bite his victims, but because Dawn’s body was decayed by the elements, the bites were wrongly attributed to the foxes. This prevented the first two murders from being immediately linked.’

  There was a thudding sound as one of the wooden chairs flipped up, and a student, a young woman in the centre of the auditorium, dashed out with her hand over her mouth.

  Kate moved through slides of Conway’s next victim, ending with the crime-scene photo of the fourth victim, Catherine Cahill. Kate was taken back to that cold rainy night in Crystal Palace: the hot lights in the forensic tent which intensified the scent of decaying flesh, but also made the grass smell like it does on a summer’s day; Catherine’s eyes staring through the plastic wrapped tight over her head. And after all this, Peter tucking the towels over his car seats, concerned they’d get dirty.

  Kate pressed the button and the slide image clicked to a picture of Peter Conway, taken in 1993 for his warrant card. He smiled into the lens wearing his Met Police uniform and peaked cap. Handsome and charismatic.

  ‘Peter Conway. Respected police officer by day, serial killer by night.’

  Kate told the story of how she was a police officer working alongside Peter Conway, how she came to suspect he was the Nine Elms Cannibal, confronted him and barely escap
ed alive.

  The next slide showed Kate’s flat in the aftermath of Peter’s attack: the Thermos flask and bunch of keys sitting on the kitchen table, each with a numbered evidence marker; the living room furniture, old and shabby: her bedroom, with its damp, peeling wallpaper, curling at the edges with a pattern of yellow, orange and green flowers, the double bed with a knot of blood-soaked sheets, clumps of hardened orange wax and glass from the broken lava lamp she’d hit him with.

  ‘I came very close to being the Nine Elms Cannibal’s fifth victim, but I fought back. Quick-thinking doctors saved my life after I was stabbed in the stomach. They also pumped Peter’s stomach, where they found partially digested pieces of flesh from Catherine Cahill’s back.’

  The lecture theatre was silent. Every student was transfixed, and Tristan was with them.

  Kate went on: ‘In September 1996, Peter Conway was tried and in January 1997 he was jailed at Her Majesty’s pleasure in Blundeston Prison in Suffolk. After deterioration in his mental state, and an attack by another prisoner, he is now being indefinitely detained under the Mental Health Act at Great Barwell Psychiatric Hospital in Sussex. It’s a case that still haunts the public imagination, and a case I will always be inextricably linked to. That’s why I chose to present it first.’

  There was a long pause after the lights went up. The students in the auditorium blinked at the brightness.

  ‘Now. Who has any questions?’

  There was a long pause, then a young woman with closely cropped pink hair and a pierced lip put up her hand.

  ‘You effectively solved the case, yet you were used as a scapegoat by the police and left out to dry. Do you think this is because you are a woman?’

  ‘The Met Police were embarrassed that their star officer was the killer in their most high-profile case. The case dominated the headlines for many years. You may have read that I made the mistake of having a sexual relationship with Peter Conway. When this became public knowledge, the press assumed I was somehow in possession of the facts, when I wasn’t.’