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

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘Alan. You have access to police databases. If someone out there is copycatting Peter Conway’s murders, then this woman is the second victim. Conway’s second victim was Dawn Brockhurst. She was dumped next to a river . . . Foxes tore off the plastic bag covering her head and ate part of her face. Shelley Norris was his first victim and she was found dumped in the wrecker’s yard on Nine Elms Lane . . . ’

  Alan put up his hands. ‘Yes, I’m aware . . . My job is to give the facts, the cause of death.’

  ‘Can you at least look? Or direct the police to look into it?’

  Alan nodded wearily. His assistants were now gently closing up the ribcage in preparation to sew up the long Y-shaped incision on her sternum.

  Kate looked down, and saw she was still holding the plastic evidence bag containing the soiled length of rope with the monkey’s fist knot. Her hand shook and she thrust it back at Alan, feeling if she held it any longer it might contaminate her and drag her back into the turbulent hell of the Nine Elms Cannibal case.

  CHAPTER 6

  Kate didn’t remember leaving the morgue, or saying goodbye to Alan. She found herself emerging from the long dank tunnel into the car park.

  Her legs moved, and the blood pumped so hard and fast in her veins that it felt painful. The sound of the cars was muffled as she crossed the busy road, and a thin mist was starting to manifest around the dull yellow of the streetlights. The fear she felt was irrational. It wasn’t one image, or one thought, but it consumed her. Is this fear going to finish me this time, once and for all? she wondered. Her neck and back were running with sweat, but the cold air made her shiver.

  She found herself in an off-licence across the road from the morgue, and she looked down. There was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in her hand.

  She dropped the bottle and it smashed, splattering the greying linoleum floor and her shoes. A small Indian man sitting behind the till watching a film on his laptop looked up at the noise of the bottle dropping. He pulled out his earphones and picked up a big blue roll of tissue.

  ‘You pay for it,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, let me help,’ she said, kneeling down and picking up a piece of the broken bottle. It glistened with the amber liquid. It was so close to her tongue and she could smell it.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he said. He looked at her with distaste – another drunk. Reality clicked back into place for Kate.

  She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a twenty-pound note. He took it and she picked her way through the broken glass and out of the door.

  She didn’t look back as she hurried across the road, narrowly missing a van which honked its horn. When she reached her car, she got inside, locking the doors. Her hands were shaking and she could smell the whisky on her shoes and feel the wetness on her legs. A part of her wanted to suck it out of the material. She took a deep breath and opened the window, feeling the cold air circulate in the car, dampening the whisky smell. She took out her mobile phone and sent a text message to Myra, her sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous.

  Are you up? Almost drank.

  She was relieved to receive a reply immediately.

  You’re in luck kiddo. I’m up and I have cake. I’ll put the kettle on.

  Myra lived next door to Kate, in a small flat above the surf shop, which she owned and ran. The surf shop was closed up for the winter, and the small car park at the front was empty apart from a cash machine strapped to the wall, and a two-sided roto-sign with ridged edges. It was spinning fast in the wind, flicking between cold drinks and ice cream. Kate went to the side door and knocked. She looked over at the cash machine, which was glowing in the corner. In the summer months it was used by the surfers, but off-season Kate was one of the only people who used it, and only then because she was too lazy to go into town.

  Myra answered the door carrying two steaming mugs of tea.

  ‘Hold these,’ she said, handing them to Kate. ‘Let’s go down and get some air.’

  She pulled on a long, dark winter coat and stepped into a pair of Wellington boots. Her face was heavily lined, but she had clear skin and a head of white hair, which glowed luminously under the light in her hallway. Kate had never asked Myra her age, nor had it been offered up. Myra was a private person, but Kate figured she must be in her late fifties or sixties. She must have been born before 1965, which was the year Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were captured for the Moors Murders – not many people had wanted to name their daughter Myra after that.

  They came out of the door and past the terrace overlooking the sea, where three rows of empty picnic tables sat in the shadows. A crumbling set of concrete steps led down to the beach, and Kate followed slowly after Myra, concentrating on not spilling the tea.

  The sound of the wind and the waves grew louder as they reached the bottom of the steps where a couple of rusting deck chairs nestled in the dunes. The chairs creaked in unison as they sat. Kate sipped gratefully at the hot sweet tea. Myra took a box of Mr Kipling’s mini Battenberg cakes from her coat pocket.

  ‘Why did you want to drink?’ she asked, her face serious. There was no judgement coming from her, but she was stern, and rightly so; six years of sobriety were not to be taken lightly. Over cake, Kate told her about the day’s triple whammy: the Peter Conway lecture, the email she’d received, and then the post-mortem.

  ‘I feel responsible, Myra. The father of this girl, Caitlyn. He’s got no one else to turn to.’

  ‘You don’t know if she was abducted by Peter Conway. What if it’s a coincidence?’ said Myra.

  ‘And then this young woman tonight. Jesus, the way she was lying there, like a beaten-up piece of meat . . . And the thought that it’s all starting again.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I want to help. I want to stop it from happening again.’

  ‘You can help by talking and sharing what you know, but remember that recovery never ends, Kate. You have a son who needs his mother. You have yourself to think of. Nothing is more important than your sobriety. What happens if you go back to an off-licence and you don’t drop that bottle of whisky? And you go to the counter, and you buy it, and then you relapse?’

  Kate wiped a tear from her eye. Myra reached out and took her hand.

  ‘Peter Conway is locked away. You put him there. Think of how many lives you saved, Kate. He would have kept on going. Let the police deal with this. Let Alan do his job. And as for this missing girl – what do you think you can do to find her? And how can her parents be sure she was killed by Conway?’

  Kate looked down at the sand and smoothed it under her feet with the edges of her boots. Speaking to Myra had calmed her. The adrenalin was no longer surging through her body, and she felt exhausted. She checked her watch. It was almost 11 p.m. She turned and looked out to sea, at the row of lights from Ashdean twinkling in the darkness.

  ‘I need to get some rest, and get myself out of these jeans. They stink of booze.’ Kate could see Myra’s concern, but she didn’t want to have to promise she would leave the cases alone.

  ‘I’ll come with you, and help you put them in the washing machine,’ said Myra. Kate was about to protest, but nodded. She’d done some crazy things when she was drinking, and the smell of stale booze had tipped her over the edge in the past. ‘And we’re going to the early meeting tomorrow,’ Myra added sternly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘And thank you.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Peter Conway walked down the long hospital corridor at Great Barwell Psychiatric Hospital, flanked by two orderlies, Winston and Terrell.

  The long years of incarceration and limited activity had given Peter a paunch and skinny, under-developed legs, which poked out of his slightly too short bathrobe. His hands were cuffed behind him, and he wore a spit hood. It was made of a thin metal mesh, and covered his whole head. A thick reinforced panel of plastic at the front moved in and out as he breathed. His grey hair was wet from the shower, and it snaked out from under the hood, hanging over his should
ers.

  It had been a year since Peter’s last violent episode. He’d bitten another patient during group therapy, a manic depressive called Larry. The disagreement had been over the subject of Kate Marshall. Peter carried a huge number of emotions towards her – rage, hatred, lust and loss. Before this particular group session, Larry had found an article in the paper about Kate. Nothing huge or significant, but he had taunted Peter. Larry threw the first punch, but Peter had finished it by biting off the tip of Larry’s fat little nose. He’d refused to consent to his stomach being pumped to retrieve the missing piece, and he now had to wear cuffs and the spit hood when he was outside his cell, or ‘room’ as the more progressive doctors liked to call it.

  There had been several incidents over the years where Peter had bitten an orderly, a doctor and two patients, and various bite guards and even a hockey mask à la Hannibal Lecter had been used on him. Biting for pleasure and self-defence were two different things in Peter’s mind. Tender female flesh had a delicate, almost perfumed quality to be savoured like a fine wine. Male flesh was hairy and gamey, and he only ever bit a man in self-defence.

  Peter’s solicitor had successfully appealed against the use of such restraints, citing the Human Rights Act. The spit hood was used by the police during arrests to protect them from bodily fluid exposure, but it was the only acceptable solution for Peter which was agreed by the hospital, courts and his solicitor.

  Peter’s room was at the end of the long corridor. The doors were made of thick metal, with a small hatch which could only be opened from the outside. Yelling, banging and the occasional scream seeped out, but to Peter and the orderlies on the usual morning walk to and from the shower it was background noise, like the tweeting of birds in a field. Winston and Terrell were both huge, imposing men, over six feet tall, and built like brick shithouses, as Peter’s mother liked to say. Despite it seeming like a leisurely stroll back from the bathroom, they both wore heavy-duty leather belts and carried mace.

  Patients on the high-security wards were kept separate from each other, in single occupancy rooms, and they rarely had contact outside. The hospital corridors were monitored by an extensive network of CCTV cameras, both for security and to choreograph the daily movements. Peter knew he needed to be back in his room in the next few minutes to allow the next patient access to the shower.

  He had occupied the same room for the past six years. When they reached the door, Peter stood against the wall opposite the door, watched by Terrell, as Winston unlocked it. When the door was opened, Terrell undid the straps on the back of the spit hood and Peter went inside. The door was closed and locked.

  ‘I’m going to open the hatch, Peter. I need you to back up and put your hands through,’ said Winston.

  Peter felt the draught as it opened and he pushed his hands through. The cuffs came off, and he pulled his arms back through and started to work on the spit hood. He pulled it off and handed it through the hatch.

  ‘Thanks, Peter,’ said Winston, and the hatch closed.

  Peter shrugged off his robe and dressed in jeans and a blue linen shirt and sweater. A small amount of luxury had been permitted to creep into his room over the six years. He had a digital radio, and while many of the local libraries in the UK had been closed due to funding cuts, Great Barwell’s was well stocked, and a stack of books sat on the small bedside table next to the bed. Peter’s only regret at having attacked Larry was the loss of his kettle. Hot drinks privileges were hard earned, and he missed not being able to make his own cup of tea or coffee.

  The longing to be free never left Peter. His latest read was a book about chaos theory, and he was captivated by this and the butterfly effect. There were numerous doors and razor-wire fences between him and freedom, but he knew that sometime soon a pair of wings somewhere would flap, signifying a small shift or opportunity, and he might get the chance to escape.

  He heard the squeak of shoes in the corridor outside and the low rumble of a trolley. Long ago he had learned the hospital divided time into blocks of five minutes. Once, when he went to see the hospital doctor, there was an incident with another patient, and he was taken back to his room on an elaborate detour, along unfamiliar corridors. Through an open door he had glimpsed the inside of the CCTV control room, a vast bank of television screens showing an image of every gate and corridor in Great Barwell. Despite the length of his stay, the complete layout of the hospital eluded him. It was vast.

  There was a knock at his door, and the small hatch opened. A long nose, almost comically long, poked through, with red wet lips surrounded with acne.

  ‘Peter?’ croaked a voice. ‘I’ve got your post.’

  ‘Morning, Ned,’ said Peter, moving to the hatch. Ned Dukes was the longest-serving patient. He had been inside for forty years for imprisoning and raping fourteen young boys. He was tiny and wizened, and his long nose and fleshy acne-ridden mouth sat in the middle of a large round face. His blind milky eyes rolled from side to side as his hands groped around on a trolley stacked with letters and packages. Ned was accompanied by an older woman, an orderly, whose lipless mouth was set in a grim line.

  ‘On the shelf below,’ she said impatiently. Ned wasn’t the most efficient mailman, but he had been doing the job since before he’d lost his sight, and he became extremely agitated and distressed if he didn’t have the structure of his mail round. The last time the hospital tried to take him off the post round, Ned had protested by pouring boiling hot water over his genitals. He’d lost his hot drinks privileges, but got to keep his job as the unofficial mailman.

  Ned’s breath was loud and nasal as he reached down and fumbled along the neatly stacked letters, dislodging one of the piles.

  ‘On the bottom! There!’ snapped the woman, grabbing his wrist and placing his hand on Peter’s pile of letters. Ned picked them up and handed them through the hatch.

  ‘Thanks, Ned.’

  ‘Bye, bye,’ said Ned, grinning with a truly gruesome set of broken brown teeth.

  ‘Bye, bye, bye,’ muttered Peter as the hatch slammed shut.

  He went back to his bed and sifted through the post. As usual it had been opened by the hospital, checked and badly stuffed back into the envelopes.

  There was a letter from Sister Assumpta, a nun who had been writing to him from her convent in Scotland for several years. She wanted to know if he liked the bathrobe she’d sent him, and was asking for his shoe size because she’d found a set of matching slippers on Amazon. She finished the letter by offering up prayers for his soul. The rest of the correspondence was tedious to Peter: a request from a writer to supply a quote for his true crime book; a man and a woman, writing separately, to say they were in love with him; and a copy of the Reader’s Digest – somehow his name had found its way onto their mailing list.

  He had written to Kate only once – a long letter during a weak moment when he was on remand awaiting sentencing. He had heard she was carrying his child, and he asked her to keep it. He also asked to be part of its life.

  He never heard back from her. The only information he gleaned was from his mother, Enid, and the press. He had never written to Kate again. Her rejection of what he felt was his genuine heartfelt letter was a worse betrayal than discovering his crimes. A court injunction was in place which prevented Peter and Enid from contacting Jake or knowing his address. Of course, Enid knew people and she had Jake’s address, not because she had any interest in Jake, but because she wanted the upper hand with the authorities.

  In two years’ time Jake would be sixteen, and the court injunctions would expire. He knew Kate was a lost cause, but one day he would meet his son, and it would give him so much pleasure to turn him against her.

  Peter went to the door and listened. The corridor was silent. He moved to the radiator in the corner, which was welded to the wall. The radiator had a large plastic dial fixed to it to regulate the temperature, and a few weeks ago, when he turned the dial, it had come away from its housing, the moulded plastic shearing
neatly off. It was a gift, having a place to hide things. Rooms were searched meticulously every day.

  Peter slowly turned the radiator dial to the left, jiggled the plastic, and it came away. He picked up his reading glasses and, using a stem, fished around inside the housing. He turned the dial over in his hand and a small capsule fell out. It was the dis-solvable capsule from a vitamin tablet. He teased the two halves of the casing apart and, using his fingernails, took out a small roll of very thin paper, tightly bound. He put the vitamin casing back together and placed it on his pile of books. He sat on the bed, scooting up so he lay flat against the wall and couldn’t be seen if the hatch was opened. Carefully, he unrolled the paper. It was a thin, white, waxy paper. It came from one of those little machines that print off till rolls.

  The small strip of paper was filled with neat black writing.

  WHEN I WROTE TO YOU BEFORE, AND TOLD YOU I HAD KILLED A GIRL IN YOUR HONOUR, YOU MUST HAVE THOUGHT I WAS ONE OF THE SAD, LONELY FANTASISTS WHO WRITE TO YOU.

  I WRITE AGAIN TO TELL YOU I AM GENUINE. I AM REAL.

  I ABDUCTED AND KILLED A SECOND GIRL. HER NAME WAS KAISHA SMITH, AND I LEFT HER BODY CLOSE TO THE RIVER NEAR HUNTER’S TOR ON DARTMOOR.

  VERY SOON THIS WILL BE REPORTED IN THE PRESS.

  I CONTINUE IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS, AND HOPE TO BE WORTHY OF YOU. PLEASE KEEP OUR LINES OF COMMUNICATION OPEN. YOU WON’T REGRET IT. I HAVE PLANS TO CONTINUE YOUR WORK, BUT I ALSO WANT TO MAKE YOU HAPPY. I WILL HELP YOU SETTLE OLD SCORES, AND ULTIMATELY, I WILL GIVE YOU FREEDOM.

  A FAN

  Peter had read this letter many times in the past few days. His mother assured him that this ‘fan’ was genuine, and she had met with him. It frustrated Peter that people outside the hospital gates could communicate in the blink of an eye while he had to rely on letters, and agonisingly slow response times.