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

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘I thought that. But she was at school. She could have just been pissed off they were stuck out in the cold with no coats.’

  He handed the photo back. ‘Do you think she could still be alive?’

  ‘She could be. I’ve seen a lot of strange cases in my time, people showing up after years missing, but Sheila and Malcolm didn’t allude to anything being a problem with Caitlyn. I suppose she could have run away and then something happened to her.’

  ‘Or Peter Conway killed her?’

  ‘That’s possible too. He was living close by. It could have been him in the car, but tall, dark and handsome isn’t much to go on. It doesn’t fit his style. He didn’t date his victims. He abducted them during the week so he could have the weekend to torture and kill them, but then again, serial killers develop their signature style over time.’ Kate put the photo down and rubbed at her tired eyes. ‘There are a ton of questions and leads we can look into.’

  Her mobile rang, and she fumbled in her jacket, which was hanging over the back of her chair, and pulled it out. It was Alan Hexham.

  ‘Hi Kate, have you got a minute?’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The police have identified the young woman from the postmortem, a schoolgirl local to the area, sixteen-year-old Kaisha Smith. The family have been informed, so it’s been released it to the press. I also looked into any cases involving young women dumped in wreckers’ yards in the past six months. And you were right. On Wednesday twenty-eighth July, the body of a young woman called Emma Newman was found dumped naked amongst the scrap metal cars at the Nine Elms wrecker’s yard near Tiverton. She was seventeen years old. She’d recently left the children’s home where she’d lived since she was small. No one reported her missing. She’d been bitten, Kate, just like Kaisha.’

  ‘This first girl was found at a wrecker’s yard called Nine Elms?’ asked Kate, suddenly feeling very cold.

  ‘Yeah, creepy, I know.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. I pulled the file.’

  ‘How close is this wrecker’s yard to the second crime scene?’

  ‘It’s just outside Tiverton, around twenty miles away.’

  Kate looked up and saw Tristan had moved closer to a TV mounted on the wall above some tables opposite. The lunchtime news was showing an aerial view of the river and surrounding landscape from the second crime scene. Underneath was written BODY OF MISSING SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD DISCOVERED.

  ‘Alan, it’s just coming on the news now. I’ll call you back.’ Kate hung up and went to Tristan. ‘This is the girl from the post-mortem,’ said Kate.

  ‘They must have put up a drone,’ said Tristan, watching the images on screen taken from high above, sweeping over the whole desolate crime scene, the rocky, gorse-covered landscape with the white forensics tent pitched next to the surging filthy river. The drone banked down a little and caught the moment from two days previously when the black body bag was carried across the field from the forensics tent to the pathologist’s van. It then cut to a reporter standing at the top of the field, next to a drystone wall. Her blonde hair was being blown about by the strong wind.

  ‘The victim has been identified as sixteen-year-old Kaisha Smith from Crediton. She was a pupil at Hartford School, a local independent school.’ A photo flashed up of a teenager wearing her school uniform and grinning at the camera. Her hair was fair and permed with a straight fringe, and she wore a shirt and tie tucked under a brown blazer. Kate shuddered. The bright young girl looked nothing like the bloated battered corpse at the morgue. ‘Kaisha was reported missing twelve days ago, after vanishing on her way home from school. Local police are appealing for witnesses.’

  The news report moved on to the next story. The restaurant was starting to get busy, and Kate and Tristan returned to their seats, where Kate filled Tristan in on her conversation with Alan.

  ‘Nine Elms wrecker’s yard?’ said Tristan. ‘That’s a creepy coincidence.’

  Kate nodded. It wasn’t just creepy, it terrified her. Two young women killed in exactly the same style. She looked down at her half-eaten fish, the grease pooling around the yellowing batter, and she thought of Kaisha’s decaying yellow flesh. She moved the plate to the next table. Tristan pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen, then he turned it towards her.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘The Nine Elms wrecker’s yard is just off junction six of the M5. We’re going to drive right past it on our way home.’

  CHAPTER 12

  When Peter got back to his cell, he switched on his radio and lined up the three packets of chocolate eclair toffees next to each other on his bed. He was looking for the pack that was slightly shorter.

  Enid had a plastic heat sealer at home, but opening and then resealing a bag of sweets meant a small amount of the bag’s lip had to be cut off. He found the shorter bag, opened it and tipped the paper-wrapped toffees across the blanket. There were thirty-two in total. He started to open them, examining each and rewrapping it. When he opened the sixth, he found the faint white line in the toffee he was looking for. Cadbury’s chocolate eclairs are made of hard toffee, with a soft chocolate centre. He pressed his fingernail into the faint white line and the two halves of toffee eased apart. The chocolate centre had been scraped out, leaving a small cavity which had been filled with a clear pill capsule. He took it out and popped the two halves of the toffee in his mouth. Carefully he wiped the capsule on a piece of tissue. He could see the paper inside, tightly wrapped up. He went to the cell door and listened. The post trolley rumbled down the corridor. It slowed, and then moved past.

  He sat back on the bed with his back to the door, eased open the pill capsule, took out the strip of paper and unrolled it. It was filled with his mother’s neat writing in black ink.

  Peter, this man who calls himself ‘a fan’, he’s the real deal. I asked for ten grand to show he was genuine – and he paid! It arrived in my bank account two da ys ago. The money came from a limited company account. He’s calling it a ‘sweetener’ – a pa yment to establish trust.

  Enclosed is another letter from him. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to know about what he does to young girls. And I don’t want you talking about it with me either. What I’m interested in is his plans for me and you. He sa ys he can break you out of there. He sa ys he has a plan. He will arrange for me and you to start a new life somewhere far away.

  I’ll find out more

  Enid

  Peter had communicated privately with his mother like this on and off for the past eight years, always being careful how and when they did it. This man had approached Enid a few months back, when she was walking in a park, and he let it be known that he was ‘a fan’ and wanted to communicate with Peter. This had happened before. People would often approach her to pass on gifts to Peter, or to get things signed by him, and Enid always made sure it was worth her while. The Fan had bigger, bolder plans and he had the money to make them happen.

  The radio had been playing in the background in Peter’s cell, but when the news headlines came on, the top story made him sit up.

  ‘The body of sixteen-year-old Kaisha Smith has been found dumped and mutilated on a stretch of riverbank near Hunter’s Tor in Devon. Kaisha was a pupil at Hartford School, a local independent school, and she’d been missing for twelve days. Police are treating her death as suspicious.’

  Peter got up and went to the radiator dial and retrieved the last letter from The Fan, the one he should have thrown away. With trembling fingers he unrolled the paper. He already knew what it said, but he just had to be sure. Yes, Kaisha Smith was the name of the girl, and the location was the same. Peter searched through the rest of the chocolate eclairs on the bed and found the second note inside. He read it with mounting excitement.

  He lay back on his thin bed and imagined feeling the sun on his face, sitting with Enid by the sea, making his own tea and drinking it from a proper cup. They would have new identities, and money. Peter liked to
see her enjoying new clothes, but hoped she wouldn’t change her perfume. His mother had used the same perfume ever since he could remember, Ma Griffe.

  He thought back to when he was little, and how he used to perch on the end of her bed and watch her get ready to entertain one of the many uncles who used to call at the house. She’d take out the square bottle from her nightstand and, using a cotton bud, she’d dab it on her throat, and between her bare breasts. If he was good she let him dab it on for her, as long as he was careful and didn’t spill any. She’d hold out the bottle as he dipped the end of the cotton bud, and then tip back her head. The skin on her neck so smooth back then, and her breasts were small and firm with large, dark nipples. When he was four she was only twenty. So young.

  Peter lay back on his bad and pulled up his T-shirt, patting the white flesh of his belly. He had swallowed all of the letters from his mother, and now the ones from The Fan. Once digested, a little part of them became part of him. Ink and paper into new flesh. He looked around the small cell and he was excited, but cautious. Who was this person? Could he really break him out of the hospital and take him away somewhere and give him and Enid a new life?

  Peter closed his eyes and conjured up that image of his mother as a young woman, perched in front of the mirror at her nightstand, head tipped back as he daubed her with perfume. He reached down and placed a hand under the waistband of his trousers.

  Together again. Me and Mum. Together. A new life.

  CHAPTER 13

  Kate came off the motorway junction and felt her heart beat faster. She glanced across at Tristan who was navigating on his mobile phone. Very soon they were driving through moorland and the road was surrounded by thick trees on both sides.

  ‘Take this next right,’ he said as Kate slowed and they passed an old-fashioned red phone box next to a field of sheep which scattered at the sight of the car. After a few minutes there was a sign on the right for NINE ELMS WRECKER’S YARD. They took the turn and bounced down a muddy potholed track surrounded by trees and fields and some derelict houses.

  Kate suddenly felt anticipation and excitement. She’d spent so long in the comfortable world of academia, and now she was back out in the real world. The track curved to the left before coming out into a huge muddy yard, which seemed to stretch out into the distance with piles and piles of wrecked cars. Puddles sprayed up mud on the windscreen.

  ‘This place is huge,’ said Kate. She heard a fire bell ringing on and off and stopped, winding down her window. ‘I bet that’s their office.’

  It carried on ringing, and she followed the sound, and at the next crossroads between piles of old cars she took a left. It led down past a long row of rickety shipping containers. A skeletal Christmas tree sat at an angle on one of the roofs, next to a blow-up doll dressed in a Santa outfit, a cigar poking out of its obscenely open mouth. When they reached the end of the row of shipping containers it opened out to a rough-looking parking area, next to a Portakabin. A faded red sign on the front read: CASH ONLY. NO CARDS!!!!

  The windows were spattered with mud, and Kate could hear a radio inside playing ‘Love is All Around’ by Wet Wet Wet.

  She stopped the car. ‘What should we say?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m your son. I’m a bit of a boy racer, I wrote off my car and forgot to take my St Christopher necklace out of the glove compartment. It’s probably gone, but we want to take a look,’ he said.

  ‘Did you just come up with that?’ asked Kate, impressed.

  ‘I was cooking it up as you drove.’ He grinned.

  ‘That’s good. Do you want to take the lead then?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Kate parked the car next to a dirty truck. Straw had been laid on the ground to soak up the mud, and they picked their way across it to the office and knocked.

  The door was opened by an older man wearing faded blue tracksuit bottoms spattered with mud and paint, and an equally grubby thick fleece and body warmer. He had scraps of long wild hair clinging to his scalp and a bushy grey beard. He squinted at Kate, giving her the once-over, and then at Tristan.

  ‘Can I help you?’ He had a strong Scottish accent.

  Tristan gave him the spiel about the crashed car.

  ‘You’ll not find something like that,’ the man said, gesturing to the piles of cars stretching away. ‘The gypsies pick these cars over like locusts. My lads are under pain of death to take anything, but you can’t police them.’

  ‘Would it help if we had a number plate to put in your system?’ asked Kate. She was prepared to give a fake one to bolster their story.

  The man took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. ‘That’s ma filing system!’ he snorted, expelling smoke from his mouth and nostrils and tipping his head back to indicate an old grubby landline phone on a desk and a thick yellow ledger with its pages curling up.

  Kate turned to Tristan. ‘It’s your bloody fault for crashing your car! That necklace was from your grandma!’ she shouted, hoping Tristan would take her cue.

  ‘It was an accident! I didn’t see the lorry stop at the traffic lights.’

  ‘Because you were eyeing up that girl coming out of Tesco!’ cried Kate, enjoying their bit of role play.

  The old man watched them, picking a piece of tobacco off his tongue.

  ‘I thought it was Sarah, Mum, and she said she was too ill to come out that day.’

  ‘It was probably because of Sarah you took it off. I told you not to let her wear it!’

  The old man put up a grubby hand. ‘All right, all right. When was it, yer wee bump in the car?’

  ‘It was a crash, and about five weeks ago,’ said Kate. ‘He rear-ended a lorry at a traffic light. The whole front was crumpled. It was a red Fiat.’

  ‘You see the yard. We’ve got sections,’ said the old man, demonstrating with the flat of his hand. ‘See back there, they’re all from the last two months. Your car might be here. Although you shouldn’t be going inside a car what’s piled up. It’s more than my job’s worth to let you . . . ’

  He licked his lips and looked at Kate beadily. The cheeky old goat wanted money. She rummaged in her bag and took out a twenty-pound note. The old man took it, rubbing it between his fingers gleefully.

  ‘You’ve got an hour until my boss comes. If anything happens, you’re on your own. Get your mother to call fer an ambulance . . . I don’t want the police here again.’

  ‘What do you mean again? Is it ’cause of those gypsies?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘No. Back in late July a young girl, a prostitute, was found dumped over there in the top corner. Poor wee lass. If she was hooking I don’t know how she got this far out.’

  ‘Did you get anything on CCTV?’ asked Kate.

  The man sputtered a spume of smoke. ‘This ain’t fucking Harrods. We’re a wrecker’s yard.’

  ‘A dead body? Here?’ said Kate.

  ‘I found her,’ he said, nodding sagely. ‘Up by the graffiti of a huge picture of Bob Marley.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘We don’t know. The police questioned everyone, and then it went quiet. She was pretty battered up. Covered in mud, she was.’

  ‘Was she dumped at night?’

  ‘She must have been,’ he said. ‘There’s no one here at night. It’s pretty isolated. Gives me the creeps sometimes when the wind howls through the metal work . . . Good luck finding yer necklace.’ The old man wheezed and flicked the butt of his cigarette into the mud. ‘And watch yourself on the metal. If you cut yourself, get a tetanus injection sharpish.’

  They promised they would, and went back to the car.

  ‘Good job,’ said Kate, watching until the old man was back in the office before turning to Tristan. ‘Have you got a data signal on your phone?’

  He took it out of his pocket and held it up. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Google the crime scene from the first victim of the Nine Elms Cannibal.’

  She started the engine and headed towards the back where the ma
n had indicated.

  ‘Okay, the photo is on Google,’ said Tristan.

  ‘If someone’s copycatting Peter Conway, they would have chosen a part of the yard which resembles the original crime scene.’

  ‘But this is miles away from Nine Elms Lane in London,’ said Tristan.

  ‘It’s all being redeveloped in London. The Nine Elms Lane wrecker’s yard is gone, as is my old nick, Falcon Road, which was close by. It’s all going to be posh offices and executive housing.’

  They drove past piles of wrecked cars, which were crushed and smashed. On several windscreens and on the upholstery inside there was blood spatter. In some cars it was almost brown; in others it looked fresher.

  ‘We’re looking for two piles of cars with a sort of path between them,’ said Tristan, zooming in to the image on his phone screen. ‘The cars are piled four high.’

  They came out into a small clearing and Kate craned her head to look around. Then she saw it, a huge mural of Bob Marley spray-painted across the side of a caravan with its wheels sunk into the mud. With three other piles of cars, it made up one corner of a crossroad junction. Kate turned off the engine and opened the door. There was thick deep mud.

  ‘I’ve got wellies in the back,’ she said. She got out and picked her way to the car boot, returning with two pairs of Wellingtons. ‘This is the bigger size,’ she said, handing them to Tristan. ‘They belong to my spons . . . to my friend, Myra. We go walking together sometimes.’ Kate bit her tongue, realising she sounded like an alcoholic dating her sponsor.

  Tristan took the boots without comment and they both changed. They got out of the car and stared up at the piles of cars. It was quiet, but there was a slight wind which made pieces of twisted metal from the surrounding cars move and groan. Tristan held up his phone.

  ‘What do you think? Her body could have been around here?’ said Kate, comparing where they stood to the picture on the screen.

  ‘The cars are different. There’s no London skyline, but I suppose a wrecker’s yard is a wrecker’s yard,’ said Tristan.