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

by Robert Bryndza

  An image of India flashed into his mind, naked and pleading. That perfect hair plastered to her face with sweat and tears.

  He took off again, and the helicopter sheared up and off into the sky, heading west.

  It worried him the police had made an arrest. They had the wrong man. He was their man, and he would reveal himself. Soon, but not yet.

  CHAPTER 38

  When Kate got home, the police car had vanished from outside her house, and Glenda called to say the police car watching Jake was also gone.

  Kate tried to call Varia to ask what was happening, but was told to expect a callback. Kate didn’t want to wait so she drove over to Exeter, went into the police station and asked to see her. She waited for an hour, and finally Varia appeared.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Kate. ‘You’ve arrested someone and you take away police surveillance on me and my son. Have you got him?’

  ‘Come to my office,’ said Varia. Kate followed her along a corridor, past offices with support staff. Phones rang, officers walked and talked. It felt odd to be back in a large police station – odd, but at the same time it felt like home.

  ‘Would you like tea?’ asked Varia, taking her into a small office overlooking the car park.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Kate, taking a seat as Varia closed her office door.

  ‘Okay. We arrested a teacher from Layla Gerrard’s school. His DNA was matched to a burglary in 1993 in Manchester. At the time blood was taken from the point of entry. He broke a window and cut himself. He then beat an elderly couple badly and took off with their valuables.’

  ‘Is he a suspect?’

  ‘No. He has an alibi. He was in France when Layla went missing. His wife is French and they were visiting relatives. I have passport records and CCTV. His arrest should not have been publicised. I have the news cameras to thank for that.’

  ‘Are you going to release him?’ said Kate.

  ‘We are going to charge him for the 1993 assault and burglary. He won’t be released, but I will still face the wrath of the press. I have twenty officers assigned to this case who are all working harder than you can imagine, going without family time,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not questioning that. Are you looking into all the schools that those girls went to? That was Peter Conway’s way in.’

  ‘Yes. We’ve looked at the schools that the three victims attended. Teachers, support staff, caretakers, casual workers. We’ve taken voluntary DNA samples from almost every male teacher and support worker who came into contact or who was associated with the girls. Hence the arrest. We’ve also taken DNA samples from males in the families, and in the case of the first victim, Emma Newman, we have looked at the children’s home she went to and everyone who works there has been cross-checked.’

  ‘And nothing?’

  ‘The DNA samples gave us the arrest today, and also we had a hit on the caretaker at Layla's school. He was involved in a sexual assault in 1991. He picked up a girl on her way home from school and raped her. We interviewed him. His wife is his alibi, but he now has limited movement; he’s registered as partially blind and he can’t drive. With the logistics of how these girls are being grabbed and abducted, he would have had to take the bus to do it. He’ll be charged for the historical crime, but there is no way he was able to kill these three young women.’

  ‘Did you get anything from the CCTV at the candlelight vigil?’

  ‘Kate, I got a crowd of people surging through the village. The point where your car was parked isn’t covered by CCTV, nor is the first half mile of the route the vigil took, then we’ve got fields and trees in the other direction.’

  ‘What about satellites, Google Earth?’

  Varia raised an eyebrow. ‘I work for the Devon and Cornwall police, not MI5. If this were a matter of national security then I might be able to request still images from Google Earth data, but for a note left on a car windscreen by a potential suspect we’re not there yet. Besides, I already thought of that and pulled up Google Earth to check the location . . . ’

  She typed on her computer, clicked the mouse a few times and swivelled round the screen. ‘You can see that the road where you parked is covered by a tunnel of trees. Even without leaves we’d have trouble getting a clear image. The CCTV we have got from the vigil is difficult to view because of the limited visibility with it being dark, and the hundreds of candles screw with the image. And almost everyone there wore woolly hats and had their heads down out of respect. The few cameras we have footage from are set at a high angle looking down and we can’t see faces.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m also in contact with Dr Baxter. She is sending me all of the correspondence coming in and out of Great Barwell to Peter Conway: letters from members of the public, transcripts of phone conversations with his mother . . . ’ She rubbed her face. ‘I’m trying my best to stay positive, but there are no witnesses to any of the abductions. It’s as if he took them and vanished into thin air. I’ve had all the male police officers and support workers in the borough submit to a DNA test. That’s not a decision I’ve taken lightly.’

  ‘I know how horrible that must have been,’ said Kate.

  ‘So, when you come to my station and act like I’m slacking off—’

  ‘You’re not,’ finished Kate.

  ‘Handwriting analysis shows all the notes match: the three left at the crime scene, the picture of Jake sent to Peter Conway, and the note left on your car. I was about to call you and say that we’ll be continuing with a police presence for you and Jake, reviewed every few days depending on the progress of the case.’

  ‘What about Enid Conway’s autobiography?’

  ‘I’ve already told you I don’t have the resources to police the tourist hotspots of Devon and Cornwall. I’ve asked officers to be vigilant on their beat patrols, I’ve flagged the areas. Now, I’ve been candid with you. I ask that you share any information with me, if and when you have it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate.

  ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a killer to catch.’

  CHAPTER 39

  The red-haired Fan sat in the darkness on the terrace of his London apartment. The air was crisp and the sky clear. He could see out across Regent’s Park to where the city twinkled and shimmered against the dark sky. All the lights were out, and he sat in the shadows.

  His family’s wealth was huge. His father was a retired barrister and his mother came from money. She was the heir to a European haulage company. Thanks to his parents, he had the use of vehicles and warehouse space. He also had an apartment in central London and a house in the country.

  He loved London. It was a vast melting pot. It was loud and vibrant and people didn’t watch you too closely; they were too busy and absorbed in their own lives and problems. It was the perfect location to hide out and make his plans.

  His apartment was on the top floor of a grand pillared terrace. His family owned the building, and he and his three siblings had been ‘gifted’ an apartment each for their twenty-first birthdays. His two sisters were married with lives of their own – both now lived in New York and let out their apartments. His brother in a fit of independence had borrowed against his apartment, and then, unable to pay the mortgage, had lost it to the bank.

  It was late, and the planes had stopped flying. There was just the sound of a far-off police siren, and very faint classical music. It was peaceful. He would miss it.

  He came back inside and went to his office. It was a wood-panelled room with heavy leather furniture, but the wood panels were obscured and every spare inch of wall was covered in a collage of newspaper clippings, photos and printouts.

  He took a moment to walk the room, something he never tired of. Every article that had ever been written about the Nine Elms Cannibal case was pasted to the walls, from the first few headlines about the corpses of the dead girls, through to the articles about the hunt for the Nine Elms Cannibal, and then the stories about Peter Conway, star cop, unmasked a
s a killer, and his beautiful sidekick, Kate Marshall.

  He reached out and touched the photos of Peter and Kate and the photos of the dead girls – Peter Conway’s four victims – and then the photos of Kate’s flat, when she almost became his fifth victim. He had known about the case since he was a young boy, and had seen the stuff in the press. For many years it had been a hot topic of conversation in the family.

  His mother and father and his siblings were united in one thing: that Peter Conway was an evil killer who deserved to be locked up. But he’d always felt he was different – he had violent urges and dark thoughts, and he felt that he would never be able to live a normal life. For many years he’d sympathised in secret with Conway, felt kinship with him. It was only in his adult years, when his parents had retired to Spain and his siblings scattered to the wind, that he was able to think for himself. His obsession started to develop. He became a true Fan.

  He went to his desk where he’d put a copy of the News of the World. He cut out the latest article, a piece about his copycat murders. The photo they’d used thrilled him. It was three circular images connected by arrows: at the top was Peter Conway, next was Kate Marshall and the third circle was empty with a huge question mark. It contained the words WHO IS THE COPYCAT?

  ‘Me, me, me, me!’ he chanted as he carefully cut out the article and applied glue to the back, before moving to the wood panelling where he pasted it on, smoothing it down so it stuck like wallpaper.

  He stood back and admired his handiwork. The room was an assault on the senses. Wall to wall pictures, articles, photos of death. He imagined the moment when the police broke down the door to his apartment and burst in. They would find this room, this shrine, and it would be photographed and those photos would be published in print and online – and one day, very soon, a book would be written about him too.

  There was a soft tone as an email came through on his computer. He went to it and guided the mouse to open the email. It was a message from an eBay seller. He had won his bid on a vintage bedspread. He smiled a gummy smile. He printed off the image of the bedspread and took it over to the article glued to his wall, where there were photos from the inside of Kate Marshall’s flat in Deptford. He held it up against the photo taken of her bedroom in the aftermath of Peter Conway’s attack on her, and the image of her bedspread.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, comparing the two. ‘It’s a perfect match.’

  CHAPTER 40

  Ten miles away, Enid Conway sat at her kitchen table preparing to take the latest messages from The Fan to Peter. It was a messy job, slicing open the sweet toffees to scrape out the soft centres. Her clothes were covered in stains, and her kitchen table was strewn with lumps of melted toffee and chocolate. She worked with a surgical scalpel, which made the neatest, cleanest cut, and she wore latex surgical gloves. The toffee couldn’t be handled for long, it quickly melted in her hands, so she had to work with frozen toffees. She also made sure the heating was switched off and all the kitchen windows were open. Cold air circulated and with it the smell of takeaway food and exhaust fumes.

  It was often noisy at night, and it was something she was used to after so many years, but tonight it made her jittery. A couple of kids were roaring up and down the street on a motorbike and the high-pitched drone of the engine was going right through her.

  She took another toffee and carefully removed the wrapper. Her hands were sweaty under the latex gloves, and she had trouble keeping the toffee still as she carefully pressed the tip of the surgical blade into the centre, working her way around it. She needed to slice it clean in half, so when it was put back together the join looked neat.

  There was a shout from next door, and it made her jump. The toffee she was holding slipped and the tip of the blade went into the ball of her thumb. The sweaty latex glove began to quickly fill with blood and she hurried to the sink.

  ‘Shit,’ she cried, pulling off the glove and holding her thumb under the cold tap. It hurt like hell. She looked at the wound, squeezing it. It was deep. ‘Fucking hell!’

  She held it under the tap for a few minutes until the bleeding stopped. Then she took out her first aid kit, applying antiseptic cream and a tight gauze and plaster. When her hands were dry, she took a bottle of Teacher’s whisky from the cupboard, poured herself a glass, and downed it with a couple of painkillers.

  She surveyed the mess on the kitchen table: the melted lumps of toffee, the balled-up latex gloves and the heat-sealing machine that sat on the edge. The whisky warmed her insides. She went to the two passports sitting on the counter next to the microwave. Enid checked for any blood spotting through the bandage on her thumb, and seeing the bandage was clean, she opened the passports.

  The first had her photo, but the name was June Munro. June was born in the same year as Enid, but on a different day. She was astonished at the quality of the fake. The paper felt right to the touch, and there was the thick plastic last page with the biometric data. The passport would expire in nine years. There were a few stamps in the back for authenticity – a two-week trip to Croatia the year before, and another to Iceland, and another to the US. There was also an America B-1/B-2 traveller’s visa. She picked up the second. It had the same stamp for Croatia and America. The photo of Peter that she’d taken in the visitors’ room at Great Barwell looked good. His name in the passport was Walter King, which she thought was odd, but he looked almost distinguished with his grey hair. His birthday made him one year younger.

  Inside the microwave was a four-inch-thick packet of euros: four hundred and fifty 500-euro notes, totalling 225,000 euros. She also had another packet of smaller-denomination notes totalling 7,000 euros, and some fifty-and twenty-pound notes coming to £5,000.

  The sight of it all made her shake with excitement and fear. She had taken three of the 500-euro notes to the bank, choosing them at random from the pile. It had been a risk, but she had to know. She’d successfully changed them for pounds. They were genuine. The passports looked kosher. He’d told her that they’d cost fifteen grand apiece from a very reliable source. None of this had come for free. On delivery of this all, she’d signed her house over to a blind trust. The house had been valued at just under £240,000. It was worth more, especially for the ghoul factor, as the childhood home of a serial killer.

  Enid poured herself another whisky. It made her nervous having all this money in the house. She was due to visit Peter the next day, and she needed to stash it all somewhere safe.

  It would be worth it, she told herself. They would cross the Channel by boat and slip into a Spanish port unnoticed. The passports were set up for the Schengen Area, covering the whole of Europe. As far as the authorities were concerned June Munro and Walter King were both in Spain. After Peter’s escape every port, train station and airport would be on high alert, but once they were in Spain they would be able to lie low for months or even years and move around Europe without having to go through extensive passport checks.

  She worried about money. She would have to leave all her bank accounts, and give up her pension, but she hoped they could buy a small place outright and save some money. There were always ways to earn money.

  For so many years she had longed to hold her son, to talk to him endlessly for hours, like they used to. She didn’t want to think about anything else, about what Peter would need to do to secure their freedom. Like always, she pushed it to the back of her mind.

  Enid downed the last of her whisky and took another packet of chocolate eclairs from the freezer. This time her hand was steady. The toffee yielded, splitting into two even halves. She scraped out the chocolate with the corner of the scalpel and replaced it with a large vitamin capsule. This had been emptied and now contained a note to Peter, detailing the latest developments. She placed the two halves back together, using the heat of her fingers to mould the toffee back into shape. She prepared the second toffee, placing inside it the note from Peter’s ‘Fan’, then she repacked the toffees and put them into an opened bag.

>   She was relieved to reseal the bag, using the plastic heat sealer, and place the bag of toffees in the freezer overnight.

  They were so close, so close. This would be the last time she smuggled notes in and out of Great Barwell. It would also be her last visit.

  She poured herself another whisky and even though she wasn’t a religious woman, she prayed for it all to be a success.

  CHAPTER 41

  Tristan was celebrating being made a full-time member of the university staff, and he came over to Kate’s for dinner that evening. She wasn’t much of a cook, so treated him to takeaway pizza. They spent the whole evening discussing the case, which was now all over the media.

  ‘There’s a few things I’ve thought we should follow up,’ said Kate, pouring them each a second cup of coffee to go with a second slice of the raspberry cheesecake Tristan had brought with him. ‘It all comes down to Enid Conway’s book.’

  There was a copy of it on the breakfast bar, and Tristan picked it up. ‘How are we going to work out where he’ll dump the next body? There are so many places Enid and Peter went on this holiday,’ he said, flicking through to the index.

  ‘Think bigger,’ said Kate. ‘We know he’s going to do this again.’

  ‘What if he gets knocked over by a bus? There must be serial killers out there who suddenly come a cropper themselves, and that’s why the killings stop,’ said Tristan.

  ‘Maybe that’s why they never caught Jack the Ripper, because he crossed the road one day and got hit by a cart.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘We shouldn’t be laughing,’ said Tristan, sawing off another chunk of cheesecake and putting it on a plate. He offered it to Kate.

  ‘No. Not that big. I’ve already eaten an enormous piece . . . Sometimes you need to laugh or you’ll go mad.’

  ‘Speaking of which, how are you coping with the police being out there?’