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

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘Fuck,’ he said under his breath.

  The old man saw the van and stopped at the electrical substation. The Fan had forced the gate open to make it look as if the substation was being serviced. The old man looked inside, then back at the van. His dog started to sniff around, and he called it to heel. Then he came right up to the van and peered through the front window.

  ‘Go on, fuck off,’ The Fan growled. He craned his head to see the other end of the street. If she was coming now, he would have to call it off. Weeks of work would be fucked up and down the drain.

  The old man dawdled for another moment, staring at the van and back at the open gate. His dog went back to the gate and stepped through to sniff some weeds before cocking his leg and urinating. Finally, the old man whistled and carried on up the street, the dog trotting after him. The Fan watched him through the tinted glass. He seemed doddery and wasn’t wearing any glasses. Hopefully this meant he wouldn’t remember too much detail.

  Five minutes later, his heart leaped when she appeared in his vision, walking along the pavement opposite. Her name was Abigail Clarke, and she was perfect – tall and athletic enough to present a challenge. He loved the girls to have a bit of fight about them, which made it all the more thrilling when he overpowered them. Abigail’s hair was long and tied back, and she wore a baseball cap. In the weeks leading up to this he had watched her walk home in daylight. Her hair had shone like gold in the sunlight, and her face had been flushed from training.

  As she walked towards the van, she had her head down, engrossed in her phone. She didn’t hear the sliding door as he popped the lock open, and as she came level he slid the door open in one smooth motion and put out his hands to grab her.

  CHAPTER 44

  Abigail didn’t notice the van until the hands emerged to grab her. The man was dressed all in black and he was wearing a black balaclava. She yelled and fought hard as she was lifted off her feet and pulled into the van. She was thrown forward onto a mattress in the back.

  Just before she landed, she reached for the small canister she kept in the front pocket of her hoodie. She thrashed and fought, feeling him on her back, and when he turned her over, she aimed for the eyes of the balaclava and sprayed him. It wasn’t mace or pepper spray but the legal alternative her mother had bought her; a bright red gel that temporarily blinds your attacker – and stains their skin red for days.

  He screamed out and put his hands to his face, scraping at the red gunge and pulling off the balaclava. His hair was almost as red as the gel. Abigail crawled and kicked and fought her way up to a standing position, then made for the sliding door which was still open. He managed to grab hold of the hockey stick tucked in her backpack, but it came loose from her bag as she fell out of the van, landing painfully on the pavement.

  She got to her feet, but he was right behind her, spitting red and gagging, sounding like a wild animal. Abigail made the fatal mistake of running through the open gate to the electrical substation. If she had run right or left she would have quickly emerged onto busier streets and might have got away.

  She ran around the small square brick building and saw there was a small door in the back. She tried the handle, but it was locked. He appeared around the building and was on her. She felt her hockey stick around her ankles as he tripped her up and she went down, landing in the grass.

  He screamed something unintelligible and hit her hard across the back of the head. Stars and pain exploded in her vision. Abigail felt her baseball cap being pulled off and she was dragged along the concrete path behind the small brick building. It was littered with the shards of a broken wine bottle, and she cried out as the pieces of glass sliced through the skin on her bare legs.

  It happened so fast, but she turned and tried to get up. His face, teeth and the whites of his eyes were slick with the red gel, and it was foaming up with drool against his rubbery lips.

  He lifted the hockey stick, and before she could get her arms up he smashed it into her throat, crushing her windpipe. She gagged and flailed, and he began to beat her with the hockey stick. Over and over again. Each blow made her body numb, and as she lost consciousness she heard the crack of her bones breaking.

  Later that evening, a genuine Southwestern Electrical Company van pulled up at the substation. The run-down street was deserted, and not the kind of place the engineer wanted to be after dark. An old man had called in to head office, asking when the work would be completed on the substation, and if his house would be without power. The message had been passed along, and it had been flagged up that the substation wasn’t due to be visited by an engineer. A break-in had to be taken seriously.

  He parked, grabbed his torch and toolkit and went to the gate. It was closed, but he saw the lock was broken. He had an odd feeling as he opened it and went through. Shining his torch on the scrappy grass, he made his way around to the back of the substation. He thought the young girl lying on the path was wearing red trousers, until he saw that it was blood caked on her bare legs. Her long hair was a tangle of red and her face a battered pulp. Congealed blood had seeped out into a circle on the concrete around the body. A bloody, broken hockey stick lay discarded on the grass.

  Flies often hung around the heat of the substation, and he could see they were already swarming over the face. It was then that he dropped his tool bag and he only made it to the gate before he threw up.

  CHAPTER 45

  Kate stopped at the petrol station on her way home from work. She had filled up her car and was looking through the limited selection of frozen food when she saw the evening news on the TV mounted above the till.

  Varia Campbell was holding a press conference in front of Exeter police station. She was flanked by DI Mercy, who looked exhausted and solemn.

  ‘Can you put the sound up, please?’ she asked the bored-looking man sitting behind the till. He grabbed the remote and unmuted it.

  ‘The young woman in question has been identified as Abigail Clarke. Her badly beaten body was found behind an electrical substation in Tranmere Street, on the outskirts of Crediton,’ Varia was saying.

  A man came up to the till to pay for his petrol, and Kate stepped out of his way, her attention glued to the screen.

  ‘A witness describes seeing a black van with tinted windows in Tranmere Street opposite the electrical substation with Southwestern Electrical branding. However, Southwestern was unaware of a call-out or anyone from the company working at this substation. We are putting out an appeal for anyone else who saw this van in the area around five to six p.m. yesterday evening. We believe this murder may be linked to the abduction and murder of Emma Newman, Kaisha Smith and Layla Gerrard.’ Pictures of the three young women flashed up on screen, followed by a photo of a young girl with strawberry-blonde hair. ‘We believe that this individual intended to abduct Abigail on her way home from school, but instead she was murdered at the scene.’

  The news report cut back to the studio, and the presenter repeated the appeal for witnesses. ‘Police are eager to speak to the driver or any witnesses of this van caught on CCTV two hundred yards from the scene of the crime.’

  A blurred CCTV image of a black Southwestern Electrical van flashed up on screen, then the news report went on to show a map of the sports ground where Abigail had been training that evening, and the bus stop they believed she was heading to.

  Kate paid for her petrol, and as she went back to her car her phone rang. It was Tristan.

  ‘Did you see the news?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They must be really desperate if they’re releasing so much information to the public.’

  ‘I’m home in five minutes. Come over and let’s talk it through.’

  Tristan arrived at Kate’s just as she was putting a frozen lasagne in the oven.

  ‘Do you always eat ready meals?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I don’t have a wife to cook for me,’ she said, setting the timer. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Have a wife? No. I do like to
cook though, when I have time.’

  ‘There’s enough for two if you’re hungry,’ she said.

  Tristan sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, and they started to talk through the case so far.

  ‘This is a huge breakthrough,’ said Tristan. ‘They have a witness to a vehicle, and he was obviously surprised at the scene.’

  ‘They also have a definite point where he wanted to abduct her,’ said Kate. She went to the countertop and picked up her computer. ‘They’ve put down the location as Tranmere Road, Crediton—’

  ‘Tranmere Street,’ said Tristan.

  ‘Tranmere Street, near Crediton . . . ’

  ‘Crediton is a bit rough. What the hell was she doing walking through it on her own?’

  Kate opened up Google Maps and typed in the address. She pulled up the map and zoomed out. ‘This is the playing field they mentioned on the news,’ she said, pointing at the map, ‘and this is the bus stop where she was due to catch her bus home.’ She traced her finger along the map and found Tranmere Street.

  ‘Bloody hell. She got so close to catching that bus,’ said Tristan. ‘Look at the scale. She was four hundred metres away.’

  Kate zoomed out of the map.

  Tristan went on, ‘We don’t know where Emma Newman went missing because she was the only one who didn’t have a fixed routine. The other girls were on their way home from somewhere . . . ’

  ‘I’ve got the location of where Kaisha Smith went missing,’ said Kate, going to her bag and pulling out her notebook. ‘She took the number four bus from the stop closest to the school training ground.’

  ‘We just need to find out where Layla Gerrard went to catch the bus,’ said Tristan.

  ‘I can phone Alan Hexham and see if he can get it from the police report,’ said Kate. ‘Let’s look at the routes taken by the other victims, and let’s start thinking like a serial killer. Where would be the best spot to lie in wait and abduct someone?’

  They spent the next few hours working painstakingly through the routes on Google Maps, cross-checking where the victims lived with the bus routes they would take, and in each instance they found a shortcut.

  ‘I want to go and look at these locations,’ said Kate. ‘These shortcuts the girls took or could have taken. Someone in the area might have seen something, or someone, without realising the significance.’

  CHAPTER 46

  The next morning, it took an hour to drive to the point where they believed that Kaisha Smith, the second victim, had been abducted. When they searched the route they found a point where two residential streets, Halstead Road and Marham Street, connected through a small alleyway.

  Halstead Road was fairly busy, but where the alleyway emerged onto Marham Street it was a quiet cul-de-sac, shrouded by bushes and only overlooked by one house, which happened to be empty and up for sale.

  ‘It would be the perfect spot,’ said Tristan. ‘He could have parked the van and lain in wait for her here.’

  Kate spied a woman coming out of a car in front of the house diagonally opposite. She opened the boot and took out a small box of cleaning supplies.

  ‘Looks like a cleaner,’ said Kate, seizing the moment. ‘Let’s see if she’ll talk.’

  Tristan followed her and they caught up with the woman as she was about to go through the front gate of a large white house. Kate introduced herself and offered her business card.

  ‘We’re trying to find out about a young girl who went missing. We think she passed through this road.’

  The woman looked suspiciously between them, trying to work out their relationship. She was very pale with short dyed black hair and her huge eyes were rimmed with thick black mascara.

  ‘We’re not police,’ Kate added. ‘We work privately, and we need help.’

  The woman seemed to soften a little at this. ‘I clean six houses on this street. I’m here a lot.’

  ‘Do you clean Thursdays? That’s the day she went missing,’ said Kate.

  Tristan took out a photo of Kaisha Smith they’d printed off, and showed it to her.

  The woman tutted. ‘I saw about her on the news! You think she was abducted here?’

  ‘It’s a theory we’re working on,’ said Kate.

  ‘I saw the news last night. Bloke in a black van – well, they think it was a bloke – killed that girl,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘Can you remember if you were working . . . ’ Kate pulled out her phone and scrolled through ‘ . . . on Thursday sixteenth September? That was the day Kaisha vanished.’

  The woman thought for a moment. ‘When was the August bank holiday?’ she asked.

  ‘That was thirtieth August,’ said Tristan.

  ‘Yes, I was working. It was the week before I was away.’

  ‘Do you work until late?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Four, five o’clock.’

  ‘Can you remember if there was a van parked up here at the end of the cul-de-sac late afternoon on that day?’ Tristan took out his mobile phone. ‘It could have been a van like this, from the Southwestern Electrical Company?’

  The woman looked at the photo on the screen. ‘Not that I remember. The house there has been up for sale for a few months. The old lady who owned it died in there, and they didn’t find her for a couple of weeks. Saying that . . . there was one of them security vans parked up here around that time. I remember noticing it there because it was one of those armoured vans, you know the ones that pick up cash from banks.’

  ‘Do you remember the date?’ asked Kate.

  The woman chewed it over, quite literally, moving her mouth while weighing it up. ‘I can’t be sure. It was around that time. All the days tend to blur into one after a while.’

  ‘Can you remember if the van had a company name on it?’

  ‘It wasn’t Securicor, ’cause those vans always make me laugh when they reverse and that posh woman’s voice asks you to get out the way . . . three letters, I think. It was written in gold. It had tinted windows, and I remember thinking what the hell is that doing there? There’s been nothing going on there, what with the house being empty for so long. Apart from when the bin men reverse their lorry.’

  ‘Did you see anyone inside? Did anyone get out?’ asked Kate.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have the police talked to you?’

  At this point the woman narrowed her eyes. ‘The police? No. I don’t talk to the police unless I have to. They might have talked to the people who lived here, but I don’t know. Lots of them commute to Bristol or even London, with Exeter being close by. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’

  After she’d gone, Kate and Tristan walked back through the alleyway. It was a stinking, dingy little passage with litter and broken glass.

  ‘There’s not a lot of dog shit,’ said Tristan. ‘So, not a route for dog walkers.’

  ‘It seems like the kind of street where people don’t walk much,’ agreed Kate. ‘What do you think about the van she saw?’

  ‘She was too vague. She can’t remember the exact date or what was written on the side of it.’

  ‘But it would be weird for one of those security vans to stop here. We’re a long way from a bank.’

  They arrived at the car.

  ‘Where to next?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘Butterworth Avenue,’ said Kate. ‘Where we think Layla Gerrard was abducted.’

  CHAPTER 47

  The Fan woke in the darkness, pain throbbing in his left eye. He scrabbled around next to his bed and pulled open the curtains. He was staying in his country house, tucked away near the North Wessex Downs. The light came flooding through the window, and he winced at the sudden brightness. He got up and went to the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror.

  The skin on his face and hands was stained a deep red. The colour was more pronounced around his left eye, which was also bruised and swollen from where the bitch had kicked out at him. The gel had seeped through the balaclava and covered his face and the side
of his neck.

  He’d felt so enraged and surprised when Abigail fought back. He’d never dreamed any of them would retaliate, and he didn’t know how much time had passed when he found himself standing over her lifeless body, her blood flooding out in a widening slick on the concrete.

  He was aware that it was dark, and the streetlamp above was flickering. The road was deserted. He’d gone back to the van and locked himself inside, trying to clean himself up, but the red dye was everywhere. He picked up her baseball cap. It was dark blue, with a red Nike tick on the front. He’d pulled the peak down low, and hoped it would be enough to disguise his dye-covered face.

  This had destroyed his plan for victim number four.

  He’d taken several baths and showers, scrubbing at his skin, but still the stain remained, like a port wine birthmark. He did a little research and found out that the colour would fade in a few days, but it put him out of action at a crucial time of planning.

  He’d driven a vast circuitous route back to the distribution centre in the Southwestern Electrical van, and had switched the plates as soon as he’d returned, but he now had to clean the red stains from the van, and he couldn’t let anyone else do it. The police would know about the red dye. This detail hadn’t been mentioned on the news yet, but that old man was a worry. He had seen the van.

  The Fan had planned to dump Abigail’s body the following Tuesday, with a note, but now he wouldn’t be able to do that, and it was no longer the perfect crime that he had planned so carefully. If the old man spoke to the police, and they knew that he was using vans, how long would it take them to trace things back to him? The fake plates would only buy him so much time.

  He took off his underwear and stepped into the shower. The red stain from the gel had seeped down his neck and onto his chest. He took a tub of industrial cleaner and shook the acrid-smelling powder into his palm. He mixed it with a little water and started to rub it over the stain on his chest, up the side of his neck and over his face. It burned and stung. He ran the water, as hot as he could bear, and was pleased to see faint pink water running off.