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

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘In what way?’ asked Tristan.

  Gary rolled his eyes. ‘She’s the mother of a notorious serial killer, and because, as our conversations went on, it seemed like a different book was emerging,’ he said. ‘The publisher had conceived it from my headline, No Son of Mine, and it was agreed that it would be a sort of redemption piece. Enid would renounce her son. But as our talks unfolded, I got the impression that she had a powerful love for him, and she was in denial.’

  ‘She didn’t believe Peter killed those young women?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Oh, no, Enid knew Peter did it. She believed he couldn’t help himself. She said that she was raped by an evil man, that Peter’s father was evil. And it gave him a dark side he constantly fought against. She said the good side far outweighed the bad. It wasn’t his fault he killed those young women. It was his genes which made him do it.’

  Kate closed her eyes and felt sick at the thought. Most of the time she could mentally separate Jake from Peter, and even though she knew Enid’s words came from a place of denial, they made her deeply troubled for Jake’s future. She dropped her cup and it shattered on the floor.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said weakly, and got up to pick up the pieces.

  ‘No worries,’ said Gary. He went to Kate, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘She’s fine. Can you give us a minute?’ asked Tristan, shooting him a look.

  ‘Sure. I’ll go and get a cloth,’ Gary said and left the room.

  ‘You okay to carry on?’ asked Tristan, seeing the tears in Kate’s eyes. He made her sit down and started to gather up the pieces of broken cup.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘I always try to look at this objectively, but . . . ’ She started to cry. ‘Peter is Jake’s father, and all this fucked-up stuff, it’s part of Jake. I get so scared when I think about it. Jake is just a kid who wants a normal life, but is he going to get that?’

  Tristan stacked up the pieces of broken cup and placed them on Gary’s desk, then took Kate’s hand. ‘I was looking online, at serial killers in particular. Do you know how many of them have children who have turned out to be normal? Charles Manson apparently has a son who lives a very quiet life with his girlfriend and child. The daughter of the Happy Face Killer is now a motivational speaker who helps the children of serial murderers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Enid Conway spouted a load of bollocks that she thought would sell books.’

  ‘No one knows how their kid is going to turn out, do they?’ said Kate.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Tristan. ‘When I got done by the police for breaking that car window, my mum freaked out and thought I was destined for a life of crime, and look at me now. I’m working at Ashdean University, and I’m not cleaning the toilets. I work for you, and that’s something to be really proud of.’

  Kate looked into Tristan’s kind brown eyes and felt so pleased she had taken a chance on him at the job interview. He was fast becoming like a second son to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling and squeezing his hand.

  Gary came back with a cloth. He stopped in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, I asked the question,’ said Kate, wiping her face and composing herself.

  Gary grabbed a box of tissues and Kate took one and blew her nose. He cleared up the mess and sat back down.

  ‘Do you want to carry on?’ Tristan asked Kate.

  ‘Yes, this is about more than just me,’ said Kate. She wiped her nose then looked up at Gary. ‘Did you know that Peter told most of his colleagues in the police that his mother was mentally ill, and sectioned in hospital?’

  ‘I’d heard that. Enid said it was lies.’

  ‘Peter told me and my colleagues on three occasions.’

  ‘Enid never mentioned that. She loved Peter fiercely, and I think it went beyond a mother’s love,’ said Gary. ‘She talked about dressing for him during the trial. To keep his spirits up. You must remember some of the stuff she wore to court: short skirts and stockings, suspenders. She would sit there showing him a bit of leg. A flash of lace . . . I remember we used to joke about it in the press gallery.’

  Kate felt sick but was determined to continue. ‘Did she talk about her relationship with Peter when he was growing up?’

  ‘She talked about the holiday they took to Devon, but it seemed pretty normal, apart from the run-in with the farmer’s wife when Enid stole a chicken. She did talk a lot about the two years Peter spent living and working in Manchester as a police officer, when Enid was back in London. She said she missed him like crazy. At the time she was working at a bookie’s in Whitechapel and she only got every other weekend off. They would alternate visits to each other. One weekend, when she came to Manchester and they’d been drinking in the pub, they went back to Peter’s flat and he showed her a new camera he’d bought. He started to take photos of her. She said things got a bit silly, and she started posing for him, for a laugh, but then he asked her to change into another outfit, and he carried on taking photos of her as she got changed, and it turned into him taking photos of her naked.’

  ‘Bloody hell, his own mother?’ said Tristan.

  Gary nodded. ‘Enid framed it that they were having a laugh and then he got naked so she could take photos of him, and then she said, “one thing led to another” – those are the words she used – but then she back-tracked very quickly and told me I couldn’t put it in the book.’

  ‘She said this in an interview with you, for the book?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Yes. It was after she’d had a couple of drinks in the lounge at the Grand.’

  ‘Why didn’t you put it in the book?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘She had the final say, and when I told my editor, she was disgusted. She said the publisher didn’t want that kind of speculation about the relationship between Enid and Peter. It wasn’t that kind of book.’

  Kate and Tristan sat back for a moment and took it in. Kate wasn’t shocked, just horrified.

  ‘Have you got any other material you could share, any other photos from Enid that didn’t make it into the book?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. There were a lot, ones of Peter as a baby, his early years in the force in Manchester.’

  ‘Could we take a look?’

  ‘Sure. Let me see,’ said Gary, getting up and scanning the crammed bookshelves. He found a shoebox and pulled it down. He took off the lid and put the box on the coffee table. ‘I had all the photos copied.’

  Kate started to sift through the old holiday photos and pictures of Peter as a baby.

  ‘I take it she didn’t give you any of her dodgy photos? If what she said was even true?’ asked Tristan, picking up the blurred photo of sixteen-year-old Enid cradling baby Peter outside the unmarried mothers’ home.

  ‘No. She told an odd story about that,’ said Gary. ‘Peter had a friend in Manchester, Altrincham I think she said, near where he lived. He owned a chemist’s, but he was one of those people who would process dodgy photos, on the side, under the table like, for a fee.’

  Kate and Tristan exchanged a glance.

  ‘Did she say what this friend was called?’ asked Kate.

  ‘No, but apparently he was an ex-copper. That’s how Peter got to know him.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Kate. ‘That’s Paul Adler, the guy who owns the chemist in Altrincham.’

  CHAPTER 50

  Since his visit from Enid, Peter had put the next part of the plan in motion. The orderlies and doctors who worked in the hospital were observant, and rules were strictly enforced. Sharp objects were forbidden, and anything that could be fashioned into a weapon was banned or strictly monitored. Toothbrushes, combs and razors were only given out for use in the bathroom, and then collected up and disposed of. All cutlery was plastic and given to patients just to eat their meals, and collected back up and accounted for when plates were returned. If anything went missing the patient and their room would b
e searched thoroughly until it was found. Any foods or snacks that were wrapped in silver foil were also banned, and even toothpaste, after one patient had sharpened the flat edge of a tube of Colgate and slashed one of the orderlies.

  As the years and months of his incarceration passed, Peter had been granted little perks here and there, for pockets of good behaviour – books (soft paperbacks with no staples) and a radio (housed in thick form-moulded plastic and checked regularly). The previous year, his collection of books had become so large that he put in a request to have a bookcase in his room. After lots of paperwork had passed back and forth, it was agreed that he would be allowed to choose a small bookcase and pay for it through his hospital account. It had to be a model that would be glued together, and he wasn’t allowed to assemble it himself. When it arrived flat-packed, a request had been put in for one of the maintenance staff to come and assemble it. It was around this time that Great Barwell had outsourced maintenance work.

  On the morning of the bookcase being assembled, Peter was taken out of his room to give the maintenance worker access. He never met whoever did it, and when he returned, the bookcase was waiting for him. It was about waist height and had been fitted beside his sink. The orderly had checked it over and searched the room again to make sure no tools had been left, and then Peter was locked in for the night.

  It wasn’t until Peter tried to move the bookcase to beside his bed that he saw the maintenance worker had fixed it to the wall with a small metal bracket.

  Peter had stacked his books in the case and used the top to store more books and paperwork. The bracket had gone unnoticed and unseen, even throughout the past four or five routine room searches.

  Peter had taken up smoking again. Matches were cheaper than buying a lighter, so he bought cigarettes and a box of matches from the hospital shop, and the next time he went for a cigarette he was doled out a few matches. He used two and tucked one behind his ear, managing to get it back to his room without it being detected.

  Every morning, toothbrushes were given out with breakfast. They were used when patients went for a shower, and orderlies collected them up again the moment they were finished. Three days previously, when his toothbrush came through the hatch with his breakfast, Peter took it out of the cellophane and cleared off the top of the bookcase. He opened his window and struck the match on the sill. Then he held the end of the toothbrush to the flame for a few seconds. He extinguished the match and threw it out of the window. He then went to the bracket on the back of the bookcase and pushed the melted plastic end of the toothbrush into the head of the screw fixing the bracket to the wall. He held it there for a few minutes, and when he pulled it away the plastic had set hard. He now had an improvised screwdriver.

  He kept the window open to clear the smell of burning plastic, and quickly unscrewed the metal bracket from the back of the bookcase and stashed it inside the plastic housing of the radiator knob. He lit his second match, held the flame against the end of the toothbrush, then flattened out the impression of the screw on the sill of the window.

  After this he went about his morning as normal – showered, shaved and brushed his teeth. Winston collected up the toothbrush when he was done and it was thrown in the recycling bin. Over the next three days and nights, Peter worked at filing down the keen edge of the bracket on the bars outside his window until it was razor sharp.

  On Sunday afternoon, Peter had his regular group therapy session with Meredith Baxter. The sessions were held in a small room next to her office. Peter’s group comprised the five long-term prisoners on his corridor – Peter, Ned, the blind paedophile who delivered the mail, Henry, a morbidly obese child killer, an arsonist called Derek whose meds rendered him a drooling zombie, and Martin, a schizophrenic.

  Martin was seen as the riskiest of all the patients, and despite his size – he was tiny and weighed only 45 kilos – his strength was remarkable. Peter had once witnessed one of his meltdowns outside the bathroom, where Martin had hooked his fingers under the waistband of his jeans and torn them off his body in one movement. Peter had tried this back in his own cell when he was wearing an old pair of Levis, and he just couldn’t do it.

  They filed into the room just after 2 p.m., and they were checked over by three orderlies, their clothes patted down. Peter had the bracket tucked behind his left ear, under the spit hood, where it was kept in place with the stem of his glasses, matching the curve. He could feel it cold and sharp against his skin.

  Winston patted him down for the third time that morning, then removed Peter’s spit hood. He gave Peter’s hair a quick check, ignoring the glasses, and told him to take his seat in the semicircle around Meredith.

  Today she wore faded blue jeans and a pink woollen jumper. The only thing that set her apart from the patients was that she was female and she wore a lanyard around her neck. The orderlies had warned her about wearing this in sessions due to the risk of strangulation, but Meredith liked to act like they were all equal and friends, so she had ignored the warning.

  On a couple of occasions, Peter had overheard Winston and Terrell talking about Meredith’s group sessions, and how wary they were of what could happen. It was one of the only times that the Category A patients were all in one place and allowed to mix without restraints. The orderlies made sure to carry mace, Tasers and their batons, and were hyper-alert during these sessions. This didn’t matter to Peter. He knew he was going to get caught and punished for what he was about to do. He wanted them to punish him; he just needed a few seconds in which to make it happen.

  The room was small and tight, and the three orderlies were so close that Peter was unsure if he could do it. He made sure he was the first to share, saying how much he worried about his mother being out in the world on her own as she got older. Meredith smiled, her shiny face creasing around her mouth, and a dimple appeared in her cheek.

  ‘Yes, Peter. We all worry about our loved ones. That’s a very human emotion to have,’ she said. ‘We’re lucky to live in a predominantly socialist country that looks after its elderly. Would you like me to request that you are given an extra phone card, to contact the social security office to explore options for your mother?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you,’ said Peter, nodding enthusiastically.

  She smiled back. It was a smug smile, which gave her the hint of a double chin.

  Meredith then moved on to Ned, who was sitting next to Peter. He told the group that he was worried about the wheel on his mail trolley. It was wobbly and about to come loose.

  He spoke in an agitated staccato. ‘What if the trolley goes tits up and all the post I’ve sorted goes everywhere? I have it all nicely arranged, so that as I go down all the corridors, I have everyone’s mail ready. If it breaks, then I won’t be able to deliver the mail!’

  Peter looked over at Henry who was chewing on the sleeve of his pullover, attempting to get some flavour out of it. His vast buttocks spilled over the edges of his chair. Derek was asleep and drooling and Martin was jittery, his leg jogging up and down.

  Peter was trying to work out the exact moment when he could make his move, when there was a sudden commotion in the corridor outside. One of the catering trolleys rounded the corner from the next corridor and collided with the door, cracking the small pane of safety glass and emptying a tray of stew down the window. It was accompanied by a scream from a patient who was in the corridor. Winston and Terrell leaped up and went to the door to check everything was okay.

  At this moment of distraction, Peter slipped the sharpened wall bracket out from under the stem of his glasses and gripped it between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. He got up and moved calmly to Meredith. She looked up at him, curiously, and barely had the chance to say his name when he grabbed her by the back of her head and slashed at her throat twice with the sharpened bracket, left to right in quick succession. He hit the bullseye and her jugular vein ruptured, bathing him and the screaming patients in red.

  Meredith’s eyes and mouth opened w
ide and her hands clawed at him as she gurgled, thrashed and flailed, and made an anguished wet sound as blood poured from the gash in her throat, saturating her clothes. She twitched and slid sideways off her chair. Peter ignored the screams and climbed on top of her, pressing his knee into her stomach.

  As he bit down on her left cheek, aiming for that dimple, he felt a jolt of pain as Terrell shot him with the Taser. The electric current made his teeth clamp down, and by the time they pulled him off her, he had a chunk of Meredith’s smooth dimpled cheek in his mouth.

  CHAPTER 51

  Kate and Tristan had stopped at a coffee shop further down the seafront to talk over the revelation that Peter Conway knew Paul Adler.

  ‘I thought you said Paul Adler had an alibi for when Caitlyn went missing?’ asked Tristan.

  ‘He does, but he denied having any knowledge of or friendship with Peter Conway, and here we have a direct link, as told by Enid,’ said Kate.

  ‘What do you want to do? Take this to Varia Campbell?’

  ‘No. This isn’t Varia’s case. The Caitlyn Murray case has been closed by the police. They didn’t think they had enough evidence to investigate it any further. I want more proof before we go to the police. I told you about my visit to Paul Adler’s pharmacy. There was something creepy about the harem of submissive young women who worked for him. And he’d kept those photos of Caitlyn. They weren’t in an album. They were still in the original processing sleeve, and it was marked with a number and a date . . . He said he used to do film processing at the chemist. He also said that he would store negatives for modelling agencies and businesses, and I saw the storeroom when I was there. There were shelves and shelves of folders.’

  ‘Do you want to confront him again?’ asked Tristan.

  Kate looked at her watch. It was coming up to 2.30 p.m. She thought back to her visit to Paul Adler’s chemist in Altrincham. When they were sitting in the small staff kitchen next to the loading bay, Tina had gone out to chuck away a rubbish bag. When she’d come back in she’d keyed in the door code and mouthed the numbers at the same time: one, three, four, six.