by Diane Saxon
Jenna’s spine cracked as she straightened, casting a quick glance at Ryan as Taylor continued.
‘Mrs Mooney had wanted her to inform the police, but Eleanor apparently didn’t want the attention in case she was mistaken. She was very independent, strong, athletic. She went to keep fit and kick-boxing. But something spooked her. It was little things – an ornament moved, a coffee mug in the wrong cupboard. Missing underwear.’
Jenna touched Ryan’s arm again, this time giving it a gentle squeeze to gain his attention. ‘Didn’t you tell us that the first victim, Marcia Davies, had said she thought there was someone watching her?’
Ryan nodded, his eyes swirled with doubt and worry. ‘She told me she thought there’d been someone in her house. Little things that she couldn’t explain. A coffee cup moved. She never mentioned underwear.’ His neck flushed and he dipped his head to stare down at his feet. ‘Why would she? I’d just met her.’ He brought his head back up, his cheeks flaming. ‘The main point she made was that she could feel someone’s stare on her all the time. She thought it was her ex. Turned out it wasn’t.’
Taylor picked up another file. ‘Victim number two. Karen Prestwich.’
‘She wasn’t a nurse,’ Wainwright interrupted.
‘No.’ Taylor held up a finger. ‘But, as we’ve established, Julia Clements was, and Karen was murdered in her house.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Who interviewed Julia after DS Morgan’s initial interview?’
Salter raised a finger. ‘Me.’
‘I don’t suppose you asked her if she thought someone was watching her?’
‘No.’ Salter straightened up from where he slouched in an operator’s chair. ‘At the time I questioned her, there was no reason I should ask. We didn’t know there was a connection, we didn’t suspect he spied on them first.’
‘Okay.’ Taylor jotted down a note. ‘Revisit Julia, DC Salter.’
‘She’s living with her parents, the other side of Shrewsbury for the time being. Said she couldn’t bear the thought of going back to a house where someone has been murdered. She mentioned selling it.’
‘I don’t blame her.’ Mason muttered.
‘So, revisit,’ Taylor reiterated, ‘ask if she had any feelings of being watched. Anything moved, touched, taken.’
Salter nodded and bent his head to write notes of his own.
‘Is there anything further?’
Ryan raised his hand.
‘Yes, DC Downey?’
‘Sir, have we identified the man from this morning? Does his DNA match that found at the first scene? Is he the killer?’
‘Get to the point, boy, don’t beat about the bush,’ Mason mumbled.
A rumble of laughter ran around the room to lighten the mood.
‘First.’ DI Taylor held up one finger. ‘The DNA from our second victim’s house matches that of Mark Pearson. Ex-con, released nine weeks ago from…?’ Taylor pointed at Ryan.
Ryan’s eyes shot wide and his full bottom lip dropped. Like a light going on, his head came up, his eyes gleamed. ‘Long Lartin, Sir.’
Taylor smiled. ‘Long Lartin. And who do we know is resident at Long Lartin?’
‘Paul McCambridge, Sir.’
‘Bingo. Paul McCambridge. DC Ellis, could you follow up on that? Liaise with Intelligence, get them to contact Admin at Long Lartin to gather all the information they have regarding the relationship between these two. We know Long Lartin is mainly single cell, so how have McCambridge and Pearson communicated? When did they meet? How long did they know each other before Pearson was released? You know the form, DC Ellis. Push, man, push. We need this information yesterday. God, we want an end to this killing spree. It’s already escalated faster than we can keep up with.’
Anticipation rippled around the room.
Jenna’s shoulders relaxed as DI Taylor continued. ‘Second.’ He pulled a photograph from his folder, with his smile stretching wide to send deep brackets out across his cheeks. ‘This is an image of Mark Pearson.’
The desire to snatch it from Ryan’s hands as Taylor passed it to him was almost too hard to resist. Instead Jenna reached out and held the corner between her forefinger and thumb. Stark eyes stared from a thin face.
‘That’s him,’ Ryan whispered. ‘That’s our man in hospital.’
Not as convinced as her young DC, Jenna squinted at the image. It was difficult to compare the picture with the man she’d seen in hospital whose face had been battered beyond recognition and whose bruised eyelids were closed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Definitely.’ The strength of Ryan’s conviction almost carried her along, but she really couldn’t confirm either way.
She shook her head, doubt skimming through her mind. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Look.’ Ryan’s enthusiasm was contagious. He jostled closer, almost bumping her off the edge of the desk. ‘Here, the shape of his head. The spacing between the eyes, the gap between his nose and mouth. Look at the ear, the left one, it has a strange fold over at the very top. I noticed it when we were at the Princess Royal when the doctor was checking his stats.’
Jenna squinted at him, as she let him run with it. Perhaps he had a talent for facial recognition. She’d look closer into that when they had more time.
‘Also,’ Ryan dug a sharp elbow into her ribs to get her attention and she shot bolt upright, not from the jab hurting but more a sense of surprise at his marked increase in confidence and familiarity. She tried not to react as Mason smirked at her. ‘See here?’ Ryan jiggled the photograph they both held on to. ‘His hairline sweeps here, it’s irregular.’ He traced the line around Mark Pearson’s forehead, tapping the mid-centre with his fingernail. ‘A widow’s peak.’
She couldn’t deny what he said, but her image of the man on the trolley evidently wasn’t as clear as Ryan’s.
DI Taylor plucked at his bottom lip as he studied Ryan. ‘We’ll have confirmation through from CSI once they process the DNA samples from the blood in the kitchen. There’s a hell of a mess in there as there seemed to be an entire bucket of water and bleach swimming all over the floor, which would mix both blood types together. Jim Downey thinks he has a clear sample from the wall behind where the male, possibly Mark Pearson, was propped.’
‘Shame no-one thought to take a buccal swab, we could have had the results back by now.’ Ryan shrugged.
Taylor looked at Ryan, one side of his mouth kicked up. ‘I think there may have been a human rights issue if we’d opened the man’s mouth and taken a scraping from his cheek without his permission or indeed knowledge, as I believe he was unconscious when the paramedics removed him from the scene.’
‘The day will come,’ Mason replied, giving Ryan a sly nudge.
DI Taylor ignored the two of them and turned to Jenna. ‘Who have you got stationed at the hospital?’
‘PC Massey. I’ve also asked DC Salter and DC Wainwright to check on the situation after the briefing.’ Both DCs gave a brief nod of acknowledgement. ‘They can give PC Massey a tea break. Mark Pearson’s currently in surgery, so I would imagine, unless he’s Lazarus, he’ll be going nowhere for some considerable time. He’s lost a huge amount of blood.’
‘Looks like she’d kicked the shit out of him.’ Filled with admiration, Mason turned to the rest of them. ‘She must have put up one hell of a fight, poor woman. She deserved to have lived.’
Jenna chewed her lip as she gave them a moment of murmured comments before she continued. ‘They were about to give Pearson a blood transfusion as well as patching him up. I suspect he’ll be in surgery a considerable time, recovery and then I’ll arrange with the hospital to have him in a private room so we can keep a close watch on him. If we consider it necessary, we’ll cuff him to the bed once he becomes active. Otherwise, I suspect just an officer posted inside the room would be appropriate at this stage.’ She caught DI Taylor’s gaze. ‘I’ve arranged for PC Scanlan to relieve PC Massey later.’
‘Excellent.’ DI Taylor shuffled the paperwork
back into the folder as it was returned to him and slapped it on the desk at his side. ‘Are we done here? Does everyone know what they’re doing? Good. Let’s get to it.’
40
Wednesday 12 February, 19:15 hours
Jenna rubbed at the deep lines across her forehead in an attempt to smooth them before they became permanent wrinkles. Fat chance. Not even over the hill of thirty for another eighteen months, age was hardly an excuse.
Since her mother’s death and Fliss’s kidnap though, the fine lines seemed to have cut deep and where they used to smooth out by mid-morning, they stayed up late to party all night.
Another bloody long day. A whole week full of them, and she was on her knees ready for a rest day, but it wasn’t practical.
She plopped into the straight backed green plastic covered hospital chair and the air whispered out of it in a gentle whoosh in the quiet room with barely a sound from the sleeping patient, the hushed bleep of the monitors a rhythmic pulse beat in the background.
Convinced the man in the bed was their culprit, Jenna waited.
The view of the car park from the window virtually the same one as a few months earlier when she’d sat beside her sister’s bed waiting for her to recover – twice. Once from her kidnapping and fall down the Ironbridge Gorge, and the second when her kidnapper had come after her again.
With idle curiosity, she watched the cars cruising up and down the aisles of the brightly lit car park, drivers looking out for the one precious space to become free. At the hoot of a horn, Jenna turned her head. A gorgeous apple green Scirocco nudged its way into a space already being reversed into by a gold Ford Escort. At the possibility of witnessing a minor road rage, Jenna tore her gaze away, exhausted, closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the high back of the chair so she didn’t have to observe the argument that was about to ensue in the car park. She didn’t have the capacity to deal with it.
Soft black clouds plumed across her consciousness as she drifted, her muscles going lax. Blood, dark crimson washes of it, stole into her mind. A woman’s body sprawled, throat slashed. The fresh face of a young woman whorled in front of her and then, with a vicious stab, flashed into the image of Fliss.
Her eyes shot open and Jenna jerked upright, heart firmly lodged in the back of her throat. She sucked in long, slow breaths and blew them out again, conscious of controlling the wild hammering of it. Desperate to choke back the rush of nausea, she closed her mind and forced herself to the present, aware that if she dwelled on the past, it had the power to destroy her.
She chewed on her bottom lip and eyed the man in the hospital bed. The bruising, already darkening to purple, covered the whole of his face, distorting the shape of it enough to make Jenna wonder how Ryan could possibly have recognised the man from his photograph. Even his jawline was swollen. She could barely see beyond the damage to the man underneath.
He wasn’t going to wake any time soon. It could be a long wait. She tipped her head back to lean it on the chair and broke into a yawn so wide her jaw cracked. She’d dropped in for half an hour, not exactly on her way home, she’d gone out of her way to get there, but she needed to know. Needed to see him for herself and judge what his condition was.
The boredom simmering in PC Scanlan’s eyes had persuaded her to offer him a half hour comfort break. Toilet, tea, food, walk, buy a book from the Friends of the Hospital. The guy had been there for hours with nothing to do but watch someone breathe. It wasn’t as though Mark Pearson could make a break for it.
The cheap plastic of the chair squeaked as Jenna shuffled herself into a better position, crossed one leg over the other and wrapped her arms around her to keep the warmth in as tiredness washed black waves over her, and her eyes drifted shut.
‘He’s a lucky man, it was touch and go in there.’
Jenna twisted around to look at the soft voiced man in pale blue-green scrubs behind her.
‘He’s stable now though.’ He reached out to touch her shoulder, a gentle offer of comfort.
She smiled at him, pushed out of the chair, forcing her tired limbs up and stretched out her hand to him. ‘Hi, I’m DS Morgan, West Mercia Police.’
His eyebrows winged up as he grasped her hand in his own. ‘John McCarthy. Anaesthetist.’ He grinned. ‘Princess Royal.’
Jenna jerked her head in the direction of her suspect. ‘I wanted to check if he’s fit to question.’ She stared at the comatose man in the bed, the stupidity of her statement not escaping her, but exhaustion had crippled her ability to think straight.
John tucked his hands into his scrubs’ pockets. ‘He’s sleeping quite naturally now, out of danger, but he’s going to have a long recovery time, I would imagine. We’ve got him on morphine, so he’s out of it, I’m afraid. We had to give him blood, he’d lost one hell of a lot. Nicked an artery. He was damned lucky. If it had been a touch deeper, he would have bled out, the amount of time I’m told it took for him to get to hospital. Bloody miracle he’s not dead.’ He slipped the clipboard off the end of the bed and ran a cursory gaze over it. ‘I heard it was a fight. How did the other fella fare?’
She shrugged, it wasn’t something she was prepared to discuss before she’d asked the man in the bed some questions. ‘Not brilliantly.’ She lowered herself back into the chair, conscious of the gentle farting sound emitting from it, but John didn’t appear to have noticed. He was probably used to all NHS hospital chairs making the same noise.
She placed a hand over her mouth as she broke into another yawn.
John glanced at his watch. ‘Long day for you too? I’m done now. Thirteen hours and, provided I don’t have another emergency in the next fifteen minutes, I’m off and home to my wife.’ As though the yawn was contagious, he managed one himself, following through with a loud groan. ‘It’s supposed to be date night, but the most romantic thing I can think of is a long, deep sleep.’
Date night. Adrian. She glanced at her phone to check the time again. She’d never given him a thought. Like John, the best thing that could happen to her would be twenty-four hours of sleep.
At the movement in the doorway, she slipped her phone away, missing the opportunity to send a quick message to Adrian as she glanced beyond John at the uniformed police officer. Her heart sank as PC Gardner strutted into the room, his head doing a little chicken dance on his shoulders like he was about to peck someone.
As his gaze hit hers, surprise flickered through and was gone before he stepped inside, stretching his neck so she heard the crack and grind of it from where she sat.
Smile stiff, she remained where she was and looked up at him. ‘PC Gardner. To what do we owe this pleasure?’
‘Sarg.’ He jerked his chin in a greeting like she was his best friend, not his senior officer. She narrowed her eyes as she considered his inherent lack of respect, not only for her but, it appeared, any authority as he nudged his way past John with no consideration for personal space. ‘I thought I’d come and arrest the murdering bastard before I go off shift.’
Passion in his voice didn’t inspire respect, but a bolt of true concern whipped through her. The officer had experience, training and yet his gung-ho approach and lack of regard for any rank dominated, to the detriment of the case if he followed through with his intentions. It wasn’t unusual in their line of work. Police officers were, by nature, strong personalities, bred to make snap decisions and work independently. Along with these traits, they needed compassion and the ability to follow rules. It appeared PC Gardner lacked both.
Jenna lowered her head for a moment while her mind raced, her fingers gripping the chair arms. She pushed out of the chair and, the same height as him, she came eye to eye with PC Gardner.
Aware of John’s keen attention, she let the ice in her voice trickle through as a clear warning. ‘Thank you, PC Gardner, but that won’t be required.’ She opened her mouth to continue, but words burst from him.
‘He’s a fucking murderer. He killed her in her own kitchen. Didn’t you see
it, were you at a different scene to the one I witnessed?’ Anger gripped him as he pushed his face close to hers. ‘Are you just going to stand there with your thumb up your arse and let him get away with it? Why the hell has no one arrested him yet?’
Frustration sparked to boiling point. This time she put an edge in her voice which should brook no argument. ‘PC Gardner. You will conduct yourself with absolute professionalism at all times, but specifically in the presence of a member of the public.’ She flicked a glance at John, conscious that he’d become far too interested just to sidle out of the room. It wasn’t her concern. He may be witness to a little verbal punch-up, but her main priority was to stop the idiot in front of her making a move that had the potential of destroying any case they may have against the patient. ‘I’m in charge here and I suggest that you leave it to me to make decisions which will impact upon the case…’
Before she could get any further, Gardner interrupted again and ratcheted her own annoyance up a notch. ‘He’s mine. I was first on scene. I want this arrest.’ Eyes flat and hard, he glared at her.
Surprise rippled through her at his possessiveness, but she had no intention of backing down. ‘I think you’ll find the case has been assigned to me, PC Gardner.’
‘Then you should have arrested him already. The man’s a murderer!’
Her gaze flickered to the door as Mason stepped inside and touched the anaesthetist on the arm.
Instead of John stepping from the room as she assumed Mason had intended, he turned, shot him a smile, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall, intent on enjoying the entertainment. Without causing more tension, Jenna understood there was nothing Mason could do further to defuse the situation. It was up to her.
‘PC Gardner, would you like to step outside and discuss this further?’ She reached out a hand to Gardner, but he shrugged her away with a violent jerk as though her touch was an offence.