by Simon Hall
‘And he left another present?’ Dan asked.
‘Yep, he got it out of a plastic bag again. A pig’s heart. He put it on the dashboard. Lovely. And he left a letter too, addressed to you again.’ Adam reached inside his jacket pocket. ‘The actual letter’s with forensics, but this is a copy.’
He unfolded the paper onto the sticky table. On one side it said simply, “Dan”.
‘Not so formal this time,’ mused Dan.
‘Indeed.’ Adam turned the paper over. ‘He goes on to explain why.’
“Hello again Dan,
I hope you don’t mind me using your Christian name this time. It’s just, I think, because I feel I know you – I’ve seen you on the television often enough, and have made some study of your career too – and I have now introduced myself in my last letter. So I hope you’re comfortable with first name terms.”
Dan felt a shudder run across his back. The feeling of wanting to look over his shoulder had returned.
“Have you worked out what this is about yet? Have you managed to add it up? The clues are now all in front of you, if you look hard enough. I don’t think it’s a riddle quite as clever as that which Joseph McCluskey set you with his Death Pictures, (yes, I did get the idea from him, I happily acknowledge that) and you managed to solve that one, didn’t you? – eventually. So you should crack this too, I think. But just to make it more interesting and add a little twist of my own, this time I have introduced a tighter time limit and a far more pressing reason for you to meet your deadline. You will see what that is within the next day or so.
“You’ll notice an unusual feature of my crimes is that no one has been injured. I know Mr Breen (yes, I am sure he’ll be there with you reading this) will blanch there and say two women have been traumatised. I accept that and would like to apologise to them. All I can say is that I have tried to go about my work in a way which would cause minimum unpleasantness and suffering, and their help was, unfortunately, necessary.
“No one will be harmed in my little game Dan; that is if you beat the deadline I’m going to set you. I’m confident you’ll manage it. This is not about attempting to harm. That would make me as bad as those to whom I wish to teach this lesson. This is about justice. As a mere man on the street, I have only very limited ways of achieving that, but I will do the best I can. This – as you will no doubt come to realise – is more or less about making the law be sorry.
“Again I am afraid I cannot sign this, as it would interfere with my plans. But very soon now you will know my name, I promise. Until then.”
There was a silence as they both stared at the note. Dan struggled to shift his eyes from it.
‘Phew,’ he breathed, eventually. ‘I mean … well … blimey. I don’t know what to say. He’s … well, he’s getting madder. I take it there’s no chance you can still dismiss him as a crank?’
‘Not a hope. He’s got a plan and he intends to carry it through. We’ve got to get him first.’
‘He says no one will be harmed though. That must be a relief?’
Adam gave him a scornful look. ‘I’m not sure I’d believe a word he says, would you?’
No, thought Dan, who knew he was just trying to reassure himself, hoping hard that his stalker meant him no harm.
‘So … what do you do?’
‘Forensics are going over the car, heart and the letter, though I don’t expect we’ll get anything. Just like in the flat, I think he’s been careful not to leave us any clues. My detectives are working through what might link this woman to the last. It’s all the usual things, their friends, hobbies, work, clubs, all that stuff.’
‘He knows a lot about me, doesn’t he?’ said Dan quietly.
‘Yes, he does. I’d like that police guard to stay on your flat until we get him.’
Dan tried to hide his relief, but wasn’t sure he succeeded. ‘So why does he take a sports club card this time?’
Adam shrugged. ‘That is baffling. I might have understood a passport, like last time, as possibly being valuable, but not an aerobics club card.’
‘It’s not the value though, is it? It can’t be. If he’s leaving parts of a dead pig and talking about some plan, it’s got to be a statement, hasn’t it? It must be something symbolic.’
‘Like what?’
Now it was Dan’s turn to shrug. ‘Good question. No idea.’ He looked hopefully at the canteen bar but it was deserted. Shame, he could do with a strong coffee to give his brain a kick. That, and to keep the creeping fear at bay.
‘What do you make of all the talk of deadlines and knowing his name soon?’ he asked.
‘The next stage of his great plan, I assume. Some grand gesture which will mean his name’s plastered all over the media along with whatever perverted message he’s trying to get across. But not yet please, you’re still here as a witness, not a hack. Any coverage of this now could spawn copycats and muddy the waters. I want this investigation conducted quietly. Hopefully we can get him before he realises we’re on to him.’
‘Sure. So what’s this woman’s name and what does she do?’
‘She works in the finance department at the dockyard. Her name’s Jane. Jane Willen. She’s in her mid 30s, married, two kids, lives out at St Budeaux.’
‘Nothing remarkable about her?’
‘Nothing at all. Another Mrs Average.’
Adam’s words had triggered something in Dan’s mind. ‘Her name’s Jane you say?’
‘Yep, Jane Willen.’
‘And the first woman’s name was?’
‘Sarah. Sarah Croft.’
He tapped a finger on the table. There was a connection, flitting, teasingly elusive at the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t quite catch it. Dan tried a trick he’d learnt from long experience. When you know something’s there, don’t frighten it off by chasing it through the recesses of your brain, think of something else and it’ll come back when it’s ready. It was the mental equivalent of playing hard to get. He let his mind wander back to the afternoon, in bed with Claire, that dark bobbed hair falling across her face …
‘The Chief Constable,’ he said with a start.
‘What?’ Adam looked baffled.
‘The Chief Constable of Greater Wessex Police. Her name. It’s Sarah Jane, isn’t it? Sarah Jane Hill.’
‘Yeah, but so what? Are you saying he attacked these two women because their Christian names make up the Chief Con’s?’
‘Why not? It fits, doesn’t it? He takes apparently unconnected and worthless objects from the women. The only connection is they both have their names on. So he’s taking their name, isn’t he? That’s what he’s saying. That’s the symbolism. And then there’s that bit at the end of the letter about making the law sorry. And there are the pig organs too. He’s trying to punish the police for something they did. Or, to be more exact, Greater Wessex Police.’
Adam looked dubious. ‘It’s worth checking, but it’s a bit of a long shot. It could just be pure chance.’
‘He doesn’t sound like the kind of man who does chance, does he? He sounds like someone who’s been planning this for a while. And, if I’m right, it gives you a link between the two women.’
‘In which case, he’d have to know them well enough to know their Christian names, wouldn’t he?’ said Adam thoughtfully. ‘Now that is worth checking. You’ve half convinced me.’
‘Well let me try the other half. It could also give you an in to his next attack. I take it the Chief Constable has a middle name?’
‘Yes, she does. It’s Nicola.’
‘There you go then. Nicola’s your next victim.’
Adam shook his head. ‘Now that is a jump too far. What do you suggest I do? Find all the Nicolas in the area and talk to them? There are thousands. Put out a warning in the media for all women called Nicola to be on their guard as we think they’re in danger of being attacked by a madman wielding pig body-parts? Firstly there’d be panic. Secondly I’d look a bloody fool.’
Dan
nodded. ‘OK, I can see the problem. But it’s worth considering isn’t it? And if you find the connection between these two women, is there another woman somehow linked to them both called Nicola? If there is, I’d certainly think about putting a guard on her.’
‘Yes … not a bad idea. We’ll get onto it. Right, I’d better get back to the inquiry.’
Adam went to stand up, then paused and turned back. ‘Just one more thing first. As you’re up to your neck in this already, the High Honchos want to know if you’d be interested in helping us out again, like you did on the Bray and McCluskey cases. You can come and join me and shadow the investigation. You can’t report anything without my say-so, but the publicity you gave us last time really helped. Do you think you’d be up for that?’
Dan smiled, couldn’t help himself. Lizzie had revelled in the reports they’d managed to produce on the two other cases. Exclusive stories, gripping insights into extraordinary crimes, just the sort of thing that saw the ratings soar and her mood with them. And come to that, if he was honest, he’d loved it himself too, hadn’t he? And now another bizarre criminal on the loose, and one who seemed to want to use Dan as his messenger.
‘I think we’d be delighted, Adam. I’ll check with my editor, but you can safely assume she’ll bite your arm off.’
‘OK then, you can start tomorrow morning. Now I’d better be off …’
They were interrupted by a man calling excitedly from the doorway. ‘Mr Breen! We’ve got something you should come and look at. It might be our break. The security guard here. He says he thinks he saw a man hanging around and acting suspiciously. He can describe him. And he reckons he saw the car he drove away in too, and he memorised part of the number plate.’
Claire sat in the CID office at Charles Cross police station, looking out on the ruined church below. Many times she’d sat here, at a loss with a case, and stared at the burnt-out stone shell, let her imagination slip back to the Blitz, the sirens and screams, fire and flames rampaging through the city, ravenously swallowing hundreds of years of history in hours. It was a destructive image, but it gave her brain space to absorb and organise the details of a crime. Pounding your head on a computer screen never brought inspiration, but a distraction often did.
Point one: did she even think a crime had been committed? Had Crouch broken the law? She’d been partially convinced by what he’d said, about having to make that split-second decision to shoot, believing someone’s life was in danger, doing the duty that society had asked him to perform. But then Whiting’s argument was persuasive too, wasn’t it? Two cases, so very similar, and a potentially powerful motive festering in Crouch’s past.
She wrote “Crime?” on her notebook, and added “possibly” after it, flicked her hair from her eyes. She needed to get it cut, whatever Dan might say about liking it a little longer. Claire added the word “stylist” in the margin.
Point two: did they have any evidence of a crime? There was nothing firm, only suspicions. Crouch went first into the houses. Could he have known a hallway would be so narrow that he could shoot without his partner Gardener seeing it? But then he’d have to be familiar with the house. Which would mean a conspiracy with the woman there. Could they have known each other, the two women and Crouch? Been having affairs perhaps? That was the usual reason for wanting to get another man out of the way. But that would be a hell of a conspiracy, wouldn’t it, all three of them bound into it? And Crouch hardly looked the passionate type.
Could he simply have realised the hall was narrow enough for him to shoot without his partner being able to see it wasn’t justified? Would he have gambled on the women not giving evidence against him because they were glad to be rid of the men who’d been beating them? It seemed highly unlikely, far too much of a risk. And anyway, a knife with the man’s fingerprints on the handle was found by each body. That would provide a justification to shoot, if, as Crouch said, he thought the women were about to be stabbed. But it was worth checking the backgrounds of the two women, to see if there might be a link with Crouch.
And what about the domestic violence issue? They had good evidence of abuse in the Bodmin case. Neighbours, family and friends all agreed Keith Williams had a temper and could be violent. The evidence was much more mixed in Saltash with Richie Hanson. His wife, Jo, might have said he abused her, but no one else could imagine him raising a fist, let alone to hit her. A kind and decent man, by all accounts.
But Jo had injuries on her body that suggested she was being beaten, some of them going back weeks, according to the doctors. And anyway, who really knew what went on inside a marriage? Plenty of women suffered domestic violence without anyone suspecting it. Hanson’s family and friends could easily be wrong about him. Men changed inside marriage. For some, it seemed to transport them to a different world where the normal rules of life didn’t apply.
Claire wrote “Evidence?” followed by “thin, if even that”.
Point three: did they have any leads? Forensics and ballistics had given them nothing. There were the background checks on the women to do. Was it worth putting a tail, or surveillance on Crouch? On what basis? She couldn’t see it being authorised on the case they had at the moment. The only real lead was that string of numbers and letters they’d found at his house. IWGU/66. It looked like a computer password, but there was nothing it might access at his home. But it was the best they had, wasn’t it?
She wrote “Leads? One, probably,” and flicked at her hair again.
Claire leaned back on her chair and checked her notebook. An afternoon and evening’s work and she’d come to the conclusion they probably had one lead. It was time to go home. She had an idea, but the best way to test it would be at her flat with her traditional Sunday companions, a bottle of wine and some music. That way, if she found nothing it wouldn’t be a wasted night.
The bar was quiet tonight, the few people in told him it usually was on a Sunday. Weekdays were busier with more staff around the station, often needing a drink or two in the evening to cope with what they’d been through in the day. Rarely did a police officer’s shift pass without abuse or trauma, and more commonly both.
It was a cosy enough little place, if you liked work bars. A couple of soft sofas in the corners, some wooden tables and chairs, groups of friends, colleagues and acquaintances of convenience huddled around them for a drink. The odd pot plant, warm terracotta walls, even some subdued spotlights. At least they’d made an effort. The beer was cheap too and that was the main thing of course, the real attraction, the comforting duvet of alcohol.
He’d learnt a couple of interesting things tonight. There was a speed trap planned for near his home tomorrow. He’d filed that one away, nine points on his licence was quite enough. Any more and he’d be heading for a ban. Drugs raids were also on the cards in Plymouth later in the week, breaking some new supply route from Birmingham apparently. That might be worth a picture. But it was a sideshow. Of what he wanted to hear, there’d been nothing.
He finished pulling the pint of lager the traffic policeman had ordered. His glasses were slipping down his nose again and he lifted them back with his index finger. Never mind, there was plenty of time. Patience was the watchword of the paparazzi. And he didn’t get seven quid an hour for most stakeouts he’d had to do either.
‘You’d better stay with me for this if you’re joining us on the investigation,’ said Adam, as a detective brought the security guard over to their table. ‘It sounds like it might be our break. If we can get a good description and even a partial number-plate we could lift him tonight. I might even want to get the description out on the TV.’
Adam stood up, shook hands and introduced himself and Dan. The man’s grip was thin and feathery and he only made brief eye contact before looking away. His name was Edmund Gibson he said, in a quiet and shaky voice. He seemed to be trembling and had a slight stutter, the words not flowing smoothly.
He was in his late thirties, about five feet ten tall and looked fit. His hair was
a dark blond, cut short and neat. He wore blue jeans and a lighter denim shirt, with a grey T-shirt underneath it.
‘Ed – can I call you Ed?’ began Adam, receiving a nod in return. ‘Ed, your information could be very important to us, so I’ll make this quick. We will need to talk to you again in more detail, but for now I want to hear what you saw so we can act on it immediately.’
‘Yes, OK,’ he whispered, his eyes wide.
‘You’ve heard what’s happened?’
‘Yes. Your … your officers were going around the area asking for anyone who might have seen anything to talk to them,’ he said breathlessly. ‘They … they told me a woman had been attacked in her car in the car park here. I … I know most of the people here. Is she OK?’
‘Yes, she’s fine, Ed,’ replied Adam encouragingly, looking him in the eye. ‘She’s upset, but fine. We’re looking after her, don’t worry. Just tell us what you saw.’
He nodded quickly and took a shaky breath, looked down at his shirt, fiddled nervously with a loose button.
‘I told the policeman I saw a man getting into a car and driving off. He looked … he looked like he was in a hurry. He said to come in here and tell you about it straight away.’
His eyes were still wide as he glanced at them, then looked away again. His fingers kept fiddling with the button and one of his legs jigged up and down as he spoke.
‘I can’t believe … can’t believe something like this happens here,’ Gibson said breathlessly. ‘I’m supposed to make sure the centre’s safe.’ He looked at them, almost pleadingly. ‘I … I won’t be in trouble, will I?’
‘No, Ed, you won’t,’ replied Adam resolutely. ‘It’s not your fault at all. No one will say it is. You can’t be everywhere at once. Now, as you were telling us, what did you see?’
The man nodded quickly. ‘I was locking … locking up for the night. The last class had finished about 15 minutes ago and I was checking the building over. It’s the last … the last thing I do at night.’