‘It’s clear we’re being tormented,’ she suggested. ‘Like a game or something. This guy wants us to look for him.’
York waited.
‘Remember Marc Durham?’
‘Nope.’
‘Come on! That guy who went on the killing spree around Loughton and Dagenham when he found out his girlfriend had been an escort for more than three years.’
‘Oh yeah. So?’
‘When the girlfriend found out what he’d done, she killed herself, couldn’t handle the guilt.’
‘Your point please,’ York pressed.
‘That wasn’t nearly as calculated but there are similarities. Durham wanted us to catch him. He admitted when we caught up with him that the guilt was eating away at him. He showed no remorse over the four people he’d killed but he couldn’t handle the fact that his girlfriend had committed suicide.’
‘There’s a big difference. This killer only wants to play with us, I don’t think he wants to be caught. Can you imagine this guy feeling guilty about what he’s done here? I think you’re right, this is a game to him. Guess what that makes us.'
Newport shrugged. 'Inferior players.'
Crouching closer to the bed she inspected the sheets, stained and encrusted with more than one kind of bodily fluid. In amongst the dense clogging of blood, semen splatters were prevalent.
‘What do you make of this, guv?’
York fished a pen from his jacket pocket and lifted the male victim’s circumcised penis with the tip. ‘These splatters don’t belong to our John Doe.’
‘So whose then? The killer’s maybe?’
York shook his head. ‘A man who goes to this much trouble isn’t going to leave buckets of spunk lying around for us to find. These sheets haven’t been changed for a long time. Prostitutes turning tricks in here two or three times a night, you get the picture.’
She winced. ‘Charming.’
From the doorway a tentative voice entered the room. It was the young officer who’d puked in the corridor. ‘Detectives?’
Both York and Newport stood. ‘What is it, son?’ asked York.
‘Man here to see you. Claims he runs the place.’
‘Liam Grayson,’ she said to York. ‘Would you like to go and make the man’s acquaintance, or should I?’
For the hundredth time York adjusted his trilby. ‘I think we should both go. It might be less of a blow when we tell him he’s going to have to buy a new bed.’
*
The hotel office looked like something from a post-apocalyptic war film. Tiled walls and linoleum flooring, the small workspace had once been used as a kitchen maybe, but now it offered nothing but a cheap pockmarked desk, a single filing cabinet overloaded with junk, and pictures of semi-clad men bent into alphabetical positions. The hotel manager was of another persuasion it seemed.
Sitting at the desk Liam Grayson stared back at the detectives, self-satisfied leer smudged across his face. Newport didn’t like the man on sight; like she’d expected anything else. A couple of stone overweight and thinning badly on top, Grayson boasted possibly the best and definitely the worst sunbed tan she’d ever seen.
‘Mr Grayson, sorry to have dragged you from your bed so early in the –’
‘I wasn’t in bed,’ Grayson cut in. His voice was surprisingly deep.
York stayed quiet.
‘Oh,’ Newport added, ‘so where were you?’
‘I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Detective,’ Grayson replied, examining his ring clad fingers. ‘Exactly how many times are you going to pull this shit?’
‘Pull what, Liam?’ asked York.
The hotel manager shifted his attention. ‘Ah, the mechanic speaks.’
York’s expression didn’t alter. ‘My colleague’s name is DS Newport. I’d appreciate it if you’d answer her questions.’
‘Or?’
‘Or,’ Newport cut in, ‘I put your arse in handcuffs for impeding our investigation and drag you out into the street. Being made to look like a bitch by a woman half your size and weight’s going to sting, believe me. Especially around here.’
From the corner of her eye, she caught her partner stashing away a grin. Gone were the days when he had to fight her corner with scum like Grayson.
The manager’s smirk disappeared. The last thing he needed was to lose face in an area like this. He’d never recover, and he knew it.
‘So,’ she repeated, ‘want to try again?’
‘Look, I know what’s going on here. You’re trying to accuse me of running a brothel again. Or a drug den, whichever it is this time. I run a legitimate business. If there’s tricky stuff going on in the rooms from time to time, I don’t know about it. That’s what hotels are about, privacy. You think I give a shit if somebody offs themself in some fucked up powder frenzy? The guests don't tell and I don't listen. It's that fucking simple.’
‘Touching,’ muttered York.
‘I’m not the type, Detective.’
Newport waited a second. ‘We’re not here to accuse you of anything, mate. We’re here to inform you that there’s been a double murder in one of your rooms.’
Grayson’s orange face turned quickly grey. ‘What? Nah…this is a windup, right?’
‘No windup, sir. Room sixteen has been cordoned off for investigation.’
‘What, so they’re still here...the bodies?’ Grayson spat. ‘Where’s Danny?’
York glanced at his notepad. ‘Your night manager, Daniel Ronson? He’s at the hospital. Went into shock when he walked in on the bodies. Probably going to need some counselling.’
Grayson sat back in his seat, eyes glazed. ‘Who did this?’ he said finally. ‘You catch anyone?’
York shook his head. ‘We need to know if there's been any fresh custom around here lately? Anyone you don’t know, anybody new to the area who’s taken a room from you?’
‘New faces're coming through here all the time. Could have been any of them. What about the Paki in the shop next door, you talked to him yet? Creepy bastard doesn't miss a trick.’
‘He's being interviewed. You keep a ledger?’
‘Of course we keep a ledger, but if you were using a room here to snort coke off a pro’s tits, would you write your real name down to confirm it?’
York shrugged.
‘How about the CCTV?’ asked Newport.
‘Most of the cameras are in action,’ Grayson revealed. ‘We run a monthly hard drive before it automatically overwrites.’
The detectives gave each other a glance. Operational cameras in a place like this? Whatever next? ‘We’re going to need to see that system,’ she requested, pretending to write something down.
Liam Grayson wasn’t their man. He was way off profile. Still, now they had a potential exhibit A. They thanked him and left the office.
Out in the street, two dark Range Rover 4*4s had arrived and were parked at an angle against the curb by a couple of overflowing wheelie-bins, a sole uniform nearby. The vehicles belonged to Will Graham, the head of field forensics, and his team.
It was no secret around the station that Graham had a thing for Newport, despite her very obvious wedding band. She used to be tolerant of his advances; now she avoided him wherever possible. It had all become a little too weird.
‘Want to get some breakfast?’ York asked.
Newport checked her watch. It was a little after five-thirty. Daylight was already beginning to beat the darkness into submission, the first rays of the day chasing away the stubborn shadows. If the previous few days of heatwave were anything to go by, it was going to be another scorcher. ‘Your turn to buy?’
York adjusted his trilby. ‘If you say so,’ he muttered.
2
DCI York stood to the rear of the room known as the Pit, as Detective Superintendent Judy Mason, or the Pit Bull as the department furtively referred to her, gave her briefing. York struggled to stay focused.
It wasn’t the method of the murders that bothered him, but
the way everything had been so carefully executed. Will Graham would not find anything from a forensics angle, York was certain of that, just as the CCTV cameras would show them nothing. Whoever had done this was smart and he had a plan. This wasn’t going to go away quickly.
‘You’ll go crazy, thinking like that.’
Newport arrived at his side and handed him some coffee from the machine in the corridor. ‘You know,’ she added, ‘you’ve had that stain on your lapel since breakfast.’
York glanced down at his jacket. There was no stain.
‘What were you thinking about?’
He stared straight ahead. ‘I have a bad feeling about this one, Holly. I think this is going to become personal, for both of us.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘This guy is clever, smarter than the average. He’s going to be watching us. I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t know our names already.’
'Should I take that coffee back? You sound wired.'
York lowered his tone. ‘Twice in as many weeks, did you think of that?’
‘Twice what?’
‘Do you not read the papers, Sergeant?’
It took a moment for it to click. ‘That Fred and Rosemary West thing in Gloucester?’
York shrugged. ‘Too convenient?’
‘A bit. Are you sure you’re alright, boss? You don’t look good.’
‘I haven’t been sleeping.’
‘You been to see anyone about that?’
‘Yeah.’
The melee of officers listened attentively as Judy Mason talked about the transfer of the two unidentified corpses to Pathology, and of Will Graham’s field team bringing in new evidence.
‘You’re not buying all this, are you?’ Newport asked.
York kept his eyes trained on the gathering. ‘Buying what?’
‘You don’t think Graham’s going to find anything.’
‘I know he isn’t. Nothing he wasn’t meant to find.’
The briefing over, Superintendant Mason asked for York and Newport to join her in one of the briefing rooms. Something to do with the recording they'd found. It was currently with Jonathan Wheeler, the department’s data analyst. Like Will Graham, Wheeler had a room full of toys and he was good at what he did, though what that might have been was anybody’s guess.
Slowly the throng of bodies swarming around the Superintendent began to thin. Mason headed directly to the meeting rooms. York caught her eye as she passed and acknowledged her with the slightest of nods. Mason returned it.
‘Tell them I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said to Newport.
‘Yep,’ she muttered and trailed Mason.
*
‘How do you feel?’
York heard the question but didn’t reply. Instead he peered into his own charcoal eyes in the bathroom mirror.
There was no easy answer to that question. In truth he felt morally lost. Who was he now? He was a man. He was a police officer. The moral list ended there; the immoral list was longer.
‘I asked you a question, Nicky.’
‘I heard it,' York acknowledged.
‘Are you choosing not to answer?’
‘Am I choosing...not to...’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m choosing to think.'
Twisting the tap, York leaned forwards and splashed his face with cold water. The icy spray jolted him.
In the minute that followed there was silence in the bathroom. York was thankful for that. He wasn’t a fan of probing questions. Unless he was the one asking them.
‘You can’t go on like this, Nicky. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Like what?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. You can’t go on punishing yourself.’
Refusing to avert the stiff gaze from his own eyes, York knew what the words meant. ‘I feel…’
‘Yes?’
‘I feel sometimes as though I’m wading through the ashes of my life's remains. And it's fucking slow going.’
A pause. ‘Go on…’
‘How am I supposed to feel? All I know is anger. Moments of levity actually cause me pain now.’
‘Then you must push that demon out.’
York bent over the sink. ‘I don’t believe in demons, you know that.’
‘Choosing not to believe in demons won’t protect you from them.’
The density of that remark slugged York in the gut. For a moment he stood frigidly, doused in the subtle bathroom glow. ‘What should I do?’
‘I can’t tell you that, Nicky.’
York gave a subtle nod. Giving his face one more splash of cold water, he turned off the tap and took a step back. The mirror’s reflection of the bathroom gave nothing away. Turning, he took in the room with his own eyes and blinked, blinked again.
He was alone.
3
As York entered the cramped and sweltering briefing room, four sets of eyes tracked him.
‘Good of you to join us, Nick,’ Mason stated in her almost manly tone. There was an edge of sarcasm in the comment, which wasn’t lost on anyone. York didn’t mind, Mason’s brogue was her way of pressing her authority. An authority few dared question. She was blonde and petite, which gave off a natural air of underestimation. An underestimation some had lived to regret.
‘Had to use the bathroom,’ he told her, meeting Mason’s eyes and holding them.
In the room was Newport, Will Graham and Jonathan Wheeler. Graham stood and shook hands with York as he passed, forever – and happily so – in the detective’s shadow. A couple of stone overweight, Graham’s shirt, probably bought for him by his mother, stretched over his belly daring the buttons to pop. His trousers, definitely bought for him by his mother, dropped about two inches short of his shoes showing off the white of his socks. And no one quite knew what was going on with the moustache he was trying to grow – maybe his mother thought it'd suit him.
‘How you doing, Will?’ asked York.
‘Been up all night, mate, can’t be that good.’
York took a seat at the end of the table.
Jonathan Wheeler hadn’t spoken yet, but then he barely ever talked. He was the kind of guy who chose his words carefully. As far as York could tell, Wheeler worked out a lot, ate a gargantuan amount of food, and did his job to a high standard. Credentials enough not to speak if you chose.
‘Okay,’ Mason began from the head of the table, ‘here’s what we have. Desk takes an anonymous call at three-oh-seven telling us two bodies with their hearts missing are waiting to be found in a crap hole in the middle of Peckham. Not our standard run-of-the-mill crime so we’re going to need some quick results. If the press gets hold of this before we take some kind of hold we’re going to get eaten alive. Some of those vultures want their own Fred and Rose scoop, and sooner or later I’m going to have to make a statement. I’d like to have something to tell them. Liam Grayson, our charming hotel manager, has already provided us with some CCTV footage, and we’ve quickly established he’s not involved. But that does not mean he doesn’t know someone who is. So, who wants to go first? I’m sure you’re all itching.’
Mason took a seat and looked around the table. There was a brief moment of fidgeting until Will Graham stood up.
Mason raised her eyebrows. ‘Thank you, Will. What have you got?’
With a briefly inappropriate glance at Newport’s chest, the forensics man moved to the head of the table. ‘Haven’t got much yet, I’m afraid,’ he mumbled.
‘Louder please,’ said Mason.
‘From a forensics angle we haven’t got much to tell yet, ma’am,’ Graham said louder. ‘We took several semen samples from the bed sheets and several blood samples, both lots of which are being analysed as we speak.’
‘How hopeful are we of those being linked to our guy?’ Mason asked. ‘And don’t call me ma’am.’
York interjected. ‘Not hopeful at all, guv. This killer is not the sloppy type. Excuse the pun.’
Mason didn’t s
mile. ‘Is that your gut, or do you have something concrete?’
‘Gut,’ he admitted.
‘Okay, noted. Fingerprints?’
‘We’ve taken prints from around the room,’ Graham continued. ‘Items which are most likely to be touched: light switches, taps, et cetera.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing yet, ma…guv, but we’re working on it. The room is rife with prints so we should be able to put a list together of suitable candidates within twenty-four hours.’
York stood up and removed his trilby. He placed it gently on the table in front of him. ‘Sorry to be a pessimist, Will, but you’re not going to find any prints belonging to our killer.’ Will Graham went back to his seat, happy to pass the reigns. ‘The killer directed us to the voice recorder, he wanted us to find that. Whoever this man is he’s playing us, daring us to go after him because he knows we have to. In fact he’s banking on it.’
Mason said, ‘More hunches?’
York shrugged.
‘So the only thing we have to go on at this time is the voice recorder, which he gave us?’
The room’s lack of response was affirmation of that. ‘What about the CCTV?’ Newport asked.
‘My guys are viewing it as we speak,’ said Graham. ‘Nothing so far.’
‘Alright,’ Mason pressed, ‘that’s enough. Let’s hear the recording, Jonathan.’
Without a word, Jonathan Wheeler snapped on a pair of latex gloves and removed the small voice recorder from the plastic evidence bag. He placed it in the centre of the table and sat back down. Without asking if everyone was ready, he leant forward and hit the play button.
‘So, from this point on I would like to make my intentions very clear for the hard of understanding. This is just the beginning. The two… for the sake of argument “people”…in whom I took immense pleasure ending their miserable lives, will not be missed. They are…they were, as you will discover, at the very core of everything that is rotten. So please, I beg you all, do not shed a tear, and do not mourn Michael and Harriet Fuller. To feel any kind of pity for these people will only diminish what I have achieved tonight. And whether or not you would agree, I have achieved a great deal.
Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both! Page 2