by Peter James
She squeezed the plastic shampoo bottle and lathered her hair, then she picked up the shower gel and soaped her body.
A moment later, the bathroom light went off.
73
Thursday 18 December
Roy Grace drove away from the police HQ in his official unmarked Ford and headed back to Brighton, feeling relieved that the press conference was over. Although he’d had some difficult questions, he felt he had managed to field them well, with the support of the Chief and the ACC. But it was not an experience he was looking to repeat any time soon.
Nor was he looking forward to his next task, as he turned off the A27 into the dark streets of Patcham. It was 8.20 p.m. The words of Paul Sweetman were ringing, deafeningly, in his ears.
I think he may strike again, within hours, possibly . . . I’d bet the ranch on it.
He looked at the houses he passed, many of them with Christmas lights in the windows, and some with outside displays as well. Sometimes he saw the flicker of televisions. There were people hurrying along the streets, no doubt to pubs, or to meet friends, or on their way home from work, huddled against the pelting rain.
Was the Brander lurking outside one of these houses now?
Was he already inside one?
Had he already taken his next victim?
He slowed each time he saw a male walking alone, and watched him. The forensic podiatrist, Haydn Kelly, who had helped him brilliantly in the past, had generated a profile from the footprint in the oil sludge in Logan Somerville’s garage. Kelly had showed the team a video representation of a man who walked almost exaggeratedly upright, with his feet splayed out widely. The image had been circulated to the Sussex Police CCTV team who monitored the city’s 350 cameras. But none of the bedraggled figures he saw, so far, matched that peculiar gait, if indeed the footprint actually belonged to the offender.
He turned into Mackie Avenue, and began peering through the misted side window at the house numbers. His first call was going to be to Emma Johnson’s mother, to see how she was, and to give her what reassurance he could that his team were doing everything possible to find her daughter’s killer. His next call would be to Ashleigh Stanford’s parents. He’d been informed that her boyfriend was currently with them.
Liaising with the family of a murder victim was one of the toughest parts of his job, yet at the same time, the most important. As the father of a child himself, he shuddered to think how he would feel to learn his son, however far in the future, had been murdered. He knew that it would destroy him, that his life could never be the same again. That’s what he understood, all too grimly, as he approached Emma Johnson’s mother’s front door, almost oblivious to the rain. He composed himself on the doorstep, took a deep breath, then rang the bell.
74
Thursday 18 December
Sodding bloody electrician! Freya cursed. In the pitch darkness she rinsed out her hair, then turned her face up into the shower jet.
Then she heard the shower door open.
‘Zak?’ she said.
A hand grabbed her arm and she felt herself yanked harshly out of the cubicle and onto the bath mat.
‘Zak – what the hell are you—?’
‘Shut it, bitch, I’m not Zak.’
She knew the voice, she’d heard it before, somewhere. Where? A deep, cold, shudder ripped through her belly. Her brain raced, spinning, trying to make sense. She saw a faint green glow. She lashed out and felt rubber, like a scuba or spandex suit.
‘NO!’ she screamed. ‘HELP ME!’
She felt a hand around her throat.
Something – she didn’t know where it came from – some memory, something she had seen on television or in a movie – kicked in. She lowered her head and rammed forward with all her strength, trying to headbutt him, making contact with something hard, but soft at the same time, with an almost satisfying crunching sound.
She heard a howl of pain and the hand released its grip.
She pushed past her assailant, shoving him as hard as she could, hearing the crash of the bathroom door, the sound of someone falling and then a curse.
She raced, in the almost total darkness, across the bedroom, missed the door and crashed into the wall. Scrabbling with her hands, her heart thrashing crazily inside her, she found the door handle, flung it open and launched herself onto the landing, screaming, ‘Help, help, HELP ME!’
She stumbled down the stairs, hearing footsteps behind her, then the dog barking below her, excitedly, like they were playing a game. She ran naked across the hall, the dog jumping up. Then an arm was around her throat again, pulling her backwards.
This time, Bobby snarled.
‘Fuck you!’ the voice said.
Bobby growled. Then she heard a ferocious snarling, followed by, ‘Ouch! Get the hell off me, ouch, you fucking – you bloody—’
The arm slipped away from her throat. She collided with the wall, close to the front door. So close. So close.
She heard a yelp from the dog. Then a snarl.
Then a human cry. ‘Owwwwww.’
She yanked open the front door and stumbled out into the dull glow of the street lighting, screaming as hard as she could, ‘HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME! HELP ME!’
Behind her, Bobby snarled, growled, snarled.
She heard the assailant’s voice shouting. ‘Get off me, lemme go, you sodding bloody thing!’
She sprinted, oblivious to the pain and cold in her feet, along the lane, and out onto deserted Hove Park Road. Behind her she could hear footsteps, gaining.
She made a snap decision, turned left, and ran as fast as she could down towards the busy thoroughfare of Goldstone Crescent, with the darkness of Hove Park beyond. She could see headlights approaching. Oblivious to any danger of being run over, she tore straight out into the middle of the road, stark naked, blinded by the lights. Heard the squeal of brakes.
The car stopped. A woman jumped out of the driver’s side. ‘What—?’
Stark naked and sobbing, Freya threw her arms around her. ‘Help me, please help me.’
Freya was vaguely aware of more headlights, behind the car. The sound of a horn.
‘Someone just tried to kill me,’ she gasped. ‘Please help me.’
She turned and stared, in terror, at the deserted street behind her.
Somewhere, not far away, a car engine started and tyres squealed as it accelerated away.
75
Thursday 18 December
No one ever gave you training for delivering a death message. You just learned as you went along. As a rookie cop you picked it up from your seniors. Some took a gentle approach but others came straight out with it.
It was the part of the job that, almost without exception, every police officer hated.
The sergeant Roy Grace had learned from told him always to say, straight out and bluntly, that the person was dead. That way it presented no possible ambiguity.
PC Linda Buckley had delivered the sad news earlier and was staying to support the family as the Family Liaison Officer while they came to terms with it. Emma Johnson’s mother still refused to believe it. Even though Emma’s sister had identified her body in the mortuary. She was drunk, angry and bitter. It had been one hell of a twenty minutes in the house and he was relieved to be outside and back in his car.
He was in the process of programming the address of Ashleigh Stanford’s parents into his satnav when the call came through, from Panicking Anakin at Brighton police station.
A woman had been attacked in her home near Hove Park.
She had fought off her assailant, helped by a dog. Two officers were with her now.
‘Where are they, Andy?’
‘In the back of a police car outside her house. She was naked.’
‘Don’t let them go back inside.’
‘I haven’t, Roy. I’ve got a scene guard outside the front of the house.’
Grace reached forward, switched on his blue lights and said, ‘I’m on my way.’
76
Thursday 18 December
‘Boy, you really screwed up big time!’ Felix said. ‘You were driven by sheer hubris.’
‘You’ve put us all in danger,’ Harrison added, sternly. ‘You allowed that detective Roy Grace to rile you into making a mistake. Despite what he said, you’ve not put a foot wrong before, in all these years. We’re all under threat now.’
‘We’re doomed,’ said Marcus, gloomily. ‘We don’t want things to change, not at this stage of our lives. Now we all face rotting in jail for being accessories to murder.’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘You’re the ridiculous one,’ Marcus replied. ‘BTK would have got clean away with his murders if he hadn’t risen to the bait – the tauntings by the FBI. We warned you to keep calm, lie doggo, do nothing. But no, you and your bloody ego!’
‘Surely you knew she had a dog?’ Felix quizzed.
‘I’m telling you she did not have a sodding dog!’
‘Oh,’ Harrison said, ‘so you were bitten by an imaginary dog?’
‘Very funny.’
‘Which might give you imaginary rabies,’ Marcus said pensively. He said it slowly, as if testing this hypothesis on himself, introspectively. ‘Psychosomatic.’
‘The way when someone loses a limb they can still feel it for years afterwards,’ Harrison said.
Marcus and Felix chortled. ‘Oh yes, absolutely!’
‘It’s not funny, boys. I’ve been bitten, there’s blood on my trousers, which means I might have left blood at the scene.’
‘Remember Tony Hancock, the comedian?’ Felix said. ‘Hancock’s Half Hour on television? One of the best was The Blood Donor. He went to give blood and then asked how much they would be taking. When they replied it was a pint, he worked out that a normal male human being has nine to ten pints, so he calculated that one pint equated to an entire armful. “I’m not walking around with an empty arm,” he said!’
‘I know what he meant! At least we don’t have to worry about that, eh?’ Harrison said.
Felix and Marcus laughed, sourly. Then Marcus said, ‘Well, look on the bright side!’
Felix began singing the song from Monty Python’s Life of Brian: ‘Always look on the bright side of life!’
‘Shuddup all three of you!’ he screamed.
‘The thing is,’ Felix said, ‘how could you have missed that there was a dog in the house?’
‘I did a bloody recce. There was no dog bowl – neither for water nor food. I’d have bloody seen it, wouldn’t I?’
‘Well,’ Marcus said. ‘Obviously not.’
He rounded on Marcus, glaring. ‘I’m warning you.’
‘Ooooh, I’m so scared! Mummy, help me, I’m scared. Mr Big has been bitten by a rabid dog and is close to foaming at the mouth!’
‘I’m warning you! I won’t warn you again.’
There was a moment of sullen silence, then he added, ‘There was no sodding dog in the house. She must have brought it with her.’
‘And now we’re doomed,’ Felix said. ‘DOOMED!’
‘Do you want a smack in the mouth, Felix?’
‘If it helps dislodge my aching tooth, yes please!’
‘You tossers,’ he said. ‘You trio of tossers! We have a possible crisis and all you can do is make fun of the situation. Get real!’
‘Sorry,’ Marcus said.
‘Really sorry,’ Felix said.
‘I’m sorry, too,’ added Harrison.
He glared at the three of them. ‘Like you all really mean it?’
‘Temper, temper,’ Felix said. ‘Take a deep breath and calm down. Remember what Nelson Mandela said. “Holding resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.”’
‘Go to hell!’
‘Not possible.’
‘Oh, why not?’
‘Because that’s where all of us are already.’
77
Friday 19 December
Roy Grace finally got home at a few minutes past midnight. Humphrey sat amid a forest of packing boxes, with one eye open, looking very unsettled and, unusually, did not jump up to greet him. Both Noah and Cleo were fast asleep.
Utterly exhausted, he set his alarm for 3 a.m., and backed it up with his phone alarm, brushed his teeth, then stripped and crawled into bed, slipping an arm under Cleo’s pillow. She stirred, momentarily, then was still again. He kissed her naked shoulder.
It seemed only moments later that the alarm was buzzing. Following almost instantly was the ching-ching-ching of his phone alarm.
He snapped awake, leaden with tiredness – and with guilt. They were moving today and he wasn’t going to be around to help.
He sat on the edge of the bed, head bowed, gathering his thoughts. Had the offender struck again last night and failed?
A young woman, with long brown hair, who fitted his target profile exactly, had been attacked in the shower in her house. Several spots of fresh blood had been found at the scene, presumably from the assailant, and with luck they would have DNA results back later today.
Over one hundred people had turned up for the press conference. If there was one small mercy, it was that it was December, well out of the main tourism season. Six months earlier and the financial consequences to the city’s tourist industry would have been even more catastrophic. But that didn’t cut him any slack. Brighton was turning into the modern equivalent of a leper colony. And all eyes were on him to return it to normality.
Which meant having a credible suspect under arrest as a starting point.
He was back at his desk in Sussex House at 4 a.m., with a steaming mug of coffee beside him and a banana which was going to have to suffice as his breakfast. The floor of his office was piled with documents from Operation Yorker, the original investigation into the death of Catherine Jane Marie Westerham.
Later this morning he would be holding yet another press conference, where he would be going through the details of the attack on Freya Northrop, and again asking for the public’s help. He would also need to brief the Gold group with the latest update, and everyone would have to consider the ongoing safety implications for young women in the city. Perhaps the failed attack could be the game-changer he needed – providing a good description of the offender and hopefully DNA.
He reached across the desk and pulled out the summary details of Unknown Female, now identified as Denise Patterson. She had come from a less privileged background than Katy Westerham, and had gone straight to work from school in the Cornelia James glove factory in Brighton.
And was just as dead.
He stared at her photograph, then laid one of Katy Westerham’s beside it. They could have been sisters. Just as Emma Johnson could have been, and Ashleigh Stanford.
He stood up, walked over to his round table, where he had more space, and laid out the photographs of the faces of all the women.
Then he sat down and stared at them. Thinking. Thinking.
Why these women?
Did they have anything in common beyond being young, attractive, and having long brown hair?
What was he missing?
In all the studies he had made of serial killers, and in his conversations with Tony Balazs, there was invariably a trigger. A bullying father. An abusive, alcoholic mother. Or, like Ted Bundy, rejection by a girlfriend.
What had triggered the offender?
Was that where it had all begun? Were they looking in the wrong place?
He yawned, then gulped down some coffee. His body was telling him he needed sleep badly. No chance.
Then he realized what he needed to do.
Moments later there was a knock on his door and Norman Potting came in and sat down in front of him.
‘You’re up early, Norman!’
Potting shook his head. ‘No, chief, I haven’t gone to bed. Can’t sleep. Thought I’d come in and make myself useful.’
Grace smiled at him sympathetically. ‘Your timing is perfect!’
He ushered him to sit at the table with him.
Potting stared down at the photographs. ‘Denise Patterson, Katy Westerham, Emma Johnson, Ashleigh Stanford, Logan Somerville and Freya Northrop,’ he said.
‘And who else?’
‘Who else?’
‘Who else in these past thirty years? Could it be that there is no one else, that the offender has experienced something recently that’s triggered this new spree?’
‘There’s nothing that’s been found so far, boss.’
‘Nothing that’s been found. But there are an awful lot of mispers in this country who’ve not turned up during these past thirty years. We know the offender is smart. And we’ve no idea how many others he has killed that we don’t know about – and may never know about.’
A sharp gust of wind hurtled rain that sounded like pebbles against the window.
‘You look exhausted, boss,’ Potting said. ‘If you don’t mind my saying.’
Grace gave him a thin smile. ‘Thanks, but I’m OK. I’ll look a lot less exhausted when we have a suspect behind bars. Something’s bothering me about one of the people you took a statement from, Norman. I know at the time he asked a lot of questions about the investigation, and he’s contacted you a few times since, asking about how it’s all going.’
‘Who’s that, boss?’
Grace grabbed a sheet of paper from his desk, wrote the man’s name down and handed it to the Detective Sergeant.
78
Friday 19 December
Shortly before 9 a.m., Red Westwood sat in her Mishon Mackay liveried Mini, at the top of the short, steep driveway that led up to the red-brick neo-Georgian mansion, with its columned portico, waiting for her clients to turn up. A strong wind shook the car, and the sky threatened rain again at any moment. Not a great day for showing a house, she thought.