by Louise Voss
He needed to find Graham but was torn. He couldn’t leave Chloe here like this. He looked around for a key to the cuffs but couldn’t see one, so he gently laid his jacket over the girl to cover her as much as he could.
‘Where’s Jade?’ he said softly.
Chloe tried to speak, but nothing came out. Instead, her eyes shifted to the left and Patrick’s mouth went dry as he saw what she was indicating.
Jade Pilkington lay on her back at the edge of the stage. She was completely naked, her body covered with hundreds of cuts, the skin around them shiny where Graham had sprayed them with Friendship. Her eyes were open and he knew before he tried to take her pulse that she was dead. Strangled like Rose and Jess.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said in his most gentle tone to Chloe. ‘More police are on their way. Just close your eyes, I won’t be long, and you’re safe now, sweetheart.’
He hurried to the back of the stage and into the backstage area. It was pitch black here, so he ran back and was about to take the oil lamp but realised he would be leaving Chloe in darkness. He couldn’t do it.
He swore to himself. Graham was gone.
Chapter 59
Day 15 – Patrick
Carmella dropped a copy of The Mirror on Patrick’s desk. ‘Thought you might want to see this.’
The headline yelled ‘KILLER ON THE LOOSE’ above a photograph of Graham Burns, a serious profile shot grabbed from the Global Sounds website. The sub-heading read ‘Cops Let OnTarget Murderer Escape After 3rd Teen Slaying’.
‘You’re on page three,’ Carmella said.
‘Take it away from me. Please.’
‘We’re going to find him, Patrick.’ She laid a hand on his shoulder and he wondered if she could feel how tense he was. ‘If it wasn’t for you, Chloe Hedges would be dead. You stopped him.’
‘But I was too late to save Jade, wasn’t I?’
It was 2 p.m. Kai Topper had already been on the TV news that morning, sobbing on camera and telling the whole world the story he’d shared with Patrick the previous evening. Except in this new version, Jade had been rewritten as an angelic figure, begging the other girls not to get involved in the StoryPad war. He made Rose and Jess, who couldn’t contradict the tale, out to be the ringleaders. Mrs Pilkington was on TV too, weeping copiously about her little girl. Patrick had been forcing down breakfast at home, unable to tear his eyes from the screen as Jade’s mum turned to look, it seemed, straight at him. ‘If the police had been quicker . . .’
Gill had sat beside him and put her arms around him, telling him not to beat himself up, that he was still a hero, that he’d done everything he could. It was becoming the theme of the day. Suzanne had said something similar, without calling him a hero, and even Winkler had nodded at him when he’d come in, probably feeling guilty about his own role in the affair.
Chloe Hedges was in hospital now, being monitored. Her injuries were superficial, but she was still in shock, barely able to speak about what had happened. They’d need to interview her as soon as possible, find out what Graham had said to her, if he’d given her any clues about where he might have gone, though that seemed highly unlikely. All she’d said so far was that she thought she’d been meeting Shawn, that the man she knew as Pete had used the OnTarget forum and then Snapchat to communicate with her.
They had surveillance teams watching Graham’s flat, Melanie’s old address and the Global Sounds office. His social media was being monitored as was his phone, which hadn’t been used for twenty-four hours. Airports and seaports were on alert, and Graham’s photo was all over the media, including a mock-up of him without his beard. The whole country was looking for him, but he had vanished – on foot, because his Audi, which was now being combed for evidence, had been left behind at the hotel.
‘I shouldn’t have stopped to check Chloe was OK. Should have pursued Graham before I helped his victims.’
Carmella shook her head. ‘But that’s what it’s all about, Pat. The victims. That’s why we do this, isn’t it? You did the right thing.’
He wasn’t so sure.
Gareth poked his head into the office. ‘Boss, DCI Laughland wants to see you.’
Patrick got up. His body felt heavy, his arm muscles aching from when he’d climbed the ivy. He was tired, so tired. He trudged down the corridor to Suzanne’s office feeling like he was wearing antique diver’s boots. Just before he got there, he heard footsteps hurrying up behind him. He turned to see Gareth again.
‘Boss. I wanted to apologise . . . for the other day, you know, our argument. I was being a baby.’
Patrick patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s fine, Gareth. Just remember who your friends are in future. OK? And I’m sorry too, I was out of order. Let’s put it down to the pressure of the case, shall we?’
Gareth nodded gratefully. Patrick grinned at him, turning away to knock at Suzanne’s office door.
‘Hi, Patrick.’ Her voice was soft, but she looked as weary as he felt. ‘Come in, close the door.’ She gestured for him to sit. ‘I’ve just had a call from Mervyn Hammond.’
‘Don’t tell me, he’s offering to do our PR.’ Suzanne was in the papers too.
She dragged out a smile. ‘No. He wants to talk to you, though.’
‘What about?’
‘He says he has information that will help us find Graham, but he wants you to go there, to his house.’
Patrick heaved himself up, his knees cracking as he stood.
‘Hammond’s still trying to call the shots? This had better not be a waste of time,’ he muttered as he left.
In the car on the way to Hammond’s, Patrick thought over the investigation, about everything they knew.
They had shown Graham’s picture – sans beard – to Chelsea Fox, who confirmed he was indeed the man she’d seen stab Wendy. And Strong’s team had finally managed to find traces of a conversation between Wendy and someone called Mockingjay365 arranging the meeting at the Rotunda. The exchange had taken place on the OnTarget official forum. Mockingjay was obviously Graham who, with his top-level access, had been able to delete the private messages from the forum, although they had remained on the server.
They had also taken Graham’s photo to the Travel Inn. The manager, Heidi Shillingham, recognised him immediately, with his trendy clothes and stupid socks. He had stayed at the hotel a week before the murder, had even stayed in Room 365, under Melanie’s surname: Graham Haggis. Peter Bell surmised that Graham must have got his key card cloned, using the same kind of machine fraudsters use to duplicate credit cards, while he was staying at the hotel, so the magnetic strip contained the correct code to let him back into the room a week later.
What else? An officer had been to the street where both Melanie Haggis and Nancy Marr lived and canvassed the neighbours. The old chap who lived in one of the houses between the two women told them that Nancy and Melanie were friendly, that Nancy was always popping round to see the younger woman because she worried about her and thought she needed looking after.
Patrick had his own theory about what had happened. Perhaps Nancy had popped round one day to see Melanie, perhaps concerned because she hadn’t seen her for a day or two, and discovered the suicide scene. She had called Graham – Patrick guessed Melanie had talked to the old lady about her great love and best friend – who had rushed round. Somehow, Graham had found out why his friend had killed herself. Had there been a suicide note, naming the girls Melanie blamed? Had the note asked Graham to take revenge on them? If there had been a note, and Nancy had seen it, it made a sick kind of sense that Graham had decided to kill Nancy to keep her quiet before embarking on his trail of vengeance. Why torture Nancy, though? She must have made him angry. Perhaps he blamed her in some way, thought Nancy should have been keeping an eye on Melanie. Or perhaps he’d just been practising on her, the sick fuck, working out how he was going to get revenge on the younger
girls.
The neighbour, the old chap, had told them one more interesting fact. Melanie was not only obsessed with OnTarget, she collected signed photos from celebrities. Among her collection was a picture signed by Mervyn Hammond. ‘She gave it to Mrs Marr,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t think Nancy really wanted it, thought Mervyn Hammond was a creep, but Melanie insisted. She said she knew him, that he was friends with her boyfriend.’
Patrick was close to Hammond’s house now and would ask him about this. As he got nearer he felt a stirring of hope. Hammond worked with Graham. Patrick was still suspicious that Mervyn was going to pitch to him, tell him he needed a PR man, but maybe Hammond really did have some useful information, something that would help them locate Graham.
He would soon find out.
He thought back to his second meeting with Burns, when he had come into the station to show Patrick the private messages between Rose and Jess. It had been a clever move. Graham must have fabricated those messages, knowing that it would strengthen Patrick’s suspicions about Shawn. A diversionary tactic, a trick he had later repeated to put Mervyn in the frame. At the time, Patrick had thought Burns was faintly ludicrous, a comical character. Did he dress the way he did to deflect attention away from his true nature? Or was he simply dressing to fit in with the media world? Psychopaths were good at that – camouflaging themselves, acting and looking like the people around them. Burns had fooled him, too, with the private messages from Mockingjay365. Burns had written those messages, had passed them on, no doubt edited so they didn’t give anything away.
He cursed aloud. Burns had fooled him. Finding him, ensuring he faced justice, was now a matter of personal pride.
Chapter 60
Day 15 – Patrick
Patrick parked outside Mervyn’s house and pressed the buzzer. The gates clicked open and Hammond’s voice crackled, very faintly, over the intercom: ‘I’m in the old barn.’
It was a miserable afternoon – the air cold and damp, the kind of weather that penetrates the skin and seeps through to the soul. Patrick headed towards the barn and knocked on the barn door. Mervyn called, ‘Come in.’
The light was poor in the barn, gloomy, filled with shadows. There was a distinctive smell in the room: petrol. Patrick clocked the model railway that filled almost all the floor space, three locomotives gliding slowly around the network of tracks, the little houses. There was something off about the display and it took Patrick a moment to notice what it was. All of the tiny figures – the passengers at the plastic stations, the conductors and guards and engineers, the trainspotters – were lying down.
‘Mr Hammond?’ he called.
‘I’m round here.’
Something was very wrong here. Patrick walked slowly around the edge of the model railway, noticing a small group of plastic female figures, four of them, lying at the edge of the display. They had been doused with red paint, like they were lying in a pool of blood. And another female figure stood close to them, gazing down on them.
Patrick stepped around the corner and froze.
Hammond was tied to a chair, his hands cuffed behind his back, ankles tied with rope to the legs of the wooden chair. He was dripping wet and, sniffing, Patrick realised immediately that the liquid that soaked Hammond’s clothes and hair was not water.
It was the petrol he’d smelled when he’d entered the barn.
Hammond looked up at Patrick, a desperate look on his face. He was pale, shivering, suddenly appearing twenty years older, an old, frightened man. ‘You need to do what he says,’ Hammond whispered.
Graham stepped out of the shadows. In his hand he held a large box of matches, the kind used by chefs.
‘Do you have a weapon?’ Graham asked in a calm voice. He was dishevelled, his hair sticking up in tufts, stubble darkening his face. He looked like he’d slept rough and Patrick guessed he’d walked all the way out here, knowing the police would be looking for his car.
Patrick shook his head. ‘No, Graham. Why don’t you put down the matches? Then we can talk.’
A small smile. ‘No, we’re going to talk anyway.’ He coughed. ‘You think I’m a murderer, don’t you?’
Patrick didn’t respond. He waited.
Graham pointed a finger at him and Patrick noticed that it was shaking, his body betraying his nerves, the tension. ‘I’m not a murderer. Not a criminal. I killed those girls, sure, but it was justice.’
‘Because of Melanie,’ Patrick said gently.
‘Yes! Those bitches . . . those fucking little bitches murdered her.’
‘She killed herself, Graham. I understand how hurt you must have been. Your friend.’
‘She was more than my friend! She was my soulmate’ – he laughed crazily – ‘my whole world. I promised her that I’d always protect her.’
‘You didn’t do a very good job, did you?’ Mervyn said.
Graham swung around, pulling a match from the box. Mervyn shrank away. ‘It wasn’t my fault. She didn’t . . . She never told me what was happening.’
Guilt. That was what was driving this, Patrick realised. Graham knew he should have been aware of what was happening on the forum that he managed. He wondered if there was more to it, if Melanie had only been into OnTarget because her boyfriend worked for them.
‘It was those little bitches’ fault,’ Graham hissed, turning back to Patrick. ‘The things they said about her . . . She was so sensitive, so vulnerable. She couldn’t take it. She was a beautiful person. I looked out for her at St Mary’s. And afterwards, I always kept in touch with her, helped her, even when . . . even though we couldn’t be together anymore.’
‘Why not?’ Patrick asked in a soft voice. ‘Why couldn’t you be together?’
‘Because she didn’t want me anymore. She wanted them. Those fucking . . .’ He breathed deeply. ‘OnTarget. She retreated into a fantasy world, thought that Shawn and the others were in love with her, that they were going to save her. Suddenly, I wasn’t good enough anymore. I stopped going to see her for a while. It all seemed so cruel. It was me who got her into OnTarget. Me who was supposed to run the forums she was so interested in, that she spent all her time on. I didn’t look at any of her posts on the forum for weeks because it made me feel too sick, knowing she was on there talking about her new great loves.’
Patrick was surprised. After talking to the staff at St Mary’s he had assumed that the love between Graham and Melanie had been one-way: the boy who longed to be wanted loving the attention he got from the vulnerable girl who worshipped him. But it seemed that Graham loved Melanie too. It made sense. Graham had been abandoned, thrown into the care system. He had been vulnerable too.
But that didn’t mean Patrick felt sympathy for him.
‘You tried to frame Shawn, didn’t you?’ Patrick said. ‘Asked Hattie to tell me about him and that Irish girl.’
Graham didn’t reply. He just smiled slyly.
‘And then you tried to frame Mervyn, leaving the underwear at his house, calling us.’
Another smile.
Burns still hadn’t told Patrick what he wanted and why he had brought him here.
‘Let’s talk,’ Patrick said. ‘Tell me how I can help you.’
Graham gathered himself, but still held the match between his trembling fingers. ‘I want the true story made public,’ he said. ‘My side of the story. Melanie’s story. I need him to call his friends in the press, make it happen. I want a full interview, front pages, my words with no censorship. I want the world to know that Melanie – the real Melanie, the one who loved me – was pure and innocent, and that I was only granting her dying wish: retribution against the bitches who killed her. Justice. Melanie’s soul is in torment right now. I can feel it. I thought that the only way Mel could find bliss in death would be for her tormentors to suffer and die. But if that can’t happen, if one of them lives, then the only way to stop
her suffering is to make sure the world knows the truth.’
‘I can do that,’ Mervyn said. ‘Just give me my phone back and I’ll call the editor of The Sun right now.’
‘But why do you want me here?’ Patrick asked, having a horrible feeling he knew what Graham was going to say.
‘You’re going to vouch for me, back up my story. Speak to the journalists, tell them I’m not guilty of any crime. You need to tell them I did the right thing.’ He shouted the final words, his face contorted. ‘And you need to arrest Chloe Hedges for murder.’
Patrick kept his voice even, neutral. ‘I can’t do that, Graham.’
Graham took a step towards Hammond and placed the head of the match against the side of the box.
Hammond struggled on the chair, rocking from side to side, almost tipping it over. Patrick moved towards Graham slowly. Could he grab him before he struck the match? It was too risky. Better to talk. It seemed pretty clear that Graham hadn’t thought this through. Not unless he planned to keep them here all day and night until he saw a copy of the next morning’s newspaper. And how was Patrick supposed to arrest Chloe, while he was stuck in a barn full of petrol?
‘Graham,’ he said in a soothing tone. ‘We can get you help. Maybe . . . maybe we can help organise a memorial for Melanie. Set up a foundation in her name against Internet bullying. Whatever you want. But Chloe Hedges is innocent, just like Melanie was. And what about Nancy Marr? You killed her too, didn’t you?’
Graham’s eyes flashed. Did he think he’d got away with that one?
‘What happened, Graham? Did she find Melanie’s body? And the suicide note?’