by Bo Brennan
He poured. “You’ve got a face like a smacked arse, what’s up with you?”
Before India had even opened her mouth to respond Pete straightened up and set the bottle down. “You are never going to believe who’s just walked in,” he said. Oh, I think I can. She slammed the Tequila, didn’t bother with the salt. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.” Pete disappeared out the back leaving her standing like a plank at the empty bar.
India sensed him first and froze to the spot, the bastard smelled so damned good. Then she felt his chest brush against her back. The guy had no perception of personal space at all; the whole bar serving area was virtually empty for fuck’s sake. And then she heard his voice in her ear again. “Did you call me a hunk or a hulk back there?”
She exhaled purposefully, took a step back and stamped on his shiny Italian leather shoes.
“Shit, that hurt.”
“Sorry, didn’t see you there,” she said.
“I’m very missable,” he winced. “Tequila. What you like in the morning?”
“Great,” India said
“Great?” he said, grinning at her.
India stared at him. Next time she’d aim higher, aim for his balls.
The stunning willowy goddess that had just wafted up to the bar behind him ran her arm up his back, gently squeezing the nape of his neck. He rolled his head. “James, a girl could die of thirst around here,” she said, all plummy.
India doubted the Amazonian goddess was his mother.
“Lacey, Detective India Kane. India, Lacey Fox,”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, extending a beautifully manicured hand. Her pristine French polished nails, neat and square, instantly made India self-conscious of her own gnawed stubs.
“You’ll join us for a drink, Detective?” Lacey Fox lifted her chin and beckoned Pete with a glittering smile. They certainly made a striking couple. Used the same dentist too, matching teeth.
“No thanks, I’m in a round.” India nodded over her shoulder to the pool table where her colleagues were feigning dehydration.
“I’ll get that,” Colt said, throwing a black card on the bar when India’s round arrived. “I’ll take that bottle of Tequila, too.” He blatantly ignored his companion’s piercing stare, turned to India, and said, “Mixed trebles on the pool table it is then.”
Colt braced himself for trouble as the bloke strode purposefully towards the pool table, eyes fixed on him. It came with the territory; there was always some twat who wanted to pick a fight with the biggest bloke in the pub at kicking out time. Not a problem. If he couldn’t talk him down, he’d knock him down. Colt shifted into high alert as he got closer, began to move when he came up behind India at the pool table. Lacey grabbed his arm.
“Guess who, gorgeous,” he said, with his hands over India’s eyes.
Colt was guessing too, he looked familiar.
“Gray.” Her body language said she was pleased to see him but her face certainly didn't.
Colt let out his breathe in a low steady flow. That was close, he'd called that one all wrong. He hadn’t drunk anywhere near enough to make that sort of mistake either. Punching out her boyfriend wouldn't have done much to thaw their already frosty relations.
He could feel Lacey patting his arm, knew if they weren’t in company she’d be ripping the piss out of him right now. Outwardly Colt remained nonchalant, but he was annoyed at the sudden interruption to the evening. They'd been making a bit of head way tonight; she was looser, lighter with a drink in her. Likeable even.
“What are you doing here?” she said, placing her cue on the table signalling the game over.
Ruining a good night, Colt thought, and emptied the last of his peanuts into his mouth. Eavesdropping, he crumpled the packet and poked it into the neck of an empty Bud bottle on the table behind her.
“We still on for tomorrow night?” the boyfriend asked.
“Of course, I'll meet you there.”
The tickle of the peanut lodged in Colt’s throat, that he’d been desperately trying to ignore, finally overwhelmed him. His eyes began to stream and he spluttered an indiscreet cough. Lacey passed him his pint with a wry smile on her lips as he fought to get it under control.
“How rude of me,” India said, thinking he was hankering for an introduction. “Gray, this is DCI….”
“I know who he is,” Gray said tersely.
Colt felt redeemed about his initial instincts, the guy had been screwing him out after all.
India frowned. “Gray is on the Arson Taskforce.”
Colt grinned, Arsehole Taskforce more like, and extended his hand. Maybe that's where he recognised him from. The Hampshire Arson Task Force got where shit didn't. They were big news, did road shows at forces across the country rolling out their dual police/fire fighter strategy. Colt had never been to one. Every time they were in his neck of the woods he was doing something far more exciting – like watching paint dry.
“So what are the arsonists up to these days?” he said. As soon as the words left his mouth he wished he could take them back.
“Well, you know, the usual – setting fire to stuff,” Gray said, squeezing his hand and doing his best to crush it. Colt smiled. He'd have to do a hell of a lot better than that.
“Interesting,” Colt said.
Gray looked in the direction of the empty glasses on the table behind her. “C'mon India, I'll take you home.”
“They're not all mine,” she said.
“You're in no fit state to drive.” He thrust her coat towards her. “I’ll drop you back to your car in the morning.”
India shrugged and gathered up her bag without another word. Gray placed a possessive arm around her shoulders and practically dragged her off into the night – with Colt’s stare boring into the back of his head.
Chapter 6
Thursday 2nd December
The whole team was almost assembled, all except Sangrin. Even the woman from the CPS had been seated for fifteen minutes and she'd trained in from London. India sat back and studied the wall of victims’ faces. Colt must have got in early this morning – it hadn't looked that comprehensive when they'd left last night.
She peered at the photos of the two she knew on the side marked ‘Identified’. Sharon Cutler’s big toothy grin smiled down at her, eyes brimming full of life, hope and happiness, a far cry from the woman she'd seen heavily sedated in the hospital less than forty-eight hours ago. Now she knew what had happened to her, she'd be able to structure her interview properly. Coax the most out of her.
The hulk had said she could do it today; she glanced at him and Firman locked in an intense conversation just outside the door, and hoped he'd remember. Probably would, not a hint of Tequila red eye in sight. Bloody hell, the man could drink. Having tree trunks for legs probably helped. When he looked straight at her she raised her brows in acknowledgment, and his eyes immediately diverted away again.
India glanced at the clock when they finally entered the room, 0757 and still no Sangrin.
She readied her pencil and note pad when the door opened behind them, expecting the poisoned dwarf to make it by the skin of his teeth; instead Lacey Fox breezed into the room.
“Len, darling,” she purred. “Where do you want me?” India glanced around the table, doubting there was a man in the room not screaming out an answer to that in his head.
Firman blushed as she kissed his cheek. “Anywhere you like,” he said, spreading his hands.
“Veronica, how lovely to see you again,” she said, taking a seat next to the CPS sex crimes advocate, leaving just one seat left unoccupied. Great. Meant India got Sangrin when the little scrote bothered turning up.
“Dr Fox.” Veronica nodded curtly. India’s keen eye spotted the twitch in her pursed lips as she spoke.
“Has anyone seen Sangrin?” Firman said. They all shook their heads. “Well? Cat got your tongues?”
“No, Guv.” Dwyer leant back in his chair to get a good view of the car park. “Car's h
ere though.”
“Jim, we're not waiting. Go ahead,” Firman growled.
Colt was just about to speak when Sangrin scurried in – still doing his tie, yesterday’s clothes dishevelled, and sporting a serious case of bed head. “Sorry, Guv. The traffic –”
“Save it, Lee. Sit.”
He took the empty chair next to India. “Cosy,” he whispered as he settled. The sleazy bastard smelled of sex. She glared at him and softly snapped her teeth, just in case the little prick needed a reminder.
“Good morning, everybody,” Colt said. “We have the pleasure of being assisted in the investigation by two of the country’s top specialists in the tracking and prosecuting of serial sex offenders: Veronica Laing – Specialist Rape Advocate from the CPS, and Criminal Psychologist Dr Lacey Fox.”
He wasted no time once the formal introductions were over, and instructed Dr Fox to get straight down to business. Time was money and Foxy's psychobabble certainly wouldn't be coming cheap. Budget cuts clearly didn't extend to Golden Balls and his missus.
Lacey Fox rose from her seat and sashayed towards the back wall in a skirt so tight she must've been poured into it. India stole a glance around the table, as she suspected there wasn’t a man in the room who wasn’t looking forward to the pleasure of working with Dr Lacey Fox, and every one of them had all three eyes looking her way right now.
“Good morning. For those of you who haven’t worked with a Criminal Psychologist before, my role is to brief you on the offender’s profile, MO, and to study the technical aspects of the crime. My remit here also extends to monitoring the victim typography and geographic. Any questions – please feel free to ask at any time, I operate an open floor policy.” She flashed those gleaming white veneers again.
India sighed she couldn’t believe they’d been lumbered with a head doctor, didn’t think the Guv went in for all that mumbo jumbo crap.
“So far our assailant has conducted all of his attacks at night, leading us to assume he works a regular nine-to-five job. All victim statements indicate they were not aware they had been raped until they received the DVD in the post. None have been able to accurately pinpoint the time or date of the attacks making it impossible to recover DNA evidence.”
She flashed a smile Firman's way, and said, “Would you mind dimming the lights please, sweetie? Unfortunately it's necessary that everyone in this room understands exactly what we’re dealing with.”
The Guv was out of his seat in a nanosecond. For a man winding down to retirement he could sure move his arse when he wanted to.
Foxy lifted the remote control and the drop down screen in the corner flickered to life. The room was deathly silent. “This is the recording the latest victim, Sharon Cutler, and DCI Colt received in the post two days ago. This is the first time we have known his actual location early on in his attack sequence.”
“So we have victims who don’t know they’re victims,” Sangrin mused, doing his best to sound intelligent. “And when they do know, they have no idea when the crime took place rendering the scene useless?”
“You got it, Detective.” Foxy rewarded him with a smile; those brilliant white veneers were becoming an irritating distraction. “Our man is an out and out control freak and he’s growing in confidence. He’ll be obsessed with order, engaged in employment that takes a high degree of organisation, and he will excel at that employment. He’ll be incapable of maintaining a relationship, due in part to a dysfunctional family background, particularly on the female side.”
India rolled her eyes. Same old excuse for being a fuckwit. If family background had any bearing whatsoever on a person’s moral compass – India Kane would be a serial killer.
“To him, these women are fulfilling one purpose and one purpose only – masturbation.”
India frowned, nothing about the usual rape motivators of power and control. She found it incomprehensible the bloke just wanted a tommy-tank and would go to all this trouble to get one.
“As he’s grown in confidence, he has spent more time in his victims’ homes,” Foxy continued. “At twenty-five minutes, this is the most prolonged attack yet. It’s assumed he uses GHB or Ketamine to drug his victims; however blood tests are always too late to confirm this. Investigators on the original case were unable to establish how it was administered, or indeed when and where.”
The team shuffled uncomfortably in their seats as the animal straddled his victim in High Definition glorious Technicolor. India stared at the screen. Dr Fox was proven right on at least one count – he'd grown markedly in confidence between this attack and the one in Southampton just last month. Sharon Cutler looked equally as dead as Katherine Darcy had throughout her ordeal, totally unresponsive. She heard Dwyer swallow hard when Sharon’s legs were wrenched wide apart; this early morning gift in the mail certainly explained the state of her kitchen floor.
“Could someone else be holding that camera?” India said.
“No,” Dr Fox replied confidently. “He’s working alone.”
Rape was easier to get away with than shoplifting. More so if it was drug facilitated or the victim knew their attacker. So why send the victims a DVD and risk getting caught? And why send one direct to a copper, especially a copper whose expertise was kiddy fiddlers? It made no sense to India . . . unless he wanted to get caught.
India glanced at Dwyer, sitting to her right. He was breathing heavily and looked particularly pale in the darkened room, far more pasty faced than usual. She flinched away when he started retching as the arsehole on screen really got going. Firman waived him out of the room. From the commotion outside, it sounded like he almost made it to the toilets.
“Our only certainties are that he’s working alone and his victims are unconscious and, thankfully, totally unaware.” An overwhelming feeling of relief swamped the room as Dr Fox spoke over the final sickening groans of the rapist’s sated satisfaction, all eyes turned to face her as light returned to the room once more.
“Maybe that’s not such a good thing,” Vicky voiced angrily. “Give me an alleyway stranger rape any day of the week and I’ll nail him. How the hell are we gonna cage this animal if we can't even locate his victims?”
“We start from scratch,” Colt said, as Dwyer gingerly slunk back into the room. “And work with what we do have.”
“India you've already dealt with Royal Mail before, find out if we can establish which post boxes he's using. Does he use the same one each time he attacks in a county, or is he using different post boxes? And what about the envelopes themselves?”
“Right,” she said curtly.
Colt wondered if he should take her with him and quickly dismissed the thought. No, she’d done a great job mapping the post boxes in the Darcy attack, if there was any way they could establish if the attacker was returning to the scenes, he wanted to know.
“Tom, you find out about these DVDs. I want to know how common they are and where they can be bought. Pay the techies a visit, see if there's anyway a signature or hidden data could be secluded on them.”
“Done,” Tom said, with a confident nod.
“Lee, you get the gloves. Who manufactures them, for what, and where do they distribute them?”
Lee Sangrin frowned. “So they're Latex, right?”
“It’s your job to find out,” Colt said.
“How can I find out if we don't have one? They’ve both got something solid to work on,” he said, sulkily gesturing to his colleagues.
“Think condom, Lee,” Vicky said abruptly, “second skin, single use, probably latex.”
“How do you know they're single use?”
“No prints or DNA transfer,” Vicky said. “You saw the film – it’s only the women he touches without them.”
Colt smiled. Vicky was one sharp cookie, and well versed at keeping her inexperienced admirer in his place. She probably had teenage boys at home. Probably raised them alone too, judging by her frankness and suitable terminology when appealing to Sangrin’s testosteron
e ravaged mind.
“Lacey, continue building the profile. Liaise with these guys, some of the info they find might be of assistance to you.” She nodded. “How long’s it going to take to get your full profile together?”
“Maybe a week by the time I've studied all the DVDs.”
“I'll study them with you,” Veronica said “I don't want to miss anything off the charge list.”
“Good.” Colt smiled, approving of their dual working strategy. It was about time they sorted out their differences. “Vicky, you're coming with me,” he said. Vicky gave a small salute in acknowledgment.
“Everybody clear of what they're doing?” he asked, looking around the table. A chorus of 'yes' greeted him. “Any questions?”
“Shall I interview Sharon Cutler first?” India asked.
“No,” Colt snapped, unwilling to elaborate until he had at least confirmed the situation himself.
India frowned. “Sir, we really –”
“Just do what I've asked you to do, please.”
“But –”
“Which part of no don't you understand?” he said, glaring at her.
They locked eyes; he saw red creeping across her cheeks and the twitch in her jaw where she was fighting her instinct to snap back at him. He was daring her to react, wanted to see what was behind that hard-faced exterior. When she didn’t he frowned, and wondered if she’d seize the opportunity at tonight's meeting after hearing the news he’d be breaking then.
Chapter 7
The secure police station door buzzed open on their approach, no need to reach for the intercom. Policing by appointment never ceased to amaze him, but seriously, here? Havant nick, with the Leigh Park Estate on the doorstep. Bloody beggars belief.
“Good morning, Sir, Ma’am,” the neat and tidy, ripe for retirement desk sergeant said.
“Morning,” Colt responded soberly. There was nothing good about the circumstances that had brought them here. “DCI Colt and SOCO Maplin, we’re expected.”