Years of work. Fennimore couldn’t imagine how it must feel to abandon all of that.
The younger man gripped the strap of his messenger bag as though the weight of it had suddenly become unbearable.
‘Okay, tell me what you want to do,’ Fennimore said.
‘My notes and reference texts are back home,’ Josh said. ‘If I can pick them up – find somewhere to carry on working …’
‘That could be risky.’
‘I’ll make it fast.’
‘All right,’ Fennimore said. ‘Check for the earliest flight from London or Southend – I’ll drive you to the airport. They’re probably still looking for you here, so you’ll have a good few hours on them.’
He stood and turned towards the glass-fronted entrance, but Josh jogged his elbow and headed towards a set of doors leading to the staircase. He opened a door with a push-button security lock and ducked through.
‘You know the security code?’ Fennimore asked.
‘You learn a few skills growing up in a criminal family.’ Josh led the way through a maze of stacked boxes and bookcases jammed with old books, and out the back door. He pulled up the hood of his jacket and walked fast, keeping his head down, but Fennimore got the impression he was hyper-alert as he made his way to the car park.
‘So what’s the news on Lazko?’ Josh asked.
Fennimore told him all he knew, including Haverford’s suspicion that the journalist had been tortured. ‘It’s likely that whoever killed him was also responsible for the first break-in at his place – statistically, it’s highly unlikely a house would be targeted twice in the same week.’
‘What do we think – the killer didn’t find what he was looking for, so he came back when he knew Lazko would be there?’
‘It seems to point that way,’ Fennimore said, relieved that Josh seemed to have accepted that Lazko wasn’t tortured for information on his whereabouts.
‘Did we miss something in the files?’ Josh asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’ve you stashed them?’ Josh said. ‘Are they still in your office? ’Cos anyone could walk in there now the developers are in.’
‘I moved everything sensitive to my apartment.’
Josh grunted. ‘How’s your security?’
Fennimore took a breath. He had thought it was reasonably strong, but Lazko had breezed through it easily enough. ‘You’re thinking I should move the files.’
‘Your call,’ Josh said. ‘But if the first break-in was linked to the Mitchell appeal, he was probably after the files Lazko schlepped up to Aberdeen.’
By now they had reached the car. Josh opened up and handed Fennimore the key before sliding into the back seat.
Fennimore looked at him in question.
‘If my lot’ve got their tame cops watching traffic cams, best I’m not in the front seat,’ Josh explained.
Fennimore nodded, climbing into the driver’s seat.
They were both thinking that Lazko’s killer could be on his way to Fennimore’s place right now. But Fennimore needed to return to Chelmsford to see the appeal solicitor. He glanced in the rear-view and saw Josh watching him.
‘Look,’ Josh said. ‘I’m heading that way anyhow. If you want, I could move the case files somewhere safe, drop you an email to let you know where.’
Fennimore hesitated. ‘I don’t want to slow you down.’
‘Like I said – I’ll make it fast.’
Fennimore unclipped his door keys from his key ring and handed them, together with the key card for the residents’ car park, to Josh.
‘Call me as soon as you’re safely away from Aberdeen.’
Josh shook his head. ‘They could be monitoring your calls.’
‘Then borrow a phone and text me. Or email me – and check your emails. In a few weeks, we’ll arrange to meet,’ he said.
Josh’s eyes blazed for a second, then Fennimore saw resignation and despair in the student’s face.
‘We’ll find a way to make this work, Josh,’ Fennimore said, leaning forward, looking him in the eye. ‘You have my word.’
34
Manchester, Thursday Afternoon
Still trying to make amends for the previous evening, Kieran had called in sick, and offered to take Timmy swimming. Simms’s mother accepted a lift into Manchester to do some shopping, and Simms took the opportunity to go for a run. An hour later, she sat at the kitchen table with a sandwich and a coffee, her hair still damp from the shower. Her laptop and the names of the three victims and the survivor beside her, she trawled newspaper webpages, social media websites and blogs for any reference to the women. She found plenty: memorial websites; Facebook pages; ‘Justice for …’ pages asking for information to help solve the murders. Warm air wafted in from the garden, and by three-thirty it stirred four neat stacks of pages she had printed out from the Web.
On top of each stack, a photograph of the victim; four fair-haired, blue-eyed twenty-somethings. And then there was dark-haired, thirty-four-year-old Mrs Myers. Simms wasn’t a profiler, but she knew that serial killers didn’t suddenly change their choice of victim. The letters, the way Mrs Myers’s body had been left, seemed calculated to taunt Fennimore, but why had he been targeted in the first place?
She began scrolling down the Facebook page of Hayley Todd, the second victim – a care worker. The page was being maintained by her friends and family, and it was heartbreaking to read. Moving down to the months before the murder, Simms found an album. There were photographs of three groups of friends: her co-workers at the care agency, all dressed in pale green uniforms; a gang of women members of a glee-club she sang with; and a group of four women in pink uniform dresses. From pale green to pink; had Hayley changed jobs in the months before she died?
Simms clicked on the image and read the text; the women were auxiliary nursing staff at Colchester General Hospital. She knew that care staff were on the minimum wage, and some worked two jobs to pay the bills; could Hayley have been moonlighting as a nurse auxiliary? Julia Myers was a specialist diabetes nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Frowning, she made a note and looked again at the other victims. Was it possible the clerical assistant had done agency work at a hospital, too? She called Diane.
‘Interesting theory,’ Diane said. ‘I’ll do some digging.’ She hung up and Simms got back to her trawling.
Kim Restel was the woman who had survived the abduction attempt; she had crashed her car and fled to the safety of a school. Ms Restel worked for a national advertising company, and Simms couldn’t think of a job much more removed from a vocational profession. The Myers investigation team would have interviewed her by now, but Simms had no access to their records and it seemed that Ms Restel didn’t have a social media presence under her own name: no Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest, and no Twitter account Simms could find. She found the marketing company’s website. According to Ms Restel’s profile, after graduating from Manchester University, she had started out in marketing at a car manufacturing company. Within a couple of years, she set up as a freelancer, taking small retail commissions, before being head-hunted by her present firm. How did her new firm get to know about her? She must have done something big to attract their attention. Could the killer have discovered Restel in the same way her new employers had?
Ms Restel had only been with the national firm for two months, so the attempted abduction had happened after she started working for them. Since joining the company she had been involved in a supermarket-sponsored Sports for Schools campaign and a reading initiative. Nothing about hospitals.
Simms scrolled down and found a LinkedIn button; every ambitious professional used the site as a shop window and online CV to show off their talents – ex-cops included. She clicked the link and struck gold: a list of the retail commissions Restel had worked on as a freelancer. Her final project before moving up the career ladder had been for a hospice providing end-of-life care. Excitement sent a shiver through Simms from the crown of her he
ad to her fingertips: nursing, hospitals, care facilities – there was a connection. She picked up her phone, ready to call Diane, just as her Skype alert sounded.
It was Nick Fennimore. She opened the link, feeling the old excitement at the prospect of sharing a new lead with him.
‘Nick, I was hoping you’d call—’ She broke off and peered more closely at the screen. ‘Are you okay? You look terrible.’
He wiped one hand over his face. ‘I’ve been better.’
Simms listened as he relayed the events of the day: his meeting with Mr Hazle’s widow, his consultation with Hazle’s oncologist, his tussle with Essex Police and the shocking news of Lazko’s murder.
‘Have you any clue who might have wanted him dead?’
‘I was high on the suspect list, until I provided an alibi,’ he said with a dry humour she recognized as a cover-up for the emotion he truly felt. ‘If we rule out a random, sadistically motivated attack, there are three possible reasons I can see why Lazko was tortured: for revenge; as a warning; or to extract information.’
‘Information about what – a feature he was working on?’
‘The Mitchell case review,’ Fennimore said. ‘Josh thinks we might have missed something in the files – that the killer tortured Lazko to find out where he’d hidden them.’
‘Didn’t he have the files with him?’
Fennimore shook his head. ‘I have copies and so does Mitchell’s appeal solicitor.’
‘So they are allowing an appeal?’
He raised one shoulder. ‘We haven’t had the paperwork yet, but it’s a given.’
‘You’ve read the files – what was he after?’
‘I wish I knew, Kate.’
‘The killer must know there are other copies – if Josh is right, all he’s done is draw attention to them.’
‘Maybe he thought the police would be less … rigorous than Mitchell’s team.’
‘Makes sense they wouldn’t go all out to prove they convicted an innocent man,’ she said. ‘Which is why we have the Criminal Cases Review Commission.’
Fennimore’s mouth quirked at the sarcasm. ‘I don’t think our man cares if Mitchell is found innocent, only that he isn’t put in the frame.’
‘Which makes both you and the solicitor a target,’ Simms said.
‘The solicitor tells me he has good security.’
‘What about you – where are you now?’ She peered past him, trying to find a clue from the room behind him.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I switched hotels. Josh is taking care of the files in Aberdeen.’
‘Josh?’
He didn’t seem to pick up on her shock, simply nodding. ‘I needed to stay, process the letters.’
‘You sent Josh to secure files that you believe Lazko was murdered for?’
Fennimore’s brow furrowed. ‘I sent him back to Aberdeen to get him out of harm’s way.’
‘I’m missing something,’ she said. ‘What? What are you not telling me?’
‘Essex isn’t a safe place for Josh,’ Fennimore said quietly.
Josh rarely spoke in her presence, and then only a few words, but Simms had identified the salt tang of the Essex marshes in his accent. She gazed at Fennimore, thinking through their last conversation about the student.
‘You took him home,’ she said, feeling tension rise in her chest. ‘You put him in harm’s way.’
Fennimore began to speak, then stopped. For once, he seemed at a loss for words. He took a breath and started again. ‘I made a stupid mistake,’ he said. ‘But he’s out of it now – I put him on a plane to Aberdeen.’
‘Nick – you just implied Lazko may have been tortured over the whereabouts of those case files.’
‘He wanted to gather his research notes. But he’ll be gone from there before nightfall.’
‘You should have spoken to Police Scotland.’
‘Josh’s family have police on their payroll,’ Fennimore said. ‘I couldn’t take that risk.’
‘Then you could have spoken to me. I could at least have asked them to check your flat was secure before you let him blunder in there.’
‘Josh isn’t the blundering type,’ Fennimore said.
‘For God’s sake, Nick – you put him in jeopardy. You can’t keep allowing yourself to be manipulated.’
‘What do you mean?’ She saw that her words had stung. ‘The Myers abductions,’ she said. ‘You’re so sure Mrs Myers’s murder is all wrapped up in what happened to Rachel and Suzie, you’re not thinking straight.’
Fennimore leaned closer to the camera. ‘Mrs Myers’s body was staged to look like Rachel’s – she even looks like Rachel.’
‘Yes, she does,’ Simms said, glancing down at the printouts of the victims on her kitchen table. ‘I’m looking at photographs of the abduction-murder victims, and you’re right – there is a striking similarity between them. They’re all small, fair, pale-skinned, blue-eyed.’
‘The physical opposites of Rachel,’ Fennimore murmured.
She watched Fennimore’s growing consternation. ‘That changes the victimology entirely,’ he said.
‘You think?’ she shot back. ‘And all of the other victims were single women. All of them. And not one of them had a child with her.’
Fennimore sat back, looking physically winded. ‘What the hell is he doing, Kate?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But he seems to want your involvement, and you’re being reactive to the situation, rather than proactive. It’s not helping.’
‘No,’ he said, sounding dazed. ‘You’re right. It isn’t.’
Simms’s mobile rang.
‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘it’s my SCAS contact.’ She slid the bar to ‘Answer’. ‘Diane, I have Professor Fennimore on Skype.’
‘Oh, d’you want me to call back?’
‘No, go ahead, we’ve just been discussing the victimology,’ she said. ‘I’m putting you on speaker.’
‘Um, hello, Nick,’ Diane said.
They knew each other from the National Crime Faculty and Fennimore greeted her politely, but the tightness in his voice betrayed his tension.
‘Kate had a theory about the victims’ occupations,’ Diane said.
‘Their social media profiles seemed to be pointing towards a hospital connection,’ Simms explained. ‘So what’ve you got, Diane?’
‘Your care assistant did some agency fill-ins as an auxiliary nurse at a hospital in Harlow,’ Diane said. ‘The clerical assistant did some temping at hospital clinics around London and the south-east.’
Simms felt her pulse rate rising.
‘We already know that Julia Myers was a nurse specialist,’ Diane went on.
‘And the woman who survived the abduction attempt worked as a freelancer on a fundraising campaign for a hospice,’ Simms said. ‘They all have hospital connections.’
For a stunned moment, they were silent.
‘Can you get dates for when they worked in each of the hospitals?’ Fennimore said. ‘It would narrow down the list of possible suspects—’
Simms stopped him with a look.
‘Oh,’ Fennimore said. ‘This is off the books …’
She gave him a tight smile. If she went back to the chief constable, she could be facing suspension. But Lauren is out there somewhere. A six-year-old girl—
‘I’ll do it,’ Diane said. ‘I’ll tell my supervisor I widened the search on the victims’ occupations.’
‘Diane …’ Simms said.
‘Kate, it’s okay. Just send me the links for the survivor, I’ll put it in a report update.’
They hung up a minute later and Simms stared at Fennimore on her computer screen. He was looking down, an expression of intense concentration on his face, and he seemed to be making notes – or doodling. He often doodled and mind-mapped when he was working through a problem.
He broke off for a second, glancing up with a frown on his face, saw her watching. ‘You’re right,’ he said.
He took a breath. ‘This isn’t about Rachel and Suzie.’
‘Okay …’ She waited for him to explain.
He stared at his notes for a few seconds. ‘The first letter I got taunted me with my failure to find Rachel’s killer.’ This was Fennimore in full analytical session; no hint of self-pity, no emotion as he talked about his wife’s murder. ‘The letter said, “What goes around comes around. Everything – all of it – it’s all on your head.” I thought he was talking about Rachel and Suzie.’ His brow creased. ‘But he was talking about Lauren and Julia Myers.’
‘If it isn’t about what happened to you, why did he take Lauren and Julia?’ Simms asked.
‘Precisely because he knew how it would affect me,’ Fennimore said. ‘He created a false connection to Rachel and Suzie, and arrogant tool that I am, I fell for it.’
The scientist in Fennimore forced him to examine even the most unpalatable truths, and when he admitted to personal failings, he was his own harshest critic.
‘All of this – Julia and Lauren’s abduction, his taunts about Rachel and Suzie – they all prevented me from thinking straight. He made Julia Myers lick that envelope to put me off-balance; he staged her murder and the discovery of her body to look like Rachel’s murder.’
‘But off-balance from what?’ Simms asked.
‘Mitchell,’ Fennimore said. ‘Has to be – it’s the only thing I’m working on just now. The first break-in at Lazko’s place came after I had agreed to review the case – Mitchell’s family posted the news on Facebook. I think he went to Lazko’s house hoping to get to the files before I did. I believe the same man returned to Lazko’s house and murdered him.’
‘That’s a lot of supposition,’ Simms said, doubtful.
‘Look at it, Kate: Lazko’s day job was reporting on petty crime and the occasional drugs bust for the Chronicle – what else could it be?’
Simms tried to think up a scenario and failed.
‘There must be something in those files,’ Fennimore went on. ‘He made a mistake – or revealed himself in some way during the commission of Kelli Rees’s murder.’
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