Flowers for the Dead

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  “I’m not saying a word,” Hammond says. He even sounds like a belligerent teenager.

  The detective sergeant nods sagely. He has the feeling that saying otherwise will make the prisoner more childishly stubborn. “You have a right to stay silent.”

  “Yeah! And…well, why should I help you? No one was interested in the truth before I got sent down. I even went to the papers when it first happened. Made no difference. So I’m not answering your questions now, right.”

  He is muttering still, though. His Nottingham accent is evident, with an occasional hint of Scottish on certain words. “I’ll just talk myself into trouble if I say anything. You’ll use it all against me, and before I know it I’ll be charged with something else I didn’t do.”

  Mike can understand how the prisoner had managed to talk himself into trouble last time. Clearly he is very bad at keeping his mouth shut. A fading bruise on his right cheek is evidence that he probably talks too much in front of other prisoners too.

  He lets the silence stretch on for a little longer. It is often the best weapon; people are so keen to fill it. Sure enough…

  “I mean I was treated like I was loony, right. Like I was a total liar! So I’m keeping schtum.” Hammond is warming to his theme now. Arms uncrossed, hands waving around then making a zipping motion across his mouth before snapping back into his teenage slump, leg jiggling up and down. Enough nervous energy to power a small town radiates from him.

  “Not saying another word,” he adds sullenly. He really cannot help himself, apparently.

  Mike nods again. “Well, that makes life easier!” He gives a relieved smile and moves as if to stand up. “Uncovering a miscarriage of justice would have been really embarrassing for the force. So if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s great.”

  “Whoa! What? Eh? Miscarriage of justice?” Hammond shoots forward, babbling now. The only thing to break the long, thin monotony of Hammond’s body is a mop of dark, curly hair. Hammond runs a hand through it, eyeing Mike suspiciously. “What you mean?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter; not if you don’t want to talk.”

  “I…might be persuaded…”

  “Good. Because if – and it’s a big if - what you were saying originally is true, this could your last chance to be listened to and believed. You have nothing to lose.”

  Mike watches the words sink in. Hammond’s arms flop open, hands falling palms up on his knees as he takes in the magnitude of what is being said.

  “There are no guarantees I’ll believe you,” Mike warns. “But isn’t it worth taking that chance? So that maybe, just maybe, one day very soon you’ll be able to choose your own food instead of having everything decided for you. So you can sit at home and relax instead of being in a cell. So you can be free.”

  “So I can get justice for Irene,” the prisoner breathes.

  He leans forward, the sullen teen act all gone. Instead Hammond looks more like a hopeful child who has been told that if he is very, very good then perhaps he might get off the Naughty List after all and Santa will come.

  “I want to talk! I want to talk! Mister, I really, really want to talk.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ~ Tansy ~

  I Declare War Against You

  The heater in the interview room is working overtime, pumping hot air out until it is stuffy and hard to breathe. Mike is almost grateful for the draught coming from the barred, frosted glass window, which means that while his left side is hotter than hell, his right side is uncomfortably cold.

  He leans back in his chair and looks at the prisoner in front of him. John Hammond has drawn his gangly legs up, encased in the regulation blue prison trousers, and is leaning forward, keen as mustard now to tell the police everything he knows. He has not been a difficult nut to crack, and Mike cannot shake the conviction that an innocent man has been behind bars for the past four years.

  “Right, so… Right, where do you want me to begin?” Hammond checks eagerly.

  “Tell us about you and Irene splitting up,” Mike prompts.

  “Not a lot to tell,” the prisoner shrugs. “Just, well, she said I was a lazy bastard and never did anything round the house, and I said she was a nagging cow, and next thing I know I’m dumped.”

  “No big fight? No drama?”

  “Nah, right, she got all shouty and stampy, and I just said ‘Forget it, man’ and left.”

  “Thought you said she dumped you.”

  Hammond looks sheepish and picks his thumb, a ball of nervous energy. “She did, technically. Like, she said the words. But I was the one did the walking. I packed my bags and got out of there straight away.”

  It seems a little late to engage in petty break-up point scoring, but Mike says nothing on that issue.

  “It was her house?” he checks.

  “Yeah.” Head bobs up and down in time with the jiggling knee. “Yeah, it was hers. Well, she’d got a mortgage, you know. We’d split a couple of times before, that’s just the way we were, so I didn’t bother giving her the key back. And she didn’t ask for it.

  “I crashed at a mate’s for a couple of days. When my mum found out she wasn’t happy, gave me a right earful about how Reeny – that’s what we called Irene - was the best thing to ever happen to me and she’d never forgive me if I let her slip through my fingers.”

  For the first time the overgrown kid look slides away and Hammond appears every day and more of his twenty-nine years. “She was too. The best.”

  He rubs his face with his spindle-fingered hands, trying to wipe away the grief. A wave of tiredness has washed over him, weighing down his limbs and suddenly bringing all those nervous ticks and twitches to a stop.

  “The weird stuff started not long after. She went down to London to spend a couple of days with a friend, and two, three days after she got back she sent me a text message thanking me for leaving some flowers on her doorstep.”

  His words come slower now, more considered than the verbal diarrhoea Mike expects from him.

  “You hadn’t sent them though?”

  Hammond shakes his head, then realises the interview is being taped. “No. No, I hadn’t. But I didn’t tell her that – I took a chance to get back into her good books, yeah? Took the glory because I figured that some other bastard was trying to take advantage of our split and make a play for her. I couldn’t have that.”

  He looks at Mike defiantly as he adds: “I know I’m an idiot, but I wasn’t stupid enough to risk losing her to someone else. So I lied.”

  “Don’t suppose she said what type of flowers she’d been sent, did she?”

  Hammond looks at him like he is mad. Mike isn’t sure himself what prompted the question, probably just because lisianthus has stuck in his mind because he has never heard of them.

  “I don’t know, do I?” Hammond exclaims. “Anyway, it all started to get a bit weird after that. She kept thanking me for all sorts, saying she was so impressed with how I’d turned over a new leaf and was making more of an effort. Wasn’t going to admit it wasn’t me, was I?

  “Reeny reckoned that if I kept up the good work she’d give things another go, but she wanted to wait. I was cool with that. But…the stuff was starting to freak me out.

  “One time, she reckoned I’d gone out and done a food shop for her, stocked the house up with all her favourite things. That weren’t me. No way. It sounded well weird. I mean, someone had been in her house to do that. Like, they’d not just done the shopping and left it on her doorstep; they’d gone in and put it all away too, neat and tidy in the cupboards and fridge and that,” he says, spelling it out. “But me and her were the only ones with keys, so how had they done that? I had a sly snoop around when she wasn’t looking, but it didn’t look like anyone had broken in.

  “So…thing is, it was praying on my mind, like. So I told her everything. Like, about it not being me doing the stuff, yeah. She did her nut at first, and we had a massive row – that’s what the neighbours heard. But wa
y more than being angry at me, she was terrified. I mean, someone was stalking her!”

  He looks at Mike with brown eyes that plead to be believed. “We decided there and then that I’d move back in,” he says in a voice so low it is almost a whisper. “I ran out to get my stuff, didn’t want to leave her alone. I was like two hours, most. But when I got back…when I got back…”

  His voice hitches and he shakes his head, unable to finish the sentence. He had found Irene’s body in the bedroom, laid out on the bed, surrounded by flowers.

  Mike could still see why Hammond’s story had not been believed. Irene had not told anyone that she and John were trying again, she had not shared with a single soul the fact that she was being stalked by a mysterious benefactor who did lovely things for her, and to top it all off, there was no sign of a break in – and Hammond had been the only one with a key, besides her. Then there were the neighbours witnessing Hammond hurrying from the scene; forensics…

  And yet. And yet… Mike knows the man-child in front of him is telling the truth. He suspects this may have been the first murder committed by the man who killed Julie Clayton and several other women.

  What is really making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up though, is that what is happening to Laura Weir sounds identical to what happened to Irene in the run up to her death.

  “John, in the light of some fresh information we’ve had, I’m reopening the investigation into your girlfriend’s murder,” Mike says. “I don’t know where this is leading right now, but I promise I will look into your case.”

  John Hammond sits straighter in his chair. For once, it takes him a few seconds to find his words.

  “Thank you,” he says finally, voice hoarse with emotion.

  When Mike gets outside his brain is racing, and he wishes he had Daisy’s teleporter so that he could get back to Colchester immediately. Still, the drive will be useful to give him thinking time, he decides.

  Blind to the snow scene blurring by, blind to every thought that does not involve the case, he is lost in thought, remembering fragments of conversations into cases he is not directly involved in.

  ***

  The house Adam was raised in has not change one bit. The semi-detached house, half a mile away from the Army base, is as neat, boxy, and soulless as he remembers it.

  Adam stands on the pavement outside, mouth working as he recalls all the pain and humiliation he has suffered within its walls. But he sets his shoulders back like a soldier on parade and meets the gaze of the windows.

  “See how far I’ve come, Mother? See how much I’ve changed?” he challenges proudly. His breath hangs momentarily in the cold air like a ghost’s apparition before dissipating.

  As far back as he can remember, his mother had hated him, twisting an innocent child until he shaped himself beyond all recognition in a bid to survive. Even in rare moments of kindness, he had been tensed, waiting for her to unleash a punishment for all the bad things he had done.

  Bad boy, dirty boy, useless boy.

  She had constantly betrayed her child’s love. Why? He had tried not to anger her. Instead, he had tried to make himself as small as possible so that she would not notice him. Tried to be good, and always do as he was told. No matter what he had done it was always wrong, he always deserved punishment.

  The only person who had ever loved him was his gran. And Laura. He had thought that Laura was starting to love him. She had called him her boyfriend, turned down the offer of a date with another man because she was taken, had seemed to grow happier and blossom under his care until recently.

  Where had it started to go wrong?

  No one could ever love you.

  His mother’s voice is a slap that makes him stagger. So many thoughts whirling around his head, so many emotions, so much anger and betrayal. He wants to purge himself of her forever. The emotions seem to super heat him as they make his blood pound and roar. Stronger they grow, bigger, hotter, louder until Adam is consumed and transformed.

  He is the phoenix once more, sending flames from his body, the crackle and roar unleashed from his imagination and the flames rising, rising, rising. He is lifted too on the heat thermals of his own anger, the real world whited out.

  In the purity of white comes clarity. All he has been through. All that is to come. What he must do to Laura seems so obvious that he throws his head back and laughs out loud. Of course! It will be something bigger and better than anything that happened to the women who have gone before her.

  Searing heat makes Adam stagger back. For a second he is confused. How has he got round to the back of the house? He is no longer the phoenix, yet he can see one flying around his body, twisting back and forth between him and the house that is now going up in flames. Blinking rapidly to free himself of it, he realises that he is holding a plastic petrol can. It is empty and the sharp smell of gasoline is in the air.

  The flames crackle again, licking up the back door, dancing hypnotically inside the house and beckoning him towards them. But he must refuse their invitation, he has other places to be. He is no longer consumed with white-hot fury, he has come out to the calm that is the centre of a storm. There is no sound from his mother, and with relief Adam realises he will never hear from her again.

  Peace washes over him as he walks away and treads on the tansy lying scattered on the pavement. He does not notice the openly curious glances of neighbours peering from behind net curtains at his old home on fire; he is too busy putting the plastic jerry can back into the boot of his car. As he starts his engine and drives away, the distant siren of a fire engine can be heard, but that is not Adam’s concern. He knows exactly what to do next.

  He must stop off at a petrol station first though.

  ***

  Laura cannot help smiling grimly to herself as she watches the men swarming over her home.

  “How’s it going, Joey?” she calls over to a man in his mid-thirties, who is standing in her lounge checking a clipboard as she speaks.

  “Another couple of hours and we’ll be done,” he confirms.

  “Brilliant – and thanks so much.”

  “All part of the service.” He gives her a business-like nod. He strikes her as the type who would consider smiling inefficient, but she is just grateful that he is busy being efficient for her.

  This is phase two of her plan. At the same time as ordering the camera, she had done some research online then used the office phone to call Joey’s company. He runs a security firm specialising in the best domestic-use alarms and locks that money can buy.

  After explaining the situation to him, Joey had agreed to be on stand-by, waiting for her call. When it had come, he had brought virtually his whole team over to fit the best security measures possible.

  It has cost an arm and a leg, but Laura considers it an investment. She had deliberately made herself vulnerable so that her stalker would break in and she could get a picture of him. Now she is ensuring he can never come near her again.

  ***

  The monochrome landscape rushing by is mesmeric as Mike makes the hour-and-a-half long drive from Belmarsh Prison to Colchester. He barely sees the dual carriageway in front of him because he is so lost in thought.

  “Let’s suppose my gut is right. What does that mean?” he muses.

  It means Irene McBride was stalked, her home repeatedly broken into without her knowledge. The perpetrator had to be someone confident. Perhaps who knew her personally in some way, in order to get a spare key cut. Whoever it was had loved her in their own twisted way, and felt remorse at some level for what they had done. The flowers proved that much.

  What else did his gut tell him?

  That the same person also knew Julie Clayton. This time he killed while she was out and about. Why? Whatever the reason, he had been confident enough to spend time not only picking a bunch of flowers but also mutilating her.

  The removal of the lips was a big escalation – Irene had been left perfectly intact. There had been almost t
hree years between Irene and Julie, so chances were that in between, he had killed again, perfecting his technique and developing his signature. This fits in with what Simon had discovered when he found other murders where the lips had been removed. Three, if Mike’s memory serves him correctly.

  So Mike has found another victim to add to the ones his friend knows about. That means they are now looking for a killer who has slain at least five women so far.

  Had Simon mentioned anything about flowers at the other murders? Had any of the women reported being stalked, or strange things happening around their home prior to their murders? He doesn’t remember Simon saying anything, but then again they hadn’t talked specifics. Mike drums his fingers on the steering wheel, impatient to make connections that perhaps are not there.

  What he really needs is a ciggie to help him think, but of course that is not allowed. He takes a steadying breath and forces his racing mind to slow once more.

  “Let’s suppose my gut is right. What does that mean?” he asks out loud again.

  He answers his own question without hesitation. “It means a confident, cold-blooded serial killer is out there. And I know who he is targeting next.”

  As soon as he reaches the station he goes to his boss’s office and tells her everything.

  Detective Chief Inspector Jane Goddard offers Mike an Extra Strong Mint as she perches on the edge of her desk to listen to him. Once he has taken one, she pops one into her own mouth too and hides the packet away again in the trouser pocket of her funeral black outfit. Aside from that she is motionless as Mike shares his theories with her.

  “Do you think I’m on the wrong track?” the sergeant checks.

  Cheeks hollowing as she sucks thoughtfully, she gives a little shrug, sending her black poodle hairstyle into a frenzy.

  “No, it’s worth checking out at least. Stalkers are crazy buggers. But it’s a bit of a leap from stalker to serial killer – normally they just fixate on one person and maybe kill them, but that’s it. They aren’t serials.”