Trial by Execution

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Trial by Execution Page 13

by T. M. E. Walsh


  He thought time apart would have helped him.

  He was wrong.

  ‘How have you been?’ he said, as he handed her a mug of coffee.

  Claire smiled a little as she took a sip.

  Claire’s way of dealing with her emotions was to bring up a brick wall. Be strong, never weak in the eyes of others. She felt the pressure of being in his presence and when she felt old feelings stirring she knew she had no choice but to shut them down.

  ‘I’d hoped to avoid small talk.’ She clasped the mug in her hands. She saw he was frowning. ‘This isn’t a social call. I didn’t come to talk about us.’

  ‘No,’ he snapped, ‘just came to see what you could get out of me.’ He flopped down in his armchair. ‘I see nothing’s changed.’

  Claire placed her mug on the coffee table in front of her. ‘I always found we got along a lot better when we were talking about work.’

  His eyes returned to hers. ‘You shouldn’t really be discussing the case with me, you know that.’

  ‘I’m not here to discuss the case as such, not in detail anyway. I’m here about Knox himself.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a clever girl, I’m sure you’ve done your homework.’

  ‘You invited me in,’ she said. ‘You’re interested.’ When Simon scoffed to himself, she leaned forward, gaining eye contact. ‘Knox was the jewel in your crown, Simon. The case that made you. No one got inside Knox’s head like you did. You saw what others failed to see.’

  ‘It wasn’t hard to see the animal Knox was… I just wasn’t blindsided by the fact he came from a privileged background.’

  Claire just stared at him, watching his eyes deliberately avoid hers. He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. ‘Why don’t you tell me the basics…’

  ‘Thought you watched the news?’ she cut in. She gave him a wry smile when he looked at her.

  ‘I also know we didn’t always tell the media everything.’

  Claire nodded. ‘The press conference was mainly to shut down speculation and rumour.’

  ‘It was already out there the moment people knew there was a body in the woods. People are reading up on the Dahlia case again.’ He paused. ‘You think you’re the only one to seek me out? I’ve taken my phone off the hook just for some peace.’

  He sipped at his drink,.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said, placing the mug on a coaster. ‘What happened in those woods? Give me the unfiltered version.’

  ‘Knox was found slumped against a tree, his insides almost on his outsides.’

  Simon barely flinched. ‘Good.’ He took a moment to process what that meant. He needed to visualise that in his head. ‘The wood never had anything to do with his crimes.’

  Claire nodded. ‘To me, it seems the wood was used out of convenience. It’s very close to the approved premises he was living in.’

  He nodded. ‘What else?’

  ‘We think the killer used a Stanley knife. That, coupled with the fact Knox’s face was cut up in a Glasgow Smile style…’

  ‘It’s like hallmarks of Knox’s crimes,’ Simon said. He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Revenge killing is the obvious motive. You got the old files?’

  ‘I’ve requested the old hard copies from your investigation.’

  Simon paused, shrugged. ‘You have all you need then.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. She gestured towards him. ‘I need your insight.’

  ‘I don’t know what I can tell you that won’t be in the case files.’

  ‘What’s your take on Knox?’

  Simon scoffed, shook his head, avoided her eyes.

  ‘No time to be modest, Si.’

  His eyes shot to hers. She’d just shortened his name. He’d never let anyone call him ‘Si’ except her. He bristled. ‘Simon’s fine.’

  Claire stared at him a moment. He didn’t want her being too familiar. She understood that. She’d tread carefully. ‘What you saw of Knox… You think he would’ve tried to resume his old habits once out?’

  ‘Without a doubt.’ He clasped his hands together tight. The memory of the man he’d caught still hurt him. ‘He was rotten inside. He got off on the pain inside those girls, physical and emotional. If he’d had a chance to rape another girl, he would’ve taken it. Knox was a sexual deviant.’

  He sat back in his chair again. He looked reflective, as if accessing a not-too-distant memory. ‘When I heard he was up for release, despite the severity of what he’d done, just ‘cos his damn mother was dying?’ he said, breaking off to stare at her. ‘I dropped my paper, headed right on over to visit all the victims to break the news to them personally before they had to get a letter telling them what was going to happen.’

  Claire’s eyes rose. ‘You’re not to blame for his release.’

  His hand rested on his chest, over his heart. ‘But I feel I didn’t do enough.’

  ‘How could you have done any more?’

  ‘Whoever deemed him fit for release needs sacking and stripping of whatever fucking certificates they have that says they can understand the mind of a monster,’ he said, venom in his voice. ‘What Knox did all of those years ago; that could easily have been one of my girls.’

  Claire lowered her eyes. Simon had been married before he met Claire and had two daughters, now aged thirty-two and thirty. Eve and Vanessa. Claire had always resented their presence when she’d married their father. She’d never made much of an effort with them because they had made it clear they would never accept anyone else in their father’s life.

  ‘How are the girls?’ Claire managed to say, instantly regretting the term. They were adults now and Claire felt on edge talking about them.

  Simon nodded. ‘Good, they’re both doing well.’ He paused. ‘I don’t see much of them, though.’ When he caught Claire silently asking the question in her head, he spoke quickly. ‘They have their own lives to lead with their families.’

  He shifted, uncomfortable.

  ‘Vanessa’s got two little girls now. Only a year apart. Two and three years.’

  Claire felt cold. ‘You’re a granddad. You must be very happy.’

  He cast her a joyless look. ‘Most of the time I am… when I see them. Eve and ‘Nessa are very busy.’

  Claire didn’t know what else to say. Simon never had had much time for his own children. She guessed that’d been the trend filtered down to his grandchildren, too.

  ‘I heard…’ He trailed off when she looked at him.

  She could guess the next words out of his mouth. She wanted to hear him say them anyway.

  ‘I heard about Peter.’

  He watched her face carefully, unsure of what her reaction might be. Her relationship with her father had always been turbulent. Reluctant as he might be to admit it, he had always felt sorry for Claire. She’d put up with a lot from her father; some of it he’d witnessed first-hand and a majority of it had been uncalled for.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said. Claire gave him a small nod. ‘I did think about contacting you when I heard, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.’

  Claire shook her head. ‘It’s fine, really.’

  ‘Despite everything that’s happened he was still my father-in-law, and…’

  ‘And, it’s fine. You don’t need to say anything.’ She made herself look away. She didn’t want him to see any weakness in her. ‘In the end there was only me, Mum and one of his carers at the funeral.’

  Simon tried to find the right words. ‘I would’ve come if you’d asked me to.’

  Her eyes shot to his. ‘Do you know how he died?’

  Simon went to speak but stopped himself. He had heard about the suicide. He knew Claire’s feelings on that subject and he knew better than to go into the details of Peter’s death.

  ‘It’s been a little over two years now,’ she said, as if reading his mind. ‘I’ve come to terms with it. The reasons he did
it in the first place… I need to move on from what happened.’

  He nodded, and folded his arms across his chest. ‘How’s Iris?’

  Claire laughed. ‘This is awkward enough for me without you trying to make small talk. You don’t care about Mum. You never did like her very much.’

  Simon allowed himself a smile. ‘I guess she was just too fiery for me.’

  Claire held his gaze, her face looking serious once again. ‘She was always very fond of you, though.’

  Simon stared at her.

  ‘I wonder what she saw in you that I couldn’t…’

  He stood up from his chair as a heavy silence hung between them.

  He coughed, clearing the lump in his throat. ‘I… I kept my own file on Knox,’ he said, steering the conversation as far away from their history as he possibly could but with no subtlety.

  He disappeared out of the living room and Claire heard him on the stairs, a few steps creaking under his weight.

  She released the breath she’d been holding and dropped her head in her hands. Her cheeks felt hot. She pushed her hair back from her face and tried to compose herself when she heard his feet on the stairs again.

  ‘Here,’ he said, coming back into the room moments later. He held a thick folder towards her. She frowned as she took it from him. ‘It was for my own personal use,’ he said, reading the expression on her face. ‘Every officer always has that one case that really gets under their skin. That much is true.’

  Claire placed the file on her lap and gingerly opened it. The first thing she saw was Raymond Knox’s mugshot, printed on A4 paper. It was clearly something Simon had printed off himself from a home computer at the time.

  Dark, soulless eyes stared back into hers.

  Experts say it’s the faces of the ordinary ones, the ones you’d least expect, who blend right into society, that turn out to be the faces of psychopaths.

  To Claire, that was mostly true but it wasn’t absolute. In Knox’s eyes it was always there. He looked every bit the monster he’d turned out to be.

  Claire flipped the page over.

  She flinched.

  The faces of Ffion, Raja and Sophie, cut up and scarred for life, were looking at her in Technicolour. Bright reds and purples, shaded with black, stood out the most. The sadness in their eyes, the most vivid signs of all – hope lost.

  She looked up at Simon.

  ‘My own personal collection,’ he said, sadness clear in his voice. As Claire turned the page over he watched her reaction.

  A selection of newspapers snippets had been pasted onto A4 paper. Claire glanced over a few of the captions. They all related to three or four violent rapes that had been reported in Haverbridge and the surrounding areas months before the time of Knox’s attacks.

  Claire’s brow furrowed. She looked up, saw Simon staring at her. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Put it this way… your suspect list is about to grow considerably.’ He took a seat beside her on the sofa this time, the closeness making her flinch a little as his knee touched hers.

  ‘Here,’ he said, pointing at the different snippets of yellowed newspaper. ‘Knox was always suspected of being responsible for more attacks than he was arrested for.’

  Claire skimmed over a few of them, brow furrowed. ‘You think Knox was responsible for these?’

  He nodded. ‘I know what you’re going to say. The MO doesn’t match.’ Claire gave him a look to signal he was right. ‘Knox escalated,’ he said, turning a few pages further into the file. ‘I don’t think someone like Knox would’ve gone straight from fantasising about all these sick crimes to raping and cutting up these girls’ faces after seeing one banned video, no matter how fucked-up he was. That’s like going from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye.’

  Claire mulled the information over in her head. Simon had a fair point.

  ‘Didn’t you pursue that angle at the time?’

  He pulled the file from her lap and rifled through it. ‘Of course I did, but we couldn’t pin anything on him. No DNA, not even trace evidence. The man who raped these girls wore a condom every time and there were no eye witnesses. Read the articles; he never spoke to them, just held a knife to their throats throughout the whole ordeal.’

  ‘Knox never used a condom,’ she said.

  ‘He knew he was leaving his DNA all over the three girls and, frankly, he didn’t care. All he cared about was the power and whatever sexual high he was getting from these attacks.’

  ‘Escalated,’ Claire said, nodding.

  ‘Yes, and that was why he was stopped before he could strike again. He left a trail of damning evidence when he got to those three.’ He thought of the cut-up faces in the pictures in front of him. ‘Little consolation to Raja, Ffion and Sophie.’ He turned a sheet of paper over and showed Claire a sketch. ‘There was one piece of information we had from these unsolved rapes, something that linked them, and it was this.’

  He saw her flinch, her eyes widening over the hand-drawn picture.

  ‘None of these girls had a good look at their attacker,’ he said, watching her reaction. He saw confusion in her eyes. ‘The rapist wore a hoodie of some sort, obscured the face. All the women saw were his eyes. Very dark, almost black. Like Knox’s.’

  He ran his fingertip over the sketch.

  ‘Why would Knox completely change his MO? He could’ve carried on, maybe never being caught. He went from careful to, what, carefree?’

  He gave a half-hearted shrug. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. He got bored, wanted to take it to the next level. There was never any doubt that what tipped him over the edge was that fake snuff movie. Before then it was like he was just testing the water, seeing how far his sick fantasies would take him. Experimenting, I guess you could say.’

  Simon paused then, eyes on the sketch.

  Two blank pits for eyes stared out of the page.

  ‘He thought he was being clever. He grew in confidence. The rapes became much more than hiding his identity, being discreet. Same as using the Stanley knife – he wanted a chance to push himself. Find that sexual high he craved.

  ‘He wanted his victims to know him. He wanted to own a part of them. Every time they close their eyes, it’s his face they see. That’s what Knox wanted, and that’s what he got. All three told me as much. Even Ffion, as the date of Knox’s trial grew closer, she told me. A man only had to look at her and she saw Knox’s eyes instead of theirs.’

  Claire looked down at the sketch again, her fingers splayed over the image, the need to touch each line running through her body.

  The drawing style itself was familiar to her somehow. The likeness to Knox’s eyes was startling.

  Her eyes cast around the room as if seeing its contents for the first time, despite the fact it had changed little since she’d walked out.

  ‘You pursued Knox as a line of enquiry with these other attacks?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘We did but we couldn’t pin down Knox being anywhere near these girls at the time of the attacks. His parents gave him an alibi – said their precious, misunderstood boy was at home playing computer games in his bedroom.’ He sniffed in contempt. ‘I never believed them, but I never did find the proof I needed. These girls were attacked in dark, isolated places, never near any CCTV, and always with many potential exit routes should he be disturbed.’

  Claire nodded, unsure what else to say. Her eyes swept the room again and came to rest on a pencil sketch of a graveyard, headstones partially lost in a sea of long grass that appeared to be swaying in the breeze.

  Claire remembered it then.

  Simon was quite the amateur artist. In his spare time he had often drawn or painted. It was part of his downtime when he did finally pull himself away from an investigation.

  She remembered that patch of the graveyard where he had drawn it. It was a relatively hidden corner in the cemetery. Claire knew there was a church just off to the side of the drawing. Had th
e angle been a little more to the left, the church would’ve been in view.

  The church where they had been married.

  Simon had taken her there just before they had exchanged vows, and insisted that he draw.

  Claire’s eyes came back to the sketch in Simon’s folder. Her eyes flicked towards his and she saw he was watching her intently, waiting to see if the penny dropped.

  ‘You drew this, didn’t you?’ she said.

  He blinked hard, then nodded.

  ‘Knox became my obsession. He still is… regretfully.’

  Claire’s mouth opened in disbelief. ‘I never heard you mention this file to me when we…’

  ‘When we were married?’ he said, amusement flashing in his eyes. ‘No, well, it wasn’t important. Things that mattered to me, never really mattered to you.’

  Claire let out a breath in frustration.

  ‘Hence there were so many things I never bothered to share with you. With good reason as it turned out.’

  The last words out of his mouth cut through her and she bit her lip in case she said something she’d later regret.

  ‘It took a lot for me to come here,’ she said at length.

  Simon stood and pulled the file from her grasp and walked towards the window that overlooked the drive. ‘I’m so honoured. Do you expect me to feel sorry for you? Glad that you came here asking me for my help, giving me a chance to relive it all again?’

  Claire didn’t speak. She wasn’t so sure what he meant; reliving Knox’s crimes or reliving their past, turbulent history.

  ‘I’m throwing you a bone here,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m grateful,’ she snapped. Her eyes were hard then, sharp as flint. ‘I hate the fact that you were SIO and that I have to ask for help… Is that what you want to hear from me?’

  He pressed his lips together, defiant, if not a little smug.

  ‘I still see what Knox did. It’s never left me,’ he said. ‘What I said about that one case that haunts an officer, long afterwards… Those attacks, those poor girls, they never did have justice.’

  Claire lowered her eyes.

 

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