Clive frowned and his pale-green eyes narrowed as he looked back at the bin. ‘Not really any of our business though, is it?’ he said, as he stepped around her and headed up the path towards Helena’s house. ‘So long as she keeps to herself.’
Sylvie scoffed. ‘Got a sickness, that one.’ She watched Clive swat several flies away from his face as he gripped the handle of the bin. He gave it a pull but it was heavy, so he used his foot to manoeuvre the bin and tilt it towards him so he could roll it down the path.
‘Just leave it!’ she said, as he struggled with its weight, bringing the angry buzzing of flies with him. Sylvie swiped at a few as they circled her head. ‘Jesus…’ she hissed as a fly dived around her ear.
‘What’s she got in here anyway?’ Clive said, out of breath. He stood back from the bin beside the drop curb by the roadside. ‘It stinks.’
‘Rotting grass, I should imagine.’ Sylvie took several steps back. ‘The other week was the first time she mowed the lawn since Lord knows when.’
A gust of wind whipped down the street, shaking the leaves in the trees across the road from them, and Clive put his hand to his nose.
The putrid smell was overwhelming now and Clive felt a wave of nausea hit him like a kick to the stomach.
‘I think I’m going to be sick…’ Sylvie said, stepping back. Her eyes widened with horror as Clive’s hand grabbed the lip of the bin lid. ‘Christ, don’t open it!’
As he swung the lid back on its hinges a dark shape emerged, almost in unison – one writhing mass of angry, buzzing, shiny-coloured insects.
The carrion flies seemed to explode from within and filled the immediate space around them both as they shrank back.
As the density of the flies subdued, Clive edged closer, the collar of his jumper now pulled up to cover his mouth and nose. He squinted as flies flew around his eyes, angry at being disturbed.
Clive could smell the rot inside, and the sickly, fetid taste of copper in the air was almost tangible.
He risked a look over the rim.
His eyes widened.
In among the dull, green-brown hue of cut grass and rosebush cuttings he saw red.
A flaky, bloodied smile, a deep gash torn through flesh, and a half-empty eye socket that seemed to move, come alive.
He realised it was crawling with maggots.
As Sylvie edged closer to him, he shoved her aside, lurched forward and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the pavement.
CHAPTER 28
When Claire and Stefan arrived at Helena Daniels’ house the whole street had been cordoned off, with a sea of faces watching eagerly from behind the police tape.
Some looked shocked as news filtered through about the body hidden in the bin. Some filmed everything on their mobile phones, getting a morbid kick out of the death of one of the community, and some, like Sylvie and Clive, were sitting in their homes being questioned by officers.
A large, white incident tent had been erected around the entrance to Helena Daniels’ house, obscuring the drive, right the way up to the front door. Once Claire and Stefan were suited in protective overalls, gloves and face mask, with hoods pulled up over their hair, they ventured inside.
Inside the tent was eerily silent, except for the sound of their overshoes rustling with each careful step.
The body had yet to be removed from the large wheelie bin, and Claire and Stefan approached, careful not to disturb anything.
‘Thought you needed to see the body still in situ,’ said Danika from behind her facial mask as Claire approached and lowered her gaze to see inside the bin.
A tangled mass of dirty, blood-soaked hair came into view, framing a ruined face that had once not been unattractive. Several flies still buzzed around her face, drawn by the smell of blood.
Claire edged a little closer. Helena had been dumped fully clothed on top of garden waste, her legs bent awkwardly to allow her body to fit inside the bin. Her fingers were set like talons, nails cracked, blood crusted underneath.
One eye still crawled with maggots and fluid had oozed from the nostrils, but it wasn’t this that made Claire swallow hard, her stomach in knots.
Helena’s face had been cut – another Glasgow Smile – and a deep laceration carved diagonally through the middle of her face.
Marking her as victim number one.
‘Hate being right sometimes,’ Stefan said, his voice low, muffled behind his mask.
Claire blinked hard. ‘What do we know so far?’ she said, eyes now trained on Danika.
‘She’s been bound. There’s bruising to the wrists consistent with being restrained, like Tilly. Until we get her out I can’t really tell you much more than that, but if we’re looking at loss of blood as cause of death, then she was dead before she was left inside the bin. There’s simply not enough blood here.’
‘She can’t have been killed inside the house either,’ said Principle SOCO Jason Meadows, who was observing from one corner of the incident tent. He came forward when all three looked in his direction.
‘There are no signs of a struggle inside and no visible traces of blood,’ he said. ‘Of course we’ll do further tests – someone might have tried to clean up, but Helena was almost certainly killed elsewhere and then brought back here.’
Claire nodded. ‘And that means the killer would’ve had to have transported her here by vehicle. The killer has a specific MO as regards the method in which the victim is killed, but each time the bodies have been left to be found under different circumstances.’
‘What does that say about the killer?’ Stefan said.
‘Indecisive?’ Claire ventured. ‘At odds with themselves, maybe? Maybe they have the compulsion to kill, it’s all they can see, all they are driven by. When it’s done, the act itself, they then feel lost, or something close to that?’
‘I’d say it’s unusual,’ Jason said. ‘A premeditated murder – the killer usually has a plan of what they’ll do with the body.’
‘Maybe it is planned,’ Stefan said. ‘Keep us guessing as to when and where a victim will turn up? We assumed Knox would be the first and only victim – a one-off, because he was who he was.’
‘We’re working under the assumption that Helena was in fact the first victim in a chain,’ Claire said. ‘Tilly was victim number two – not the third if we discount Knox in the killer’s eyes – hence the two slash marks across her face. Helena has one, so in theory, by the killer’s logic, she’s first in a new chain?’
Stefan frowned. ‘So, what? Knox was the end of something else in some respects?’
‘Maybe.’
‘These new victims are a new… symbol?’
Claire pulled her mask down and under her chin as she stared down at Helena’s body. ‘Maybe it’s a new cycle? The chapter of the Dahlia Rapist himself is at an end. Knox is gone. Now we move on to something new, yet with a similar message?’
‘Nah,’ Stefan said. ‘Knox did what he did because he just wanted to do it, to show these girls that they belonged to him. That they may not be with him in a physical sense but he would always be in their thoughts when they looked in the mirror… It’s the same method of dispatch, though. The Glasgow Smile. Nothing exactly new there.’
‘These killings are linked to Knox, the infamy of it all – but the message is different,’ Claire said.
Stefan rubbed his forehead. ‘What message?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t work it out yet. There must be a link between them both.’
Claire looked around, and her attention went back to Jason. ‘Who found her?’
‘Her neighbours. Clive Marshall and Sylvie Broadbent.’
‘I need to speak with them.’
He nodded. ‘Inside their respective homes giving statements,’ he said. ‘You might want to look inside Daniels’ house first, though.’
CHAPTER 29
Helena Daniels lived alone. At thirty-eight that wasn’t unusual, considering she’d
never been married or had children. She had a steady job, working in a bank, and she rented her house. Nothing extraordinary in any of that.
That’s where the normality ended.
Claire stood in Helena Daniels’ bedroom.
She found herself staring into the cold eyes of Raymond Knox; his pictures, mainly from newspaper articles, adorned the walls.
Love hearts had been drawn, in what looked like pink lipstick, around various images of the monster.
Stefan went to speak, but stuttered. ‘It’s… It’s almost…’
‘Almost childlike,’ Claire said, taking everything in. ‘An obsession.’ Her eyes came to rest on a laptop on the dressing table.
‘Got no power,’ Jason said, following her line of vision.
‘We need to see if she had any association with Tilly.’
All three looked around the room again.
‘It’s creepy,’ Stefan said. ‘Imagine going to sleep with all this crap on the wall.’
Claire shuddered. ‘I rather guess that was the point. Helena wanted to be with him, actually saw herself with him by all accounts.’
Jason shook his head. ‘What possible attraction can Knox have for anyone?’
‘Sylvie Broadbent’s next door?’ Claire asked him.
‘Yes, and from what I’ve heard her say, the street was no stranger to Helena’s obsession with Knox.’
CHAPTER 30
‘It isolated her.’
Claire sat opposite Sylvie Broadbent, eyes ever watchful.
‘No one in the street wanted anything to do with her,’ Sylvie said. ‘Dirty, it is. Was.’ She sniffed in contempt. ‘Filthy, the things she fantasised about with that man. That rapist. I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but… well, you can imagine what we’ve all been saying around here.’
Sylvie was finally starting to relax, the shock of what she’d seen beginning to ease a little. She’d been given a few cups of very sweet tea, and by the time Claire had sat down with her, she was not far from being back to her usual haughty self.
‘How well did you know Helena?’ Claire said, as Sylvie sniffed into her drink. Claire glanced at hers, untouched, long gone cold.
‘How well does one know anyone?’ she said between sips. Her eyes rose to meet Claire’s.
Claire just stared at her, taking in her faded, dyed, red hair, at the liver spots on the woman’s hands, at the pale eyes that didn’t hide their disgust for the deceased.
‘What I mean is,’ Claire said, ‘how well did Helena know you? You say she told you her feelings towards Knox?’
Sylvie nodded.
‘She thought she knew you well enough, then?’
‘I wasn’t her friend, Chief Inspector, far from it. When she found out he had been murdered, she shut herself away, like a widow in mourning.’ She tutted, shook her head. ‘I thought she’d just given up with life. She was inconsolable over that thing.’
A uniformed officer, who stood off to the side of Sylvie, leaning against the kitchen counter, glanced at Claire, who gave a subtle nod of her head, silently dismissing her.
‘Are you familiar with any personal problems Helena might have had?’ Claire said.
Sylvie glanced at her, but when she didn’t add anything further, Claire edged forward in her seat. ‘Did she have trouble at work, or any financial worries?’
‘Nothing of the sort.’
‘You’re so sure?’
‘Helena told everyone her business.’
‘Any boyfriends that you knew about?’
Sylvie almost spat out her tea. ‘Who’d have her? No, no, she put everyone off her.’ She seemed to soften all of a sudden, as if the enormity of what had happened to her neighbour had just sunk in.
‘Her mouth…’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget what she looked like. Helena was a lot of things, but she didn’t deserve that.’
‘Did she have any enemies, or receive any threats that you know of?’
Sylvie shook her head. ‘No. I mean, if she did, she kept it to herself, but she lived her life on the internet anyway. Everything she did went online. She was shameless in her support of Raymond Knox. Thought she was going to marry him and such nonsense.’
‘On the internet? You mean she was on social media a lot?’
‘Mmm,’ she said, sipping more tea. ‘My grandchildren are all on various sites. I can’t keep up with them all, but they would tell me, nanny’s crazy neighbour was at it again. They’d tell me about things she posted.’
‘In support of Knox?’
‘Yes.’ Sylvie pursed her lips. ‘I suppose we should’ve felt sorry for her.’
Claire wondered just how damaged a person you’d have to be to even contemplate supporting someone like Raymond Knox. She just didn’t understand it.
She made a mental note that Helena’s social media accounts were a top priority.
‘Can you tell me when you last saw Helena?’
Sylvie nodded. ‘She was mowing her lawn the other week.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘It was on the twelfth, around midday.’ She paused, and as Claire studied her face, she noticed the woman’s skin now looked completely drained of colour. ‘That dreadful stink in her bin,’ she said. ‘I thought nothing of it.’
Claire’s eyes narrowed a little, waiting the old woman out.
‘She’d let the garden slip. It was like a jungle, really overgrown.’ She paused and Claire saw tears begin to well in Sylvie’s eyes for the first time since she’d seen Helena’s body.
‘The flies, the smell,’ she continued. ‘I thought it was because of all the garden waste. I thought the dozy woman had missed a collection.’
Claire referred to her notes. ‘You said the bin had been outside the house since the thirteenth?’
Sylvie nodded. ‘It had been left outside the back gate.’
‘And you didn’t see who left it there?’
‘No,’ she said, voice flat. ‘But I heard it, though.’
Claire’s eyes shot towards her. ‘What do you mean, you heard it?’
‘I’d fallen asleep in front of the telly. I woke up, looked at my clock and it was just after 2 am. I heard someone moving a bin, then whoever it was left.’
‘You saw someone?’
‘Sort of. I heard the footsteps going down the path. I assumed it was maybe someone she’d met on the internet. You know, another like her?’ Sylvie looked bitter. ‘I guess I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but…’
‘You didn’t think that 2 am was an odd time to put the recycling bin out?’
Sylvie nodded. ‘I did, and I looked out of the window, just a small gap in the curtains, in case I was seen.’
She paused, and Claire silently willed her on.
‘What did you see?’ Claire said, when nothing else was forthcoming.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I saw the back – well, side – view of someone walking to the end of the path and heading in the opposite direction to the house. Too dark to see if they were someone I knew.’
‘What were they wearing? Any idea of height, age, ethnicity? Anything at all?’
‘They were wearing dark clothes, baggy, had a hood up, so I couldn’t see much. My porch light only gives the bare minimum of light down my path; not much can be seen other than in the immediate few feet or so.’
Claire made a note of the details.
‘What about visitors? Did Helena have any regular visitors?’
Sylvie shook her head and blew her nose. ‘No, never.’
‘Helena’s parents are both dead, I understand? A car accident six years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘But she had an aunt?’
‘Yes, but they were estranged. What very little family she does have want nothing to do with her. She told me as much. Told me it was due to Knox, how they’d never accept him.’ Sylvie shook her head in disbelief. ‘She was
convinced they’d be together one day.’
Sylvie looked out of the window again, as if it helped her visualise the past, the images of moving pictures scrolling past her outside the window.
‘Maybe one visitor,’ she said.
Claire sat forward in her seat. ‘What is it? You remember something?’
‘I don’t know, really. It was rather odd.’
‘Odd, why?
‘Well, there was someone I saw go up the path once, in recent weeks, had a hood up, pulled down low, like those silly boys that hang around the local shops at all hours,’ she said.
‘When was this? Can you be more specific?’
Sylvie shook her head. ‘I do have a life outside of these four walls,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t sit here all day staring out the window… I’m sorry, I can’t remember. It was probably nothing. Maybe the paperboy. He dresses like that sometimes…’
She went back to drinking her tea and a single tear rolled over her cheek.
*
‘Clive Marshall’s statement pretty much echoes Sylvie’s,’ Stefan said, as Claire drove them back to the station. ‘He was a little less judgemental, though, about Helena. He thinks she needed help, not ostracising.’
Overhead the clouds had gathered again, and the wind had picked up. On and off it began to spit with rain, but it didn’t cool the mugginess of the day.
Claire glanced at Stefan, then looked away when he caught her.
‘Something wrong?’
‘It’s probably just me overthinking everything.’
‘Let’s have it anyway.’
‘The three original victims of Knox,’ she said. ‘The men in the families…’
‘I know what you’re going to say.’ She looked at him. ‘They don’t own any walking shoes, you know that.’
‘None that they have admitted to.’
He stared at her. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Say that any one of the males close to the original three victims is involved for some unknown reason – they all have alibis for when Knox was killed – I can see why any one of them would want Knox dead. But why Helena? Why Tilly?’ He sat forward in the passenger seat. ‘So far as we know at this stage, Tilly and Helena had no connection to any of Knox’s victims and their families.’
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