by Max Manning
He estimated he had about a minute before Ince arrived. He ran back into the bedroom and pressed his face against the window pane. A sheer drop. No drainpipe to cling to. No way to clamber on to the roof. He heard the rattle of a key turning a lock. A single bead of sweat trickled down the left side of his face. He needed a weapon. Something heavy he could use to knock Ince out. Burglaries and violent crime were pretty common in Dagenham.
Blake left the bedroom and ducked into the bathroom, hoping to find a window that offered an escape route. There was no window, just a toilet, a grimy bath and a sink. He heard footsteps on the stairs and shut the bathroom door. I’ve really screwed up this time, he told himself. He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes resting on what looked like a loft hatch.
No time to think. Blake clambered on to the edge of the bath, stepped on to the sink, pushed the loft panel up and hauled himself into the roof space. He quickly slid the access panel back into place and rolled on top of it.
He could hear himself panting like a marathon runner. He tried to hold his breath, but after a second or two gasped for air. The sound of footsteps grew closer. People like to talk about two kinds of luck. Good luck and bad luck. Blake didn’t believe in either of them, but lying face down in a policeman’s loft he was willing to accept some of the good stuff if it came along.
53
Blake breathed in slowly, the air heavy with the sweet, sickly smell of decay. He let his vision adapt to the blackness before lifting his head to look around.
Thick cobwebs hung from the rafters like strips of dirty lace, and a small water tank stood flush against a flimsy-looking wall separating Ince’s roof space from the neighbouring flat’s loft. Blake shifted his weight to one side to relieve the pressure on his chest. His torso was spread across the access panel, his legs splayed slightly apart and resting on wooden joists. He strained his neck to keep his face a few inches above a thick clump of insulation.
He froze at the sound of the bathroom door opening and choked back a sudden urge to cough. The stiffening muscles in his legs and lower back cried out for relief, and he willed himself to keep still. Blake held his breath and listened. After a few seconds, he heard a trickling and splashing. The sound of a tap running was followed by the bang of a door slamming shut.
Blake released the air from his lungs as slowly and quietly as he could. He put his hands on either side of the hatch, pushed himself up on to his knees and stretched his back. He thought he heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs, but he was reluctant to believe it. Maybe there was such a thing as good luck after all.
After five minutes he stood up, crouching to avoid being draped in cobwebs. It occurred to Blake that the loft would be a pretty good hiding place. Positioning his feet carefully on the joists, he pulled up the insulation, one strip at a time. It wasn’t until he lifted the final strip that he found something. The corpse of a mouse, its skull crushed in a trap baited with a bit of chocolate biscuit. Blake edged towards the water tank. He stuck his hand in the narrow gap between the tank and the party wall, half expecting a mousetrap to snap his fingers. Nothing there. He could see the plasterboard wall had a long crack running from the joists to the roof.
Stepping back to the hatch, he squatted and slid the panel slowly to one side. He’d found nothing to incriminate Ince, but had managed to avoid what at one point looked like almost certain discovery. Still, it’d be a good idea to keep this little escapade to myself, he thought. What Fenton doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
He gripped the edge of the hatch, lowered himself slowly, and pulled the panel back to allow it to fall into place as he dropped to the floor. He flexed his knees on touchdown, to keep the noise to a minimum, stood up, arched his back and stretched.
In the short moment between dropping and landing, he’d had one single thought in his head. Get out of the flat as quickly as possible. But something held him back. He had a strange feeling he’d seen something important. Something that had gone astray on the journey from eyes to brain.
Blake replayed his search of the loft, but drew a blank. Dropping back down into his landing position, he took a look around, his eyes level with the rim of the bath. The toilet needed cleaning badly, inside and out. The waste pipe under the sink had sprung a slow leak where it curved back to the wall. The wicker bin in the corner was full of scrunched up tissues and toilet paper tubes, the vinyl flooring at the tap end of the bath badly scratched.
Blake prodded the plastic bath panel with his fingers. It flexed. Kneeling down, he pushed the top of the panel with his right hand, worked a finger into the gap that appeared at the bottom, and yanked hard. There was a screech as the edge scored the flooring. Blake pulled again and the panel slid out. Tucked between the bottom of the bath and the floorboards, wedged beneath the plughole pipe, lay a mobile phone. Behind it, pushed closer to the wall, something more sinister glinted in the darkness. He fought back an inexplicable urge to reach in and grab it. Instead, he pushed the bath panel back into place, making sure it didn’t split or buckle.
Outside, as Blake walked towards the main street, he pulled the crumpled photograph from his pocket, tore it into pieces and dropped them into a litter bin. The rubber gloves followed. He took out his phone, dialled and clamped it to his ear.
Fenton answered immediately. ‘It’s late,’ he said.
‘We’ve hit the jackpot.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve got him.’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
54
The weak have a fascination with the strong. The powerless have a fascination with the powerful. My followers are demanding more. They hunger to learn, to gorge on my infamy.
What would the delectable Belinda Vale make of the real story I wonder? She has no idea. She got the absent-father thing right. Good guess. The four-year-old me walked into the bedroom and found the bedsheets dripping blood. I found out later that the public gallery was packed at Mother’s trial. Female killers are a rare breed. The court ordered psychiatric reports, but whether Mother was sane or not, it didn’t matter in the end. They sent me some of her belongings, including family photographs, jewellery and a leather-bound prayer book. I don’t remember ever seeing her pray.
My foster carers put them in an old shoebox, a memory box they called it, and let me keep it under my bed. I flushed the contents of the box down the toilet. Everything except for a newspaper cutting I found tucked in the prayer book.
Giving Fenton another fright was a masterstroke. It amused me no end. The calibre of these senior police officers is depressingly poor. I enjoyed the trip to the cemetery. I hadn’t planned to send her back unharmed. A graveyard would have been a great place to leave a body. But the girl and I have something in common.
What feeds the public’s appetite for blood and gore? The answer came to me this morning in bed. The instant I opened my eyes it hit me, like a shaft of sunlight slicing through the clouds.
They want to be me. They want to do the things I can do, but know they are incapable. They admire my strength, my brains, my ability to plan, hunt and take life as casually as snuffing out a candle.
55
‘We’ve got the bastard,’ Norman Tobin said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Caved in and started blubbing like a baby as soon as we pulled him.’
Belinda Vale raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. She’d been fast asleep when she’d got the call and uncertain whether she was awake, or dreaming, when they told her about the arrest. She took a shower, but skipped breakfast before leaving for Westminster. As the investigation’s psychological profiler, she would be needed to offer guidance on the best approach to take during the long hours of interviewing ahead.
The identity of the killer had been a shock. She’d spent the twenty-minute drive trying to reconcile her knowledge of the man with the crimes he’d committed. ‘Detective Constable Ince has admitted the murders?’ she asked. ‘He says he’s the killer? I, Killer?’
Tobin stopped rubbing his hands and laid them flat on the desk. ‘He hasn’t actually said that, but he’s coughed to a lot of other stuff, crumbled like a soggy biscuit. He knows what we found in his flat. The evidence is damning and he knows there’s nowhere for him to go. Detective Sergeant Daly has been leading the initial questioning, but she’s going to need suggestions from you about the best way to coax the important stuff out of him.’
‘What exactly has he admitted?’ Vale asked.
‘Illegal use of the Yard’s computer database, accessing the private details of fellow officers, and witnesses. It also seems that when off duty he’s been carrying out private surveillance on various subjects. Following them around, sitting outside their homes, making detailed notes about their movements. He had photos of all three victims and had cut out newspaper articles about the murders.’
Vale had met Ince once, in the station canteen, and that encounter had been brief. As far as she could recall, he didn’t fit her profile of the killer. Her first impression had been that he was a small-minded, not particularly imposing young man. Sometime down the line she was going to have to put her hand up and admit she’d got it wrong.
‘Who are these people he’s been watching?’
Tobin shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Well, in addition to the victims, he had a photograph of you pinned to his wardrobe door.’
‘A picture of me?’ Vale was wide awake now.
Tobin nodded. ‘It seems he’s been watching you for a while. Our computer guys say it looks like he illegally dipped into your personal file on two occasions, and later accessed DCI Fenton’s details a couple of days before killing Marta Blagar.’
‘Ince was stalking me?’
‘He says it’s all innocent. That he just likes observing people. It gives him a thrill. He claims he’s tried to stop, but it’s an addiction.’
Vale nodded. A classic voyeur, she thought. In layman’s terms, Ince was a Peeping Tom. Although she knew of a few cases where voyeuristic behaviour had escalated to violent assaults, it was unusual. On the other hand, the collage of photographs and newspaper cuttings matched the obsessive nature of organised serial killers.
‘What have you got that links him to the murders? Any trace of the I, Killer posts on his computer?’
‘We’ve got everything we need,’ Tobin said. He had a self-satisfied grin on his face that made Vale want to slap him. ‘When our officers searched his flat they also found a knife, which I’m confident will turn out to be the murder weapon, and a mobile telephone. In the phone’s album we found photographs, and even some video footage, of two of the victims, Edward Deere and Marta Blagar. They were the photographs that were posted on the internet. He’d stashed them behind the bath panel. The knife is being tested, but I’ve no doubt we’re going to find blood and DNA that we can match to the victims.’
Vale wondered if Ince had targeted her because she was the profiler on the case. It made sense. She was happy that he was safely behind bars, but disappointed that her profile had been so far off the mark.
There was still a chance that checks into Ince’s childhood would throw up one or two match-ups with predictions she’d made, but if she was going to have a chance of rescuing her reputation she’d have to come up with a successful strategy for the interrogation. Before she could think about the direction the questioning should take there were a few things she needed to know.
‘You say Ince is denying any involvement in the murders?’
‘He can deny it all he wants,’ Tobin said, still smirking. ‘The knife and the phone are going to convict him. He knows that. He’s confessed to all the other stuff. Misuse of the database and stalking. In fact, we can’t stop him spilling his guts about stuff he’s done before and since joining the force. I think it’s a pathetic attempt to muddy the waters. By admitting some stuff he’s trying to convince us that he’s being honest. I’ve seen it all before.’
‘What led you to Ince? I understand there was no forensic evidence to go on.’
Tobin’s smirk stiffened. ‘We acted on a tip-off, but we would have got there anyway. The investigation started to gather momentum from the moment I took over. We were closing in. It was only a matter of time.’
Vale raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t convinced. ‘Who tipped you off?’
‘Someone who called the murder inquiry helpline. He wouldn’t give his name even though our operator assured him it would never be made public if he didn’t want it to be. In any event, we’ve got the bastard. We’ve done our job. He’s going to be convicted, locked up and never let out.’
Vale allowed herself a smile. The fact that Ince was arrested as a result of an anonymous tip-off would be conveniently buried. The Yard was going to have a lot explaining to do once the arrest was made public. The media would pounce like sharks in a feeding frenzy on the revelation that the killer was one of the Yard’s own. It would be an even bigger disaster if the murder team was unable to claim credit for his capture.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. Without waiting for an invitation, Ray Partington walked in.
‘Sorry, boss,’ he said. ‘But the papers have heard we’ve pulled someone for the murders and all hell is breaking loose. We’re going to need to give them something soon. If they come up with Ince’s name before we give it out, we open ourselves up to all sorts of accusations.’
Tobin raised a placatory hand. ‘Take it easy, Ray,’ he said. ‘Slow down. Prepare a news release, you know, the usual stuff about someone being questioned. Throw them a bone to keep them at bay, but no names yet.’
Partington gave Vale a look that left her in no doubt that he considered the detective chief inspector a halfwit. She acknowledged him with an almost imperceptible nod.
‘I take it you two already know each other,’ Tobin said.
‘Belinda had a starring role in one of my press conferences. Her profiling knowledge made quite an impression.’
Partington refocused his attention on Tobin. ‘I’ve already prepared an initial release along the lines you’ve just suggested, but I’m here to stress that we’re going to have to be more expansive pretty soon. This is one hell of a story, and the more accommodating we are to the press, the more we give them to work with, the more likely they are to go easy on you.’
Tobin frowned. ‘What do you mean me? Why would they single me out? I was brought in to sort this inquiry out, and under my command we’ve caught the bastard.’
Partington caught Vale’s eye. ‘When I said you, what I meant was us. What worries me is that if the media are starved of juicy details about Ince they could focus on the performance of the investigating officers. They are likely, excuse the unfortunate phrase, to want heads to roll.’
Tobin’s face reddened. Vale could see a vein pulsating across his left temple. ‘Thank you for the advice,’ he said, sounding the opposite of thankful. ‘As always it’s valued. Send out the initial press release as discussed. We’ll talk about how to follow that up tomorrow morning. I am sure that, as always, you’ll use your expertise to protect the reputation of the force and its officers. Please close the door on your way out.’
The curtness of the dismissal didn’t seem to bother the press officer. He nodded at Vale before striding off. The vein on Tobin’s left temple had stopped throbbing, but his face was still flushed. Vale had no medical training, but she was pretty sure Tobin needed to get his blood pressure checked.
Reverting to a strategy she used to calm agitated clients, she lowered her voice a notch and spoke slowly. ‘I appreciate you’ve a lot to deal with, but I want to get started on working out the best way to get Ince to open up about the killings. If he’s being interviewed now, I’d like to drop into the observation room and take a look.’
Tobin checked his watch. ‘I think they’ll be taking a break soon and resuming in about half an hour. You can start then. The man’s broken. He’s a babbling wreck, but he’s not speaking about the murders. We’ve got enough evidenc
e to convict, but I’d rather not have to go to trial on this. It’d be a bloody circus.’
Vale took a moment to think. A confession would mean the police wouldn’t have defence lawyers picking over their investigation, exposing every mistake, highlighting failures and demanding a detailed explanation of the evidence trail that led them to Ince. She was surprised that the detective constable was resisting admitting guilt. Once caught, organised serial killers usually relish talking about their crimes.
‘It’s likely that he needs a bit of time to accept that there’s no way out for him,’ she said. ‘The chances are that when that happens you won’t be able to stop him boasting about how clever he’s been.’
Tobin laughed nervously. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. He stood up and checked his watch again. ‘We’ve got time to pick up a coffee on the way.’
By the time they reached the observation room, the interrogation had already restarted. Vale sat close to the viewing window, choosing an angle that gave her the best view of Ince’s face. His eyes were red and swollen, his complexion ashen. Detective Sergeant Daly stood in front of him, her hands on her hips. ‘I’ve told you everything,’ Ince said, thumping his right fist hard on the table. ‘I admit it all. What more do you want?’
Daly paused and looked across the room at her new partner, a straw-haired, pot-bellied detective standing with his back to the wall.
‘Let’s start with Lauren Bishop,’ she said. ‘Why her? Did you try it on? Did she knock you back? Laugh at you? I bet that pissed you off.’
‘This is crazy,’ Ince said. He slid his hands out and gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. ‘You really think I killed her?’
‘You were on the spot pretty quickly. Secured the area. Made sure the murder scene wasn’t contaminated. Handy that, if you want to make sure it’s clean, evidence-free.’