Lost Souls

by Chris Merritt

  ‘No, actually it’s about Charlotte Mullins.’

  ‘Really?’ Smith stood up straight.

  ‘Yes. We were looking at the news coverage yesterday, and Kieran happened to mention that he’d worked with her.’

  ‘I see. When was this?’

  ‘About six months ago,’ replied Chalmers. ‘I didn’t know about it, otherwise I’d have contacted you earlier. I just thought I should let you know.’

  ‘OK, thanks. We’ll probably need to speak to him again. Tomorrow, if possible.’

  ‘That’s fine. Kieran should be in the office most of the day.’

  Smith ran through a few more details, then ended the call and pocketed her phone. She remembered the encounter with Kieran Meade at the Youth Rise Up charity. The small cross hanging around the young man’s neck. And his words when she’d asked him about it.

  I was saved.

  Fifty-Four

  It was already dark when Jordan Hennessey came out of the boxing gym. Shielding his eyes against the rain and squinting into the gloom, he scanned the car park in the middle of the housing estate. It didn’t take him long to pick out the dark van. The figure he could just about see in the driver’s seat confirmed this was the right vehicle. He jogged over and the passenger door popped just as he reached for it. He climbed up and in, wiping the water off his face.

  ‘You’re late,’ the man said. He wasn’t making eye contact, but Jordan could see that he had a serious look on his face, like he was properly pissed off. His jaw muscles were tight, and he was gripping the steering wheel with one gloved hand.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jordan dropped his bag into the footwell as the man started the engine.

  ‘Our friend doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

  Shit. Of course, the promoter would be expecting them. Jordan was imagining some seriously hard old bastard, like Lenny McLean. Sheepskin leather jacket and cigar. Big gold rings. Bald. Probably an ex-heavyweight. Not the sort of person you wanted to piss off.

  ‘I just…’ he faltered slightly, hoping he hadn’t ruined his chances of getting his hundred quid upfront. ‘I wanted to do an extra couple of rounds on the bag,’ he explained. ‘You know, get ready for the fight.’

  The man didn’t say anything, just sat there, seething.

  ‘We gonna be late, then?’ asked Jordan.

  ‘Not if we get moving right now.’ He sighed. ‘Here, get this down you.’ He handed Jordan a bottle of Lucozade Sport drink. Jordan noticed the guy’s hand was trembling slightly.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Jordan never turned down food or drink these days. He was often hungry, and especially now, having done a training session, he needed something. As they pulled away from the car park, he popped the plastic cap and, realising how thirsty he was, guzzled half of the drink in one go. The man took a few turnings and Jordan soon recognised that they were heading south-east from Isleworth, through St Margaret’s.

  ‘Where we going, then?’

  The guy didn’t even glance at him, just kept his eyes straight ahead. ‘Can’t say too much about it,’ he replied. ‘Like I told you before, the promoter’s taking a risk doing this. The fight’s illegal. He doesn’t want anything coming back to him.’

  ‘Yeah, course not,’ Jordan agreed. He imagined the whole thing was pretty hush-hush. ‘So, who am I fighting?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The man continued to focus on the road. ‘You’ll find out this afternoon, though.’

  ‘Sweet.’ Jordan looked sideways at the guy. He was sweating, despite it being a cold, wet day. ‘You all right?’

  This time the guy did react. His head swivelled and his eyes flicked from Jordan to the bottle and back. ‘Fine,’ he answered.

  ‘It’s just that, you know, you seem a bit… tense.’

  ‘You would be too, if you were in my shoes.’

  ‘Right.’ Jordan wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but he decided not to ask any more questions for now. He gazed out of the window, drank his Lucozade. A few minutes later, they crossed the river at Richmond Bridge. The promoter must live somewhere south.

  As they drove on through the middle of Richmond Park, Jordan started to feel himself relaxing. That was good. He’d been wired when he got in the van, so excited about meeting the promoter, confirming the fight and getting his money, that he’d been running on adrenalin for most of the day. Maybe it was the scenery that was chilling him out. Nature and that.

  At the park exit, they took a few more turns and Jordan found himself losing his bearings as he began to feel sleepy.

  ‘Where’s this guy based, then?’ He could hear his own voice slurring a bit.

  ‘He moves around,’ replied the man. ‘Keeps on his toes.’

  Jordan tried to make sense of this. But his brain was getting fuzzier and he couldn’t think straight. As they moved through an area of housing he didn’t recognise into what appeared to be woodland, two things occurred to him.

  One, the Lucozade he’d just chugged down might’ve had something in it, since he never normally felt this whacked, even after a hard training session. And two, it didn’t look as though there were any offices around here.

  They slowed, turned off the road. The bottle slipped from his hand, thudded onto the rubber mat in the footwell. His eyes began to close. He tried to fight it, to force his eyelids apart, stay awake. He managed a few seconds, but then there was nothing he could do, as though someone else was in control. His eyes closed once more, and this time, he gave in to it, and let himself drift into the darkness.

  Fifty-Five

  Lexi needed comfort. She’d just taken a long, hot shower and had wrapped herself in the thicker of her two bathrobes. Now, she was letting the hairdryer’s warmth flow over her scalp as she perched on her bed. Once she was done, she’d make a herbal tea, choose a podcast from her phone – nothing too heavy or political – and wind down for the night. All this was aimed at helping her sleep, though it was destined to fail. She knew what’d be keeping her up into the early hours.

  Her dad.

  The video call they’d done this evening had set her worrying. It was totally obvious to Lexi that her dad’s symptoms were getting worse. He had that dry cough, now, that she’d read so much about. He’d claimed that it wasn’t bothering him, but she could tell from his movements and expressions that it was. And he looked tired, too. She’d encouraged him to contact his doctor, but he’d told her he was fine. When Lexi had spoken to her mom alone, afterwards, she’d said that he wasn’t listening to her advice, either.

  When the call had ended, her frustration had tipped over into tears and Lexi had needed to talk it through with Sarah. That’d helped, as always, but unless Sarah could magically make her dad’s Covid-19 infection disappear, the relief was only temporary. And Lexi could already feel the anxiety tugging at her insides, nagging at her mind. Maybe she should take some leave from the clinic, fly over there and—

  A sound cut through the drone of her hairdryer. It was her ringtone.

  Lexi checked the phone screen: Dan. At eleven at night? He wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important, though. She switched off the hairdryer and picked up.

  ‘Hey, Dan, what’s up?’

  ‘Sorry to call so late, Lexi. Am I disturbing you?’ He was keeping his voice low.

  ‘No, it’s all good.’ Truth be told, she was grateful for the distraction. ‘What’s going on? Where are you?’

  ‘Just out,’ he replied.

  ‘On the case?’

  ‘No.’ He hesitated a second. ‘Not that case.’

  Instantly, she knew what he meant. ‘Jess?’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’

  ‘Oh my god. OK.’ Lexi remembered that he was following a new lead on his wife. A sighting, he’d said. ‘Do you need my help?’

  ‘Not on this. Cheers, though.’

  ‘Right.’ There was a brief pause and Lexi wondered if she should ask him more about Jess, but he spoke first.

  ‘How are you doing?’
he said. ‘Any update from your dad?’

  ‘Oh, he’s… I dunno, I guess he’s a little worse than before, actually.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ Dan sounded like he meant it. ‘Hope he fixes up soon.’

  ‘Me too. So, uh, did you wanna talk about the case?’

  ‘If you’ve got a minute.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He told her about releasing Eric Cooper from custody today.

  ‘Had he been in care?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. But he wouldn’t talk about it.’

  ‘So… he matched the profile.’

  ‘That bit of it, yeah.’

  ‘Come on, Dan,’ she replied. ‘He’s statistically the right age and sex. He lives in the area, and knows the churches. He spent time in care as a kid, and he’s got deep religious beliefs. Does he have some kind of private location?’

  ‘Not that we could find, other than his flat, which didn’t appear to be a murder scene. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. I mean, we’ve got some leads to follow up. Trying to find Charley’s phone, and seeing if we can identify the mystery man from the restaurant. But it’s the location I can’t get my head around.’

  Lexi lay down on her comforter, rested her head on a pillow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said, private enough to commit a murder, public enough that a kid would go there.’

  ‘Right. I was trying to see it from the victim’s perspective, too.’

  ‘So, what kind of place fits that description?’

  ‘That’s what I was trying to figure out,’ she said. ‘An apartment is kind of private, but it might be hard for the killer to control that environment if there are neighbours. Even if he’s somehow got a whole house to himself, people next door or across the street might see or hear something.’

  ‘Or smell something.’

  ‘Eww. Jeez, Dan.’

  ‘Just saying.’

  The thought of that was gross, but she knew he had a point. Dr Volz had estimated two full days between the murders and the killer placing his victims in the churches. Enough time to let the rigor mortis pass so they could be posed.

  ‘So, his home is too risky,’ Dan stated.

  ‘Agreed. Unless he lives in an isolated farmhouse or something.’ She paused. ‘But if he did, that’d make it less likely for a young adolescent to go there with him. They might get creeped out.’

  ‘Depends what he offered them. Or maybe he drove them there against their will.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she conceded. It still felt as though they weren’t getting it.

  ‘What about somewhere private, within a public place he’s got access to, then?’ suggested Dan. ‘Like a back office in a church, or a Scout hut… even a school.’

  Lexi got a spike of adrenalin. Was the school thing a reference to Tim? Or had he said it simply because the two victims had both attended Richmond Park Academy?

  ‘Possibly,’ she replied. ‘But I guess all of those locations would still be pretty public, much more difficult to clean up. And he’d have a higher chance of being disturbed. They’re just as risky as an apartment.’

  ‘So, where the hell is he taking them?’ asked Dan. ‘Where’s he doing the murders?’

  Lexi didn’t have an answer. ‘Beats me,’ she said.

  There was a moment’s silence before Dan spoke.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Good luck with your search. I hope you find… whatever you’re looking for.’

  ‘Cheers, Lexi. All right, see you—’

  ‘Wait!’ she cried.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is, uh… is Tim still a person of interest for you guys?’

  ‘Lexi…’

  ‘I just wanna know.’

  She heard Dan take a breath. ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’

  He rang off and she looked at the phone for a second before tossing it on the bed next to her. Then she realised: she’d still not told him about finding out that Tim had been in care. That her own boyfriend fitted a major part of the child killer profile she’d written. Should she call him back, tell him right now? She grabbed the phone again and clicked into the call screen, her thumb hovering over the dial icon.

  But Dan had literally just said he had to go, so she should probably call him later. Maybe tomorrow. Besides, when she looked at it more rationally, she knew there was almost no chance that Tim was connected to this. Lexi shut the phone off and lay there, holding on to it.

  Almost no chance.

  Fifty-Six

  Lockhart ended the call with Green and switched his phone to silent. It was always useful talking a case through with her. She saw things that he didn’t – that no one in his team did – and he reminded himself that she’d been right before. The issue wasn’t his trust in her profile. It was what to do with it. They couldn’t go around asking every bloke in south-west London between twenty and sixty if he’d been in care and believed in an afterlife. They had to focus on the actionable, practical elements of it.

  Top of that list was the fact that this perpetrator had some way of identifying kids in care, perhaps via Social Services records, or schools. The latter possibility reminded Lockhart of Green’s boyfriend, Tim McKay. He’d just told her that McKay wasn’t a person of interest, but that wasn’t strictly true. As they tried to formulate a new suspect strategy, all options had to be on the table. And that certainly included McKay. But he couldn’t tell her that.

  If McKay was to remain in the picture on their suspect strategy, however, it meant biting the bullet and finally informing Burrows that the teacher was in a relationship with their consulting psychologist. Lockhart had held that back from his boss for long enough, and keeping it secret much longer might actually damage their investigation down the line. Burrows would go ballistic, but that was better than a trial collapsing, should it ever come to that…

  Right now, though, it was time to focus on something else. The release of Eric Cooper might’ve represented a failure of sorts, but at least it had given Lockhart the chance for an earlier finish tonight – nine p.m. instead of midnight – while they reoriented Op Paxford. There was no question what he planned to do with those few spare hours. He’d dropped into his flat in Hammersmith, picked up a few bits of kit, and headed straight over to Nick’s warehouse near Erith.

  This was Lockhart’s first opportunity to get back here after observing the fishermen from Whitstable loading up and driving away. He still needed to head down to the port and check out the fishing business, J. Tharpe and Sons, but first he wanted to look inside the warehouse. The comings and goings he’d seen at Darent Industrial Park had all been in the early hours, so Lockhart reckoned that now, at eleven p.m., he’d probably be OK.

  He’d recced the security features on the building as best he could, with a couple of walks past and observation through his night vision monocular. From what he’d seen, there didn’t appear to be any cameras, but Nick had installed locks and an alarm. Lockhart knew that breaking in was risky. Worst-case scenario was that he found nothing and got caught, spooking Nick and pushing anything dodgy he was up to further underground. But Lockhart had been trained in covert entry during his time in the army, and he reckoned he could still get in undetected. Especially with the kit he’d brought with him.

  Nick had chosen a wireless alarm system, presumably so he could be alerted to any unexpected entry to his warehouse. Lockhart guessed a message would be sent to Nick’s phone. He understood, though, that a wireless system was only as good as its ability to transmit. During his previous visit here, Lockhart had recorded the alarm make and model and looked up the technical specs online. Then he’d got hold of a remote that emitted the same frequency.

  Lockhart climbed the outer fence to bypass the keycode lock, then activated the remote as he approached the warehouse. He could now trigger the alarm sensors without them being able to transmit the intrusion to their base. At least, that was the theory. He walked directly underneath an
infrared unit and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  So far, so good.

  Next, he needed to get into the building itself. He’d seen Nick locking a side shutter, and thought this was his best bet. He took out his set of picks and, in less than a minute, he’d sprung the cylinder lock. He took a final glance to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then lifted the shutter and entered, leaving the remote outside to continue jamming the transmitter.

  The interior was dark, and Lockhart needed to use his Petzl head torch to find his way. He saw a bank of lockers on one side, a desk with a few papers and some stationery, and several rows of storage racks with crates and containers resting on heavy-duty metal shelving. He knew he had to be in and out quickly, but he wasn’t sure where to begin.

  He decided to start by scanning the desk. There were invoices, bills of lading, accounts. Lockhart used the camera and flash on his phone to record as much as he could without disturbing the arrangement of paperwork. He’d run through it later when he was back home. He shouldn’t hang about here, though.

  Just as he was turning, his torch beam flashed across something on the wall that caught the light.

  A set of photographs.

  There were about a dozen images, stuck directly onto the plasterboard. Most were of Nick with various other guys. Holding pints of beer in a pub, watching a football match, out in the woods with shotguns. But one image got his attention because of the other person in it.

  Jess.

  It looked like a selfie, taken by Nick, with the two of them side by side. Brother and sister. Lockhart was lost for a moment, thinking about her. He hadn’t seen this image before; Jess hadn’t showed it to him. Maybe because she knew that he and Nick didn’t much like each other. Or maybe she never had a copy of it. Instinctively, Lockhart leant in and took a close-up photo of it. He stared at it a little longer, felt that sense of yearning for her. He knew he could let that feeling grow and take over, as it often did… but he had to keep moving. There was work to do.