Lost Souls

by Chris Merritt

  It’d be impossible to check inside all the containers and boxes, though; he’d be here till dawn, by which time he’d most probably have some company. He needed to prioritise. He took another pass of the storage racks, more slowly this time. And that was when he saw them.

  To the rear of a shelf sat three thick, plastic trunks. Lockhart recognised the SuperBox Gorilla from the military; a solid favourite for transporting kit. And these ones were padlocked. He took out his picks and quickly worked at one of the locks. It popped open and he slipped it off.

  Then he heard the sound.

  An engine. And it was right outside.

  Lockhart kept still, listening. Wondering if it was Nick. If he could make it to the side shutter he’d entered through and get out before the main doors opened. And, if he couldn’t, whether he’d have to fight his way out.

  He held his breath, straining to listen for any clue as to what was happening. A voice, a movement, an indication that the outer gates were opening. But there was nothing except the hum of a large vehicle.

  Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the engine pitch rose with acceleration and faded in volume. It was driving away. Had a delivery driver just taken the wrong road in the industrial park, got lost and stopped to check the map?

  Whoever it was, Lockhart wasn’t taking any more chances. For all he knew, someone could’ve been dropped off by the vehicle and be making their way in now. He had to get out, soon as. But first, he needed to see what was inside these boxes.

  Carefully, he lifted the lid. Angling the head torch beam down, he removed a layer of foam packing from the top. His breath caught as he peered inside. It didn’t take him long to recognise the contents. He lifted one of the clear plastic bags and saw more of the same stuff underneath.

  Lockhart hadn’t worked in narcotics, but he was pretty confident he was looking at MDMA pills, better known as ecstasy.

  Thousands of them.

  Friday

  15th January

  Fifty-Seven

  As the rain hammered down on the roof, he looked at the corpse laid out in front of him and felt a mixture of pity and relief. Pity, because it looked as if Jordan Hennessey – the boy too tough to ever seek affection – wanted a hug. As if he was finally reaching out and asking for some love.

  He knew that was an illusion, of course. The posture was simply the result of rigor mortis taking hold of Jordan’s limbs, stiffening them in death and lifting them up, as though he was still alive. It would pass soon enough, though, and by tomorrow night his body would be as flexible as a gymnast’s, ready to be posed in the church, just like the other angels. And that was why he felt a sense of relief, too.

  Relief that the unpleasant act of sending him to heaven was done. This time, he’d needed some assistance, specifically a dose of GHB in the Lucozade bottle, to render the lad unconscious. He didn’t want to have to do that any more than he wanted to wrap the cord around his neck and squeeze, but it was unfortunately necessary, because Jordan had been strong enough to fight back. To make things difficult. To leave traces behind that even his thorough preparations might not remove. But that wasn’t all.

  He was also relieved that Jordan’s disastrous, violent, downward-spiralling life was over. It had already been a train wreck, and showed every indication of only going further downhill. If anyone could recognise those signs, it was him, because he’d been there. Of course, when he was Jordan’s age, he hadn’t been quite so hard. Hadn’t known how to throw a punch. Couldn’t really stand up for himself. That only came later.

  At some point during his own adolescence, he’d tried to leave the man who was ‘looking after him’. Tried to run off and make his own way. But it hadn’t gone well. That first night in a shelter, he’d been assaulted by an older bloke who stank of booze. Had his quilted jacket stolen by a woman who’d hissed at him that she’d claw his eyes out if he grassed her up to anyone. And that was just the first night.

  He quickly realised that, without the man, he’d have to take care of himself. Find his own food, wash his own clothes, make his own money and score his own heroin.

  He didn’t even last a week before he went back to the man. Said he was sorry. Asked to have his room back. The man had smiled at that, though his eyes had remained cold and dead, and calmly told him that he probably shouldn’t try to run away like that again. It was too dangerous out there with no one protecting him. He’d walked meekly back through the front door. And that was how things had stayed. For a while longer, at least.

  Jordan’s problem was that he’d been too self-reliant. Too determined to stay out there alone in the world, playing the big man. But the boy hadn’t learned how to survive yet. Quite the opposite, in fact; he’d been destroying himself. That’s why it had been an act of mercy, turning him into an angel. Same as it would be for the next one.

  He already knew who that was, of course. He wasn’t just randomly picking kids and hoping they’d need saving. He’d been planning this for a while, choosing them carefully, making a list, doing his groundwork. And he was reaping the benefits of that, now. There was a momentum to his angel making, pace as well as purpose.

  Once Jordan was kneeling by the altar, his soul assured of its place in heaven, he’d move on to another angel-in-waiting.

  He knew just where to find her.

  Fifty-Eight

  Lockhart knocked on the door, waited. After a moment, Burrows said, ‘Come in.’

  ‘Morning, ma’am.’ He took in the scrupulously clean, meticulously tidy office. He’d seen some OCD-level neatness in the army, but this was one beyond that.

  ‘Dan.’ The DSI looked a bit surprised to see him. ‘You’re in early.’ Her gaze dropped and rose again as she rapidly appraised his appearance. He’d barely slept, and it showed in his face, but since he’d showered, shaved and put on clean clothes, Burrows evidently hadn’t found enough to fault him on. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Have you got a few minutes?’ he asked.

  She frowned, but nodded and offered him a chair. He sat and explained, as briefly as possible, that Dr Lexi Green was in a relationship with a man who featured in their suspect strategy. He could see Burrows physically tensing as he spoke. By the time he finished, she was fully scowling, her lips pursed and hands gripping the edge of her desk.

  ‘And how long have you known this?’ she demanded.

  Lockhart shifted slightly in his seat. He thought of the interview with Tim McKay three days earlier. ‘Since last night,’ he replied.

  Burrows stared at him as if she didn’t believe it. But, since it wasn’t recorded anywhere, the only people who could contradict that were McKay, Green, and Guptill.

  ‘Hm,’ she said eventually. ‘Dr Green didn’t think to mention this to us?’

  ‘She didn’t know about the connection of the victims to the school until I briefed her yesterday.’ That wasn’t true either, but Lockhart didn’t want to give Burrows any more of an excuse to bollock him.

  ‘Really?’ Burrows arched her eyebrows, leant back and folded her arms. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘It wasn’t in the original file she read about Donovan Blair.’

  ‘I see.’ Burrows’s anger was just below the surface. ‘Well, if she didn’t know, then it comes down to a lack of professionalism on your part.’

  ‘But, they haven’t been together that long, and—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear that, Dan,’ she interjected. ‘It’s your responsibility. You need to do the due diligence on all personnel you bring into a case. Police, civilian, experts, lawyers, whoever. These kinds of connections to suspects can undermine an entire case. The buck stops with you.’

  He could almost see Burrows calculating whether this was reason enough to remove him as SIO. But he also knew that, across The Met, detectives were in chronically short supply. Burrows might be a box-ticker, but she was shrewd enough not to bin her SIO without a replacement.

  Lockhart cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.
It was a fast-moving investigation, and we weren’t in possession of all of the facts.’ He cringed at his own words; they sounded like the sort of thing Porter would say.

  ‘Well, it still goes down as a procedural error on your part. But the important thing is how we manage it from here. I want Dr Green kept at arm’s length on Paxford, now. No further operational detail is to be shared with her.’

  Lockhart blinked. ‘But how is she supposed to profile for us?’

  ‘Use another psychologist if you’ve got the budget.’

  ‘I trust Dr Green.’

  ‘You’ve already shown your judgement to be wide of the mark,’ snapped Burrows. ‘And I’m not just talking about this case.’

  Lockhart flexed his hands under the desk, then squeezed his fists. Tried to stay grounded, breathe calmly. That’s what Green had advised him to do when he started to get pissed off.

  ‘And I expect you to follow that instruction to the letter,’ she added coldly. ‘I’m well aware that you had two conduct inquiries initiated under DCI Porter.’

  ‘I was cleared both times,’ Lockhart said.

  ‘That may be true. But three proceedings in three years starts to look like a pattern. One that others will notice.’

  The implication was clear. If Burrows wanted to throw him under the bus, she could. But Lockhart had no intention of keeping Green completely out of the picture. He needed her help.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Is that all for now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, then. Get back to it.’

  Fifty-Nine

  If an investigation runs out of leads, review the existing evidence to determine where the gaps lie. That was what the official procedure recommended. Or, as Smith preferred to put it, if you haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on, take another look at what you do know. Which was exactly what she’d been doing all morning.

  While Khan and others checked further CCTV footage and ran down unidentified numbers from Charley Mullins’s phone records, Smith was drawing together everything they had so far on a large mobile whiteboard in the MIT office. Lockhart had told her to go back to basics, so that’s how she’d approached it.

  In the middle of the whiteboard, she had pinned up a portrait photograph of Donovan Blair on the left-hand side, while an image of Charley Mullins took up a corresponding position to the right. To the left of Donovan’s photo were the key people they’d spoken to about him: his foster parents, Roger and Trisha Hughes, his sports coach, Ben Morris, and the Salvation Army volunteer, Marshall Hanlon. None was currently considered a person of interest, but it never hurt to have all the pieces up there. Their photographs were accompanied by brief notes on their names and connections to Donovan, handwritten in marker pen with lines connecting each of them to him.

  To the right of Charley Mullins were the images of people around her whom they believed to be significant: Neil Morgan and Frida Olesen from The Beacon children’s home and, of course, the mystery man she’d met in the restaurant. His identity had a nice fat question mark next to it. Smith had also added Charley’s phone as a lead on the board. She and Khan had found sod all yesterday in the roadside vegetation where the mobile had died, but Smith wasn’t giving up on that just yet.

  In the centre of the board were the three things that linked Donovan and Charley: Eric Cooper – with all the circumstantial evidence they’d collected against him noted – charity worker Kieran Meade – who the guvnor was visiting now – and Richmond Park Academy. Under the school, she’d listed the staff who knew both Donovan and Charley. Among the half-dozen names, she’d highlighted one, and added his photograph from the school website: Tim McKay.

  Smith knew she had to tread carefully there.

  Mr McKay didn’t have a decent alibi for the nights in question when Donovan and Charley were thought to have been murdered and moved to the churches. He was someone they should look at more closely. But the slight snag there was that, apparently, McKay was the boyfriend of the MIT’s favourite profiler, Dr Lexi Green. In twenty-plus years in The Met, Smith had only come across this a few times: a personal connection between investigator and person of interest. The situation was as awkward as it was rare.

  Lockhart had explained the sensitivities of that to Smith this morning. The guvnor had looked exhausted and seemed distracted as he talked. She put that down to the pressure on him in this investigation. It wasn’t enough that, in DSI Burrows, he had the world’s biggest stickler breathing down his neck all day about every procedural step he took and decision he made. He also had to contend with their old boss, DSI Porter, turning up the heat with each new media soundbite he gave on Paxford. Smith didn’t blame Lockhart for showing signs of stress.

  Given that McKay was on their board, though, it meant managing what Dr Green could see about Paxford. Lockhart said he’d deal with that, establish a kind of Chinese wall – or ‘ethical wall’, as the guidance on inclusive language said it should be called, now – so that he would brief Green on appropriate material, without disclosing anything that could leave them up shit creek without a paddle down the line, in court. Smith could just hear the defence brief’s tone of theatrical surprise as it was laid out for the jury.

  So, you’re saying that a member of your investigative team was in a relationship with my client?

  In the unlikely event that McKay turned out to have anything to do with it, obviously…

  Smith added a half-hearted, dotted line between Donovan and Charley with the words SOCIAL SERVICES? circled in the middle. They needed to check out some more stuff around that, too. Her heart sank at the possibility of another conversation with Alison Griffin.

  Smith hoped she never burned out in the way Griffin clearly had. She liked to take the piss as much as anyone else, but she wasn’t a washed-up cynic like the old social worker. She still believed in what she did. If you didn’t have that, you couldn’t get out of bed in the morning to investigate murders in London. Or anywhere, for that matter.

  She made a note to call Social Services and hoped she might get to deal with someone a bit more enthusiastic and helpful. Leave no stone unturned and all that. Speaking of which, she’d head out again soon, while it was still light, to have another look for Charley’s phone. It had to be there somewhere. Not even the pissing rain today could put her off. She had even let Khan convince her to download the metal detector app for her mobile.

  Was she getting obsessed? No, she reasoned, just determined.

  Definitely not obsessed.

  Sixty

  Normally, on a case like this, Lockhart would’ve sent a more junior member of the team to interview a person who had volunteered information about a victim. A DC like Khan, Parsons or Guptill. Granted, Kieran Meade was a potential person of interest, given that he’d also briefly crossed paths with Donovan Blair. That link was definitely worth exploring, and clapping another set of eyes on him was no bad thing either. But that wasn’t what had taken Lockhart away from his decision logs, budget spreadsheets, team rosters and strategy meetings today. It was his discovery last night, and the need to get out of the office, away from the stifling scrutiny of Burrows, and give himself some space to think about it.

  The find was serious, no doubt. But Lockhart knew he couldn’t get too carried away with it just yet. Yes, industrial quantities of Class A drugs were being stored at his brother-in-law’s warehouse. There was every chance Nick was up to his eyeballs in dealing ecstasy. Clearly, the right thing to do would be to call it in. Lockhart couldn’t incriminate himself by confessing to trespassing, breaking and entering, obviously. He could, however, offer a credible tip on a Met narcotics hotline and just let those guys do the rest.

  Another option was to admit he was there and ask Nick about it himself. But, if confronted, his brother-in-law might just claim that he didn’t know what was in the boxes. You’d have to ask the sender, mate, I’m just moving it from A to B. Then they’d simply disappear, Nick would double his security, and Lockhart’s
opportunity to find out what was going on would be lost.

  Bottom line, it’d be tough to prove his brother-in-law’s knowledge of the drugs without more evidence. And Lockhart wanted to be the one to find it, especially if there was even the slightest chance all this – including the fishermen in Whitstable – had any connection to Jess’s disappearance.

  Now he was getting carried away…

  He recalled the new photo he’d found of Jess. He’d studied it a hundred times since leaving the warehouse. There was something about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She looked somehow… older, but maybe that was just the picture, the lighting or focus or whatever. And the fact he’d photographed it in the dark meant the image he had wasn’t the best quality. Still, something niggled at him.

  Whatever was going on, Lockhart hoped he could shed some more light on the MDMA by analysing the documents he’d photographed on Nick’s desk, but he needed time for that. And time was – as Lexi Green had pointed out to him when they’d spoken yesterday – in short supply. A killer who’d already murdered two victims in quick succession would probably be seeking a third. A matter of when, not if, Green had said. And anything that Kieran Meade or his colleagues might be able to tell him could make the difference.

  Lockhart parked his Defender around the corner from the Youth Rise Up office, stuck a MET POLICE BUSINESS sign on the dash and headed over. It looked as though the charity had moved into the premises of a shop that’d gone bust and, judging by the shabbiness he could see behind the plate glass front, neither landlord nor tenants seemed to have done anything to do the place up. Or install any heating, apparently. The cold made him shudder as he stepped in, and he rubbed his hands briefly before reaching for his warrant card and introducing himself.