Who's Next?: A completely gripping and unputdownable crime thriller (Detective Lockhart and Green Book 2)

by Chris Merritt

  ‘We can ask her,’ said MacLeod.

  Smith was wondering how to open her questions when a well-spoken male voice rang out.

  ‘Where shall I put the coats?’

  ‘Just bring them in here,’ Stott-Peters called out.

  ‘Righto.’

  A young man marched into the living room. He was early-twenties, Smith guessed, and handsome, with chiselled facial features and thick arms in which he held a stack of jackets. He was probably not much taller than Smith but possessed a kind of coiled energy that made his presence seem much larger.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ He flashed her a pearly grin. ‘I’m Xander.’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Maxine Smith.’ She hadn’t seen any mention of a son or other male relative.

  ‘Nice to meet you.’ He gestured to the clothes. ‘Mimi, should I take this lot to the charity shop tomorrow, do you think? Probably be closed by now, won’t it?’

  Stott-Peters flapped a hand at him. ‘Yah. Maybe in the morning.’

  ‘I could drop some of Pickle’s stuff there, too.’

  ‘OK,’ said Stott-Peters weakly.

  Xander sighed. ‘Poor old Pickle.’ He dumped the jackets over an empty armchair before helping himself to a glass of champagne. Then he sat down next to Stott-Peters, manspreading just enough so that his leg touched hers. His body language didn’t suggest they were mother and son.

  ‘Are you a family member?’ Smith asked him.

  ‘Ah, no.’ He was gawping at her cleft hand with the same mixture of fascination and revulsion that Smith had seen a thousand times. She noticed that he had a pair of prominent, dark moles close together on one cheekbone, but she knew better than to stare at an unusual part of someone’s appearance.

  ‘Xandy’s a friend.’ Stott-Peters forced a smile. ‘And he’s an actor. Aren’t you, darling?’

  ‘Well, I try.’ He broke his gaze from Smith’s hand and shrugged. ‘The right jobs aren’t coming up at the moment, though. It’s bloody tough out there.’

  Smith gestured to the pile of coats. ‘Are those…?’

  ‘Charles’s jackets,’ replied Xander. ‘I’ve told Mimi there’s not much point having them here anymore, right? Bad memories and all that. We can have most of it gone by the end of the week, I’d expect.’

  ‘I realise it might seem as if I’m trying to get rid of him.’ Stott-Peters stared into her glass. ‘But I loved him deeply.’

  ‘Not that he cared.’

  ‘Xandy!’ Stott-Peters tensed. Then she drank some more. ‘Charles loved me, too, in his own way.’

  The young man snorted his disagreement, but Smith ignored him.

  ‘How long were the two of you together?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘It’s a long time.’

  Stott-Peters nodded briefly, then wiped a hand over her face, her shoulders curving inwards.

  Smith discreetly took out a small notebook and pen. ‘Mimi, I’m sorry to have to do this, but could I ask you a few questions, please?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who would’ve wanted to hurt your husband?’

  ‘It was a robbery, wasn’t it?’ exclaimed Xander.

  ‘We’re looking at all possibilities. Were you aware of any specific threats made against him, Mimi?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone with a grudge against him, then?’

  ‘Grudge?’ She drained her champagne glass. ‘I don’t know if, I mean—’

  ‘Come on Mimi!’ blurted Xander. ‘Where do we start? Charles had a hundred enemies. Spurned lovers, jealous men, husbands he’d cuckolded.’

  ‘Don’t talk about him like that,’ Stott-Peters said quietly.

  ‘But it’s true!’

  Smith had to proceed gently. ‘Mimi,’ she began, ‘I know this might be hard to talk about, but if your husband was being unfaithful, then that’s something that might help us investigate what happened to him.’ She didn’t mention the triangle symbol, for now.

  Stott-Peters shut her eyes, as if summoning the energy to speak. ‘Charles did have a number of…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Little dalliances. But he always came back. He apologised.’

  ‘Sorry to ask, but roughly how many of these, er, dalliances did he have?’

  ‘A few,’ replied Stott-Peters.

  ‘Dozens. He didn’t treat you how you deserved to be treated, Mimi.’ Xander laid a hand on her leg.

  Smith made a note to get any names from her later. Each would represent a possible motive. But she also had to acknowledge that this Xander guy was becoming a person of interest for her, too. ‘Can I just check, Mimi, when was the last time you saw your husband?’

  ‘Last night. He went out to walk Pickle, as usual, around nine p.m. Same place, same time, every night. Unless he had some function or other to attend.’

  ‘And when he didn’t come back, what did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. It wasn’t the first time he… I mean, I just assumed he’d stopped over with one of his, you know.’

  ‘Other women?’ asked Smith.

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Was his car still here?’

  ‘Yes, but he often took taxis to get around.’

  ‘Did you try calling him?’

  ‘No. Charles was old enough to look after himself. He always came back, sooner or later.’

  ‘Did your husband wear a watch?’ Smith asked.

  Stott-Peters managed a thin smile. ‘Bloody great big silver thing. He almost never took it off. His parents gave it to him on his birthday years ago. They’d engraved the back of it: “To our Charlie, happy fortieth”. I used to think sometimes that he loved that watch more than—’ She broke off, her eyes moistening.

  Smith noted the detail, waiting a moment before following up. ‘Now, I realise this might be difficult, but I need to ask you for any names of people that your husband might’ve been romantically involved with.’

  ‘I can help,’ said Xander.

  Stott-Peters drained her glass. ‘I need a refill.’

  As she stood and crossed to the champagne bottle, Smith settled into her seat. She wasn’t going anywhere for a while. And her hope that this case would be closed quickly had already gone out the window.

  Day Two

  Six

  As Lockhart drove south from the MIT 8 office in Putney to the hospital in Tooting where Charles Stott’s post-mortem was taking place, he reflected on the day’s investigative work. It didn’t take him long, because they hadn’t really got anywhere since the discovery of Stott’s body yesterday afternoon.

  Smith had passed on what Jemima Stott-Peters had said about her husband’s infidelity. They had a list of more than thirty women he’d apparently used and ditched over the past five years, and many of them had male partners who might’ve wanted revenge on Stott, too. But, with no evidence of a specific threat towards the director, Lockhart knew they’d need to speak to everyone on that list and eliminate each one by alibi. And that was only half of their suspect strategy.

  Despite now acknowledging that Stott’s promiscuity could be a possible motive for his murder, DCI Porter hadn’t allowed Lockhart to drop the robbery-gone-wrong theory. Porter wasn’t attributing much significance to the symbol drawn on Stott’s neck, either. The DCI dismissed it as a distraction, perhaps a joke by the killer or drawn before the attack. Lockhart didn’t agree, but since Porter was in charge as Senior Investigating Officer – or SIO – he was calling the shots.

  It meant Lockhart was overseeing one of the broadest suspect strategies he’d ever known on a murder investigation. They didn’t have the personnel to follow everything up, and each hour’s delay identifying a credible suspect gave the killer a further advantage. But they were doing everything they could.

  Khan was obtaining as much CCTV footage as possible, though that wasn’t a lot. Unsurprisingly, there weren’t many cameras watching the woods. On their witness strategy, another DC called Andy Parsons was leading local house-to-house inqui
ries, hoping someone might’ve heard or seen something, but that’d drawn a blank so far.

  For their victim strategy, Berry was trawling social media for any indication of Stott’s activities prior to his death, again without success. His phone might offer some leads, but it was way down the Met Police queue for data exploitation.

  As for Porter, he’d spent most of the day briefing top brass and journalists, even asking Lockhart to return to the crime scene and record a short appeal for witnesses. Not that there was much chance of anyone credible coming forward with information. Overall, it was a pretty bleak picture.

  However, Lockhart did hope that the post-mortem might offer them something to go on. In the absence of more definitive leads, it was always worth attending. You never knew when the single clue would emerge that jump-started an investigation. And, with Dr Mary Volz conducting the examination, there was every chance of finding it. Volz was one of the best in the business, an experienced Home Office Registered Forensic Pathologist whose work on the Throat Ripper murders last year had contributed more to the case than she’d realised.

  As he parked outside St George’s Hospital and put the ‘Met Police Business’ sign on top of the Defender’s dashboard, Lockhart was again reminded of Green. The South-West London Trauma Clinic, where she had given his therapy sessions, was only a stone’s throw from here. They’d arranged to meet nearby after work. He was hoping she could shed some light on the symbol. He told himself that was the only reason he wanted to see her.

  Inside, St George’s mortuary looked much like the other London mortuaries Lockhart had visited during his five years in homicide, with its standard fittings of stainless-steel tables, side benches and trollies on a pale linoleum floor. But the routine set-up and procedure didn’t mean a conveyer belt for the corpses. On the contrary, it allowed pathologists like Volz to apply maximum attention to the details of a person’s death – however tiny – that could determine how their final hours of life were spent.

  Volz saw him through the viewing window and gestured that he should enter.

  ‘Mary,’ he said, walking over to the slab where Stott’s body lay, covered to the neck by a white sheet.

  She pulled down her surgical mask and tucked some loose strands of grey hair back under her cap. ‘Dan. Haven’t seen you since…’

  ‘November.’ He didn’t need to remind her what’d happened then. He wondered if Volz thought about it as often as he did.

  ‘That’s right.’ She held his gaze a moment. The strength in her pale blue eyes was unnerving. ‘I followed all the news coverage. You and your team did an incredible job. I don’t think I’ve known another case like it in all my time doing this.’

  ‘We stopped him. That’s the main thing.’ He wasn’t going to list all the stuff he could’ve done differently. Done better.

  The silence hung between them briefly.

  ‘So,’ began Volz, turning back to the body, ‘first things first. I can tell you that X-ray comparison of dental records confirms this is Charles Stott.’

  ‘OK.’ That answered Lockhart’s initial question, at least. Victim ID was never a given in murder cases.

  ‘Now, you want to know how he died. I need to send some tissue samples for toxicology, just to check if there were any drugs in his system. But I expect those tests to come back clear. I’m confident this is what killed him. Have a look.’

  She folded the sheet down to Stott’s waist and, for a moment, Lockhart simply stared in silence. He’d encountered dozens of dead bodies as a soldier and a murder detective, but he’d never seen one in this state.

  Aside from Volz’s Y-shaped incision in Stott’s torso, now stitched closed, his body was intact. But deep bruises covered most of his skin, the various shades of blue and purple vivid under the LED lighting rig. The contusions were so numerous that they merged with blotches of red, yellow and black, virtually eclipsing the original pale skin tone. The extent of Stott’s injuries had been impossible to see when he had been lying fully clothed in the woods.

  ‘His back and legs are much the same,’ she added. ‘There was a single, perhaps initial blow to his head, probably by a large blunt object like a mallet. That’s the only area of external bleeding. It would’ve stunned him, perhaps even briefly rendered him unconscious, but it’s not serious enough to have killed him. The rest of the impact sites on the body are much smaller. My guess would be they represent punches and kicks, perhaps some stamping. There’s no penetrating trauma, it’s all blunt force. And the lividity around where he’s been struck indicates he was alive throughout.’

  Lockhart swallowed.

  ‘My guess is that his cause of death was internal haemorrhage from the assault. He lost— Dan, are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Carry on.’ Lockhart became aware he’d been holding his breath. He was picturing that scene from Afghanistan again. Except, this time, he was inside the building, face to face with the Taliban sniper. He forced himself to focus on Charles Stott.

  ‘So,’ resumed Volz, ‘he would’ve lost so much blood internally that, eventually, his organs would’ve ceased functioning. His pulse would have sped up until his heart failed. It would’ve been an agonising, drawn out way to die. I’ve counted over eighty separate impact sites. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a sustained, vicious attack.’

  Lockhart nodded his agreement. He was already imagining who could be capable of such violence.

  ‘I can’t say for certain if it was one assailant or more, though,’ she added.

  ‘We only found one set of footprints around the body.’

  ‘A number of his smaller bones were fractured,’ Volz continued. ‘Multiple ribs, carpals and phalanges in both hands – perhaps as he tried to shield himself – plus his left clavicle and the radius of his right arm.’

  ‘So, the attacker was strong.’

  ‘Very.’ She took a deep breath, gazing at the injuries. ‘And there are perhaps ten or so wounds without as much lividity and inflammation.’

  He understood what that meant. ‘Those blows were delivered after he’d died?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  He needed to tell Green about this. The symbol wouldn’t be the only thing he’d need her help to interpret.

  ‘What about time of death? We know he was last seen at nine p.m. and found at approximately eleven a.m. the following day.’

  Volz shook her head. ‘Without having been at the scene when he was found, I’m afraid I can’t say accurately. Was his body rigid when you got there?’

  ‘Yeah. That was about two p.m.’

  ‘So, he probably died closer to the start of your fourteen-hour window than the end of it.’

  ‘Between nine and, say, midnight?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Makes sense, given he went out to walk his dog. Much more than an hour or two and he’d either have returned home or gone to see one of his girlfriends.’ He was thinking out loud.

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Any DNA we missed at the scene?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘No obvious sources that I could find so far. The attacker was probably wearing gloves and a hat or mask. Sometimes there are skin samples under a victim’s fingernails from their attempts to resist the attack. But, as you can observe,’ she gently lifted one of Stott’s hands, ‘his nails were bitten to the quick. I couldn’t find anything to harvest from there, unfortunately.’

  Lockhart knew the SOCOs at the crime scene hadn’t found any biological evidence, either. He couldn’t hide his disappointment. A DNA sample from their killer would’ve been a great starting point. Even if the person wasn’t on the national database, it’d give them a means of comparison with suspects down the line. He gestured to the symbol on Stott’s neck.

  ‘What did you make of this?’

  Volz frowned. ‘I don’t really know. It’s drawn directly onto the skin. The lines are relatively clean and barely smudged, which suggests to me that it was applied after the attack. Therefore,
I’d be amazed if anyone other than the killer had done it.’

  Lockhart had thought the same. He took some photos in the bright mortuary lighting to show Green. ‘Nothing else drawn on his body?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to him. ‘Have you considered testing the triangle? Forensic ink analysis, perhaps?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Do you reckon that’s worth a shot?’

  Volz bent to inspect the symbol. ‘Well, it’s more commonly done with tattoos. But it would be possible here, if you scraped a few skin cells. The procedures are expensive and time-consuming, though. So, the question is whether it’d tell you anything about the perpetrator. I’m stepping out of my area of expertise, but to my eye, it just looks like a simple marker pen.’

  ‘I agree.’ He sighed. ‘Hard to see that blowing the case wide open.’

  Lockhart had to face it: they were in the dark. Without much else to go on, he was pinning his hopes on Green. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that.

  Seven

  Having checked the windows and exits, Lockhart allowed himself to relax slightly and take in his surroundings as he waited for Green to arrive. He approved of her choice of pub. The Selkirk in Tooting had the kind of simple, no-frills interior that Lockhart liked. It served his favourite beer, Stella Artois. And, at six o’clock on a Wednesday evening, it was pretty quiet. That made it easier to discuss a murder case, but it also made being out less stressful.

  Back in the day, Lockhart was a big pub-goer. But the more training he got in situational awareness from his old unit, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, the harder he found it to enjoy being out in a crowd. People equalled danger. If you switched off or let yourself go, you could be in trouble. Then, after Jess had gone missing, he gradually found himself preferring to drink alone in their flat. Since police social life centred on boozing, he had no choice but to force himself into a crowded pub now and then. Several pints of Stella usually helped, though that, too, was something Green had been encouraging him to change last year. A dysfunctional coping strategy, she’d called it. Or something like that.