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

by Chris Merritt

  Meanwhile, it was up to Smith to follow up a key lead: Gomez’s boyfriend, Paul Newton. He was a cardiologist at the nearby King’s College Hospital but had been given the day as compassionate leave when he was informed of Gomez’s death.

  As Smith walked to Newton’s flat, she took advantage of the few spare minutes to review some footage on her phone from their Braddock bus stop cameras. There was a lot of material and Smith already knew they’d struggle to keep up with watching it all. It was 3 a.m. by the time they’d finally finished putting everything in place, which meant she’d only managed four hours’ kip before she was up again and into Jubilee House. She was feeling the effects of that late night – or maybe early morning was more accurate – but at least the cameras were in place.

  Nothing of interest had cropped up so far, and a text to Stagg this morning confirmed he hadn’t seen anything, either. But a result on their first night would’ve been almost too good to be true. At least the feed was working, and no one seemed to have discovered, vandalised or nicked the cameras, which was a major plus. This was London, after all.

  At the new-build apartment complex, Smith pocketed her phone and rang the buzzer for Newton’s flat. Once inside, she found his door on the third floor open, a slim black man standing on the threshold. He had a short, neat beard, and wore chinos and a thin woollen sweater over a collared shirt. Smith would’ve described him as handsome, ordinarily, but his face seemed to have lost all vigour. She imaged he was still in shock.

  ‘Doctor Paul Newton?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ He blinked. ‘Just… Paul’s OK.’

  Smith introduced herself, adding: ‘Please call me Max.’

  The open-plan living room and kitchen had a circular dining table in the middle, where Smith found her team’s FLO, PC MacLeod, sitting amidst several mugs and crisp packets. There was an iPad to one side.

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Paul,’ said Smith. ‘And I apologise for intruding here, too.’

  Newton nodded quickly. ‘It’s all right. I understand.’ He slumped into his chair and peered into an empty mug. Smith felt as though the energy had been sucked out of the room.

  ‘Shall I put the kettle on for us?’ asked MacLeod gently, reading the situation. Once again, Smith was grateful for her emotional intelligence.

  ‘Thanks,’ whispered the doctor.

  MacLeod glanced at her.

  ‘Oh, well…’ Smith was gasping for a brew, and sometimes sharing a hot drink did help break the ice a bit. ‘If you don’t mind. Cheers, Rhona.’ She took a seat beside Newton.

  ‘So sudden,’ he said, unprompted. ‘We were supposed to meet up last night. I was meant to go over to Nesto’s place. Then he just didn’t answer me. I wasn’t sure if he’d run out of battery or lost his mobile, or if something had happened…’ Newton tailed off, his face still blank. He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what I thought. But I didn’t want to just turn up at his place, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Sounds like you were worried, Paul. And it’s hard to know what to do in situations like that,’ Smith said. But she needed to go back a step. ‘How long had you known Mr Gomez?’

  ‘Only a couple of months. But it was getting serious,’ he added. ‘We saw each other three, four times a week. More, recently.’

  ‘So, you were spending a lot of time together?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘And do you know of anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt Mr Gomez? Was he in any kind of trouble?’

  ‘No… nothing. I mean, not that he ever mentioned to me. And we were very open with each other. We had to be, since we couldn’t be open with our families about… us.’ Newton continued to stare at the table. ‘Nesto was the sweetest guy in the world. He never had a bad word to say about anyone.’ At this, his voice cracked, and he began to cry silent tears that shook his body. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Smith quietly. ‘Take your time.’

  They sat in silence for a moment while MacLeod brought the mugs of tea over. Newton gradually stopped crying and took some deep breaths, warming his hands on the mug.

  ‘You see death every day at work,’ he said, almost absent-mindedly. ‘And you care about the patients on the ward. But you never get too attached. You can’t. So, I guess I thought I could handle it. Death, I mean. Then when it’s someone you love…’ He stopped and looked up at Smith. ‘God, I loved him. That’s the first time I ever said it. I hadn’t told Nesto yet. And now I…’ Newton’s head dropped and his shoulders began to shudder once more.

  ‘I’m sure he knew how you felt about him.’ MacLeod leant towards Newton and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re coping so well with this, Paul.’

  ‘I don’t think I am,’ he said, his voice rising in pitch.

  ‘You’ll find your own way through it,’ said MacLeod, her soft Scottish accent soothing, reassuring. Newton turned to MacLeod and, suddenly, wrapped his arms around her. The FLO held him and rubbed his back. Smith found herself moved by the simple, human gesture. The flame began to kindle inside her, as it had done so readily for Op Braddock.

  When the time was right, Smith resumed her questions. ‘Can you tell us about Mr Gomez’s work, please?’

  ‘Oh.’ Newton sniffed and massaged his eye sockets with the heels of his hands. ‘Nesto loved what he did. Set design, for films and TV.’

  ‘He worked in film?’ Smith recalled Lockhart’s mantra: he didn’t like coincidences. And neither did she. How likely was it that two of the victims’ professions were linked by the same industry? But if that was the connection, how did Johnson, the lawyer, fit into it?

  ‘Yeah. You can see some of his stuff on Instagram.’ Newton reached for his iPad and tapped the screen a few times. ‘Here you go,’ he said, proffering the tablet to Smith. ‘He put half of his life on there, to be honest. They wouldn’t let him post photos of sets where the production hadn’t been released yet, he told me. It was pretty cut-throat, apparently. You could get fired just like—’ he clicked his fingers, ‘that. But he could put some stuff on there, older work. And,’ Newton hiccupped a small laugh, ‘he always posted his Zumba. He was mad about it. Tried to get me to go.’

  Smith was scrolling through the pictures. Gomez had added details of the places, times, and events of his life. It wouldn’t be hard to find out where he was going to be, she thought.

  ‘Oh God,’ moaned Newton. ‘If I’d said yes to going with him last night, we’d have been walking home together and, maybe… this wouldn’t have happened. I should’ve—’

  ‘This is not your fault, Paul,’ said MacLeod. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It was the fault of the person who attacked Ernesto,’ said Smith, realising she’d used the victim’s first name. That was a sure sign this was becoming personal for her. ‘No one else.’

  Newton raised his wet eyes and met her gaze.

  ‘And I’m going to find him,’ she added.

  Thirty-Nine

  According to the clinical psychology textbooks, a patient not turning up for a session should be a cause for concern rather than relief. But relief was exactly what Lexi felt when her 3 p.m. client, a young Syrian asylum seeker, had failed to show. It wasn’t the first time, and since Lexi knew he was unreliable rather than risky, she could use the DNA – Did Not Attend – time to work on her profiling rather than chasing him up.

  Like most clinicians, she had a mountain of paperwork to get through. But that could wait. Because none of it was as important as helping to catch a serial rapist operating in her part of south-west London. A guy who was preying on young women waiting alone at bus stops after dark. She’d been in that position herself many times, taking public transport home on her own. It could be her. The thought scared her, and had made her more vigilant of late, but it also made her angry as hell. Or maybe she was already angry, and this asshole sex offender was just someone against whom she could channel that rage more productively than she had been doing with her binge drinking.


  Despite feeling strong emotions about the case, though, Lexi had to be objective about profiling the Operation Braddock attacker. She needed to apply the theories she’d studied to make an educated guess about who this was, and what was driving him. That was how she could be most useful. Of course, she was still writing a profile for Dan’s double murder case, too, but she was kind of stuck on that, and planned to come back to it this evening.

  Last night, Lexi had dropped by Lavender Hill police station, where Detective Sergeant Eddie Stagg had supplied her with the details of all eight Braddock incidents so far. She’d been given a desk in the CID room and, after Stagg had talked her through the basics, she’d been left with printed copies of the victims’ accounts. It made for tough reading, because Lexi realised that she fell into the same demographic as those being watched, harassed or attacked: female, white, age twenty to thirty-five.

  And her personal discomfort hadn’t improved when she’d caught Detective Constable Roland Wilkins staring at her several times, his jaw slack, a wad of gum visible inside his mouth. Gross. Each time she’d busted him, he’d looked away sharply, acting as if nothing had happened. It was creepy, but the experience would be familiar to a lot of women. Whether on a train, in the street, the gym or a café, shopping, in a bar or wherever, men stared. And those stares, eyes roaming over your body as if it were their property, left you in no doubt as to what they were thinking.

  In the case of the Braddock rapist, though, his thoughts had escalated to actions. He’d begun simply by watching women. Then, twice, he’d demanded the women expose their breasts to him. His next two reported attacks had involved assault by touching. Every time, he’d run away. The reluctance, almost shyness with which he acted, coupled with the fact that he made no threats and used no weapons in those first six attacks, made Lexi believe he fell into the sexual motivation category of stranger rape.

  These rapists typically had poor social skills, limited sexual experience with women, and did not intend to hurt their victims. Research showed most rapists tended to attack women of similar age and ethnic background to themselves. So, Lexi was developing a picture of their suspect as a young white man, maybe twenty to thirty-five years old, awkward and introverted, a little quiet or passive, definitely single, and most probably a loner. She also figured that, given the geographical knowledge demonstrated in the attacks, he lived locally – probably within the area formed by the locations of the offences.

  They knew from the victims’ statements that he was shorter and stockier than average. Lexi wondered if he believed his physical appearance made him unattractive to women, particularly if the ‘stocky’ part of his build was fat rather than muscle. Maybe he’d been rejected by women when expressing his interest towards them and had developed low self-esteem as a result.

  This type of rapist also tended to start out stalking or spying – a ‘Peeping Tom’ – which fitted with the Braddock reports. He would often feel that he had an emotional connection with his victims. Crucially, this meant he was unlikely to seriously harm the women he attacked. So far, so good on the profile, she thought, until she tried to factor in the two most recent attacks.

  These had both involved the use of a knife to make threats of violence. The intended victim in incident seven had managed to get away from him, but victim eight had not been so lucky. The violence, the weapon, the aggressive act of dragging the woman into the vegetation behind the bus stop all pointed to a different category, more about anger. These offenders were typically more ‘alpha’, assertive, confident and physically stronger.

  But the threats he’d made towards the victim even indicated a little sadism, which was another type altogether. The type that most often graduated to murder. Since there had only been one violent attack, Lexi couldn’t say for sure where this guy fitted.

  She was lost in thought, tapping her pen on the desk and re-reading her notes for anything she might’ve missed, when her phone vibrated. It was Dan.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ she greeted him. ‘Listen, I’m gonna do some more on the profile tonight, although I don’t really know—’

  ‘Have you seen the news?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Uh, no.’ Lexi could feel her pulse going a little faster. ‘I’ve been in with clients all day. Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘There’s a new victim. Same killer, as far as we can tell.’

  ‘Holy shit. Really?’ Lexi was already calculating: three victims in nine days.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Um, OK.’ She grabbed her pad and flipped back to the notes she’d taken in Dan’s apartment. Her memory of the visit made her picture his wall about Jess. And she remembered him, vulnerable, grieving. She felt that fierce desire to help him, once more. Then his voice brought her back to the present.

  ‘I think you might’ve been right,’ he said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About it not being related to sexual assault.’

  ‘Huh.’ Lexi clamped the phone between her ear and shoulder and pulled up the BBC News website on her work computer. One of the minor headlines under UK news ran:

  Murder Victim Discovered in Cemetery

  Posted three hours ago with the tag ‘London’.

  ‘Jeez, the press are all over this,’ she exclaimed. She clicked into the article and scrolled down. It was just a few paragraphs and lacked detail.

  ‘Tell me about it. We haven’t even held a media briefing yet. Porter’s going nuts. The journos are linking it to the first two murders, and they know about the symbols.’

  ‘That sucks.’

  He hesitated. ‘Er, I’m assuming you haven’t said anything to—’

  ‘Hell, no! Come on, Dan. I mean, I literally just found out there was a third victim.’

  ‘Sorry. Course. Just checking…’

  ‘Is that why you called?’ She could hear the irritation in her own voice. ‘To accuse me of leaking information to the press?’

  ‘Nope, not at all. Forget I said that.’ He paused. ‘In fact, I want to tell you more about it.’

  She took a breath and leant back in her chair, still a little offended. ‘OK.’

  ‘Have you got a few minutes?’ he asked. ‘I really need your help.’

  Lexi suppressed the small, ridiculous burst of pride she felt at the idea of Dan needing her and glanced at the clock. Her next client wasn’t due till four and it was a quarter of, now. ‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘Go ahead.’

  Forty

  I’m aching. Badly. It’s always like this, now, the day after physical exertion: sex, violence or any other fun stuff. The combined pain of broken bones, torn tendons, and busted ligaments that have supposedly healed but don’t appear to have got the memo about being fixed. After it happened, they put me in a coma, at first, because my body was so shattered. Operated on me a dozen times. Shoved metal plates and screws and all kinds of stuff under my skin to hold me together. Kind of like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine character in the first X-Men film. Minus the claws, unfortunately. And except for the fact that he recovered in, like, a day. I needed months to get used to my injuries. Months more after that to rehab and get my strength back. But I’ll never be the same as I was before the accident. It’s like my whole body holds a memory of it and can’t let go. Can’t let me work like I used to. Can’t even let me live a normal life. Not that my life was particularly normal up until a year ago, but that was how I had wanted it to be. It was my life.

  And that’s why they have to pay for taking it from me. I couldn’t let that go unpunished. Who did they think they were, doing that to me?

  That pathetic creature last night put up a bit of a struggle. Maybe because he was younger, fitter. But it didn’t make any difference in the end. Just like being younger, fitter and tougher won’t make any difference to Dan Lockhart when I come for him in a few days’ time. But first, there’s someone else on my list. Another one who colluded to screw me over, and who needs to suffer for it.

  Usually, I haven’t got the patience o
r interest to research stuff in detail. I like making decisions impulsively; things are more exciting that way. When it comes to murder, though, some degree of planning and preparation is needed to avoid getting caught.

  That’s why I’m in John’s apartment, lying on his sofa, eating his food, drinking his beer, and using his laptop and his Wi-Fi to research my next kill. It’s nice to know that I could count on John for an alibi if the police ever came knocking. But I don’t think I’ll even need him to lie for me. By the time they find me, it’ll already be too late for them to stop me.

  And too late to save Lockhart.

  Day Ten

  Forty-One

  Lockhart had woken long before his alarm. He’d checked the clock on his phone, seen it wasn’t even 5 a.m. yet, and tried to go back to sleep. But his brain had been a vortex of thoughts from which he couldn’t escape: the bodies of Ernesto Gomez, Martin Johnson and Charles Stott. The Taliban sniper in that Afghan house. The Op Braddock rapist and cameras set up to catch him. The possibility of losing his job if their illegal surveillance was discovered. And, running through all of it, Jess. The image of her smiling face, then the unthinkable idea of her being declared ‘officially’ dead.

  He’d tried to relax, but it was no use. After half an hour watching the bus stop feeds had failed to distract him, he’d decided to get up. Green had always told him in their therapy sessions that whenever he got mentally ‘stuck’ in his own stress, the best thing was to do something different. So, just as the sun was creeping over the horizon he’d grabbed his wetsuit, cap, towel and a flask of tea and set out in his Defender for the river.