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

by Chris Merritt

  In addition to the Lewisham group, Lockhart noticed DS Eddie Stagg and DC Roland Wilkins sitting off to one side. Stagg was chomping on a bacon roll and simultaneously swigging from a large mug, while Wilkins stared at his phone screen, the young DC’s concentration and jerky hand movements suggesting he was playing a game. They’d be here for the Op Braddock links.

  In fact, he thought, the only person who’d been involved in Thorncross who wasn’t here was Lexi Green. Despite his – and Smith’s – scepticism, Green was the one who had provided them with the name Blaze Logan. But inviting her here would mean admitting to Porter that he’d been keeping her in the loop all along. And he wasn’t about to shoot himself in the foot like that. He’d just have to find a way to keep her included.

  He’d already dismissed her ideas on this case at least twice. When was he going to learn? Whether casework or therapy or simply talking, Green made things better in his life.

  Before he could interrogate that observation any further, the activity and volume began to rise, and Lockhart realised that DCI Porter had entered the office. The two of them would be delivering the briefing this morning for what now constituted a manhunt. Or, more accurately, a womanhunt. He’d never heard that term before. Then again, he didn’t think he’d ever come across someone like Blaze Logan before.

  Anyone who wasn’t already in position for the meeting wheeled a chair across and crammed themselves into the space. The size of the crowd and the few unfamiliar people made the team update feel more like a press conference. They hadn’t held an actual press conference, yet, but Lockhart had no doubt that Porter would be planning how best to cover the sizeable media angles on the operation, as soon as this briefing was over.

  ‘All right,’ boomed the DCI, ‘gather round everyone and listen up. I can see some new faces here. But there are so many of us that if we did introductions we’d be here till lunchtime. So, I’ll get straight into it and the faster we finish, the faster you lot can get cracking.’

  Lockhart saw Khan fiddling with his phone. He looked as though he was texting. Then he happened to glance up and met Lockhart’s gaze. Furtively, he pocketed the device.

  ‘Now,’ Porter announced, ‘I have one word of warning before I ask DI Lockhart to bring us all up to speed. Many of you will have seen details of our ongoing murder investigation in the papers over the past week or so. Some of that information was privileged and known only to us. I want to make it absolutely clear that any unauthorised contact with the media will be dealt with swiftly, and decisively. And anyone who does decide to talk to a journalist without my say-so will be looking for a new job before the end of the week. Does everyone understand that?’

  There was a good deal of murmuring, but Lockhart saw plenty of nodding heads and heard several yes, sir replies.

  ‘Good. And that applies to discussing the details of this case with anyone outside this room, too. Right, Dan, over to you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Lockhart stood and moved to one side of the whiteboard they were using as a projector screen. He surveyed the assembled group; more than thirty faces focused on him.

  ‘We have a new person of interest on Operation Thorncross,’ he began. ‘She goes by the name Blaze Logan, though we believe this is an alias. We’re working to find out her real name, which should give us a passport photograph and further background intelligence.’ He pressed the clicker in his hand and bullet points appeared on screen under the heading of the op name. Helpfully, someone had inserted an image of a blank face with a ‘?’ in the middle of it.

  He clicked again and a second picture came up. It showed a woman in motorbike leathers astride a dirt bike, crash helmet under one arm. With the lighting and grainy quality, her face wasn’t clear. ‘Luce has found a few photos online that we think are of her. This one’s probably the best. As you can see, it’s not great.’

  ‘We discovered Logan almost by chance,’ continued Lockhart. ‘Because we believe she was the victim of a stabbing and attempted rape four nights ago. That attack was one of a series of sex crimes in south-west London which DS Eddie Stagg, over there—’ he indicated Stagg, who half-stood up, hastily wiping his mouth with a napkin, ‘has been working on in Wandsworth CID, along with DS Max Smith from our MIT, under the banner Operation Braddock.’

  He paused to let the information sink in a moment. People seemed to be following so far.

  ‘The perpetrator of those assaults is unknown, so keep in mind that we may uncover evidence of his identity during this investigation. In fact, we believe Logan is the only one of his victims to have seen his face, because she fought back and removed his mask.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ Porter snapped.

  Lockhart froze momentarily. He wasn’t sure if he’d said too much. He took a sip of coffee to give himself a moment to think before he answered.

  ‘The morning after Logan was attacked,’ he said, ‘an eyewitness came forward to say that they’d seen a woman possibly being assaulted at a bus stop in Colliers Wood, between Wimbledon and Tooting, the previous night. Officers attended the scene and discovered a bloodstained knife. Analysis of—’

  ‘Why didn’t the eyewitness call 999 at the time of the attack?’ interjected Porter.

  Lockhart didn’t respond immediately. Because the ‘eyewitness’ was drunk on Stella and passed out on his sofa…

  ‘We don’t know, sir.’ Stagg spoke loudly and confidently from the side of the room. ‘He or she may not have been sure of what they saw, at first. They described a fight, so it may not have been clear who was the victim until they thought about it later. It’s also possible they didn’t have access to a telephone immediately. They might’ve been scared of reprisal. And, of course, there are members of our community who are very wary of contact with the police. We suspect it’s the latter reason, hence the fact it was an anonymous tip.’

  Porter frowned, but he didn’t say anything more. Lockhart had to hand it to Stagg, he was a good bullshitter.

  ‘Analysis of the blood on the knife,’ Lockhart resumed, ‘provided a match with a sample taken from the body of Ernesto Gomez.’ He clicked again, bringing up a photo they’d been given by Gomez’s boyfriend, Paul Newton. It showed the Colombian set designer holding a beer and smiling in what looked like a pub garden. ‘The material was under Gomez’s fingernails, which indicates a probable defensive wound. Our hypothesis is that Logan attacked Gomez and may therefore be a suspect in Op Thorncross. Given the identical MO and signature of the three Thorncross murders, she could also therefore be responsible for killing Charles Stott and Martin Johnson. At the very least, she’s a significant person of interest.’

  Lockhart could already see one or two expressions of puzzlement among the group.

  ‘Now, some of you might be wondering how we were able to identify the victim from the bus stop as Blaze Logan,’ he continued. ‘This was the result of painstaking work by DS Stagg, DS Smith and our analyst, Lucy Berry.’ Lockhart spotted Berry in the group and gestured to her. She immediately blushed a deep red and shrank slightly in her chair. ‘Based on the eyewitness report of the attack, we traced the journey of the victim away from the bus stop into neighbouring streets, where home CCTV supplied by a member of the public gave us a range of properties into which the victim could’ve gone.’

  Another pause. He noticed a couple of nods.

  ‘House-to-house inquiries found that one of these addresses was occupied by a man named Jonathan Foster. He initially behaved evasively but eventually disclosed to us that he had a female friend named Blaze Logan staying with him who was out on the night of the bus stop attack and came back shortly after what we believe to be the time of the assault. In his bathroom bin, we found a quantity of bloodied tissues consistent with a serious injury, as well as a used needle and some fishing line, suggesting that she’d sutured her own stab wound.’

  This was met with a smattering of audible winces, gasps and expletives from the room.

  ‘We also found clothing in th
e room she’d been staying in at Mr Foster’s home, which matched the outfit the eyewitness described the woman at the bus stop as wearing. Further discussion with Mr Foster gave us the backstory of Blaze Logan.’

  Lockhart went on to describe Logan’s work as a stuntwoman, her move to the US, the accident that left her seriously injured and the lack of compensation she received before being deported to the UK.

  ‘There is a strong possibility,’ he added, ‘that her motive for the murders is something connected to her profession as a stunt performer, since two of the victims also worked in the film industry. Though what her exact connection to those individuals is, we have yet to discover.’ Now wasn’t the time to share Green’s theory of surrogate victims. He was only just getting his head around it himself.

  ‘Great work, Dan.’ Porter leant back in his chair. ‘What are the priority follow-up actions?’

  Lockhart clicked on to the next slide and brought up more bullet points.

  ‘We need to find out Blaze Logan’s real name. Our best bet for that is the US embassy, because they’ll have a record of a visa application for her some time around eighteen months ago. Luce assures me there are very few professional stunt performers in the UK, so tracing her application should be possible. If we go through our FBI liaison in the embassy, we’ll have an answer within a couple of hours. We’re also checking with the British Stunt Register in case she’s on their books.’

  ‘Good.’ Porter made a note.

  ‘We have Foster’s laptop, too, which he said Logan used regularly during the time she was staying in his home. We can request data exploitation on that, see if her search history gives us any clues on her intentions.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Max also got Mr Foster to check his personal possessions, and he discovered that his emergency bank card was missing from his wallet. It’s not a card he uses often, and it only has a few hundred pounds in the account. He wanted to cancel it, but Max persuaded him to leave it in case Logan has it. Might enable us to trace her movements.’

  ‘Fine.’ Porter tapped the notebook with his pen, then said: ‘Is she using a phone?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Double check with Foster if he knows anything about it.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘The second you have a confirmed photograph, get it out to the UK Borders, airports, ferry terminals, anywhere else she might go. And all boroughs for patrol units, obviously, plus every other police force in the country. She’s had, what, a seventeen-hour head start on us? She could be anywhere by now.’

  Lockhart nodded, but he didn’t agree with Porter’s final point. Green had told him about humans’ natural response when faced with a threat: fight or flight. And he didn’t think Logan was someone to flee from danger. She was like him. She was a fighter.

  Sixty-Six

  I wake up, blink a few times, then remember where I am. There’s a warm, slumbering body next to me. Still fast asleep. I think I wore him out last night. What was his name, again? Joseph? Or was it Gareth? Doesn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he was there, last night, in the club. A brief conversation confirmed that he was single, and that he lived alone. Those were the only two things I cared about. The fact that he wasn’t hideously unattractive was a bonus. His job was something to do with web design… user experience, maybe. He said his clients were mostly in the US, and he didn’t need to start work until midday, so he was having a big Sunday night. I hope his clients won’t miss his services too much. Actually, I don’t give a shit about his clients, just as long as no one comes searching for him anytime soon.

  I take another look at him, lying there, one arm thrown above his head, fingers splayed as if he’s waving to someone. Maybe he is, in a dream. It’s the sort of thing he’d do; he seems like a nice guy. His only mistake was – like most men – thinking with his cock. It didn’t occur to him to ask why a woman who was out of his league was picking him up in a club, why I was so interested in the privacy of his apartment. Why I gave him almost no information about myself. Why I made him leave without telling his mates.

  I feel a burst of excitement as I push myself up into a kneeling position, pick up the pillow I’ve been sleeping on, and straddle him. He stirs as my weight settles on top of him. I lift the pillow, just as his eyes open a fraction. He registers that it’s me, and there’s half a smile on his face as he closes his eyes again. Perhaps he thinks I want some more of him. That this is my special way of waking him up. But he couldn’t be more wrong.

  It’s my way of making sure he stays asleep.

  A muffled sound escapes his lips as I press the pillow onto his face and hold it firmly down. I know he isn’t strong enough to resist me. Still, he starts to struggle, presumably as he realises this isn’t a kinky game. It takes a surprisingly long time, perhaps almost two minutes, before the flailing and thrashing is over and he stops moving.

  When I’m certain he isn’t breathing any longer, I roll back onto my side of the bed. Remove the pillow I just suffocated him with, sit up and use it to support my lower back, which is hurting almost as much as my stupid stab wound. I reach across to the bedside table for his MacBook laptop. I open it and take his limp right hand from beside him. Touch his index finger to the corner button on the keyboard. And it opens. Thank you, Joseph. Or Gareth.

  I fire up the web browser.

  There’s work to be done.

  Sixty-Seven

  Lexi threw the teaspoon into her kitchen sink, took a slurp of tea too soon, scalded her mouth, and growled. She was still mad about getting cut out of the Thorncross case, after discovering the name of Blaze Logan. She deserved better than that. She’d given Dan’s team their serial murder suspect on a plate, working for free, and all he’d promised was to ‘look her up’. And she hadn’t heard anything more about it since.

  She tried to reason with herself. This case wasn’t about her. She didn’t need recognition; she wasn’t a narcissist, right? It should be enough to know that she’d done something useful. And yet, it gnawed at her. Did she want Dan’s approval, was that it? Or did it go deeper than that? Was it about trying to compensate for those other losses she could’ve prevented? She thought of her brother, Shep, and of her old flatmate, Liam. The sense of guilt made her feel a little sick.

  There had to be more she could do. What about Operation Braddock, the bus stop attacks? She’d only succeeded in confusing and alienating the detectives with her profile on that, because it wasn’t clear – but how many cases were? Models and theories were always neat, reality was a whole lot more complicated. She was doing her best, all things considered. But it wasn’t enough. Lexi resolved to take her tea upstairs and do some more research.

  At the top of the stairs, she noticed that Rhys’s bedroom door was open. That was odd. Normally, he kept it shut. She paused, throwing a glance back down the stairs. Should she?… No, it was his space. He was entitled to his privacy. But she was the main leaseholder, and he wasn’t home. She hesitated a little more. Then her curiosity got the better of her and she went inside.

  Rhys’s room smelled how she remembered Shep’s room smelling as an unwashed teenage boy; sweat, dirty clothes, stinky shoes and other odours Lexi didn’t want to interrogate too closely. She moved across to Rhys’s desk and put her tea down next to his computer. It occurred to her that she really knew very little about him at all. Surely, she had a right to know about the guy she was sharing a house with. Didn’t she?

  She scanned the items on his desk: several half-empty bottles of those mega-caffeinated energy drinks, a games controller whose cable went to the PC, some letters with the hospital logo at the top, a copy of WIRED magazine, and a plain book.

  Lexi reached for the book, and flipped it open at random. It was a journal, handwritten. She read a line, having to work hard to decipher the messy scrawl:

  …not that I don’t want a girlfriend, it’s just better that I’m not involved in anything now because of what happened…<
br />
  She snapped the diary shut and put it back. She should leave right away.

  But she didn’t follow the thought. Instead, she held still a second, listened. There was no sound.

  Unable to stop herself, she moved to the set of drawers beside the desk and eased open the top one. It contained Rhys’s socks and underwear. She assumed they were clean, but it was still gross. She was about to close it again when something smooth at the back caught her eye.

  She eased the balled socks and boxers to one side. And couldn’t believe what she was looking at. A knife.

  Not just any knife, a long-bladed, curving, serrated, evil-looking thing.

  Her mouth was dry, pulse thumping in her neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The voice almost made her heart stop and she whipped round to see Rhys in the doorway. How had she not heard him come in?

  ‘Rhys, I was, uh—’

  ‘Why are you looking in my drawer?’

  She needed to get a hold of herself. This was serious. She couldn’t back down, now.

  ‘There’s a goddam knife in here,’ she said.

  He stepped over and peered in. Lexi could smell his body odour. She moved slightly away, conscious of how close they were. Sarah wasn’t home yet and she felt suddenly vulnerable.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he replied. ‘That.’

  Her gaze involuntarily rose to the birthmark on his forehead, but she brought it back down again and made full eye contact. ‘What the hell is a knife like that doing in this house, huh?’

  ‘It’s… um, it’s a collecting thing. Like a, sort of a hobby.’

  ‘A hobby?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you kidding me?’