by Amy Cross
“Doing what?”
“Getting crazier and crazier.”
Stopping, Ophelia turned and looked back at her.
“Ever since I first met you,” Laura continued, “you've been ratcheting up the insanity. Pushing your luck, getting more and more out of control, more like a cartoon, putting yourself in danger and just...” She paused. “Where does it end, Ophelia? How crazy can you act before something really bad happens?”
“I'm just playing to my strengths.”
“You're flying higher and higher,” Laura told her. “Eventually, you need to find a different way of living.”
“Or my wings'll melt off?”
“Or you'll crash and burn. You'll fall.”
For a moment, Ophelia seemed lost for words, before finally a faint, sad smile crossed her face. “I know,” she said, before turning and shoving her hands in her pockets as she walked away.
“I just don't know if I can help you when you come plummeting down,” Laura whispered, watching as Ophelia reached the far end of the street and took a right turn, finally disappearing from view.
Sighing, Laura took a moment to try brushing the shoe-polish off her shoulders, before giving up and taking her coat off, folding it over her arm and starting the walk back to the police station.
Chapter Two
“So you didn't bring her back to the station?” asked the officer the next morning, as he followed Laura along the corridor. “You just let her go?”
“Don't worry about it. Everything's sorted.”
“Yeah, but Guv, the -”
“It's sorted,” she said again, stopping and turning to him. “What's your name again?”
“Broad,” the officer replied. “Stuart Broad.”
“Well, Officer Broad, there are just some times when -”
“When we have to bend the rules,” he continued, “I know. In case you've forgotten, I helped bend some pretty significant rules for you back at that shop last night.”
“And I've very grateful. When I accidentally -”
“You didn't accidentally do anything,” he replied. “You were stealing that bottle, and nine times out of ten you'd be in a cell right now. If you were a regular person, at least. You're a thief, Detective Foster.”
She paused, shocked by how blunt he was being.
“And that Ophelia girl,” he continued, “what's really going on with her? Everyone knows you and her are close, but there's something not right about the whole thing.”
“So what's your point?” she asked.
“I just thought you should know that people are talking. You know how gossip spreads in a place like this. People are asking, why the hell is Laura Foster running around with some delinquent little bitch who by rights should be in a padded cell?”
“If -”
“That Ophelia girl is mental,” he added. “Properly, out of her mind, insane. She's literally as mad as a box of frogs. And maybe she's been able to help you once or twice, and that's great, but sooner or later she's going to do something bad, something that won't just bring her down, it'll bring you down too.” He paused. “So fine. Let her go after she was caught in someone's garden, and let her go the next time she does something bad, and the next time and the time after that. Just don't act all shocked and surprised when she eventually goes too far.”
“If -”
“Laura!” a voice shouted from the other end of the corridor. “Where the hell have you been?”
Turning, she saw Nick Jordan leaning out of his office.
“I've got to go, Officer Broad,” she continued, turning back to him, “but thank you for your advice. I appreciate your concern a great deal.”
“No you don't,” he replied, turning to walk away. “You're going to keep right on going, until that scrawny kid takes you both down in flames.”
Once he was gone, she took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure, before turning and making her way along the corridor to where Nick was waiting.
“You alright?” he asked, clearly concerned.
“I've had better mornings.”
“Well this one is about to get a lot worse. We've had a call about a murder a couple of miles away. Uniform's there now and I nabbed the case from Barnes. I told him we'd take it.”
“Fine,” she replied, “then what are we waiting for? Let's -”
“There's something I need to tell you before we go to the scene,” he continued, clearly concerned. “The thing is, there's a reason why I thought we should take this case as soon as I heard about it, but I'm not quite sure how you're going to react.” He paused for a moment. “This one might be a little personal.”
***
As soon as she stepped into the apartment, Laura felt a shiver pass through her body. Nick had warned her, and she had believed him, but still... In the back of her mind, she'd figured that he was probably over-reacting at least a little, that the similarities were superficial and that maybe he was seeing patterns that weren't there. Now, however, she realized that if anything, he'd been under-stating the situation. The whole scene wasn't just similar to the Natasha Simonsen scene from a couple of years earlier. It was identical.
“You okay?” he asked, stopping right behind her.
She nodded, watching as a couple of lab workers examined the scene, collecting forensic samples.
“If you need to get out of here,” Nick continued, “I can -”
“No,” she whispered, “I'm fine.”
“But -”
“I'm okay,” she said again, unable to stop staring at the dead body on the bed, over on the far side of the room. She stood in silence for a moment, her eyes fixed on the bloody sheets, and deep down she already knew that this couldn't be a coincidence.
The resemblance was too perfect. The body was even arranged in the same position.
“Her name,” Nick continued, stepping past Laura and heading across the room, “is Sarah Jenkins. Twenty-two years old, studying architectural history at university and making some extra money on the side as a model for low-rent glamor mags, been living here for about six months after moving out of student digs. Neighbors say she was a quiet girl, kept herself to herself... God, I hate that phrase, but you know what I mean. No wild parties, not many visitors, seemed polite enough and generally didn't make a nuisance of herself. The guy next door said he didn't hear a thing out of the ordinary last night, but from what we can tell she was killed at around three in the morning.”
“Just like Natasha Simonsen,” Laura whispered.
“That's not where the similarities end,” Nick told her. “In fact, they're piling up way, way faster than they should.”
“How was she killed?” Laura asked, stepping toward the bed.
“Three guesses,” Nick muttered.
“A series of knife wounds to the back,” Doctor Maitland replied, looking up from the side of the bed, where he was taking swabs from the girl's exposed back. There were five clear, distinct stab wounds, in a pattern that anyone associated with the Simonsen case would recognize in an instant. “I know what you're going to ask, Laura, and from what I can tell, the pattern seems to match the wounds Natasha Simonsen suffered, to a remarkable degree.”
Reaching the bed, Laura walked around until she could see the dead girl's face. Glassy eyes stared straight up, and there was a trickle of blood dried around the left nostril, along with a few lines of mud.
“That's a foot-print,” Maitland told her, “in case you were wondering. For some reason, the killer appears to have pushed his foot down on her face.”
“The same as with Natasha,” Laura whispered. “Get as much of a print as you can. Let's try to figure out the guy's size.”
“The similarities are too great for this to be a coincidence,” Nick said, stopping on the other side of the bed. “In fact, they're piling up.” Taking out his notebook, he held it up for her to see. “Just from a cursory background check and a few details about Sarah's life, I've already come up with twenty-five clea
r, key points where they match. That's really why I wanted to warn you before we came, Laura... Whoever killed this girl, they made a definite effort to mimic the death of Natasha Simonsen. The two girls even look similar, and Natasha was doing some modeling work too, wasn't she?”
Crouching next to the bed, Laura stared at the dead girl's face. Over the previous couple of years, she'd gone from being obsessed with solving Natasha's murder to trying everything to block those thoughts from her mind. She still remembered that moment when a jury had cleared Daniel Gregory of all the charges, and the judge had taken care to offer severe criticisms of her own handling of the case. Natasha's death had haunted her ever since, and she'd always known that her own mistakes had led to Gregory walking away without paying for what he did. And now someone was recreating that crime-scene, as if they were mocking her for everything that had gone wrong.
“Ophelia was right,” she whispered.
“What was that?” Nick asked.
“Nothing,” she replied, still staring at the dead girl's face. “We need to find out where Daniel Gregory has been over the past twenty-four hours and -”
Nick sighed.
“We do!” she insisted. “Come on, seriously, you don't think there's a very good chance he's been up to his old ways again? The man is a complete psychopath, he -”
“Woah,” Nick said, “hold up there. Already way ahead of you, and the guy has a cast-iron alibi. So don't even start down that path.”
“Look again.”
“Laura -”
“It's him,” she said firmly, feeling as if a kind of cold fury was starting to reach up through her chest. “I don't care what anyone else says, it was him last time and it's him again. He killed this woman. Obviously it's taken a while for him to get his confidence back after the trial, but now he's ready to go again.”
“Daniel Gregory was out of the country,” Nick replied. “He's arriving back today, from a business trip to Brussels.”
She shook her head.
“Laura, I've already double-checked. I've seen ATM footage of him in Brussels from last night, I've got credit card transaction records, hotel bookings, email access, his entire itinerary for the journey, social media log-in details that prove he was out there last night... There's no doubt, he was hundreds of miles away.”
“No,” she replied.
“No?”
“No. He was here. He did this.”
“How?”
“I don't know, but he did.”
“This is exactly what I was afraid might happen.”
She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Just...” He sighed. “Laura, there's no doubt that this girl's death is linked to what happened to Natasha Simonsen. We're in total agreement there. Hell, everyone in the room is in agreement, you'd have to be blind not to see what's going on. And the most likely thing is that it's the same killer, right?”
“Right, and -”
“Which means Daniel Gregory isn't the man we're after. Not for this, and not for Natasha's murder either.” He paused for a moment. “I know that probably runs against your grain, Laura, but I'm just calling it how I see it. Sometimes, the most obvious suspect turns out to be innocent.”
“Daniel Gregory killed Natasha Simonsen.”
“But if -”
“And he killed this woman too.”
“From all the way over in bloody Belgium? With a knife? That's a bit of a long reach, don't you think?”
“It's a challenge,” she continued, getting to her feet. “He's set it up like this, as an impossible crime, to frustrate us. I told you years ago, he likes to set these things up years in advance, it's one of his tricks. He's trying to drive us out of our minds!”
“And why would he do that? Why would he even bother caring what any of us think?”
“Because -” She paused, realizing that she was in danger of sounding paranoid. She knew, especially after talking to Ophelia, that Daniel Gregory seemed to have been targeting her, but she also knew that no-one else would believe a word she said if she started sounding paranoid. Still, she was certain that this latest crime-scene was intended as a taunting message, as a reminder of her past failings. Gregory had always shown a theatrical touch, and now he was clearly taking things to another level.
“Do you want to pass the case on to someone else?” Nick asked.
She shook her head.
“I'm just thinking,” he continued, “that maybe you're too close to the -”
“No,” she said firmly. “This is my case.”
“Well...” He paused. “Technically it's our case.”
“Whatever. It's aimed at me.”
“Aimed?”
“You know what I mean.” She watched as Doctor Maitland slipped a swab into the dead girl's open mouth and moved it around for a moment, before pulling it back out and dropping it into a plastic bag. “I want the autopsy fast-tracked. You're going to find something else once you cut her open.”
“Find something?” Maitland replied, looking up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Another hint,” she continued.
Pausing, Maitland looked over at Nick, and they shared a concerned moment.
“Natasha Simonsen's left thumb was missing,” Laura continued, looking down at the dead girl's hand and seeing that, against expectations, her thumb was intact.
“I noticed that too,” Nick replied. “You'd think, after all this, that the killer would've bothered to lop off the thumb, wouldn't you? Bit sloppy of him not to copy one of the defining characteristics of the original case.”
“It's not sloppy,” Laura told him, staring at the girl's hand. “If the two deaths were identical, that'd be the sum of the message, but the thumb... He left it on this time for a reason.”
“Such as?”
“I don't know, but Natasha had a bullet in her stomach, remember?” She turned to him, then back to Maitland. “An unused bullet. It made no sense at the time, I remember it was one of the things we just couldn't explain. The defense had a field day during the trial, they made that bullet out to be some kind of huge discrepancy. We couldn't tie it to Gregory, so it became one of the key factors that caused the jury to turn against us.” Pausing for a moment, she looked down at the dead girl's belly. “You have to look and see if she has a bullet in her stomach too. She will, I'm sure of it.”
“You think someone's trying to send us a message using weird little discrepancies?” Nick asked.
“The message is for me,” she almost said, but she held back at the last moment. She felt as if her mind was spinning, but she also knew full well that this was most likely the intended effect. The killer would have anticipated how she'd react, and she felt sick at the thought that she might be behaving exactly as he expected. At the same time, she knew that Daniel Gregory had outsmarted her during the original case, and she was certain he was trying his luck for a second time. In the back of her mind, she'd always suspected that he wouldn't leave things alone, that he wouldn't be able to just walk away.
“We can't place Gregory at this crime-scene,” Nick said finally. “We can't even try, we'd be laughed out of every court in the land.”
“The ATM video was faked,” she replied. “All the evidence was faked, he wasn't in Brussels last night.”
Nick sighed. “The guy's shifty, but he's not some kind of master-criminal. What do you think he did? Do you think he hacked into a bunch of computers? Give me a break. This is real-life, Laura, not an episode of CSI. The one thing we know for certain is that Daniel Gregory wasn't in the country last night, and as alibis go, that isn't too shabby, is it?”
“I need to -” Pausing, she realized that there was one secret weapon she had this time around, someone she'd only met after the Natasha Simonsen case. She turned and headed to the door. “I need to talk to Ophelia.”
“Seriously?” Nick called after her. “You're relying on Captain Fruitcake for help now?”
“Get the autopsy done.”
Without waiting for him to finish, and with a slowly-growing sense of panic in her gut, Laura made her way out of the apartment and then along the corridor, passing several neighbors who were watching the scene from their front doors. Hurrying down the stairs, she passed several uniformed officers who were heading up to the apartment, but she ignored their greetings and focused, instead, on getting down to the foyer as fast as possible, and then out to the front of the building. Stopping for a moment, she took a series of deep breaths, but if anything the sense of nausea was increasing. She made her way around the side of the building and found the bins, and she barely got one of the lids open in time before leaning inside and throwing up. She paused, waiting to see if the wave of nausea had passed, and finally she took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her lips.
“I can't do this,” she whispered, feeling as if the whole world was spinning all around her. “Crap, I can't do it. Not again.”
Chapter Three
“Hello, Mr. Gregory,” Ophelia whispered, watching intently from her seat in the cafe as Daniel Gregory walked past wearing an immaculately tailored suit that clung to his newly lean physique. He didn't notice her, of course, instead heading away from the platform and over to the public toilets. After slipping a coin into the slot, he made his way through the turnstile and disappeared inside.
Reaching down to her plate, Ophelia picked up the last of her carrot cake and slipped it into her mouth, while keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the door to the public toilets.
“Is this seat taken?” asked a voice suddenly, with a hint of a Scottish accent.
Turning, she saw a middle-aged woman standing nearby, with one hand already on the empty chair.
“Go for it,” Ophelia replied, before turning back to watch the door. She picked up her cup of tea and, while the woman dragged the chair over to the next table, Ophelia continued to watch the toilet door.
She sighed.
And watched.
And waited.
Until finally, after almost twenty minutes had passed, her eyes began to narrow slightly.