by John Stewart
Simon didn’t need to check the file for the answer.
“North Acton Playing Fields. Why? Can’t you find it?” Simon stood to assist in Mike’s search.
Hovering the pin around the map, Mike was getting frustrated with his lack of geographical knowledge of the area.
Simon gave him another minute before deciding to put him out of his misery. “More to your right and up a touch and you have it.”
Mike followed the directions and stuck the pin all the way into the cork backing with a burst of frustration and relief.
“Feck ya! I nearly had it.”
Simon laughed at Mike’s uncharacteristic use of language.
“It’s a big city Mike, the locations are dotted all around it. Even a local would have difficulties finding all of them.”
Mike studied the positioning of the four pins on the map for a moment before turning back to Simon.
“Right, I’m gonna pack up here and head back to the hospital, are you okay with me coming back first thing tomorrow, I’d like to go through the last case and give the whole thing an overview. Maybe with all the details in my mind, something will come up?”
Simon nodded and picked up the coffee cups.
“Sounds like a plan, I’ll help you tidy up.”
***
Driving back to the hospital, Mike couldn’t shake the feeling that Simon still wasn’t telling him everything. He had twice looked him in the eye and swore there was nothing else, but every time something new came up, he admitted holding something back. He didn’t entirely trust Simon, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from trying to get to the bottom of the cases and in turn, find out who attacked Rebecca.
He arrived back at the hospital by 10pm and settled in beside Rebecca. He spoke briefly to one of the doctors on duty, quizzing her about how long he should expect Rebecca to be kept under, but was only offered a vague estimate of between three days and a week.
“Should be enough time,” he thought to himself as the doctor left the room. Holding Rebecca’s hand as the cases churned in the back of his mind, his eyes soon became heavy and he nodded off to sleep to the sound of her breathing.
Chapter 14
The sound of a distant heart rate monitor pulled Mike from his broken and uncomfortable slumber. It was still dark outside, but the room door was ajar and allowed the light from the corridor to creep in. Picking up his phone, he saw it had just gone 4am. He stood to stretch his legs and walked to the open door leading out to the hallway. Walking along the usually bustling corridor, Mike was struck by the silence. The sound of the monitor was no longer audible, instead only the electrical hum from the overhead fluorescent lighting could be heard.
Puzzled by the lack of night staff, he took a stroll towards the nearest nurses’ station, but still there was no one to be found. As he looked inside, he saw a small table with a solitary cup of tea on top. He watched the steam rise from the foam cup as the sound of the heart monitor that had awoken him, kicked back into action. This time the sound was closer and he followed it further down the hallway toward a darkened ward. As he reached the doorway leading into the dimly lit ward, the sound of the monitor seemed to emanate from all around him. He tried the light switch with no success, so used the light from his phone to illuminate his path. Just as he lit up the phone, the monitor fell silent once more. He raised the phone and saw six beds, three on either side of him. None of the patients in the beds had any monitors hooked up to them and on closer inspection, Mike realised why. He slowly walked towards the first bed to his right, careful not to shine the phone light on what he thought to be sleeping patient’s faces. The beds had none of the standard bedclothes, just a single white sheet. It was then that he noticed the stillness of the patients and the chilled air in the room. He was not in a ward, he was in the morgue. He quickly turned to leave, when he noticed the bed nearest the door to his left was now empty. He willed his legs to move, but fear had paralyzed them. Slowly, he shone the phone’s light over the sheets. As the light hit, he saw they were covered in blood. He involuntarily jumped back from the disturbing sight and with the power restored to his legs, was about to run for the door when a hand grabbed him by his shoulder. He turned in horror to see a woman standing in front of him, bleeding from her eyes. She stared at him for a moment before screaming in an unbearably high-pitched tone.
It was then that Mike jolted in his chair as he awoke in a cold sweat. The sound of the same heart monitor from his dream was coming from the next room. Almost mirroring the actions of his dream, he picked up his phone and checked the time. It was 7.42am and the morning sun had begun piercing through the blinds onto Rebecca’s face. For a moment, he thought he saw her wince at the brightness as she often did at home, but it was nothing more than a muscle twitch. Outside the room, the usual beehive of activity was in place and the memories of his nightmare began to fade, replaced by thoughts of Simon’s cases. As he prepared to leave, Nurse Claire Swindon arrived in to check on Rebecca and replace her fluid drip.
“Hi Mike, I didn’t see you yesterday afternoon. Is everything okay?”
Mike smiled on seeing her by now familiar face.
“Ah yeah, I just thought I’d get some things wrapped up before you guys decided to wake Sleeping Beauty here. Now I know she’s out of the woods, I’m a little more focused.”
Claire smiled broadly. “Well good for you, she’s a lucky girl this one.” She said as she propped up Rebecca’s pillow.
Mike avoided blushing as best he could.
“I’m the lucky one, sure if it weren’t for Becca, I’d probably still be on night patrols back home.”
Claire tilted her head with obvious curiosity.
“Night patrols? Were you a police officer in Ireland?”
“Yup, An Garda Síochána’s finest and heading nowhere fast. It’s funny how long you can be doing something before you realise how much time has passed.”
Claire gave a mocking smile. “Who are you telling? I’ve been doing this for years, still no closer to being an actress.”
They both laughed as Mike tidied away his blanket from the bedside chair.
“Speaking of time, do you have any news on when Becca can be woken up?”
Claire took a glance at Rebecca’s chart.
“Well, her hydration levels are heading in the right direction, so maybe another couple of days, but don’t quote me on that.”
Mike didn’t want to waste any more of the morning chatting when he could be finishing up the case reviews.
“Listen, thanks for everything you’ve been doing for Becca, you were right when you said she was lucky, you guys have been great.”
This time Claire held back on the blushing, clearly not accustomed to being praised for her efforts.
“All in a day’s work, Officer Wesley.”
“Ha, it’s just plain old Mike nowadays,” he replied as he zipped up his overnight bag and kissed Rebecca tenderly on the forehead.
Claire looked away awkwardly as Mike whispered in Rebecca’s ear, “I’ll be back soon,” he said before turning back to Claire. “Okay, I’m going to be away again today. If anything happens just give me a call, I’ll have the phone on me all day.”
“No problem, you’ll be informed before the doctors decide Miss Hollister is ready to wake up, so don’t worry.”
“Great, thanks again. I’ll be late getting back, so I’ll probably see you first thing tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring you a coffee then,” Claire said, laughing as Mike left for Simon’s apartment wearing a smile.
***
Simon hadn’t been awake long by the time Mike arrived with a day’s supply of garage bought croissants and energy bars.
“Stocking up for the winter?” Simon joked as Mike brushed passed him and headed straight for the spare room.
“I want to wrap this up today if at all possible.”
Simon gave a concerned look.
“What’s the rush? You’ll hardly make much progr
ess in one day. I need you to find something new Mike, not just confirm dead ends for me.”
Mike stopped abruptly and turned back to face Simon.
“Firstly, it hasn’t been just one day, between myself and Becca, we’ve put over a week of man hours into this and secondly, I told you right from the outset, we would review each case independently and should we find any connections, they were yours to follow up on.”
Simon took a half step back as Mike made his position clear. “Okay, I just don’t want this to be all for nothing, that’s all.”
Mike snapped back again. “After what happened to Becca, you’re lucky I’m here at all. I should be with her, not looking through this horrible shit that’s probably gonna keep me up again tonight.”
Simon’s eyes widened. “What do you mean keep you up again?”
Mike turned back towards the spare room, walking as he spoke. “Ah, it was nothing, just a dream in the hospital. They’re bloody hateful places at the best of times, let alone when you spend your day looking at stuff like this.”
Simon followed him into the room and stood in the doorway as Mike sat his bag down on the chair, picked up the last box of case files and dropped it down on the table. He said nothing for a moment as Mike took out the files and began to organise them across the table.
Finally, Simon took a deep breath and spoke with the voice of a frightened man. “Was it the girl with the bloody eyes?”
Chapter 15
The words sent a chill down Mike’s spine as the image from his nightmare flashed in his mind. He held his gaze on the table as Simon awaited his response.
“What? What girl?” he finally answered, shuffling the statements in front of him.
“You said you had a dream. Was it about the Barnes girl with the missing eyelids?” Simon asked with obvious discomfort.
Mike felt a growing unease at the repeated question.
“No. Ah, I don’t remember. It was just a dream.”
Simon stepped inside and sat on the arm of the chair beside Mike, staring into space as he spoke.
“I see her nearly every night, shrieking at me. At first I thought she was angry, but the more I dreamt of her, the more it felt like she was screaming for help. The drinking helped, but she’s always there waiting for me to fall asleep.”
Mike turned to face Simon, trying his best not to come across too aggressive. “Look, Simon, there’s a lot of horrific shit in these files. It’s perfectly normal to have the odd bad dream, we’re not machines. Now are you going to help with this today or what?”
Simon snapped out of his wallowing mood and stood from the chair. “You’re right I suppose, but no, I have to go out today, I’ll leave you in peace. You know where everything is in the kitchen, just help yourself.”
“Thanks, I will,” replied Mike as he turned back to the files.
Simon walked out closing the door behind him.
Mike shook his head with a feeling of pity for Simon as he realised just how damaged the man really was. The moment passed and as he heard Simon exit the apartment, he picked up the final case summary and began.
The fifth and final victim was another male. He went by the name of Darren Taylor and was a forty-four-year-old bar owner from Neath in Wales. Like the case of William Coope, Mr. Taylor was reported missing from his hometown and was found dead in London. An instant similarity that got Mike’s attention. His body was discovered, bound with twine, lying face down in the Mitcham Allotments along the Eastfields Road. He had been struck from behind while closing his bar in Neath on January 4th, 2014 and was suffocated with a plastic bag. Unlike the Coope murder, the M.E. determined that he was dead several hours before being dumped at the allotments. This led the investigating detectives to believe, he was in fact killed in Wales and transported to London, a theory held up by the presence of car boot fibres found on his clothes. Mike again made note of that detail, recalling the similar fibres found on Coope’s body. He read on to see if the fibres were crosschecked for a possible match, but despite a formal request made by the then retired Simon Meadowcroft, there were no details on whether or not any comparison was ever made. Mike was surprised at this, but saw that the case was handed over to the police in Wales following the M.E.’s findings on the likely time of death and he gathered that Simon’s connections only extended as far as his London colleagues. Unbeknownst to Mike, the details Simon had acquired from the case, were through his last remaining detective friend Ethan Sloane and only after his persistent requests.
CCTV footage from the bar in Neath showed Mr. Taylor cleaning up, emptying the tills and leaving by the rear exit. There were no cameras in the car park and no witnesses came forward. The local police in Neath suspected a disgruntled customer was responsible for the killing as Mr. Taylor was known to have a poor attitude with customers and wasn’t a well-liked publican. No prints, hair fibres nor any traces of DNA were found and the toxicology report came back negative for any drugs in his system. After a few months, the case went cold. Mike looked through the pictures, which thankfully weren’t as disturbing as some of the previous cases. Darren Taylor wasn’t mutilated like some of the others. His head wound, while severe enough to incapacitate him, hadn’t bled, so there was no blood around the body, just frost and withered vegetation.
“Why drive somebody all that way, just to dump them in an allotment?” Mike thought to himself as he sifted through the remaining documents and pictures one by one.
The last picture he picked up was a close up of Mr. Taylor’s face. The plastic bag had been removed and Mike noticed some discoloration on his cheeks, but put it down to lividity as he was positioned face down in the allotments. It was then that Mike noticed the plastic bag, which was visible to the left of Mr. Taylor’s face. The bag appeared to have writing on the inside, but it didn’t look like the usual branding found on shopping bags. He looked back through the morgue pictures for a second time and noticed that the discoloration on Mr. Taylors face had vanished after his body was washed, which would not be the case had it been caused by lividity. This piqued Mike’s interest all the more and he went through every picture one by one in a bid to see if he could make out the writing on the inside of the bag. It took some time, most angles were focused on specific areas of the body and none of them seemed to have a good close up shot of the bag, but then he saw it. By combining three separate photos, shot from three different angles, he was able to make out the reversed lettering inside and it immediately gave him the connection to the previous murder, he had been looking for.
The words ‘Happy New Year,’ were written on the inside of the bag, facing the victim and once Mike saw it, he thought of William Coope and how ‘Y2K,’ had been cut into his chest.
“Can’t be a coincidence,” Mike said aloud as he moved across the floor to pick up the Coope murder files. Looking at the pictures of the ‘Y2K,’ cut into Mr. Coope’s chest alongside the ‘Happy New Year,’ written on the inside of Darren Taylor’s bag, Mike knew, he finally had a solid link, a link that the investigators working the original cases had not made.
He sat back and looked at the map for a few moments, he had no idea where in London the Mitcham Allotments were. He walked over and took a closer look at the map, but to no avail, he simply wasn’t familiar enough with the area, so he admitted defeat and ran a search on his phone. It didn’t take long for the phone to point the way and once he made the correlation, he took a final pin and pressed it into the area Mr. Taylor was found. At a glance, the locations seemed to be completely random. There was no distinct pattern that Mike could make out, just five random pins placed on the outskirts of central London. He was wrong. He just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 16
Simon had spent most of his morning aimlessly strolling around the city. Mike’s ambitions of wrapping up the case reviews by the end of the day had him on edge. The past month had been a living hell for him and the only thing keeping him going was the possibility of finally catching the person responsible.
He stopped off at the coffee shop facing St Paul’s Cathedral and sat staring out the window at the tourists and passersby. All he could think of as he watched the world go by was that Mike was his last hope and if he couldn’t find something new on the cases, he may not have long to live himself. He removed the old blue envelope he had kept in his bedside drawer from his jacket pocket, took a deep breath and looked at the incriminating picture from underneath the table. Lifting his head, he again looked out the window and wondered if one of the people outside was the killer and if so, what were they waiting for?
***
Back at Simon’s apartment, Mike had taken a break to get some caffeine and food into his body, he also took a minute to check in with the hospital. As expected there was no news on Rebecca, so he got back to working on his newly discovered connection.
He took out Rebecca’s audio recorder and began making a list of every connection each case had to the next. This time he worked backwards, starting with the most recent discovery.
“Okay, the plastic bag that was used to suffocate Darren Taylor had ‘Happy New Year,’ written in permanent marker on the inside, as if the killer wanted it to be the last thing the victim saw. Now, William Coope’s killer also left a new year related message in the form of carving ‘Y2K,’ into his chest, likely with a medical grade scalpel. Coope’s killer also took him from his hometown and brought him several hours away to London, just as Taylor’s did. Obviously the ‘Y2K,’ is a reference to the year 2000, so that could be important. Both male victims, one killed in a very bloody and methodical manner, the other simply struck from behind and suffocated. It could be the same killer, but the violent nature of William Coope’s death seems more personal, of course the killer may have been disturbed when kidnapping Mr. Taylor, or he may have simply died sooner than expected, either way the similarities cannot be ignored.”