by John Stewart
“I wasn’t worried, smartass,” Rebecca replied, giving him a light punch in the ribs as he hugged her.
“Oi, no bruises, please. You’ll ruin my topless modeling career.” They both laughed and kissed.
“So, what’s your plan for today?” Mike asked as he sipped his coffee, already knowing the answer.
“I’d love to keep reading if you don’t mind. I’ll be caught up by tomorrow evening if I keep going.”
“Okay, I guess I could occupy myself by catching up on some emails. Last time I checked my phone I had hundreds.”
“Perfect. Do you want some breakfast before you start?” Rebecca offered with a smile.
“Only if you’re having some too, I should be the one pampering you.”
“I wasn’t offering the full Irish.” She said with a sarcastic laugh.
“Technically speaking it would be a full English, genius,” he replied, sticking out his tongue.
“Okay smartass! You just talked yourself out of my famous French toast.”
Mike moved closer and began playfully kissing her neck, “Awh, I’m sorry. French toast sounds great.” He said pulling away and taking another gulp of coffee. “Just let me grab a quick shower.”
As he walked away, Rebecca gave him an affectionate slap on the backside and smiled to herself as she turned to switch on the cooker.
***
After he showered and politely ate the mildly rubberized French toast without comment, Mike left Rebecca to her newspapers and set up at the desk in the spare room. He sighed when he saw the number of emails in his inbox had increased to almost four hundred. One by one, he read through them. Some were work related, some were financial, but most were from the many online shopping sites he favoured. His online absence had apparently been noticed and many of the emails were promotional offers, clearly intended to get him spending again.
He wasn’t in the mood to begin his Christmas shopping so soon after Halloween and deleted them as he went. Scrolling down the page, one new email caught his eye. He didn’t recognise the sender’s address and was about to delete it, but his antivirus flagged the attachment as safe, so he opened it out of curiosity. It was from Simon Meadowcroft.
“Hi Mike,
I realise you said you were done with me and the cases, but I’ve managed to wrangle some more information from my source. CID in Wales have confirmed the fibres found on William Coope are a match to those found on Darren Taylor and my guy also informed me that an address was found in Darren Taylor’s pocket. It’s another location and wasn’t released to the press. It has to mean something. I’ve marked it on the image attached.
I hope to hear back from you, but I understand if I don’t.
Kind regards
Simon”
Mike’s initial reaction was to send the email straight to the junk folder, but as he read the new information, he couldn’t fight his curious nature. He right clicked the attachment and downloaded the file to his desktop. Opening the image, Mike was faced with a familiar site, he had spent long enough staring at the map in Simon’s apartment to memorize the locations, but he noticed the sixth point Simon had added.
He zoomed in on the image to get a better view of the location, but the image began to pixelate before he could see any place names on the map. He opened a second tab on his Internet browser and found an interactive map of the city. He then zoomed in on Simon’s new location and watched as the map expanded to reveal high-resolution aerial view of the area.
The location was Weaver Fields, a recreational park, twenty minutes outside of the city centre. Mike sat back in his chair, conflicted as to what to do with the information. Half of him wanted to delete the image and forget he had ever seen it, but the other half was filled with an unyielding curiosity that was hard to suppress.
“Could be the body location.” He thought to himself with a curled lip. He opened the image full screen on his laptop and studied it for a while. All the locations seemed to be surrounding the city centre. He right clicked the image and selected the print option, but as soon as he did, he remembered the wireless printer was in the living area, right beside where Rebecca was catching up on the newspapers. He darted out of the chair and into the room just as the printer began coughing and groaning into life. Rebecca’s head lifted as he hurried in.
“What ya printing?” Rebecca asked in a childlike tone.
Mike stood between her and the printer, hiding the emerging image from her eye line.
“Ah, just some details on a few stories I might be put on when I go back to work.” Turning to remove the sheet as he spoke. “How’s the reading coming along?” Folding the sheet in half as he turned back around.
“Good so far, the usual reams of bad news and celebrity bullshit. Looks like I didn’t miss a whole lot after all.” She said without lifting her head.
Mike started walking back towards the spare room.
“Told ya, same old rubbish. Let me know when you fancy lunch.”
“Okay.” Raising her eyes briefly, before returning them to the newspapers.
Mike closed the spare room door after him, letting out a sigh of relief that Rebecca had been too engrossed in the news of the previous three weeks to question him any further.
He sat down, unfolded the printout and once again studied it for a few minutes. He took out a pencil from the desk drawer and drew a line around the points, making a rough circle on the map. He then tried various combinations, connecting the points from top to bottom and left to right. After a while, the points all intersected in the centre with gave him another possible point of interest. He reopened the interactive map and zoomed in on the central point. The map revealed the intersecting point to be perfectly aligned with the Chelsea Physic Gardens. Opening the notes that he had already made and saved on the laptop, he added this detail at the bottom of the map and tried online to find some sort of connection with the two new possible locations.
Nothing of note came up in his search results and before he knew it, Rebecca was calling him into the kitchen, having already prepared lunch. As they ate, he tried to put the new information to the back of his mind and enjoy Rebecca’s reaction to the news stories he had already read the week earlier. Once finished, they cleared up and Mike returned to the spare room with a full stomach.
He returned to reading his last few remaining emails before refocusing on the map. Looking at it again, he picked up the pencil. This time, he tried joining the points numerically from location one to six. He moved back from the image to see the result, which now resembled a toddler’s attempt at drawing a star. The overlapping lines from his previous efforts had made it difficult to make anything out, but there was something gnawing at the back of his mind. He took out a red marker and traced the pattern again, from location one to two and so on. The movement of tracing the pattern felt oddly familiar, like he had drawn it before. He did it again and again until finally his muscle memory took over and he completed the pattern by adding one final stroke from the last point back to the first. He stood over the image and rubbed his chin with a satisfied yet puzzled expression.
“That’s it, the Unicursal Hexagram.”
Chapter 22
“What the hell is a Unicursal Hexagram?”
Mike turned to see Rebecca standing in the doorway wearing an inquisitive expression and sat back in his chair.
“Oh, it’s just a pattern I was looking at.” Trying his best to block the computer screen. His efforts proved to be pointless, as Rebecca walked closer and recognised the first few location markers on the map displayed on the laptop.
“Oh my God! The cases, I’ve been so caught up in the news, I completely forgot about them. Why haven’t you mentioned anything? It’s my story too ya know.” She said picking up the printed copy of the map.
Mike hesitated for a moment, knowing once she got up to speed, she would want to get right back to working on it.
“Okay, listen, I don’t want you getting into anything just yet. You nee
d to relax and get your strength back.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m fine. It’ll be good to get the old brain ticking again, those newspapers are getting repetitive anyway. So, how far have you gotten? Any links yet?”
Mike shifted in his chair, unsure of how to dampen her enthusiasm without revealing his real reasons for wanting her as far away from the cases as possible.
“You’re just not ready Becca. In a few weeks, when you’re back to normal, I’ll fill you in on the whole thing. Why don’t we head out and get some fresh air? We’ve been cooped up indoors for long enough.”
“Mike, why are you acting all weird? Since when do you like taking walks? I’m fine! I want to see what I missed. You can’t just hijack our story like this.”
“I’m not hijacking anything Becca, just, please trust me on this,” Mike said as he again stood up from his chair.
“No, tell me what’s wrong. I worked just as hard as you did on this and I have every right to know how it’s going.” Rebecca fired back almost shouting.
“Working on this is the whole reason you ended up in the bloody hospital and I won’t let that happen again.” He countered, matching her volume.
“Don’t be stupid. I fell, it could have happened anytime.”
“You were attacked!” The words fell from his lips before he could stop them.
Rebecca stood back, clearly taken aback as Mike slumped back into his chair, cursing himself for blurting out the words.
“I didn’t want to tell you yet. You need to get yourself well again before dealing with all this shit.”
Rebecca was silent for another few moments. She raised her hand to her mouth and Mike saw it was trembling. He quickly stood again and put his arms around her, but she pushed him away and stood back from him.
“Tell me what happened.” Her voice was calm yet firm.
“I should have never pushed you to work on those cases.”
“From the start Mike.” She demanded in an even firmer tone.
“Okay, you spent the day researching the Kimberly Barnes case. Do you remember anything about that?”
“No, I told you. The last thing I can remember is leaving here and getting into the car that Monday morning.”
“Right, well according to Simon, he left to go to the shops. When he got back, he found you lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood.” Rebecca held the back of her head as he continued. “He rang for an ambulance and you slipped into a coma shortly afterwards. You lost a lot of blood. I thought I’d lost you.”
“But you said I fell. How do you know I didn’t?”
“Simon said the apartment door was open when he got back and there was nothing in the room or on the floor that could have caused the injury to your head. The doctors said it was most likely an iron bar or maybe a baseball bat.”
Rebecca pulled over the chair and took a seat while she took it all in.
“My worry is that maybe someone involved with one of the cases found out we were working with Simon and attacked you as a warning.”
“What, to scare us off? I can’t see it.” Rebecca said dismissively before another thought entered her head. “That’s why my brother was so annoyed with you, wasn’t it?”
“One of the nurses told him about your attack. I tried to convince him it was an accident, but he was having none of it and blamed me for leaving you alone. I guess he was right. I should have been there.”
Rebecca’s tone softened.
“Mike, it could have been any of us. We don’t even know for sure if it was linked to the cases. It might have been an attempted burglary. Maybe they saw Simon leaving the apartment and figured the place would be empty, who knows?”
Mike gave a regretful sigh.
“Maybe, but I’d rather you stay away from it. I was so pissed off about it, I swore I was done with it all, but then I saw this email from Simon. He managed to get more info on the last case. That’s what I was working on when you came in.”
Rebecca reached out to hold his hand as she spoke.
“Okay, let’s make a deal. You get me up to speed on what I missed while I was having the world’s longest power nap and I help you with the new stuff from here. I won’t leave the flat.”
Mike sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Come on Mike, it’ll be a good story for us and the coma bit will give it a nice edge.”
Mike squeezed her hand tight, noticing her tremble had vanished. “Are you sure you’re ready to start back so soon?”
“It’s been almost a month. How long do you think I should wait?” She said with a sarcastic grin.
“Right then, if you’re sure.” He said with a hesitant smile.
“I’m sure, now you get your notes set up on the couch and I’ll stick the kettle on.”
“I’ll need to speak to Simon first. There’s a lot of pictures relating to the last three cases that I don’t have and you’ll need to see them.”
“Didn’t he say he wasn’t comfortable with us taking them out of his place?”
“I don’t care what he said. If he still wants our help so badly, he’ll send me what we need or we’ll wrap this story up as an example of police incompetence, with his name in the title.”
“Look at you thinking like a reporter, I’m impressed,” Rebecca said with a look of genuine surprise.
Mike picked up his phone and called Simon’s number. Simon was sitting on a park bench when his new phone rang.
“Hello.” He answered, unsure of who to expect.
“Simon, it’s Mike, I’ll help you on one condition.”
Simon’s eyes lit-up on hearing the offer.
“Anything! Name it.”
Mike held a firm, borderline aggressive tone, making it clear he was still angry over Simon’s earlier omissions.
“Email me all the files relating to each case. Statements, pictures, summaries, the lot. If we’re going to work on this any longer, it’ll be from here. We’re done with the house visits.”
“Is Miss Hollister back on her feet? Can she remember what happened?” Simon asked in an inquisitive tone.
“Don’t worry about Rebecca, you’ll be dealing with me and me alone from now on.”
The line was quiet while Simon clenched his jaw and considered the request.
“Alright Mike, you have a deal. All the files are backed up on my cloud account, I’ll send you the link now.”
Mike raised his eyes to the sky and let out a subdued chuckle. “Bloody cloud accounts.” He mumbled.
“What?” Simon replied.
“Nothing, just send on the link and I’ll take it from there.”
“Okay Mike, do what you can. As it happens, I may just be looking at our killer at this very moment.”
With that, the line went dead in Mike’s hand.
Chapter 23
Simon hung up the phone and sent Mike the link to the files. Despite his dramatic statement, he wasn’t as yet any closer to finding anyone, but he had found something, he hoped may prove helpful. After spending several days inside, he decided it would be a good idea to get out of his apartment and get some fresh air, so he took the half hour stroll to check out Weaver Fields Park. The area was predominantly open grass with some surrounding trees and a small wooded area along the south-east corner. Walking around, he saw play areas and a sectioned off football pitch. The whole park was dissected by five paths leading to a circular rest area. In the centre, stood a large metal art installation, which caught Simon’s eye.
He had no particular love for public structures, in fact, he had often decried them as a waste of taxpayers’ money when speaking to his friends on local councils, but this one was different. Above the highest point of the sport-themed piece, he spotted a security camera. He had dealt with many types of CCTV cameras in his time and could tell, that particular model had a 360-degree rotation capability. He sat and watched as the camera slowly tilted and turned covering a large proportion of the park. Wracking his brain to think of someone he
knew that could get him access to the footage, he kept coming back to the last person he wanted to call, D.S. Ethan Sloane. Despite their conversation the previous day, he was the logical call, Ethan had the level of access he needed and they had history. He dialed the number and awaited the inevitable lecture.
On the other end, Sloane was filling out reams of paperwork following an officer-involved shooting during a morning raid. He looked down to see Simon’s number appear on the screen and with a heavy sigh, he picked it up.
“When I said don’t be a stranger, I didn’t expect daily calls.” He said, attempting to keep the conversational mood light.
“Ethan, sorry mate, I know you’re probably on top of your head with that botched raid this morning.”
Sloane grimaced at the unjust media coverage his earlier operation had attracted.
“It was a clean shoot, fucking press are making us out to be the bad guys as usual.”
“I don’t doubt it. I remember how it works.” Simon replied, trying to reinforce their connection before asking for more help.
“So, what can I do for you today then?”
Simon took a slow deep breath before he began.
“Okay, don’t lose your shit, I’m sitting in Weaver Fields…”
“Jesus Christ Simon! I told you to let it go.” Sloane blasted.
“I know, I know, but just listen to me.”
“Go on,” Sloane said with a sigh.
“Right. In the centre of the park, there’s a CCTV camera.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that Simon. We checked the whole area after the Taylor killing.”
“I know, you said, but I have reason to believe that there is going to be another murder and this might just be the place it happens.”
“Because of a note found in a dead man’s jacket? Simon, you’re reaching. That could have been there for any number of reasons, a date, a reminder to walk the dog, anything.”