Cold Heart: Absolutely gripping serial-killer fiction

by Stephen Edger

  A look of guilt spread across Mrs Owen’s face. ‘Ah, I wish you’d come around sooner. My son was here on Friday and bagged up the few things she’d left in the room – mainly clothes and makeup – and took it to the dump. He said if she hadn’t returned to pay what she owed, I was better off dumping her stuff so the room was clean of her. I want to rent it out again, but he doesn’t think I should.’ She scowled. ‘He’s started mentioning retirement homes, but I’m not going anywhere.’

  Kate thought about her own mother in a care home in Romsey, and made a mental note to visit her as soon as they’d found Daisy.

  ‘Do you know if your son took the bags straight to the dump? He didn’t leave them in your bin outside?’

  ‘He was already planning to take some of his own stuff to the dump, so I assume he went straight there. I can phone and ask if you’d like?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said, standing. ‘While you’re doing that, would you mind if I used your bathroom?’

  ‘Of course, dear. It’s upstairs, first door on your left. You can’t miss it.’

  Kate thanked her again, signalling for Laura to keep Mrs Owen busy while she had a snoop in what had been Maria’s bedroom. As Kate reached the top of the staircase, she realised what Mrs Owen had meant about not missing the bathroom. The overpowering scent of potpourri was enough to make your eyes water.

  Closing the bathroom door loudly, Kate tiptoed along the hallway, ignoring the first room, the biggest, which had a single bed and its own unique odour, and pushed open the door to the remaining room. It was brighter than the first, the curtains wide open and no net curtain to block out the sky at the front of the house.

  All that remained was a single bed, a chest of drawers unit and a rickety-looking flat-pack wardrobe. Kate carefully opened each of the four drawers in the unit, but all were empty. Moving across to the wardrobe, the door squeaked as she opened it, but save for half a dozen wire coat hangers, it too was bare.

  Allowing her eyes to scan the room one final time, she noticed something poking out just behind the bedroom door. Stepping across and pushing the door to, she saw the wastepaper basket, still containing a translucent plastic carrier bag. Bending closer, Kate could see something in the bottom of the bag. Lifting the bin and resting it on the mattress, she nudged the coloured items with a pen, realising they were nail clippings. Mrs Owen didn’t seem the type to paint her nails. Tying the ends of the plastic bag, and squeezing out what air she could, she carefully placed the sealed bag into her jacket pocket.

  Moving quickly down the stairs, Kate nodded for Laura to finish her drink. ‘We’d best be on our way, Mrs Owen. Thank you for your time this morning.’

  Mrs Owen pushed herself up unsteadily, disappointment in her voice. ‘Do you really need to go so soon?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, criminals won’t arrest themselves.’ Kate would have spent the rest of the day keeping Mrs Owen company if she could, but in truth she needed to get back to SSD. ‘Thank you for your generosity, but we really do have to be on our way.’

  Mrs Owen showed them to the door, and once outside, Kate passed Laura the bag. ‘Possible nail clippings from Maria Alexandrou. Can you get these to SSD immediately?’

  Laura nodded, seeing Kate staring at a woman across the street. ‘You know her?’ Laura asked as the Latino woman stared daggers at them.

  Kate took in the woman’s appearance: spotless makeup, figure-hugging skirt and jacket, designer handbag draped around her shoulder. ‘No,’ Kate said, as the woman suddenly upped her pace and headed towards the bottom of the road. ‘But she clearly knows who we are.’ Without a second’s thought, Kate raced through the weathered gate in pursuit.

  32

  Kate took the corner at pace, closing the gap with every step, and was soon grabbing the woman’s arm to stop her.

  ‘What’ you want?’ the woman demanded, out of breath, her accent Hispanic.

  Kate released her. ‘Why were you running?’

  ‘Is free country… I do exercise.’

  Kate already suspected exactly who the woman was, but needed confirmation. ‘You were coming to see, Maria,’ Kate said, finally getting her breath back.

  ‘Who?’

  There’d been a flicker in her eyes at the mention of Maria’s name. Kate was about to press on when Laura caught up, still holding the evidence bag.

  ‘Everything okay, ma’am?’ she said, barely out of breath. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken we all have a mutual friend. Naomi Hendrix says hi, by the way.’

  A second flicker in the woman’s eyes. ‘I don’t know who that is.’

  ‘Of course not. Listen, I just want to ask you a few questions about Maria. Will you let me buy you a drink so we can talk?’

  The woman looked beyond the detectives, as if she was contemplating whether she’d be able to outrun them. She eventually sighed. ‘Okay, but we need to get off the streets before someone sees us.’

  *

  With some coaxing, the woman revealed her name was Sofia. The pub she brought them to was dark and grimy. Although it was barely midday, the bar was already being propped up by four men drinking in pensive silence. In the background, Phil Collins sung quietly from the stereo speakers.

  ‘You were the one who told DI Hendrix that Maria was missing, right?’ Kate asked when they’d collected their drinks and were squashed around a small table as far from the bar as they could be.

  Sofia nodded, placing the straw delicately between her thick red lips, and slurping the double vodka and orange juice she’d ordered. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Kate considered the question. ‘I don’t know for certain, but it’s looking probable. My colleague is taking nail clippings we believe to be Maria’s to be examined. If it’s a match, then I’d say it’s a strong possibility that she is. I’m sorry.’

  ‘At least she is out of the life; that’s all she wanted.’

  ‘Can you tell me about her? I’d like to know as much as I can, so I can catch whoever is responsible for her death.’

  ‘Sure. Wha’ you want to know?’

  ‘Everything – her full name, how old was she, where was she from, how the two of you met?’

  ‘We – the girls I work with – we don’t use last names; I think most don’t use real names. I am Sofia now, but was not always the case. You understand?’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘But Maria, she was different. She knew who she was and she didn’t hide that. I know her… three years, I think. She’s like a sister to me; we share experiences and help each other. She was born in Serbia, I think, come to this country to study, but drop out of university, because too expensive. She didn’t want to leave UK, so she did what she had to stay. That’s how we meet.’

  ‘You told my colleague that Maria was trying to buy her freedom?’

  ‘Is true. She decide she want to pay the boss to go free.’

  ‘You told my colleague that Maria managed to raise ten thousand pounds to buy that freedom. Did she give you any clue as to how she got that money?’

  Sofia shook her head despondently.

  Kate chose her next words carefully. ‘In your line of work, how could you lay your hands on that amount of money quickly?’

  ‘I wish I knew… In my experience, girls who earn biggest money either do the parties, or they take on other jobs.’

  ‘Other jobs?’

  ‘You know, like, delivering drugs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you think she was working as a mule?’

  Sofia shook her head. ‘I think not. Listen, everybody take them to get by – it goes with the job – but Maria turn her back on all that last year. When she decide she want to buy freedom, she get herself clean. I don’t think she would do those jobs to make the money.’

  ‘You mentioned parties?’

  ‘Sometimes a client speak to the boss because he want to hire several girls for friends at party. Me and Maria never do that. Some of the stories m
ake us feel sick. But maybe Maria did decide to do it, I don’t know.’

  Kate had heard plenty of horror stories but she’d need Hendrix’s support to go much deeper into that line of enquiry.

  ‘Have there been any of those parties recently, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know. The boss, he know I won’t, so he not ask me. Maybe, Maria ask him and not tell me, or maybe she get money another way. I don’t know, I’m sorry.’ Sofia finished the last of her drink. ‘I need to go.’

  Kate reached for her hand across the table. ‘No, please, stay a bit longer. I can buy you another drink.’

  But Sofia placed her free hand over the top of the glass. ‘I have had enough. I can’t be late or the boss not be happy.’

  ‘Okay, quickly then, do you know if Maria actually managed to pay off her debt? Did she give your guy the ten grand he wanted?’

  ‘I don’t know. Last I see her, she say she has the money and going to take it to him, and then she gone. I never see her since.’

  ‘We believe she had a tattoo removed from her ankle last week. It’s been described as a brand of some kind.’

  Sofia raised her own foot, allowing Kate to see the full scorpion and the initials C and E.

  ‘I think maybe the partial scar we saw resembles that.’

  ‘All of us are forced to have it, so we marked as his property.’

  ‘Would he have allowed her to have it removed?’

  ‘If she had bought her freedom, then I suppose so.’

  ‘Sofia, is there a chance that she took the money to your pimp, and he killed her for it?’

  Sofia chewed on the straw, suddenly conscious of anyone who might walk in and see them talking. ‘I have to go. I’m sorry.’

  She teetered to her feet, knocking the table as she went. Kate watched her leave, tempted to go after her, but not certain what additional information Sofia would be able to give her. In her gut, Kate now had no doubt that the victim dismembered in the school grounds was Maria; everything she’d learned till now steered her in only that direction.

  But that left the bigger question: how had Maria managed to get her hands on ten thousand pounds so quickly, and had she been killed because of it?

  33

  Seated in the incident room, Kate’s mind raced to try and figure out what could have connected Maria Alexandrou and Petr Nowakowski, and driven them into the path of a killer. Two victims from the wrong side of the tracks, striving to make amends, but ultimately failing. There had to be something she was missing.

  The incident room was virtually empty. Patel was on his way back from the prison, Laura was waiting at the lab for the DNA results and the rest of the team were out on calls. The only detectives at desks were Humberidge, deep in conversation with someone on the phone, and Olly Quinlan, who seemed practically asleep as he stared at his monitor. With his head propped up by his arm, looking anything but motivated, she couldn’t help but wonder whether she had somehow led to this deterioration in his personality. One thing was for sure: she couldn’t afford to carry any passengers if she was to manage all three investigations under the supe’s nose.

  ‘Olly,’ she called out. ‘Walk with me.’

  He jumped at the sound of his name, and he frowned as his brain slowly processed where he was. ‘Sorry, ma’am?’

  Kate stood, grabbing her jacket. ‘I need fresh air. Walk with me.’

  Humberidge was oblivious to the brief exchange, growing angrier with whomever he was addressing on the phone.

  Quinlan, pulled the leather jacket from his chair and followed Kate out of the room.

  *

  ‘I didn’t realise you smoked, Olly,’ Kate said when they were outside the station, and he had sparked up.

  ‘I quit, but I’ve recently started again.’

  It was another indicator that something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure how much to pry. ‘Are you okay, Olly?’

  ‘It’s just a cigarette, ma’am. I’ve quit before, and I’ll quit again.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t need to be a detective to see that there’s something wrong. You can talk to me, you know. I don’t bite.’

  He watched her as he inhaled deeply, before shaking his head as he exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘It’s just family stuff, ma’am. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘It’s in my nature to worry, Olly. I’m a mother, and my instinct is telling me that something is off with you, and I need you working at full capacity if we’re to find Daisy and solve the two murders.’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but everything is okay. I know I screwed up the other day, but—’

  ‘This isn’t about you missing the morning briefing on Saturday. Look at you. The Olly I know is the life and soul of any party, a bubbly character whose cheeky approach to life helps motivate the rest of the team. Something’s changed.’

  He crushed the cigarette underfoot. ‘If there was something I’d tell you, ma’am, but I’m fine. A bit grumpy maybe, but I’ll try and cheer up. Okay?’

  Kate knew anything else she said would potentially overstep the mark of her role as his superior. ‘Where are you with speaking to Nowakowski’s employers?’

  ‘Oh, I spoke to them, but it’d be more accurate to refer to them as his former employers. They dismissed him a month ago.’

  ‘Really? What for?’

  ‘The lass I spoke to couldn’t say for certain. It was recorded on her system as “impropriety”. I asked her what that meant and she said that was all it said, but in her experience, impropriety usually means that the employee had either been caught taking drugs, or shagging one of the passengers on board.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Just her opinion.’

  ‘So if he was sacked, why did he tell his sister he was due on a cruise this week? And where was he planning to be really?’

  Quinlan raised his eyebrows. ‘Exactly!’

  ‘You think he’d fallen back into old habits? Maybe dealing to fund the deposit on the new flat?’

  ‘It’s not unheard of. I think we need to look a little closer at his movements in the days leading up to his death to establish that.’

  Kate nodded her agreement. ‘Do me a favour, see if you can track his activity through mobile phone coverage, but also track it against the mobile number for Maria Alexandrou. I want to know whether they came into contact with one another.’ Kate paused to answer her phone. ‘Matthews.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Laura said. ‘SSD have confirmed the match. The foot belonged to Maria Alexandrou.’

  *

  As darkness spread across the sky outside the office, it was hard to ignore the tension on the faces of her team, as Kate gathered them around the board, and asked for their updates in the Daisy Emerson disappearance. Tonight marked the tenth full day since Daisy had last been seen. Given the media attention, countless hours of overtime – some paid, some not – and the team’s determination to bring her home safe and well, they were no closer to really knowing where she was or why she’d disappeared. The pain of failure was etched on each of their faces, and Kate knew nothing she could say or do would alter that; at least not tonight.

  ‘Our orders remain unchanged,’ Kate informed the group. ‘Our focus is on finding Daisy Emerson. Where are we with tracking her movements on that Friday night?’

  DC Rogers raised a weary arm into the air. ‘I’ve been at the Highfield campus since lunchtime, ma’am, showing Daisy’s picture, stopping groups as they walked past. But nobody claimed to have seen her that night. A couple of guys were happy to offer opinions on what might have happened, based on nothing but a keen sense of imagination.’

  ‘What about the Avenue campus?’

  ‘Hitting that first thing, ma’am, but finding anyone who can help is like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  Kate could feel her dejection, and knew how frustratingly fruitless the leg work could be in challenging investigations such as this. ‘We need to keep looking, Vicky. One person out there could
have the vital piece of the jigsaw we’re missing. Don’t give up. Were you on your own up there today?’

  ‘Inspector Bentley sent a couple of uniforms up with me.’

  ‘Good. See if you can get any additional support tomorrow too. In fact, if any of the rest of you are scratching your heads, I want a team going door-to-door again along Daisy’s route home. She can’t have just disappeared into thin air. Someone knows something. I also want someone to dig into Ismael Vardan’s movements in the past week. That three hours when he was supposedly reading in his classroom doesn’t sit well with me. Ewan, where are we with tracking that IP address?’

  ‘We’ve got the original signal narrowed down to the UK, but that’s as much as they claim they can tell us at the moment.’

  ‘Who’s they? Who’s tracing the address?’

  ‘The company who supplied the masking software, ma’am.’

  ‘Why are we relying on them for this information? Surely one of the techie guys in SSD can trace it quicker?’

  ‘The company are anxious to protect their customers’ identities. Their head office is in Shanghai, so we’re having—’

  ‘They must have the individual’s credit card information for this software. That would do to begin with. Don’t take no for an answer, Ewan. If it’s some weirdo from the back of nowhere, we know we’re looking for more than a runaway girl.’

  His head dropped, crestfallen. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Come on, people, we need to think smarter. I appreciate you’re all exhausted, and every avenue we pursue is leading to a dead end, but we can’t give up on her.’

  Quinlan cleared his throat. ‘I checked on Alfie Caplan’s alibi, ma’am. He was at his brother’s halls of residence in Kingston on Friday night, like he said. His brother confirmed Alfie arrived around eight o’clock and stayed until after lunch on Sunday. We have traffic-camera footage of the car arriving in Kingston just before eight o’clock. Mobile phone signal has him in West London for the entire period.’

  ‘Okay, so he didn’t pick her up from Georgie’s road, but I still think he’s hiding something. Keep digging. What else?’

  ‘Speaking of mobile phone activity,’ Laura offered, ‘I was looking at Daisy’s mobile activity for the Friday night. Georgie said Daisy left at quarter past nine, right? The phone company puts her in Georgie’s road at that time, but the phone signal isn’t lost until twenty past nine. The whole time it doesn’t leave Abbotts Way. You and I have walked that road and it would only take two minutes at most to walk from Georgie’s house to Highfield Lane. So why hang around? Georgie was adamant that Daisy left at that precise time, and hasn’t mentioned that Daisy was waiting for anyone, or that they continued talking in the street after she’d left. I just don’t understand what she was doing for that five minutes. Even if she did eventually walk to Highfield Lane, that still leaves three minutes unaccounted for.’