Stop Dead

by Leigh Russell

  CHAPTER 54

  The post office was forwarding Geraldine’s mail. There was one such envelope on the doormat that morning, with a printed redirection label. Since her conversation with Celia, Geraldine wasn’t surprised to pull out an invitation to her father’s birthday celebration. After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped it into her bedside table, along with the single photograph of her mother. Although she was neither superstitious nor religious, she hoped and prayed the proximity of the two pieces of paper would bring her luck and her adoptive father would be able to tell her where to find her birth mother. Then she turned her attention to the serious business of the day.

  As she drove out of London along side roads lined with green hedges, the weather turned chilly, threatening rain. Nearing her destination she passed through a pleasant residential district before the area changed again. She followed the main road, which was a bus route; its verges were overgrown, and beyond them only waste ground was visible. From the road she turned into a lane that led to the prison complex. The women’s prison was directly opposite the entrance to the car park. The outer high metal gate was locked behind her and she was admitted through a second gate. She followed a chatty blonde prison officer through a neatly laid out garden, into a secure building where she checked in and was finally taken along a rabbit warren of corridors to the visitors’ room.

  Not for the first time, Geraldine wondered what it must be like to hear a key turn, knowing that door wouldn’t open again for years, decades in some cases. Did the young prisoners she passed in the corridor wake up every morning thinking, ‘Oh shit, I’m still here,’ as they gazed around at the four walls of their cells? The penalty of a lengthy incarceration was harsher for women. A man could leave prison after twenty years and start a family. Yet the recidivism rate indicated how many prisoners preferred the security of prison care to the life they faced on the outside.

  The blonde woman who had let Geraldine into the building handed her over to a cheerful square-jawed officer who led her outside. They walked briskly along a path bordered with small bushes that skirted the main prison block. Another jangling of keys, another door closed. Geraldine followed her guide into a large room where a prison officer stood unobtrusively by the door. She smiled and jerked her head in the direction of a solitary woman seated at a table, waiting.

  ‘There she is. Good luck trying to get anything out of her. She’s not much of a talker.’

  Geraldine looked at the prisoner’s grey bowed head and hesitated. Rehearsing the approaching meeting in her mind she had envisaged a terrible outcome. In a nightmare scenario Geraldine stared at the convicted murderess, like Dorian Grey gazing at an aged image of himself, knowing she was meeting her own mother for the first time.

  ‘Yes, I had two daughters,’ she imagined Linda Harrison saying. ‘One of them was about your age. I called her Erin.’

  ‘So where are they now?’

  In the terrible fantasy, Linda shook her head.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I did hear one of them had joined the police force, and the other one is a killer. Seems to run in the family.’

  Geraldine’s first sensation on sitting down was an overriding sense of relief. The woman facing her looked nothing like Geraldine imagined her own mother would look now. She had a photograph of her mother aged around sixteen. There was no way the prisoner was the same woman as the one in that faded image. In the precious photograph, Geraldine’s mother looked uncannily like Geraldine as a teenager, with large eyes so dark they appeared black, and a small crooked nose.

  Geraldine didn’t recognise the prisoner in the flesh from the photograph she had found online in an old newspaper. Taken when Linda was barely twenty, the image had been on the front pages of all the papers, so it was possible Sam might have seen Linda’s face in the press during her trial. At that time Linda’s hair hadn’t been grey and badly in need of a wash, hanging down on either side of her pinched face in greasy straggly locks. Together with her extreme pallor, her unkempt appearance made her appear a lot older than forty. She pursed her thin lips and glared at Geraldine, her green eyes guarded.

  ‘Linda.’

  The prisoner continued to stare fixedly at Geraldine who smiled uneasily.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  The other woman didn’t respond.

  ‘It would help you if you helped us,’ Geraldine added untruthfully.

  Silence.

  Geraldine took a breath and plunged in with a direct question.

  ‘Do you have a daughter?’

  The green eyes flickered for an instant.

  ‘Do you have a daughter?’ Geraldine repeated.

  Linda’s face had resumed its blank expression. Geraldine leaned forward and repeated her question once more, studying the other woman closely while Linda sat in stony-faced silence.

  ‘It would really help us if you answered my questions.’

  Unexpectedly, Linda erupted in hoarse throaty laughter, simultaneously beating a tattoo on the table with the flat of one hand. Behind her the prison officer at the door stepped forward, tensed for action.

  When the prisoner was quiet, Geraldine posed her question yet again.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  Linda’s voice was gruff, as though she was unused to speaking.

  ‘It would help our enquiry.’

  ‘Help you?’

  Linda spoke with scathing derision. Too late, Geraldine amended her statement.

  ‘I don’t mean it would help the police exactly. You’ll be helping innocent people.’

  ‘Sod off!’

  ‘Linda, you don’t understand. It’s really important you tell me the truth.’

  ‘I don’t want to continue with this.’

  Linda enunciated the words coldly.

  ‘Please, Linda, if you could just answer a few straightforward questions –’

  It was no good.

  Frustrated, Geraldine watched the prisoner shuffle from the room without a backward glance, her past as secret as if she had died twenty years ago. In a way, she had.

  CHAPTER 55

  It was hard to credit how quickly the body count had risen without anyone coming forward with information. Henshaw, Corless, Bradshaw, and now a fourth victim had all been killed within a fortnight of each other. There were two gaps of four days between the first three murders, then only two days had elapsed before the fourth man was killed. A fifth body might be discovered at any time. It was all happening so fast, the killer must surely be making careless mistakes. By now someone must be harbouring suspicions about a family member, a neighbour or a colleague. Someone must have knowledge that could help point the investigation in the right direction, but apart from the usual cranks, the public had remained obdurately silent.

  Observing a press briefing, Geraldine watched as Reg stated the facts of the case, his calm delivery making no impression on the reporters. He had done a good job to conceal his irritation with their lurid suggestions and hysterical comments.

  ‘So you’re hunting for a serial killer?’

  ‘If you know who he is, why is he still on the loose?’

  ‘Are the streets of London safe any more?’

  ‘Can you assure us there won’t be any more killings?’

  Amy and Desiree joined Reg. Amy spoke stiffly about the loss of her wonderful husband.

  ‘This was a senseless murder,’ she concluded lamely.

  Desiree wanted to speak, but she kept breaking down in tears, and in the end Reg had to take over.

  ‘If anyone has any information, however unimportant it might seem, please contact us on this number.’

  ‘Why was Maurice Bradshaw a victim?’ Sam asked for the twentieth time, when the press briefing was over. ‘Who would even notice him, let alone want to kill and mutilate him?’

  Geraldine nodded without answering. She understood her colleague’s disquiet. It was certainly hard to understand how anyone could have been provoked to attack an inoffensi
ve nonentity like Bradshaw. But without motive the murder was reduced to a senseless act of violence not only somehow more vile but also more worrying, since it suggested the killer was selecting victims at random. In the absence of any pattern, it became almost impossible to trace or predict the killer’s movements. And after four murders it was clear this killer would strike again and again, until he was stopped.

  It was drizzling when Geraldine and Sam arrived at Camden station. They hurried along the crowded pavements of Camden High Street past shop windows filled with bizarre shoes, boots and belts, to Gino’s Café. When she had lived in Kent, Geraldine had rarely travelled by public transport, but parking in London was so difficult, even with police parking privileges, that she was just as likely to use the tube.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ she had asked Sam the first time they had travelled on a packed train together.

  ‘No. It’s usually worse.’

  From the outside Gino’s wasn’t inviting, with its grimy glass front, a yellowing menu displayed in the window, and the ‘s’ from the tawdry red sign missing: Gino’. It was decent enough inside with wooden chairs and formica-topped tables displaying white china cruet pots; a cramped space packed with dark-uniformed officers and white-clad scene of crime officers jostling one another in the aisles between tables. As soon as they entered the room the stuffy atmosphere hit them, airless and buzzing with voices.

  ‘It’s this way.’

  A young constable greeted them with a grin, as though he was throwing a party and showing them to the kitchen where the drinks were.

  ‘It’s all happening out in the alley.’

  He looked as though he wanted to jump up and down with excitement. Geraldine wondered if this was his first experience of a homicide investigation. She gave him a level stare. He might be enjoying the bustle and thrill of a murder case on his patch, perhaps on his first day on the job, but this was a serious investigation. All the same, she couldn’t help feeling a flicker of empathy for his zeal.

  They manoeuvred their way to the back exit, past a man seated at a corner table watching the melee. From his wretched expression Geraldine assumed he was the café proprietor. There would have been something heartening about the purposeful atmosphere in the place were it not for the fact that another victim had been discovered, making a total of four bodies in barely two weeks. And for all their hard work and investigation they were no closer to finding out who was responsible. Geraldine had an unpleasant feeling that they were running around like a bunch of unfocused amateurs.

  Outside the rear exit of the café the alleyway was narrow and dirty, spattered with shiny oily puddles, barely wide enough for one-way traffic to pass between the high kerbs on either side of the flat cobbled roadway. The rain had stopped but it was wet underfoot and everything gleamed: tall grey garbage cans, grey paving slabs and cobbles, brick buildings, one painted white, all looked grey in the weak sunlight. Only the forensic tent loomed white and spectral.

  Geraldine hoped her visit would turn out to be a mistake, an error of judgement on the part of an eager junior officer. It was still possible the café proprietor had stumbled upon a vagrant who had succumbed to an overdose of toxic drugs, or downed a few drinks more than his damaged liver could survive. Maybe this would turn out to be a death from natural causes. But a quick glance at the victim was enough to persuade her that she was viewing the fourth victim of the killer one newspaper had glibly called The Hammer Horror.

  CHAPTER 56

  On Monday morning, Geraldine tracked down the firm of solicitors who had defended Linda Harrison twenty years earlier. It didn’t take long to find them. When she telephoned, she learned that the solicitor who had dealt with the case had retired around ten years ago. The secretary at the law firm obligingly called back straight away with contact details for the retired lawyer, who was happy for Geraldine to call her. Unable to shake off the feeling that Linda held the key to the case, Geraldine preferred to speak to the woman in person. She didn’t want to risk missing any nuance in the conversation. Half an hour after she had first contacted the firm, Geraldine was on her way to Richmond.

  The weather was overcast. After a few miles, a steady drizzle began to fall although the autumn sun was shining behind her, lending the air a luminous quality. Geraldine wondered if she would see a rainbow and sure enough before long a faint arc appeared up ahead, spanning the sky. She smiled, hoping it was a good omen. In the meantime, the traffic was building up and she soon regretted her decision to drive. If she had taken the tube she could at least have read the paper on the way. As it was, she listened to the radio and took a minor detour to drive through Richmond Park. She didn’t see any of the famous deer, but the open parkland made a welcome change from the busy streets.

  Melissa Joyce lived in a smart terraced house near the river. Geraldine didn’t generally park in restricted zones but on this occasion she had no choice. It was impossible to find a space that wasn’t on a double yellow line or in a residents’ bay. Melissa came to the front door straight away and led the way into a living room, small but tastefully furnished.

  ‘How can I help you? I take it this is about someone I represented?’

  Geraldine nodded.

  ‘You must appreciate a few years have gone by since I left the firm. I can’t promise to remember the details of every case I worked on, but I’ll do what I can. So – what was the case?’

  When Geraldine explained the reason for her visit, the other woman’s anxious expression relaxed into a smile.

  ‘Good lord, yes. I certainly remember the Linda Harrison case! I can see the defendant as clearly as if it happened yesterday. She wasn’t the sort of woman you forget. Let me make some coffee and then we’ll get down to it – and perhaps you can tell me why you’re interested in the case after all this time. It must be twenty years since she was convicted and there was no controversy about it at the time. She made a full confession. It was cut and dried. All we could do was plead diminished responsibility, but the jury threw that out straight away. She refused to show any remorse for what she’d done, just insisted she would do it again if she had the chance – ’ Melissa broke off with a sigh. ‘It was a domestic affair, very sad. Now I’ll fetch the coffee and then I’ll answer your questions as best I can after all this time.’

  Over coffee Geraldine explained that she wasn’t able to share the reason for her interest. The solicitor nodded her understanding and, without reference to any notes, launched into a detailed account of the case. Linda had been nineteen when she had killed her husband. They had been married for less than two years. She was a strange woman, according to Melissa, with no family to support her. Her parents were both dead and her only sister had died some years before the murder took place. To begin with Linda had blamed the murder on an intruder, but the police had found no evidence of a break in.

  ‘What was odd was that she stuck to her guns, insisting the attack was the result of a burglary that went wrong. No amount of questioning could shake her account. And then she altered her story for no reason at all. It wasn’t as though she broke down or anything, she just changed her mind. It was bizarre.’

  She paused, frowning, still puzzled by the memory.

  ‘What happened?’ Geraldine prompted her.

  ‘She claimed she’d murdered him herself. She flatly refused to explain why she had decided to confess, after such strenuous denials. We pleaded self-defence in court, of course, but the jury didn’t go for it because she refused to express any remorse. “I did it so you can punish me for it,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact voice. “If I found out that bastard was still alive, I’d do it again,” was what she said, without a trace of emotion. And the only reason she ever gave was that she didn’t like him. How could we build a case with that?’

  Melissa paused to pour more coffee from a gleaming cafetiere.

  ‘All we could do was plead diminished responsibility. It was obvious there was something not quite right with her. But the psychiat
ric report came back saying she showed no signs of mental disorder or disturbance of any kind. Linda Harrison had known exactly what she was doing when she took her husband’s life, they decided. There was nothing we could do for her. To be honest, she didn’t exactly help herself. It was as though she wanted everyone to put the worst possible construction on what she’d done, and even that fact didn’t sway the jury into believing she was unbalanced. Or the judge for that matter. In his summing up he described her as a genuinely evil character. But is there such a thing? Still, if there is, she came closer than anyone else I’ve ever encountered. “A cold-blooded killer,” that’s how the papers described her.’

  As they talked through the details of the case, Melissa let it slip that the only reason she could come up with to account for the defendant’s change of heart was that she didn’t want her niece to be questioned.

  ‘Her niece?’

  Geraldine sat forward, alert.

  ‘What niece? I didn’t know she had a niece.’

  Melissa shrugged.

  ‘There was a niece. Linda’s sister had a daughter. The niece went to live with Linda when her mother died. We never found out who the father was. He disappeared before the child was born. I’m not sure Linda’s sister even knew who he was. Linda didn’t, at any rate. So when the sister died – I can’t remember what it was, leukaemia or something – the child went to live with Linda. There were no grandparents by then. They’d died years before.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Linda’s sister?’

  ‘No, the niece.’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. She was about twelve or thirteen when the murder took place, maybe fourteen. There were some questions raised about her being cared for by her nineteen-year-old aunt, but social services thought it was best for the child, to be with family.’

  Geraldine felt the skin on the back of her neck prickling with excitement.

  ‘You said Linda confessed to killing her husband to protect her niece from being questioned in court?’