Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  She nodded, pushed through the doors and was gone.

  ‘Come in, Bill!’ said Banks, pausing the imagery on her laptop and bringing up her screen saver.

  He closed the door and smiled at Alice Banks as he sat in White’s chair. In her early thirties, single, with long jet-black hair, Alice was way above average pretty and had a smile that could stop traffic.

  Carol White’s screen was black and Hendricks projected vivid horrors into that darkness. He took a deep breath, catching the edge of White’s perfume even though she was not there.

  ‘It’s Daisy by Marc Jacobs,’ said Banks. ‘She splashes it on like it’s holy water and it’s somehow going to make things easier.’

  Hendricks looked at the surface of Carol White’s desk: the pens standing neatly in a mug bearing Johnny Depp’s face as Captain Jack Sparrow, her closed spiral-bound notebook, Gold Spot breath freshener, a Costa Coffee takeaway coffee container, a depleted box of king-size tissues, the everyday trappings of an ordinary human being whose daily work was full of impossible demands.

  ‘If you’re feeling affected by your work, the door’s still open if you ever want to talk to me.’

  ‘No thanks, Bill, but thanks for offering.’ She smiled. ‘The door’s still open for you, Bill. Likewise.’

  He remembered last year’s Christmas party, how he’d declined an invitation back to Alice’s flat in Gateacre and, spiralling to the present, recalled the ten men that the Trinity Road rumour mill, six married, four not, who hadn’t declined an invite to Alice’s home.

  ‘It just doesn’t get to me any more, Bill. Pure and simple. Carol, on the other hand, who used to hold me together when I was going to pieces, it’s like we’ve gone through a role reversal. She’s coming up with the goods in reporting back but she’s all over the place in every other department of her life.’

  ‘Has she said anything that’s made you sit up and take note?’

  Alice Banks smiled. ‘Are you here about that round robin email about the leak?’

  ‘No, I’m genuinely concerned for Carol.’

  ‘She told me about last night. She’s really embarrassed about it. She’s been expecting you all day and dreading you coming. Every time there’s been a knock on the door, she picks up her bag so that she can claim she’s off for a smoke outside.’

  ‘She told me about her husband leaving.’

  Banks sighed. ‘Well, she told me for the last few months she’s had two means of communicating with him. Crying and screaming.’ She held Hendricks’s gaze. ‘I feel sorry for him. He’s a lovely guy. Actually, I feel sorry for both of them. Go on, Bill, ask me. Do you think Carol is our leak?’

  ‘Well, do you?’

  ‘I haven’t overheard anything, and I haven’t seen her put the phone down suddenly or switch screens at the bat of an eyelid when I’ve walked in on her...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘She’s been very erratic. She was a rock. Now, she’s like a bowl of dust blown on the wind. I’m not going to accuse her. I have no evidence. But I’m watching her closely, and I didn’t need a memo to prompt me to do so. Frankly, and personally, it doesn’t worry me if she is the leak. What I’m worried about’s her mental health. She’s just not up to it.’

  She looked away into the distance and Hendricks felt suddenly sad that such a good and truthful woman was wasting herself on men of little worth.

  ‘How do you cope, Alice, with all this?’

  ‘I’ve fireproofed myself with ideas that are as profound as my feeble mind can cope with.’

  Hendricks smiled. ‘Go on...?’

  ‘This kind of horror and abuse has been going on since the dawn of human time, all the way through history but never acknowledged; never, ever documented. But it’s a brand-new issue because in recent times, it is acknowledged and, oh boy, is it recorded! I say to myself, if it wasn’t me trawling through this filth, it’d have to be some other person. I’m doing someone else a favour – maybe someone I know, maybe a stranger. My role in this won’t last forever. But what will last forever is this. Some adults will abuse children. Some children will be abused by adults. I don’t particularly like my job at the moment, but what I do like is when me and Carol give you the ammunition to blow these characters sky high.’

  ‘Keep an eye on her for me, Alice.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Hendricks opened the door and, stepping out of the viewing room, paused when Alice Banks said, ‘Keep that door open!’

  He looked back at her with a quizzical smile and pointed at the door in his hand.

  ‘No, not that one, Bill!’

  59

  12.23 pm

  For the third time, Christine Green pressed play on her CD and moments later Adolf Hitler’s voice filled the living room.

  ‘Could you turn it down just a little bit?’ said Stone, standing in the doorway to the hall and losing the will to live.

  ‘Could you tell your bastard mates who are ransacking my house to make less noise?’

  Stone looked out of the window at Riley on the pavement taking another call, and felt Christine Green advancing. He turned his attention to her, saw the red veins in the whites of her eyes and smelt coffee on her breath.

  ‘You intrigue me, Christine,’ said Stone, his voice rising above Hitler’s threadbare rhetoric. He stepped away from her, walked up to the CD player and turned it off.

  ‘Hey, you! How dare you! This is my house...’

  Stone took the CD from the player and dropped it in an evidence bag.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Removing evidence from a crime scene.’

  Christine’s outrage spiralled into a momentary dumb confusion.

  ‘If you had to describe yourself in two words, say, for the purposes of internet dating, would you say Hitler lover or paedophile hater?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I want to get a picture of how you see yourself.’

  ‘I see myself getting victimised because I stand up for innocent children by the likes of you who should be victimising paedophiles.’

  ‘Karl?’

  ‘Excuse me, Christine.’

  Stone walked over to DC Clive Winters at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘There’s no sign of a laptop. The four of us have had the place apart and there’s nothing doing.’

  ‘Fucking told you so!’ snarled Christine from the door to her front room and Stone, who thought his morale had hit rock bottom, felt his heart tumble just a little further.

  ‘Keep this for me please,’ said Stone to Winters, handing him the evidence bag with the Hitler CD. Then he turned to Christine and weighed her up. ‘You’re a contradiction in terms.’

  ‘Have you been reading about psychoanalysis in Reader’s Digest?’

  ‘All these books. Your immense skill in fashioning wood. You’re a highly intelligent woman but you present like a dumb lout.’

  She put Mein Kampf back on the shelf, folded her arms and stared at him.

  ‘Got any mates, Christine?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you have any friends?’

  ‘No. Who needs them?’

  ‘So you’ve been let down in the past? How about virtual friends, on the internet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must get people communicating with you through your website?’

  ‘That doesn’t make them my friends.’

  ‘Do you know someone called Lucien Burns?’

  ‘Lucien Burns?’ She looked and sounded blank. ‘Is he a TV chef?’

  ‘Can I pay you a compliment, Christine?’

  ‘What are you after?’

  ‘Information. So listen to this and think about it. We’re talking to you as part of a murder investigation, as in very serious shit and very, very seriously long custodial sentences. When we find your laptop, Christine, we’ll be able to see everything that’s come in to you and everything you’ve sent out. If you know who’s topped the pa
edos, do yourself a favour and give me a name or names. Otherwise – here’s the key.’ Stone mimed throwing the key away and, for a moment, the woman was quiet and reflective.

  ‘But you’re not going to find a laptop, so do one.’

  ‘Who do you know who’s capable of killing, not just saying they’d do it, but actually killing a couple of paedophiles?’

  ‘Loads of people.’

  ‘Including yourself?’

  ‘All I’ve done is protect children...’

  ‘Here we go, blah, blah, blah.’

  ‘I want to go to the police station. I want a lawyer. I’m not saying another fucking word until I’ve got a lawyer with me. Sly arse, trying to interrogate me like you’re having a casual conversation when I’ve got no legal representation!’

  She turned, walked into the front room and slammed the door shut.

  Riley walked by the open front door, talking on her iPhone.

  Desperate for a change of scene, Stone stepped past the massive swastika on the hall wall and on to the busy main road as Riley closed down another call.

  ‘More calls from the uniforms on paedo watch?’ asked Stone.

  ‘Thirty-eight paedophiles and counting. No one knows anything. Half of them are begging to be taken into protective custody, the other half are denying they’re paedophiles. One guy called Edward Hawkins, Flat Four, 101 Arundel Avenue, started speaking and acting really strangely when he saw Eve’s name on the card the officers gave him – looked like he’d been sledgehammered when he heard her name. Denied knowing her. They think he’s bullshitting and does know her. Anything here, Karl?’

  ‘There’s no sign of her laptop. She’s demanding a solicitor. Heads or tails, who’ll take her in to Trinity Road?’

  ‘No need. You look like you want to strangle her. I’ll take her,’ said Riley. ‘What’s your hunch?’

  ‘She’s ditched her laptop but she’s an accomplice to murder. She knows the woman who phoned from 699 Mather Avenue and she’s up to her neck in it but she thinks she’s going to walk away in twenty-four hours.’

  The door to the front room opened.

  ‘Are you talking about me?’ asked Christine.

  ‘Get your coat, Christine. You’re going to Trinity Road with me. Right now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, for now, we can’t find your laptop here and because I say so,’ said Riley.

  60

  12.23 pm

  The contents of Steven Jamieson’s filing cabinets were set out on three tables in DS Terry Mason’s office in the basement of Trinity Road police station.

  ‘Talk me through it,’ said Clay, picking up a brown paper file from the first table.

  ‘Here we’ve got papers and documents related to his property business. It all seems legitimate and appears to have nothing to do with his secret self. So we’ll call this the public face of Steven Jamieson even though his name didn’t appear on anything public, post arrest and conviction.’

  The table was piled high. Clay glanced through the top documents, saw a standard tenancy agreement, an eviction notice and an inventory of furniture fixtures and fittings for a fully furnished house. Then she turned to the second table, which was less weighed down.

  ‘This lot is to do with purchases made for his former home in South Yorkshire and his house on Mather Avenue, receipts for things Frances Jamieson, mainly, bought for their homes,’ said Mason.

  At random Clay picked up a file and took out the contents; she made a mental note of the document at the top of the pile, a full structural survey of 699 Mather Avenue.

  Mason continued, ‘You’ve got contracts with estate agents, land registry documents and so on, so this is his private self, if you like.’

  Clay opened another file in the middle and saw a receipt for £8,500 for carpets from John Lewis. She pictured Steven Jamieson’s dead body and Frances Jamieson bound, gagged and with her eyelids hacked off, and then imagined them alive in the carpet department of the store in Liverpool One, Mr and Mrs Ordinary needing carpets just like everyone else.

  She pointed to the third table. ‘And what’s all this, Terry?’

  ‘This is his secret self.’

  Clay felt her skin pucker into goosebumps, a quickening of her pulse and her mouth growing slightly dryer.

  ‘I’m not saying a word on this one, Eve. I want to know what you think,’ said Mason.

  She picked up the first file and took out a sheaf of Barclays bank statements; she checked the branch address, 10–12 Pinstone Street, Sheffield S1 2HN, and the name and address of the account holder.

  ‘Daniel Campbell, 183 Queen Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S1 2DW,’ read Clay.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Campbell. He’s Steven Jamieson’s solicitor. Or was. Sounds like a slimy little shit,’ said Cole.

  Clay heard Mason and Parker laughing as she cast her eyes down the columns, paid in and withdrawn.

  Paid in 09/08/2004, £50,000.

  She went to the next sheet and saw: 09/09/2004, £50,000.

  ‘Fifty thousand a month, every month?’ Clay asked Mason.

  He nodded. ‘With additional amounts of money paid in as and when.’

  She picked out a standing order: 03/08/2004.

  ‘APL Ltd. Three thousand pounds. Each month?’

  ‘Every month,’ confirmed Mason.

  ‘APL Ltd is the only constant. Started in 2001 and still being paid up to the present.’

  ‘Is there a pattern?’ asked Clay.

  ‘These bogus companies crop up, receive an income for so long and then close down.’

  ‘It’s a slush fund managed by his solicitor to put distance between this account and Jamieson himself,’ said Clay.

  ‘It took us a bit longer than that to work it out, but – yeah,’ said Parker.

  ‘I want you to analyse these bank statements, Barney. Get in touch with Barclays in Sheffield and get them to disclose more information. As soon as we’ve made copies...’ She checked her iPhone contacts, saw the name Lesley Reid, the SIO who’d brought Jamieson to a form of justice. ‘...these can go to South Yorkshire Professional Standards Department. Every penny I’ve got says that he used this account to pay off bent coppers in and around South Yorkshire. And a lot more besides.’

  She put the statements into the file and handed them to Cole.

  Clay picked up the second file and took out a handful of letters on ‘Daniel Campbell Solicitors’ headed notepaper. She flicked through the letters and saw that they were all to the same medical doctor in Sheffield: Dr Damien Warner. And with each letter came a receipt for £5,000. She compared the first and second letter and saw that the only variation was in the date.

  She started to count the correspondence.

  Clay flicked through twelve identically worded receipts from the same doctor

  ‘Twelve lots of cosmetic surgery?’ observed Clay, wondering if Steven Jamieson or his wife had some sort of surgical addiction on top of their other issues.

  She picked up the third file and took out a collection of confidentiality documents drafted by Jamieson’s solicitor and on notepaper headed ‘Donald Campbell Solicitors.’

  ‘There are twelve confidentiality documents, twelve deals for silence. And there are twelve receipts from Doctor Warner,’ said Mason.

  Clay looked at the first confidentiality document and saw Campbell’s signature and another signature in child-like writing that turned Clay’s skin to ice. Next to the child’s signature was another box. Beneath the dotted lines were two words: Parent/Guardian. Above the dotted line was an adult signature.

  ‘They all signed for different amounts,’ said Mason. ‘The lowest signed for five hundred pounds. The biggest pay off was twenty five thousand pounds. Clay checked the terms and conditions on the first page more closely, and saw there was no clear indication of the nature of the activity that demanded silence for money, but saw menace, ruination and the power of the law in case the silence was broken.


  ‘Dr Warner didn’t perform cosmetic surgery on these children,’ said Clay, a dismal probability forming in her mind. ‘Thank you, Terry, Paul, you’ve done a great job weeding these out.’

  She handed the third file of confidentiality agreements to Cole.

  Clay dialled Lesley Reid’s number and, as the phone rang, she said to Cole, ‘Block book an interview suite from three hours hence until whenever. I want Daniel Campbell’s arse in it as soon as our colleagues in South Yorkshire can get him over here.’

  ‘Lesley Reid speaking.’

  ‘Hi, Lesley, it’s Eve Clay. I think I’ve got something red hot for you.’

  61

  1.08 pm

  Stone looked up from his desk, saw Clay enter the incident room and called, ‘Eve, I’ve just taken a call from a journalist who covered Justin Truman’s trial.’

  As Clay arrived at Stone’s desk, she said, ‘Go on?’

  ‘His legal team was bankrolled by Justine Weir,’ said Stone. ‘She was baptised Katharine Weir but she changed her name by deed poll to Justine, as a homage to Truman.’

  ‘Do we know her current whereabouts?’

  ‘She died in an RTA in Mexico City four years ago, which places Truman in or around that part of the world. Weir was his Old Faithful, would have followed him into the top of an erupting volcano. Prior to that, the last details I have of her were from around the time Justin Truman escaped from custody. She walked into her lawyer’s office and instructed him to put every last penny of her considerable fortune into a range of offshore accounts. She offloaded all her assets in the Weir family building business in a fire sale and shifted that money into the same accounts and altered her last will and testament.’

  ‘Who was named in the will?’

  ‘Guess?’

  ‘Justin Truman,’ said Clay.

  ‘She phoned her lawyer two weeks after her appearance in his office, said she was in Algiers and didn’t know where Truman was. You’ve got to understand, she had the money and connections to move mountains. Getting Truman out of the country and fitting him up with a new identity overseas – for the likes of you and me that’d be virtually impossible but for her it was nothing.’