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

by Mark Roberts

When she left the shot he moved to fast forward and confirmed that she didn’t come back the way she had arrived, which meant only one thing. Once she had left the Jamieson house, she had travelled, on foot no doubt, but maybe with an accomplice in a vehicle, into Garston and the direction of the Liverpool South Parkway railway station and bus terminus, a place milling with travellers even after the rush hour.

  If any of the images on Sylvia Hursts’ CCTV footage were circulated in Liverpool South Parkway it was almost certain to generate eye-witness sightings of the woman disguised as a small girl. The evidence was crucial.

  Hearing Sylvia Hurst’s feet on the aluminium ladder, he stood up, pulled his trousers up and pushed the handle.

  He opened the bathroom door as Sylvia arrived from the final step, and they stood as if frozen in time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sylvia Hurst. ‘It appears that the CCTV has automatically wiped the footage you were looking for.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it appears that the chemotherapy is having no effect on your wife’s secondary tumours.’

  ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ said Rimmer. ‘But these things happen all the time.’

  Detective Sergeant Bob Rimmer walked down the stairs, to the hall, to the front door and closed it without turning to look at Sylvia Hurst who lay down on her bed and felt her throbbing temples with the tips of her shaking fingers.

  *

  On the pavement outside Sylvia Hurst’s house on Mather Avenue, Detective Constable Bob Rimmer sent a text message to DCI Eve Clay and DS Gina Riley.

  Eve and Gina, sorry, bad news. The Hursts’ CCTV system has a self-wiping facility and the footage for our crucial time is gone. I’ve been hunting everywhere on the system but Mrs Hurst says the system was due for repair.

  He felt the ghost of his former self haunt his heart and it wasn’t a mansion. It was a prison where once the doors were locked, they could never, ever be opened again.

  70

  4.05 pm

  Annabelle Burns’s knuckles were white and her face as hot as her hands were cold on the steering wheel. As she drove under the concrete mass of the Rice Lane flyover, she looked at her mobile phone on the passenger seat and for the hundredth time since making the journey up Queens Drive to the north end of the city, willed it to ring.

  Silence.

  Then a mighty blast of a car’s horn. She looked up at a car swerving away from her and saw that she had half strayed into the wrong lane. She jerked her steering wheel to put herself in the right lane.

  She felt her heart beating in double time and fought back the urge to cry as she pictured Lucien sitting in his cell and staring at the wall, each painful second an eternity. What an idiot he had been to construct such a terrible website. And now he was in such trouble! Why did he have to be so disobedient?

  As she travelled down Rice Lane, Lucien’s life flashed through her. How simple their life had once been, compared to the unravelling mess that it had become through his disastrous time in secondary school. The change in him aroused a physical pain in her chest. It was like a red-hot needle piercing her to the core.

  When she saw the railway station she wondered what it would be like just to step on the next train, the first leg of a journey to the end of the earth.

  Up ahead, the glaring red and yellow of the McDonald’s logo made her look left at the row of houses on the other side of the road. She smiled and felt tearful again at the memory of the time they’d lived there. ‘Oh my God!’ A police car and a white van were parked outside the houses on the pavement, and two men, a tall black man and a smaller man with a beard and a bald head, were loading stacker boxes on to the back of the van.

  There was a sudden disconnection in her brain, and her understanding was plunged into darkness, then light, darkness, then light, darkness, then light, a switch turning on and off.

  The sight of the police car and the plainclothes officers made her want to make a U-turn and drive away at top speed. Darkness. Light. She looked at the black officer and thought their eyes had connected, that he was looking at her with pure accusation. Darkness. Light.

  When he looked away and turned to walk back inside the house she wondered if it was the house they’d lived in in the good days. Darkness. Light. And she wondered if the police presence in Rice Lane was related to Lucien being in custody, and wondered if she was spiralling off into hypermania. Darkness.

  Light. She saw the sign for Aintree Racecourse and tried to calm herself with the memory of Lucien aged six visiting there when it was almost empty and how a kind steward had allowed him through the turnstile and on to the track to stroke the horses. Darkness.

  Light. Annabelle pulled left and pulled up in a side road. Darkness.

  Why wouldn’t the phone ring?

  Light.

  She had to get her head straight and return to the south end of the city, to Trinity Road police station and find out how Lucien was getting on.

  The only thing she could hear as she sat stone still was her own breathing and, as she listened to herself, the parts of her brain reconnected and the darkness gave way to the pure light of understanding.

  The police?

  She looked at the silent phone on the passenger seat.

  That was the reason why her phone was not ringing and her call had not been returned.

  The police were involved.

  And she was locked in the absolute silence that falls in the moment before the bitter end.

  71

  5.25 pm

  ‘Get the kettle on, Eve, you’ve got visitors coming from Sheffield.’

  ‘Hello, Lesley, you’ve picked up Daniel Campbell?’

  Clay attracted the attention of Cole and Hendricks and hit speakerphone.

  ‘We most certainly have. I’ve officially come out of retirement to offer you the benefit of my experience during the interview that you’re about to conduct with Steven Jamieson’s solicitor, Daniel Campbell.’

  Hendricks held his arms in the air. Result.

  ‘Where are you, Lesley?’

  ‘Currently on the M1, heading a little bit north to travel west and about two hours away from Liverpool.’

  ‘How is Campbell?’

  ‘I can see the back of his head in the car in front. The technical term in these parts is absolutely shitting himself. But he’s acting aloof and arrogant like he just doesn’t care.’

  ‘We’ve got rooms booked for him. A cell and an interview suite. Is he representing himself?’

  ‘No, he’s meeting a friend, at your nick. Milk and two sugars, please, Eve, and I’m not averse to a digestive biscuit or three.’

  ‘The kettle will be boiling when you get here, Lesley, and the biscuit barrel’s open and it’s all yours. Call me when you’re close at hand.’

  Clay replaced the receiver and optimistically asked, ‘How are you getting on with Jamieson’s paperwork?’

  ‘Two hours until Daniel Campbell rolls up here, right?’ checked Cole.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what we know, but there’s more to learn, so I’ll keep it brief and then get a move on.’ Cole stood up, took a set of A4 papers from his desk and went over to Clay. ‘The bank statements go back to the early 1990s. Standing orders and direct debits to different companies that come and go. DWR Limited for instance. I checked with the Companies House website. DWR registered in March 2013, dissolved in April 2015. Month of first payment to DWR March 2013, last payment April 2015. I’ve got twenty-eight such bogus companies so far, and counting.’

  He handed the top sheet to Cole.

  ‘DWR Accountants Limited,’ she read. ‘Dissolved. One officer. Daniel Campbell?’

  ‘He must have a large extended family. Daniel Campbell’s the officer for five companies on the Jamieson payroll. Of the other twenty-three, they’re all registered to a place called Conway House on Ackhurst Business Park in Chorley. They’ve all got one officer, either James Campbell, Thomas Campbell, Richard Campbell – the list of Campbells goes on
. They’re all accountancy firms. They come and they go and they all have two or three initials in their title. They all submit crock-of-shit tax returns to the Inland Revenue and they all pay approximately five grand, funded via Campbell. It’s all as bent as a hairpin. There’s one firm that stands out because it’s been the only constant going back to the first statement and featuring in the latest. LAB.’

  Cole handed Clay the Companies House details for LAB Accountants Limited.

  ‘You’ll probably have a better idea in a few hours, when you’ve had a chance to talk to the delightful Daniel Campbell,’ said Cole.

  ‘Where are we up to with Dr Warner and the confidentiality agreements?’ asked Clay.

  ‘I’ve faxed Jamieson and Campbell’s confidentiality documents over to Mark Benson at the CPS,’ said Hendricks. ‘I’m waiting for a callback. Yeah, if it doesn’t come in the next five minutes, I’m going to harass him. Dr Daniel Warner I tracked down through Google. He won’t be able to help us himself.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Clay.

  ‘He’s dead. He wasn’t a cosmetic surgeon.’

  Cold, hard suspicion gripped Clay, made her wish she could click her fingers and magic Daniel Campbell into the room and make him start answering questions right there and then.

  ‘Dr Warner was a gynaecologist. Or he was officially until he was booted out by the BMA for molesting a thirteen-year-old girl who he was supposed to be treating.’

  As quickly as Clay’s spirits had risen in the phone call with Lesley Reid, so they plummeted.

  ‘Bill, when Campbell gets here, you come into the interview with me. We’ll hit him with the bank statements and ask him about the services they were buying from the struck-off gynaecologist. Great work, both of you, thank you.’

  As Clay walked to the door, Hendricks answered the ringing landline on his desk.

  ‘Yes, it is Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks. OK! Eve, hang on a minute, please.’

  Hendricks listened and as he did so, his face became clouded with disappointment. ‘Could you have another look, or advise me on how I can go about searching for the missing records?’ He sat on the edge of his desk and sighed. ‘OK, thank you for trying again.’

  Hendricks replaced the receiver. ‘That was Alder Hey in the Park. They either haven’t got or can’t find Lucien Burns’s medical records.’

  Clay nodded. ‘I’ll speak to him.’

  Her iPhone received an incoming text. It was Poppy. Can we talk?

  72

  5.33 pm

  Clay passed the door of the viewing room where Carol White and Alice Banks spent their gruelling days. She tried the door handle and it was locked. She knocked but there was no reply.

  She moved to the next door, a small office, knocked and heard Poppy Waters call, ‘Come in!’

  Clay smiled as she entered the room and closed the door. ‘You want to talk with me, Poppy?’

  Poppy indicated Lucien Burns’s Apple Mac. ‘Five-fifty through to nine last night, with some short breaks, it seems he was doing online GCSE papers according to his Apple Mac. But as an alibi goes it’s not a good one. He’s very close to the scene of Jamieson’s murder and he’s got Pages for Apple. Conceivably he could have done the work on his iPhone on the way there and back and sent it to his Mac.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. Are we getting any insights into his secret self?’

  ‘He’s a bit of a megastar on the internet and he knows it,’ explained Poppy. ‘He gets lots of fan mail and he’s got thousands of people posting on his website, and some of it’s pretty damning stuff. There’s loads of people who claim to hate paedophiles enough to murder them.’

  ‘Have you tracked down any names on Lucien’s list of twelve most violent females?’ asked Clay.

  ‘One,’ said Poppy. ‘I’ve mainly been trying to track Lucien’s activity. Althea Henry. Claims to be from Warrington, but that may just be a claim.

  ‘She says: Hang the paedo by metal hooks through their feet, smear food all over them and dangle them from a crane so birds come and peck their eyes out. Let the crows eat him alive. What that bastard did... Althea. This is the best Vindici site ever.

  ‘Lucien replies: Thanks, Althea. What you say’s too good for them.

  ‘She replies: Why don’t we get together? We could be like the Bonnie and Clyde of paedo killers? Take Vindici’s work to a new level?

  ‘He replies: How do you know I’m a male?

  ‘She replies: Wishful thinking. Seriously, would love to get together with you. How about it?

  ‘He didn’t reply to that one.

  ‘She continued with a new post: What the fuck’s wrong with you, ARSEHOLE? Are you a fucking pussy or a queer bastard?

  ‘He blocked her after that.’

  ‘Most lads of his age would have been salivating, taking her to one side in cyberspace and fixing up a time and place for a little ooh-la-la,’ said Clay. ‘Unless... he’s very body conscious...’

  ‘He’s definitely not gay,’ Poppy laughed, anticipating one of the next possibilities.

  ‘I’ve already come to that conclusion myself,’ said Clay.

  Poppy went red in the face. ‘He’s downloaded so much porn it’s untrue. There isn’t one male homosexual image. He’s a very red-blooded heterosexual male. I can tell you what his type of woman is.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Clay.

  ‘He likes mature women, brunettes, women in their thirties and forties in all shapes and sizes.’

  ‘A bit like me maybe?’ asked Clay.

  Poppy thought about it. ‘Actually yes, definitely like you.’

  ‘Have you found anything that we should be concerned about?’

  ‘I found another list of names and addresses of paedophiles living in Liverpool.’ Poppy handed the list to Clay. As Clay scanned the list her eyes paused on one name: Steven Jamieson, Mather Avenue, Liverpool 18. No number.

  ‘Is Steven Jamieson on the electoral register?’ she asked.

  ‘He isn’t but his wife Frances is, and there’s only one Jamieson resident on the entire length of Mather Avenue,’ replied Cole. ‘I reckon the lad knew where Steven Jamieson lived and it was only round the corner from his house in Springwood Avenue. He made a good job of hiding the document you’ve got in your hand on his Apple Mac. But not that good a job.’

  ‘I’m going to confront Lucien with this. Do you have your own copy, Poppy?’ As she spoke, Clay called Hendricks on speed dial.

  ‘Yes, I do, Eve.’

  ‘Bill, we’re going to have to haul Lucien back into the interview room. His alibi is full of holes and he’s been lying to us through his pearly-whitened teeth.’

  73

  5.36 pm

  The duty solicitor, John Robson, held out a hand to Christine Green but withdrew it when she made no effort to reciprocate.

  ‘Are you sure this bloke’s a solicitor?’ Christine jabbed a thumb in his direction. ‘He looks like an overgrown schoolboy in his dad’s best suit.’

  Robson sat next to Christine and smiled at Riley and Stone.

  ‘I’ve been in countless interviews with Mr Robson representing all manner of people in all manner of trouble,’ said Riley.

  From the corner of the room, the custody sergeant, Harris said, ‘He’s an excellent solicitor and, if I was you, I wouldn’t alienate him. You’re going to need him, Christine.’

  Stone took his ringing iPhone out and, for two rings, didn’t recognise the number, but the but the digits 0151 525 gave away the location.

  ‘Is that your mother telling you to get home for your tea?’ said Christine.

  ‘Better than that,’ replied Stone. He showed the display to Riley, who in turn smiled at Christine.

  As he left the room, Stone connected, shutting the door after himself.

  Riley pressed record and formally opened the interview.

  ‘I’ve only got two questions, Christine. One thing’s puzzling me; the other’s absolutely bamboozling me. The puzzling thing. Where
’s your laptop?’

  ‘What laptop?’

  ‘The one you run your Vindici-worshipping, paedophile hate-mongering website from?’

  ‘What laptop?’ She addressed Mr Robson.

  ‘OK, Christine. We will find your laptop sooner or later. The bamboozler. You’ve done a good job for a long time in keeping your head down. Until today. We found you because you posted a picture of the McDonald’s over the road from your house. You gave yourself away so cheaply. Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve got nothing to hide. Unlike all the paedos out there and the pigs like you who protect them!’

  ‘That’s nice, Christine. My boss predicted this would happen. You’re not the only Vindici site in Liverpool. But you know that. Who’s the other person, Christine?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know anyone.’

  ‘You posted that picture of McDonald’s to get us running after you.’

  ‘Like I want to be here? Like I want some nigger—’

  ‘Moderate your language!’ Mr Robson looked as though he’d been stung by a wasp.

  ‘—and his bum boys ransacking my house.’

  The door opened and, still on the phone, Stone blocked the space, looking directly at Christine. ‘Thank you. I’ll be there directly.’ He smiled and closed down the call.

  ‘What?’ She spat the word at him.

  ‘We’ve got your laptop, Christine. Amongst other things...’

  74

  5.43 pm

  Clay looked through the observation slot at Lucien Burns as he did press-ups on the floor of the cell. As he pushed his weight up from the floor, he raised his hands mid-air, clapped and counted, ‘Ninety-seven.’ Clap. ‘Ninety-eight.’ Clap. ‘Ninety-nine.’ Clap. ‘One hundred.’ Clap.

  As his hands came to the floor he clenched his fists and supported the weight on his body on the tips of his toes, his elbows and forearms, all the time staring at the CCTV camera in the corner of the ceiling.

  ‘He’s going to be a monster when he’s older,’ Hendricks whispered to Clay. ‘Do you think he’s on steroids?’