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

by Mark Roberts

  7.53 pm

  Mason smiled at Clay across the treasure trove of evidence on his table in his workshop in the basement of Trinity Road police station, and it felt like a lottery win.

  Flanked by Stone and Riley, Clay looked at the find from the cardboard box at the back of McDonald’s, Rice Lane, laid out on three clear plastic sheets.

  ‘What’s the back story on the find?’ asked Clay.

  ‘A kid working at McDonald’s finds the box at the back of the restaurant. The manager phones Walton Lane police station. Walton Lane phone us.’

  There was a knock on the door. It opened quickly and, without invitation, Poppy Waters entered at speed.

  ‘Is that the laptop?’

  ‘Poppy, slow down,’ said Clay.

  ‘Talk us through it, Terry, so that we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. And when we’re done here, feed the info back to Bill Hendricks when he gets back and Barney up in the incident room. Fire away on this great find.’

  ‘I’ll begin with the laptop.’

  Wearing latex gloves, he lifted the laptop lid. The dead screen was covered with a network of what looked like spiders’ webs. Mason took a close look and counted.

  ‘She’s hit the screen three times with a blunt instrument in the hope of knackering the laptop. She did the same with the mobile phone.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ said Poppy. ‘It’s like hitting the roof of a house with a hammer to bludgeon to death someone in the basement. I’ll transfer the hard drive and SIM card into a like device. No problem.’

  ‘When you’ve dusted the laptop and lifted any finger or palm-prints, Terry, pass it straight on to Poppy,’ said Clay. ‘Dig the dirt and fast, please, Poppy!’

  Clay looked at the coat, front side up.

  At the bottom of the red duffel coat, in another transparent bag, was a sharpened bicycle spoke.

  ‘The spoke was concealed inside the coat, left-hand side, in the vertical hem where the toggles are sitting,’ said Mason. ‘I felt it through the fabric as I took it from the box. I had to use a folded handkerchief to get it out. It’s bloody lethal. Wilson and Jamieson were awake, right? It must have been like having a fencing foil inside their skulls.’

  Clay thought back to the autopsies. ‘The spokes she used to pierce their stems and impale their brains.’

  ‘The coat is covered in fresh and older bloodstains. The fresh ones are splatter from when she whipped his legs. The older blood stains are from direct contact with her victim.’

  Clay indicated a dry discolouration, ‘That blood will have come from David Wilson.’ She looked at the fresh splatter in the middle of the coat, pointed it out. ‘She must have knelt over Steven Jamieson as she whipped his legs. Humiliate the rich and powerful, and how!’

  ‘But can you see Frances Jamieson’s blood anywhere?’ asked Mason.

  Clay looked hard up the left sleeve from the wrist to the shoulder and saw stale stains from David Wilson and the continuation of a line of splatter from Steven Jamieson. Slowly, her eyes zigzagged across each square centimetre on the front of the coat, but there was nothing that jumped out as being definitively from the female victim.

  Then Clay started at the shoulder of the right sleeve and her eyes tracked across small markings of blood until she reached the cuff.

  A fresh rim of blood had soaked into and dried around the cuff.

  She’s right-handed, thought Clay, but what did she do with her right hand to Frances Jamieson to pick up that staining? Something up close and personal but the mark wasn’t consistent with the damage caused to the woman’s eyes.

  Clay looked away, cast herself back to that living room at the moment the lights came on and Frances Jamieson’s bound and gagged form became clearly visible. Her back surfaced in Clay’s mind, the signature ‘Vindici’ on the woman’s shoulder.

  ‘As the killer carved her bogus autograph in her flesh,’ said Clay, ‘the blood soaked into her sleeve and the rim of the cuff. That’s Frances Jamieson’s blood.’

  Clay stepped back, looked at the fourth section of the table.

  ‘This is a child’s backpack,’ said Mason.

  ‘My Little Pony.’ Clay smiled at the grim irony. The contents of the backpack were laid out and looked to Clay’s eyes like a map of murder.

  ‘We’ve got the thin blue ropes,’ said Mason, ‘identical to the ropes used to bind Frances Jamieson. A sharpened spoke, the one she used to attack Steven’s brain...’

  ‘Hang on, Terry.’ Clay crouched so that the contents of the table were at eye level. ‘Get the coat to the lab right now, please. Press them. Tell them to drop everything, we need the different DNA results back right now and we need to squeeze Christine Green’s head just as quickly.’

  Clay made a mental note of the remaining contents of the backpack: the bloodstained orange-handled Stanley knife, the incense cones and the Lynx aerosol canister.

  ‘Have you printed off photographs of all this?’ asked Clay.

  There was a knock on the door and Hendricks entered the room just as Mason handed Clay a brown A4 envelope and said, ‘Pictures taken in situ at the rear of McDonald’s on Rice Lane, and individual shots of each piece of evidence taken close up as you see them on the table here.’

  Clay looked at Hendricks.

  ‘Well done, Bill! You were spot on about the wounds on Jamieson’s legs. That’s what he got for being rich, powerful and a complete bastard. What’s happening?’

  ‘Lesley Reid and her colleagues are here with Jamieson’s solicitor Daniel Campbell.’

  ‘Is his solicitor here yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bill, you come with me and we’ll talk to Campbell, make him aware of just how deeply in the shit he is. We’ll formally interview him when his solicitor shows up.’

  ‘Mark Benson from the CPS has been back to me. The detail on Jamieson and Campbell’s confidentiality agreements are so vague as to make the documents not worth the paper they’re printed on. Campbell must’ve known it.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Riley.

  ‘I want you to come with me to Christine Green’s cell. I think we need to arrange a little social event before we formally interview her.’

  81

  8.03 pm

  Christine Green stood at the centre of her cell, staring straight ahead at the wall, her back turned to the door and the observation panel. As Sergeant Harris unlocked the door, she didn’t move, turn or appear to hear.

  ‘Christine,’ said Clay. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

  She remained silent and still. Clay walked into the cell, met her face to face.

  ‘More of your mind games, Clay?’

  ‘I want to introduce you to someone of a similar mindset.’ Clay drilled in on Christine’s face, reading some confusion beneath the tough sheen. ‘He’s coming down the corridor now. Can you hear his footsteps? He’s three cells away from you.’

  The footsteps stopped at the open door of the cell.

  ‘Come in,’ said Clay.

  ‘Hello,’ said Lucien to Christine’s back.

  Slowly, she turned, looked him up and down.

  Neither Lucien nor Christine spoke.

  Clay waited, counted slow seconds to ten and asked, ‘Do you know each other?’

  Silence. Seconds mounted up.

  ‘Have you met before?’

  ‘Who’re you?’ asked Lucien.

  Christine turned on Clay. ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’

  ‘This is Lucien Burns, Christine, unless you didn’t already know. Do you know him?’

  ‘No I don’t. I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

  ‘Lucien, this lady in front of you is Christine Green, unless you didn’t already know. Do you know her?’ asked Clay.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The reason why I’m introducing you, unless you’ve already met before, is because you’ve got such a lot in common.’

  ‘Don’t insult me!’ said Christine. �
�What’s he got in common with me? How old are you, lad?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  Oh, I get it now.’ Christine looked at Clay. ‘You absolutely evil-minded bitch. You’re trying to make out that my website’s a smoke screen. That I’ve been having a sexual relationship with a minor while calling for the blood of paedophiles. That’s a very clever strategy, Clay, but it’s not original. It’s positively medieval. I’m orchestrating a witch-hunt because I’m the biggest witch of all. Right? Wrong, you philistinic cunt. You’re using this child, and you are a child in the eyes of the law, lad, to try and smear my name. What’s she offered you?’

  Lucien shrugged.

  ‘Tell me she’s been having sex with you since you were fourteen and I’ll get you off the burglary charge. Is that what she said?’

  ‘No!’ said Lucien, a look of profound disgust imprinted on his face. ‘No!’

  ‘You know what, Christine, DS Riley and DS Stone were right about you. You are bright, incredibly bright.’

  ‘Well, you aren’t, Clay. None of this theatre would have been admissible in a court of law.’

  ‘I had no intention of trying to smear your name, Christine. You’re smart but you’re wrong there. And I certainly wasn’t intending to try and use this in the court case against the pair of you. But my goodness, you’d do well as a barrister, that was quite a piece of oration.’

  ‘Then why have you brought us together?’

  ‘Not because of some conspiracy theorist crap about bent policing techniques, certainly, but because, as I said, you have so much in common. You both live in the same city. You run the only like-minded websites located in Liverpool. You both hate paedophiles with a biblical vengeance. And you both venerate paedophile serial killer Justin Truman. You’re both being interviewed during the same time window in the same police station in relation to the same murder inquiry. David Wilson. Steven Jamieson. I want both of you to know in the same breath what we now have as evidence. Christine, we’ve got your bloodstained red duffel coat. We’ve got your laptop. It’s being pulled apart right now. We’ve got your backpack. We’ve got your phone. We’ve got your murder weapon. We’re going to analyse every single word that you both say in the light of each other’s separate interviews. I’m pretty certain you’re both going to be charged in connection to the these murders before your twenty-four hours in custody is up. That’s a lot to have in common. So I just wanted you both to know it in the interests of neither of you being in the dark.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re really here, lad,’ said Christine. ‘But she’s using the serious shit I’m in here for to try and destabilise you. Get your solicitor and tell him or her what’s been going on here. She’s right out of line.’

  ‘I’ve already had a talk with my solicitor,’ said Lucien. ‘She’s told me to cooperate. Clay just wants to establish the fact that we either do or don’t know each other. Who are you?’

  ‘Who are you?’ echoed Christine.

  ‘Like DCI Clay said, I run a Vindici website. That’s why I’m here talking to you now. Because they think I killed some paedos. Because I live...’ He stopped and looked like he didn’t know whether to weep or scream as the concept became concrete in his mind. ‘Fucking hell. Because I live round the corner from one of the dead paedos. She’ – he pointed at Clay – ‘thinks that you and me are a team. Well, I didn’t fucking kill no one. Don’t even try and fucking well drag me down into your shit! Tell her...’

  ‘Likewise, dickhead, with big brass bells on it. This is your shit, not mine. Wilson and Jamieson were murdered in your end of the city, not mine, not the north end. I’m not in a team with you. Who are you, Lucien? Some over- privileged snot-nosed bastard from the south end trying to blame me for what you did? Oh, but in the interests of fairness, congratulations on a good job killing paedos. Well done.’ Christine turned on Clay. ‘The evidence you claim you’ve got, if you’re bluffing and playing mind games, belongs to him, not me.’

  Lucien flew at Christine, his right arm raised and fist bunched to punch her. She stood still and, as Hendricks grabbed and turned him, Lucien’s fist punched the air. In the same moment, Christine threw out her foot and kicked him in the knee.

  Riley got hold of one arm and, with Hendricks to the left, dragged Lucien backwards out of Christine’s cell.

  Christine looked directly at Clay with a smile behind her eyes. ‘You can see what a volatile young man he is. What a violent, violent person. Murderous rage. We’ve seen it with our own eyes, haven’t we, Clay?’

  82

  8.18 pm

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve been fingerprinted, Daniel?’ asked Clay.

  Daniel Campbell replied with a silent, contemptuous look. Beneath a neatly manicured head of grey hair, his face was lined and would have been handsome except for his fish-like eyes.

  Clay drifted away from him and over to Lesley Reid and her two male colleagues from South Yorkshire Police.

  ‘Did Campbell have anything to say on the way over here?’

  ‘He’s going to litigate against you, Merseyside Constabulary, us three and South Yorkshire Police.’

  Clay looked at Daniel Campbell’s possessions in a plastic bag on the desk, and saw top-of-the-range designer everything. An Yves Saint Laurent wallet crammed with credit cards next to a gold fountain pen. A bunch of keys to what she imagined was a very large house in a prestigious gated community. A notebook in a leather casing and the latest iPhone.

  She looked at the cut of his black silk suit, the handmade white shirt and the damson silk tie and span back in time to Sister Philomena explaining something Jesus had said about money and the soul.

  ‘You can have everything in the world, Eve, but it won’t do you any good if you lose your soul.’

  Clay tried to imagine the state of Daniel Campbell’s soul as he stared straight ahead, and decided that if she was the Devil she would have offered two pence as an opening bid for it but would have gone no further than five.

  ‘I’m going to take your picture next, Daniel,’ said Sergeant Harris behind the front desk.

  ‘It’s Mr Campbell to you, do you understand?’

  ‘Of course I understand, Mr Campbell,’ said Sergeant Harris. ‘So as you know, after I’ve taken your photograph, I’m going to swab your mouth for a DNA sample and then you’ll be going into the holding cell until your legal representative arrives.’

  In the plastic bag on the front desk, Daniel Campbell’s iPhone rang.

  As it rang out, Campbell said to Clay, ‘I need to take that call. It’s probably going to be Aaron Brierley, my solicitor.’

  ‘By all means, take your call, Mr Campbell, you are allowed one.’

  Clay watched closely as Campbell fished the iPhone from the plastic bag and connect the call.

  ‘Yes, I’m in Trinity Road police station right now. Yes, it is hard to talk. Where are you, Barry?’ Silence. ‘Half an hour?’ Anger. ‘Can’t you make it quicker than that?’ Disbelief. ‘I’ll suppose I’ll see you when I see you then.’

  Daniel Campbell returned the iPhone to the plastic bag and frowned when Sergeant Harris produced another empty plastic bag.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘This bag, Mr Campbell, is for your shoes and shoelaces when you’re in the holding cell waiting for your solicitor to arrive.’

  ‘So, the picture,’ said Sergeant Harris. ‘Don’t smile or pull a funny face, Mr Campbell. Pull a passport face for your mugshot.’

  Campbell looked at Clay. ‘My client gets murdered when I’m hundreds of miles away in another city, and you arrest me on suspicion of bribing police officers? You’ve got no evidence.’

  ‘Yes I have, Mr Campbell. If I was you, I wouldn’t talk about why we’ve brought you here in such a public place.’ Clay indicated the space behind him.

  Campbell looked over his shoulder and through Annabelle Burns, who froze to the spot. Clay watched her reaction as Campbell blithely turned his head and faced away from Annabelle.
Annabelle opened her mouth but stayed silent, the words on her mind obviously lost inside her. Then she frowned, staring at the back of his head as if she was looking at something obscene and completely out of place.

  ‘Annabelle, come over here please,’ said Clay, walking to the doors leading to the interview suites.

  Once they were behind the swing doors, Clay looked out into the reception area where Campbell remained mute and furious. Clay pointed at him and said, ‘You were shocked when that man turned and looked at you. Do you know him?’

  ‘No. Just for a split second I thought it was the American actor Steve Martin. I guess it was the white hair. He’s probably nothing like him. I’m stressed to the hilt. Wouldn’t you be if your son was being questioned in a murder investigation?’

  ‘If you want to be personal, Annabelle, if my son was being questioned in a murder investigation, I wouldn’t have been away from the police station as long as you have. Where have you been, Annabelle?’

  In the reception area, Campbell turned and faced Clay as Sergeant Harris took a profile picture of Campbell.

  Clay watched Annabelle closely as she stared in the solicitor’s direction but this time her face was blank.

  ‘Everybody, including Lucien, especially Lucien, made it perfectly obvious that my presence was not welcome. I’m not some little dog to come running back and forth and looking desperate to be told Beat it, Fido!’

  ‘Just as a matter of interest, where did you go in your car?’

  ‘How do you know I went out in my car?’

  ‘Detective Constable Maggie Bruce was in your bedroom window when you turned up and drove off in it.’

  ‘I was stressed so I went to Otterspool Promenade... Look, I want to know what’s happening with Lucien?’

  ‘He’ll be here for at least the full twenty-four hours.’

  Clay watched Annabelle’s face, imagined her juggling the word hours and turning it into years.

  ‘And then you’ll release him?’ asked Annabelle.

  ‘It depends what happens between now and then.’

  Clay pictured the bay window of Annabelle Burns’s bedroom. ‘Who were you talking to on your mobile phone when we showed up at your house? At one minute past nine this morning?’