The Jigsaw Man

by Nadine Matheson

  Chapter 57

  ‘How did you get my number?’

  ‘Good afternoon to you too. Busy day?’ asked Olivier.

  ‘You could say that. I guess it’s unlikely you’ll tell me where you are?’ Henley’s voice was steady but inside she wanted to scream.

  There was no reply from Olivier. Henley waited, listening to Olivier breathing, until he broke the silence.

  ‘I’ve been catching up on the news. You’ve been busy. How’s the family?’ he asked.

  ‘Why don’t you hand yourself in?’

  ‘Why would I do that? I can feel the sun on my face, the wind in my hair.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get used to it.’

  Olivier laughed. A deep, sarcastic, pitying laugh.

  ‘Why are you hiding?’ Henley asked, her stomach in painful knots.

  Olivier whistled softly down the phone, saying nothing.

  ‘Are you keeping an eye on me? I don’t think I’m the one you should be worried about.’ Henley prayed that Olivier didn’t pick up on the quiver in her voice.

  ‘Meaning?’ Olivier asked, bored.

  ‘There’s someone out there pretending to be you, taking credit for your particular… brand of killing. Who would do that? Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘You keep asking me these questions. All I wanted was to hear your voice. You’ve got me all caught up in my feelings.’

  A delivery man came out of the chicken shop, so Henley walked back onto the main street.

  ‘I thought you would be grateful to hear from me. Life must be pretty lonely for you now that your husband and little girl have left.’

  Henley stopped dead in her tracks. The delivery man hit the brakes on his moped, there was the screech of tyres, and a car horn beeped.

  ‘Oi, you stupid cow!’ shouted the delivery man, swerving around Henley. ‘Watch where you’re going!’

  ‘How do you know that—’ Henley said, sprinting across the road.

  ‘Don’t play stupid.’

  Henley stopped at the stairs leading up to the police station. She felt her throat tighten and the muscles in her legs weaken. She placed a hand on the rusty railings.

  ‘You were at my house?’

  Silence from Olivier.

  ‘You were at my house?’ Henley repeated, her voice louder this time.

  Olivier laughed. ‘I’ve been in prison, Inspector.’ There was a pause that seemed to last a lifetime. ‘But maybe someone sent me a gift. A little video. Maybe.’

  Henley couldn’t breathe.

  ‘And maybe I saw your lovely house. You opening the door, your husband coming up the path. He’s not how I imagined he would be. You told him not to move, but men. They never listen.’

  ‘Someone sent you a video?’

  Olivier was silent.

  ‘What do you want?’ Henley was bordering on panic now. ‘What do you want from me?’

  Olivier ignored the question. Instead, he said, ‘A word of advice, Anjelica. Be careful crossing the road next time. That moped nearly took you out.’

  Henley looked down at the phone, but the call had ended. She looked around wildly and then sat down on the steps heavily. Panic was sweeping over her in waves. When Olivier had stabbed her the fear had been centralised. Now, she was trying to defend herself against something, someone, she couldn’t see. There was a slight chill in the air, but Henley was sweating. And even though she hadn’t eaten since last night, Henley threw up in the middle of the street.

  Chapter 58

  He had been watching her.

  When every police force in the United Kingdom had been watching the airports and train stations, chasing every wild goose, no one had thought that he would come for her.

  ‘How did Olivier get your number?’

  Henley looked up at the NCA agent who had asked her the question. He used to be DS Bailey, based in CID, at Charing Cross. He usually worked on serious fraud cases. She wondered who he had pissed off to end up on a babysitting case where no one knew where the baby was.

  ‘Chance Blaine, maybe? I gave him my card. But Olivier is resourceful. He always has been. Someone could have just transferred him directly to me. Have you checked with the central switchboard?’ said Henley, inching herself closer to the window. They were all squeezed inside Pellacia’s office.

  ‘We’ll get someone on it. Are you sure that he was out there watching you?’

  ‘If she said that he was there then he was out there,’ Pellacia said defensively from behind his desk.

  ‘He told me to be careful crossing the road. He wouldn’t have said that if he hadn’t seen my near miss with an idiot on a moped,’ said Henley.

  ‘And you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when you left the hospital?’

  ‘No. As I told you, Ramouter and I came back from the hospital. I parked the car. Ramouter went into the station and I went across the road to get something to eat. My phone rang. It was an unknown number. I had no reason to suspect that Olivier was even in the area until he told me to be careful.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ said Agent Bailey. ‘It means that he’s got no intention of going anywhere. He’s staying in the area. Sorry, I know that’s not good news for you.’

  ‘Great. He’s been in our neck of the woods all this time. What exactly has the NCA been doing?’ asked Pellacia.

  ‘You saw Olivier three times before he escaped––’ Agent Bailey asked, ignoring Pellacia’s question.

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting his escape is Henley’s fault?’ Pellacia shouted.

  Agent Bailey didn’t flinch as he kept his attention on Henley. ‘Of course not, but he called you Anjelica. He’s trying to get close to you. You’ve got a kid, haven’t you?’

  Henley nodded.

  ‘Your colleague DS Stanford said that your husband and daughter are in Kensal Green. We’ve sent our own officers to them. Just as a precaution. I’m sure that everything is OK. What about the head that was delivered to your home on Sunday? Have you got any further with that investigation?’

  ‘We’ve tracked down the storage company and we’ve recovered the CCTV and the rental agreement. The details were fake,’ said Henley.

  ‘And what about the leak to the press about these recent murders? Have you discovered who was responsible?’

  ‘Is there a point that you’re trying to make?’ Pellacia snapped.

  ‘Stephen. It’s a small unit, you’ve got leaks,’ said Agent Bailey. ‘This case is mutating into something else and your senior investigating officer appears to be a potential target for a convicted murderer. You don’t need me to tell you that things aren’t looking that great for you.’

  Henley could sense Pellacia bristling next to her. These men were in his space, addressing him by his first name as if they were peers, as though they would walk out of the SCU in a couple of hours and sit around the table in the pub.

  ‘What do you think he wants?’ Agent Bailey asked Henley.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Henley said, exhausted.

  She was pissed at herself because it was one of the questions that she should have asked him. What do you want? How long had he been watching her? Are you working with the copycat? Who is he? Why me?

  Henley couldn’t understand why Olivier was clinging onto her like a leech. It was as if he knew that she was broken – easy prey. Or maybe he could tell that she couldn’t let him go.

  Pellacia handed Henley a shot of brandy.

  ‘I should be at home.’ She took a sip. ‘I need to speak to Rob.’

  ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘How can I not speak to Rob about what’s going on?’ Henley said wearily. ‘He’s been watching my house. But why?’

  Henley squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to block out the world. To disappear. She now understood what it meant when someone said that they had been shaken to their core. She opened her eyes to see Pellacia staring at her.

  ‘It’s not the same for him, is it?’ Pellacia said.

&nb
sp; ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The attention. If he calls the paper or he puts out a random tweet, it’s temporary. People will talk about him, but they’re not engaging with him. Olivier will only be a hot topic for as long as it takes for another Z-list celebrity to start trending, but with you, he’s always got your undivided attention.’

  ‘I don’t like how this investigation is going,’ Henley said, changing the subject. ‘Our copycat goes to ground and Olivier rises up.’

  ‘Let’s assume that they’re not working together,’ said Pellacia. ‘What do you think Olivier will do next?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know,’ Henley snapped. ‘Maybe he’ll come for you, finish what he started with me or he’ll try to find the copycat himself.’

  There was a knock on the door and Ramouter walked in without waiting for a response. Henley was about to tell him off, and then she saw the look on his face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of the agents, but we’ve got a problem.’ Ramouter handed Henley his phone.

  Henley read the headline at the top of the Evening Standard. ‘Shit.’

  COPYCAT SERIAL KILLER TARGETING THE JIGSAW JURORS

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

  Chapter 59

  Two years earlier…

  ‘The prosecution will be applying to discharge the jury and under the circumstances we have no reasonable grounds to object,’ Olivier’s barrister Brendan Turnmill QC said.

  The sound of Olivier tapping his fingers rhythmically against his case files filled the small consultation room.

  ‘We’re on day twelve,’ Olivier finally replied. ‘They haven’t even finished their case yet and they want to get rid of my jury.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Brendan.

  ‘And we’re not objecting?’ Olivier pulled out a notepad and flicked through the pages. He stopped at Tuesday. Day Two. Jury Panel. He ran his index finger along the twelve names he had written down.

  ‘No. We—’

  ‘Which means that you lot have made a mistake.’ Olivier leaned back and looked across at his solicitor David Samuels, who had been sitting silently next to Brendan doing everything he could to avoid Olivier’s gaze.

  ‘What have you done, Mr Samuels?’ Olivier’s tone was hard and demanding. ‘I doubt very much that it was our learned friend Mr Turnmill QC who did something so monumentally stupid that it led to my jury being let go. He’s the monkey. You’re the organ grinder.’

  David swallowed hard and ran a finger around the collar of his shirt. The sound of a woman crying in the consultation room next door filtered through the cracks in the wall.

  ‘What have you done?’ Olivier asked again.

  ‘Mr Olivier,’ David said. ‘It’s… well—’

  ‘And where’s Joseph?’ Olivier asked. ‘You usually send that little shit to sit in on these conferences.’

  ‘That’s the problem, Mr Olivier,’ Brendan said, glancing over at David with an unmistakable look of disgust.

  ‘I don’t want to hear from you,’ said Olivier without taking his eyes off David.

  David spoke softly as though his voice was being suffocated. ‘Joseph was—’

  ‘Speak up,’ Olivier commanded.

  ‘Last night Joseph was arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice by tampering with the jury. Your jury,’ David explained.

  Olivier didn’t respond as he looked down again at the jurors’ names.

  ‘He’s allegedly passed on information to one juror and may have tried to bribe another,’ David continued. ‘He’s being produced at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today.’

  ‘Which ones?’ Olivier asked.

  ‘What ones?’ David queried.

  ‘Jurors. Mr Olivier is asking which jurors!’ Brendan replied exasperatedly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with that right now. It’s more important for us to focus on next steps.’

  ‘I asked you which ones did your idiotic little colleague tamper with?’ Olivier shouted, lunging forward and grabbing David’s tie. Brendan scrambled out of his chair and ran out of the room. David’s iPad fell out of his hands and onto the concrete floor.

  ‘Which ones?’ Olivier asked again over the sound of a piercing alarm.

  ‘The young black girl and, and—’

  Olivier suddenly let go as two burly dock officers burst into the room.

  ‘No harm done,’ said Olivier as he stepped back into the corner and held his hands up. ‘I was just letting my solicitor know that he was sacked.’

  Present Day

  ‘This all started with you,’ Olivier said. He pulled out a long piece of kebab meat from a grease-stained container and pushed it into his mouth.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ Blaine said, moving closer to the church wall.

  Olivier carried on walking. ‘They found number three right here.’ He stamped his foot on the concrete staircase where Sean Delaney’s body had been found. The night sky encased the churchyard like a shroud. The minimal light came from the windows of a few flats overhead.

  ‘Why would he dump Delaney down here?’ Olivier walked over to Blaine.

  ‘I told you before, they’ve been watching me,’ Blaine whispered as he tried in vain to back away from Olivier.

  ‘Four bodies.’ He pulled out a large green chilli from his kebab and threw it down the staircase.

  ‘They’ve already spoken to Lorelei about me. They’ve been to my workplace. I can’t do this anymore.’

  ‘Too bad for you I’m afraid, son.’

  ‘I know how the police think. That woman. Henley.’

  ‘Show some respect. She’s Detective Inspector Henley.’ Olivier sat down on a nearby bench, patting the seat next to him.

  Blaine dragged himself with resignation to the bench. ‘They think I did it. Killed those jurors.’

  Olivier laughed through a mouthful of chilli sauce-covered chips. ‘They probably think you’re next,’ Olivier said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Even in the dimly lit church grounds, Blaine’s face had visibly paled. Olivier enjoyed the slow, pleasurable thrill of taunting him. ‘Detective Inspector Henley probably wants to use you as bait,’ he continued. ‘She’s cold like that. A bit like me.’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing?’ Blaine replied, his voice shaking. ‘Are you using me for—’

  Olivier said nothing as he crushed up his takeaway box and threw it into the bushes.

  ‘Do you think whoever is doing this will come for me?’ Blaine’s voice almost disappeared amid the siren of a passing ambulance and a couple screaming at each other from a nearby flat.

  ‘I told you, this all started with you,’ said Olivier. ‘You and I have spent a lot of time talking and I remember everything you told me about Joseph McGrath.’

  ‘That’s not my name anymore.’

  ‘That’s not the point, boy. Now, let’s think about this logically.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve made me come out here in the middle of the night – to be your sounding board?’

  ‘Or maybe I am using you as bait.’ Olivier’s words cut through the air like a blade. ‘All four of those dead jurors gave evidence in your trial,’ he continued. ‘Lewis, Kennedy, poor little Zoe and Delaney.’

  ‘But I didn’t kill them,’ Blaine almost whined.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, shut up and listen. There were two more jurors who gave evidence against you.’

  ‘I… I… I don’t remember.’

  ‘Of course you do. Two more jurors who got themselves in just as much trouble as you. Now, I need you to remember who you spoke to. Who seemed most eager to want to help you out? Who would want to please me, impress me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Your stupidity made my copycat. It’s all cause and effect. You are going to help me track down those jurors.’

  ‘What if I say no?’ Blaine replied unconvincingl
y. ‘I can go to the police right now and tell Henley that I need protection.’

  ‘You could do that, but then I would have no choice but to visit your girlfriend Lorelei, cut off her head, put it in a box and leave another present on my girl’s doorstep.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. We’re not even together anymore.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Actually, maybe I’ll go and do that right now as it looks like you need an incentive.’

  Blaine grabbed hold of Olivier’s arm. ‘No, don’t. Please.’

  ‘Let go,’ Olivier said, looking down at Blaine’s hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Blaine stuttered as he stepped away.

  ‘I’m going to find this copycat and you’re going to help me.’

  ‘But what if he kills me? He could kill me.’

  Olivier smiled and tapped the side of Blaine’s face. ‘If you die, then you die. Cause and effect, Mr Blaine. Cause and effect.’

  Chapter 60

  Henley had woken up in a strange bed that morning, with an intense desire to just stay there. She hadn’t had the energy the previous evening to fight Stanford when he had told her to go home, pack some things and to stay at his house. She was mentally exhausted and in no mood to be taking part in a press conference.

  Henley sat at the end of the table with Pellacia on her left and Commissioner Superintendent Larsen next to him. Pellacia had planned to read out a bog-standard statement: We are not prepared to make any further comments in regard to the investigation. But Commissioner Superintendent Larsen had other ideas. There were some people who relished the media spotlight, and the borough commander was one of them.

  The media room was packed and stifling. Henley felt herself stiffen and focused on making sure that she looked as though she was in control. That she was someone who was in authority. The last thing that she needed was for Olivier to be out there watching her on TV, knowing that he’d got to her.

  ‘Callum O’Brien. Evening Standard.’

  Henley turned her gaze to the tall, skinny man in the front row. It had been years since she’d last seen him. He hadn’t changed.

  ‘Inspector Henley, how can you be sure that Peter Olivier is not involved in the current spate of murders?’