Her face twisted in confusion. ‘He said Ruth didn’t have a child, so he couldn’t kill her in the same way he killed the others. It kind of makes sense.’
Dominic’s voice turned to stone cold concrete. ‘We work with evidence, Claudia, not whimsy. It’s evidence that’s going to put Samuel Tyler away for a very long time. Don’t forget that.’
Claudia stared at her father. She wasn’t a weak woman, Dominic didn’t expect her to simply back down to him. She had her own mind and could argue her point very well. In fact they’d had their fair share of stand-up rows, as many families, parents and children, had. But Claudia looked at him for a long time, then necked what was left of her wine, walked the glass into the kitchen, placed it on the counter and thanked him for the drink.
‘You’re leaving?’ He hadn’t known what to expect, but this wasn’t it.
‘This is something I need to resolve myself. I’m sorry if I upset you.’ And with that, she left.
Dominic stared at the closed door she had exited through. This was worse. By the sound of it, she was going to continue down this path. In what way, he had no idea. But it wasn’t something he could allow to happen. Samuel Tyler had to be convicted of Ruth’s murder or his own life was at risk. He had to stop Claudia, and he had to stop Samuel Tyler.
CHAPTER 19
The following morning Claudia was in early as she hadn’t slept well, worrying about the friction between her and Dominic over Samuel Tyler, as well as the visit to Tyler itself. She put the kettle on and waited for it to boil.
She had no idea what she really thought of what Samuel Tyler had said to her and had hoped to talk it through with her dad, but he’d put paid to that with his anger at her visit and her broaching of the subject.
Had she been heavy-footed with him? Of course they had charged Tyler with killing Ruth. It was only reasonable Dominic would be angry whenever Tyler’s name was mentioned. It was why Claudia had backed away last night. She had recognised her own error, and without wanting to make things worse, she had left. She only hoped they could put it behind them at work today.
With tea made, she sauntered down the corridor into her office. The incident room was quiet. Only a couple of staff were in at the minute. She liked this time of day. The quiet before the storm.
Not that there was a storm. They were getting nowhere with the investigation. The top brass were getting annoyed, and the pressure was bearing down. It wasn’t that murder investigations never took this long, but they’d created this magical task force as they saw it, and they expected answers within a much smaller timeframe. How could the brass show them off as the cream of the crop if they couldn’t solve a simple homicide?
Claudia let out a breath. They had to make a dent in this case soon or heads would start rolling.
She watched Kane stroll in and lifted a hand in acknowledgement. Right behind him was Dominic. He refused to look up at her, so she watched his routine as he sat at his desk, logged on to his computer and said his good mornings to the rest of the team as they ambled in. But at no point did he raise his head her way.
She would have to deal with it. She couldn’t allow Tyler to infect their working relationship. Walking out on him last night had been to protect him and their family. How could he not see that?
Claudia placed the now cooled mug of tea on her desk and walked into the incident room. A few voices welcomed her with ‘morning, boss’. She gave a generalised ‘morning’ in response. Her primary aim was to get to Dominic and resolve this issue before it bled into work anymore than it already had.
‘Can we have a word?’ she asked over his shoulder.
He turned and looked up at her. ‘I’m a bit busy.’
‘I need you.’ She would brook no argument from him.
He tried not to scowl, but the intention flickered across his mouth. She let it pass.
‘We can go to my office or take a walk?’ she said.
Dominic looked around. ‘I don’t particularly want to be dragged into your office like a naughty little school boy.’ The frustration was oozing from him.
‘Let’s walk.’ She strode towards the door expecting him to follow and he did. ‘What is it?’ she asked as they moved out of the incident room into the corridor.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t play stupid. This sullen attitude you’re giving me this morning. What did I do to deserve it?’ She felt like a child herself for asking that question, but they had to hash it out between them. It couldn’t be allowed to fester. Not in a work environment.
They reached the top of the stairs and Dominic made his way down. Claudia followed.
‘I don’t understand why you’re chasing your tail with this Tyler stuff,’ he said, eventually.
As she knew he would. How to get past it? How to close it down as a subject between them but keep her own counsel? She didn’t have the answers. It would have been easier if the tossing and turning that had occurred through the night had provided some, before she found herself in work and facing this problem. Of course she didn’t trust Tyler entirely. There was the possibility he had targeted Ruth because she was getting too close to the case. But that didn’t sit right because the logical person to kill would have been Dominic or Kapoor, his DI at the time. No, there was more to this that she needed to think about and it would help if she could talk to her dad.
They reached the next floor down and Dominic continued going down the stairs. It was an unusual building in that it was built on a steep hill, and so there were more floors on one side of it than the other.
‘I left last night because I didn’t want to fight with you, Dad. I didn’t mean to upset you. It was wrong of me to come to see you straight after seeing him.’ She purposefully refused to use his name. Anything that might trigger her father.
‘But it felt like he sucked you in with his lies.’
Claudia couldn’t make out the tone in his voice. Some level of distress, but there was an underlying issue there. Not that it surprised her.
How could she deny what Tyler had said intrigued her? ‘Can we agree not to talk about him with each other?’
Her father’s shoulders stiffened in front of her and he lost his step, stumbling down a couple. She reached out and grabbed his elbow. He shrugged her off, stabilised and continued his journey downwards.
‘I’ll only be happy when you walk away and leave that bastard to rot, Claudia. He deserves nothing less. He certainly doesn’t deserve your time.’
She couldn’t make that promise. Something about what Tyler had said was under her skin, irritating her and needling away at her. There was no way she could ignore him.
They reached the bottom of the building, coming out into the front foyer.
Dominic turned to look at her. She hadn’t responded, hadn’t made the promise he needed. Disappointment was etched on every line. He stared at her a moment longer then turned on his heel and walked out the station, throwing over his shoulder the words, ‘I’m going for a quick walk, I’ll be back for the briefing.’ The early morning sun glinted on the glass door as it swung closed behind him. They were in for yet another hot day. Claudia wondered how long this weather would hold. It had to break at some point.
Her own disappointment clouded her mind, disappointment that she could not resolve the issue with her father. But it wasn’t rare that they didn’t see eye to eye on things. She’d deal with this as she dealt with every other issue they’d had. The only problem this time was the sensitivity of Ruth’s murder. The loss and pain of it. For all concerned. She would have to step carefully.
‘Hey.’ A smile from the front counter.
Claudia raised a grin of her own at the warm greeting from Steve, who was on duty this morning. He’d been here years. Longer than she had. She’d moved around the force during her service. As a front counter staff member, Steve would have got his job here and settled.
‘You want to take your post up to the task force while you’re down here? Saves them going
through the mailing system,’ he asked, holding out a stack of white and brown envelopes.
Claudia stepped forward and took them from him. ‘Thanks, Steve.’ She flicked through them. There were a few for her and a couple of others for the team. ‘Have a good day.’ She waved at him as she turned and pressed the button for the lift, using her ID card to access it. This was a public area, and the lift would spit her out into the bowels of the building.
There was no way she was walking all the way up the stairs she’d just descended.
Once in the incident room she distributed the post and took her own into her office and sorted through it. There was nothing of great importance.
That was until she got to the last one.
The last one grabbed her attention.
The last one was a drawing of a crime scene.
CHAPTER 20
It was as intricate and strangely beautiful as the first one she had received.
As with the first one, there was no letter. It was simply a drawing with a clock and a day attached to it.
But it was different to the first one.
The crime scene was different.
Claudia stared at the drawing, awestruck by the complexity of it. The delicacy of the pencilling and shadings bringing the image to life. The beauty of it. But at the same time, the horror of what it represented.
Sitting in her chair, drawing still in hand, terror clawed inside Claudia’s chest.
She had to get a grip. She let go of the paper and allowed it to waft down to her desk.
Forensics were unlikely to recover anything from this, but she had to go through the procedure.
First she took several shots of the drawing with her phone, next she dialled the crime scene unit and requested a CSI attend immediately if they had one available, then she put in a call to Sharpe. She’d leave it to her to update Connelly.
Sharpe was, as expected, furious. What was unexpected was that she was marching her way down to the incident room. She wasn’t usually one to get involved in the day-to-day work, usually sitting in her office, overseeing the process from there, attending meetings only when necessary and snapping out emails when she had something to say. Being in attendance was not her wheelhouse.
Claudia needed to inform the team quickly.
She emailed the photographs she’d taken of the drawing to her work account, then sent a global email to the team with the images attached, pressing send as Sharpe pushed her way through the incident-room doors.
There hadn’t been a lot of time to reflect on what was happening. It had been a matter of immediately reacting to events. There was still the drive of adrenalin surging through Claudia’s veins as she printed out the images she’d photographed, so they had a hard copy to work with.
Through her open door she shouted at Krish to collect the printout from the copier as Sharpe elbowed her way past into her office. The scent of cigarettes wafted under her nose. It had not been long since Sharpe had been out for a smoke. Claudia turned away and tried her best not to wrinkle her face in disgust, instead moving towards her desk to show Sharpe the original mailing.
Sharpe was an excellent detective, even if she only managed from a distance now. She stood away from the desk as she peered down at the paper. ‘It’s not one that’s already been called in?’
Claudia moved to her office door again and looked out at the incident room. It was a hive of chatter. Everyone had seen their emails. Krish handed her the printed image. She thanked him and he returned to his desk. She spoke to the team. ‘You’ve seen the image in your email. I want to know if we’ve had a murder reported that matches it. Let us know immediately.’
She turned to Sharpe. ‘You were informed as soon as I saw the drawing. We know nothing about it. We’ve had no time to do any work on it.’
Sharpe was still staring down at it. ‘It looks grim. If there’d have been a murder that looked like that, I’d have heard about it.’
This was true.
Again the victim was male. But this time he was hanging from a small bridge over water, his arms above his head, wrists bound and holding him up. The muscles in the tops of his arms were stretched to their limit as the weight of his body pulled him down. There was a breeze block tied to his feet, pulling and stretching and causing the male so much agony. A scream was etched on his face. This was a drawing, a snapshot, done before death had set in. Did this mean they could find him before the crime occurred and stop it this time?
A pulse flickered in Claudia’s temple. ‘You think we can stop it before it happens?’
Sharpe held out her hand for the paper Claudia was holding. She handed it over. ‘It says Wednesday next to the clock. Eight a.m. That’s only one day to identify the victim and the location. The press are going to have a field day, but we need to use them to our advantage with this. We have to stop this murder or we’ll be toast, Claudia.’
Claudia was well aware of how this would be perceived if they allowed another man to die at the hands of this killer. Not that ‘allowed’ was the right word. But if they failed to stop him being killed . . . They could not fail.
This man on the bridge, whoever he was, could not afford for them to fail.
‘I’ll update Connelly, and obviously we’ll have to inform the PCC.’
Claudia rolled her eyes. The Police and Crime Commissioner. A civilian elected to the role, who only worried about how crime looked because how it looked to the citizens of Sheffield determined his tenure. And he was quite happy in the role. Though Claudia couldn’t imagine being dictated in your job by what the public thinks of you. Even if it was how policing was pretty much run nowadays, anyway. At least in a task force like theirs, they could simply react to the cases as they came in. Do their job and let others worry about the problems of perception. Claudia realised that as someone on the fast-track promotion scheme, this would at some point be her world. She had to start paying attention. Get used to the political side. The concerns of how policing was perceived. There was a push in the current climate for officers to be aware of proactive policing. To prevent crimes happening rather than just being reactive. Though it was difficult with murders, it wasn’t altogether impossible. Just take domestic murders, for example. And here was another case in point.
The whole policing strategies thing was a worry for another day. Right now they had just over twenty-four hours to stop the murder of an unknown man at an unknown location.
Claudia looked up from the drawing that had mesmerised her.
Sharpe tapped her fingers on the desk. ‘This is where the task force has to come into its own, Claudia. There’s no free run with this. All eyes are on you. You have your actual job. Get stuck in and resolve it.’ Her tone forbade any argument. She turned her back on the drawing and marched out of the office and through the incident room, nearly bumping into Dominic as he walked back in. ‘Nice of you to join us, DS Harrison,’ she sniped on her way past.
Claudia couldn’t help but smile behind her door. Giving herself a second of freedom before the hard work of this investigation took everything from her.
‘What did I miss?’ Dominic asked in the incident room.
Claudia strode in with the drawing in her hand. ‘We’ve had another drawing delivered, and this time we’re going to stop him before he kills again.’
CHAPTER 21
He was exuberant. He’d posted the invitation yesterday and the reason for his joy today was that the envelope containing his drawing, his invite, would be delivered this morning.
The police would open it and unlike last time they would understand the significance of the image.
The prospect of their faces sent a flurry of tingles across his skin. The thought of them recognising the drawing for the invitation it was.
He could imagine them working with the drawing, trying to figure out the location.
But he wasn’t stupid. Of course, part of the thrill of creating these exhibits was the risk of being stopped before he could complete it. It w
as as though there was an electric current running through him.
He was alive.
Surging with energy.
The cops wouldn’t stop him. There were several bridges it could be. He was a precise artist, though, and there were tell-tale signs within the drawing if you looked hard enough. Even if they did identify it, the clock was out by several hours. He’d be long gone by the time they got there. Even if they arrived early in an attempt to catch him in the act.
No, he wasn’t dumb. He needed the audience, but he also needed to play this out again.
This wasn’t the end of the line. There was plenty more to come. His mind was ready to play.
The first work of art, the installation at the industrial estate, that had been all about the art. Creating the sculpture and performance piece for his audience in company with the working invitation had been all the thrill he’d needed. After all, he was an artist. One whose work would be recognised for years to come. But he had to admit that following on from that first piece, having the police involved, choosing them as his invitees, choosing DI Claudia Nunn, had turned up the thrill a notch. And in doing so he had changed the effect of his actions a little. He’d chosen DI Nunn after seeing her in the press. She’d gone after her own father, it had eventually been reported. She was hardcore. If anyone was worthy of being invited to his installations it was her. He was now as enthralled by the game as much as by the exhibits themselves. The game, creating the invitations, was intertwining into the final piece for him. Becoming a part of the exhibit. The need for the chase. The hide and seek within the invitation. Making his heart pound. He couldn’t separate the game from the installation. It was now part of the performance piece, he realised.
SECONDS TO DIE a totally gripping serial killer thriller with a twist (Detective Claudia Nunn Book 2) Page 8