‘You know, sometimes, when he thinks I’m not looking, I see him cry. He tried to hide it from me because he doesn’t want me to worry, but I do worry about him.’
‘If anyone can look after themselves, it’s him,’ Adrian said.
‘The people who hurt him made him that way. They burned him, cut him, electrocuted him and so many more things. How can anyone be right after going through that?’
Adrian didn’t want to admit she was right, so he changed the subject instead. His empathy for Parker had got him into trouble before. ‘So, you went back to university, in Bristol?’
‘That’s right. I went to study to become a vet.’
‘Was Robert Coley one of your teachers?’
‘He was, he taught genetics.’
‘When you were at Exeter, was Helen Lassiter your genetics teacher?’
‘Yes.’ She looked confused. ‘Why?’
‘We found her body this morning. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning.’
‘Did she die naturally? I mean, do you think it was murder?’
‘Any idea why he would target the genetics teachers?’ Adrian said, ignoring her question.
‘They must have been bad. Parker isn’t a bad person, he doesn’t just kill people.’
‘He does just kill people,’ Adrian corrected her.
‘You know what I mean.’
The scary thing was Adrian did know what she meant.
‘You can’t just take the law into your own hands like that. If everyone did that then everything would fall apart. Who gets to decide who deserves to die and who doesn’t?’
‘Everything is already falling apart, we just choose not to see it. Bad people get away with terrible things every single day.’
Abbey started to shift nervously in her seat. Considering how sweet she was, he found it hard to believe that she was OK with the things that Parker was doing and yet she seemed to believe it was completely justified. Was it just a case of love being blind? He didn’t think so.
‘What about Gillian Mitchell, have you ever heard that name before?’
‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t.’
Adrian thought for a second; what the hell should he do? What could he do?
‘I’m going to have to tell my boss about this.’
‘How? You’ll get in trouble if you admit what you did. Won’t you?’
She had a point. They had captured Parker before, but when Abbey had shown Adrian evidence of Parker’s abuse, it had made him question whether Parker deserved to be punished any more than he already had been. Adrian decided he had suffered enough. Adrian was a hypocrite; he had taken the law into his own hands and now Parker was free to commit more sadistic acts. No judge. No jury. He needed to speak to Imogen.
‘I’ll at least have to tell my colleague about it. I can’t just let him go around killing people – we need to find out why. If this is all retribution for something else, something bigger, we need to know.’
‘If I knew I would tell you. He must have found something out about Professor Coley.’
‘You didn’t notice your professor doing anything strange that might warrant him becoming a target?’
‘He was a strange man, he seemed to favour me in class. A few weeks in, he started to become overfamiliar with me. He didn’t know I was married and I wasn’t showing then.’ She gestured to her stomach. ‘People have a tendency to underestimate me.’ She said the last part rather ominously.
‘Do you think he was interested in you … sexually?’
‘No, that wasn’t it. I felt like I was being groomed for something, I’m not sure what. Coley made me very uncomfortable though and I have learned to trust my instincts about people. I mentioned it to Parker and I think he did some background checking.’
‘And then killed him. What did he find?’
‘I didn’t see him after that; he left me a note telling me not to worry. Then a few weeks later I found this note for you posted through my door.’
‘So, you’ve had no contact with him since it started?’
‘No. But I am scared. I don’t want him to go to prison. He doesn’t deserve it.’
‘That’s debateable.’ Adrian tried to ignore the rising panic inside him. Was there any way out of this? What concerned him the most was that Imogen would get in trouble too, never mind himself. It was never as simple as just making that one decision to break the law, it was all the lies that came after, all the other decisions that just pushed you further and further into a corner.
‘Whatever is going on, they must have done something to deserve it,’ Abbey pressed.
‘That’s not really up to him.’
‘I’ll make him promise never to hurt anyone again. I can’t do this alone,’ she said, immediately holding onto her pregnant stomach.
‘When are you due?’
‘Seven weeks.’
‘Look, I won’t do anything just yet. I’ll have to speak to my partner first. How do I get in touch with you?’
‘I’ll contact you with a number you can reach me on.’
Adrian stood up and opened the door, adrenaline coursing through him. There was no time to spare. Yet again he was watching this woman walk away, knowing she had answers but feeling powerless to stop her. It was almost the same as the last time he had met her. She had provided him with information back then that blew his case wide open. Photographs of historic abuse against her husband and the motive for his crimes. Now that Adrian knew Parker was involved, the case filled him with a strong feeling of dread. God only knew what horrors they would see before it was over.
He followed her to the exit and watched her walk out of the station and across the forecourt until she disappeared out of view. The further away she got, the harder his heart beat until he could hear it echoing in his ears.
‘You all right, Miley? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Imogen was standing behind him eating a bar of chocolate from the vending machine in the corridor.
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back to the room where he had been talking to Abbey.
‘You’re hurting my arm, what’s going on? Who was that?’
Adrian felt winded – the full repercussions of what he had done just over a year ago were coming back to bite him in the backside after all. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t think of how to tell Imogen what was going on. This was massive, and somehow, he felt paranoid even trying to explain it in the station.
‘That was her,’ he finally said. He was breathless. Was this what a panic attack felt like?
‘I’m going to need more than that.’ Imogen seemed both annoyed and concerned at the same time.
‘Her. From the museum.’
‘Again, no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘That was the girl from the museum. Abbey Lucas, the one I spoke to that time … It’s him, he’s back.’
‘What do you mean he’s back?’ Imogen said, although Adrian could tell she was starting to understand.
‘Parker,’ Adrian whispered. ‘It’s him, he’s been doing this.’
She had finally got it.
‘How? Why?’
‘It seems he killed Robert Coley and I would guess Gillian Mitchell. They both match his MO. It also explains why those crime scenes felt so familiar. I don’t know about the others.’ Adrian handed Imogen the note.
She looked at it and sighed a deep and heavy sigh.
‘What are we going to do? How the hell do we explain this to the DCI?’ she whispered.
‘I’m not sure we can explain it without losing our jobs.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Imogen blew her cheeks out.
‘If it comes to that, you need to let me take the heat,’ Adrian said. ‘I should have brought him in and I didn’t. I won’t let you get in the shit because of a decision I made.’
‘I’m not agreeing to that right now. I would have made the same decision if it was mine to make, he saved my life. Let’s think.’
‘There is on
e good thing, I suppose.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We know Parker is involved, now we just have to figure out why. If we can figure out his motivation, then the case should open up.’
‘Then I guess we need to find out more about Robert Coley. He must have been up to something. Parker didn’t pick these people at random, did he? There is a reason, we just need to find out what it is.’
Chapter Twenty
Imogen and Adrian huddled together over Imogen’s desk. She had been feeling sick since she had heard that the most violent and undocumented serial killer they had met was killing again. Although thinking about it now, she wasn’t sure what she had expected him to do with the rest of his life. She had hoped he would finally find some peace. Can you really go on to live in a normal way after you have exsanguinated and dismembered someone? Obviously not.
Now that they knew, it seemed so obvious. The parallels between Robert Coley and Gillian Mitchell’s crime scenes were there. Parker’s style was very much all over it, a mixture of primal rage and precision. He had confessed in the note to killing three people. In terms of timing, it seemed likely that it was Helen Lassiter who was the third victim. Although they still had no way to connect her to whatever the motive was, she was connected to Parker’s wife Abbey Lucas. Carbon monoxide poisoning was more subdued than his normal blood driven murders, though. One to go? Why was he targeting four people specifically? How were those four people connected?
‘Are there no clues on who the fourth victim could be?’ Imogen said.
‘It’s got to be someone at Exeter; if it was Bristol then he would have stayed there and dealt with it. It seems likely that it would be another professor.’
‘Are you sure Abbey wasn’t lying about having no contact with him?’
‘She didn’t have to come forward at all. She’s just trying to protect him, I think. Just like last time.’
‘And she had no idea why he’s doing it?’ Imogen said.
‘She said Robert Coley took a special interest in her. A bit like Gillian Mitchell took a special interest in Caitlin Watts,’ Adrian said. ‘I think we need to speak to Caitlin again. Well, someone does.’
‘We might struggle to see her right now since the grandfather got a lawyer. He said she’s not fit for medical reasons; her therapist has also said that any conversations about the case right now would be damaging for her mental state. The DCI is pushing to get her statement recorded,’ Imogen explained.
‘Covering their backs?’ Adrian said.
‘She was never going to get charged with a false report. She recanted really quickly, before you even got charged. Usually there is only a prosecution of the complainant if the accused has done jail time. Even then there have been less than a hundred and fifty women prosecuted for false claims in the last five years out of over five thousand reported rapes, and at least half of those hundred and fifty getting a conviction, that’s still pretty low,’ Imogen said.
‘I know. It’s frustrating, because I don’t want her to be prosecuted, but I can’t help feeling a little angry about it,’ Adrian admitted.
‘Of course you’re angry about it. Are you OK now, though? Relieved that it’s over?’
‘Yes, of course, but we both know shit sticks and people are still going to think some kind of deal was made to make her retract her statement, unless we can figure out why she did it. It’s going to be following me around for a while.’
‘I’ll see if I can get in an interview with her. All we can do is put in a request. I’ll take DI Walsh with me. I don’t think taking you would be a good idea,’ Imogen said.
‘Agreed.’
Imogen hated this. Everything inside her had always conditioned her to believe the victim first and then move on from there, but she had never believed Caitlin. That’s not to say Caitlin might not have been telling the truth, just that she was so sure that she knew Adrian, beyond a shadow of a doubt. She knew that he wasn’t guilty of rape. They had seen it time and time again though, a woman absolutely adamant that her husband wasn’t a pervert only to then be shown a snapshot of his hard drive containing thousands of depictions of child abuse. Or the woman with the nice new husband she loves and trusts beyond reason, enough to leave her teenage daughter alone with him for long enough for him to groom and exploit her. Those women had been wrong, but they had been so sure, as sure as Imogen was about Adrian. She wondered if she’d have accepted a guilty verdict for Adrian. Would she have insisted it was a frame job? These things scared her, new situations and her reactions to them. When Imogen’s knowledge of herself was put to the test. When she didn’t behave in the same way she would theoretically assume she might behave. Not knowing yourself was quite terrifying at times.
She watched Adrian study the pictures for hints and clues. She had to admire his resilience. You could tell the people who had written him off as guilty because they had a sheepish look on their faces around him. There were others who clearly didn’t believe he would be accused without some possibility of truth behind the accusations.
‘You go home if you want, Grey, I’ll speak to the DCI, I’ve got a few things to do here.’
‘You sure?’ she asked, but the truth was she was happy to go; she was so tired. She hadn’t slept since this case had started; somehow the news that Parker was back had made her feel a little safer, which was admittedly an odd thing to feel about the presence of a serial killer. Sometimes when she was half asleep she could hear him whispering into her ear, telling her everything was going to be all right, half memory, half imagination. A remnant of the last time she was with Parker as he held her hand, comforting her, making sure she was OK as they waited for an ambulance after a bullet had ripped through her. Knowing that they had at least some answers also took the heat off, even though Parker being linked to this case could complicate things dramatically. If anyone found out they knew he had killed people and let him go, they would have bigger problems than a disciplinary hearing.
Chapter Twenty-One
Six months earlier
Abbey sat eating her sandwich on one of the marble benches opposite the fountain near the statue of Cary Grant by the harbourside area in Bristol, posed to look as though he was walking through the square. She watched a little girl as she splashed in the fountain, up to her ankles in the water. Her father sat nearby on a bench, looking at his phone, occasionally mumbling encouragement at his daughter. Abbey remembered days with her father in the park, no mobile phone to distract him, his attention on her, making sure she had fun. With no mother to look after her, she had always been very close to her father, until she wasn’t. She hadn’t seen him in over a year now, and that wasn’t even unusual any more. They had lost each other, and they couldn’t find a way back after everything that had happened, after everything they had done. She couldn’t forgive him for the actions he had taken after she had left university and he struggled with who she became after she was sexually assaulted.
It was a warm day in late September and people were still desperately clinging to the last trails of summer. Abbey had her university books next to her. She heard a loud scream as the little girl fell face first into the water. The girl’s father came rushing over and pulled her out. As her little legs left the water, they started to bleed in little starbursts. She had fallen in some broken glass. The square was surrounded by pubs and someone must have tossed a bottle into the fountain. Panicked, her father dumped her in the pushchair and rushed away, presumably to get her to a doctor. Silence descended on the square again and Abbey was pulled from thoughts of her broken relationship with her father.
‘Miss Lucas?’
Abbey turned around and saw her genetics professor, Robert Coley, holding a cup of coffee. He sat on the bench next to her. This wasn’t the first time she had bumped into him outside of class; she was starting to think maybe it wasn’t an accident.
‘Professor Coley,’ Abbey said, unsure why he was sitting with her.
‘Lovely day, isn’t it?
’
‘Yes, very warm for September.’ Abbey wasn’t an approachable person, which made her immediately suspicious of people who were nice to her. In her experience, those people always wanted something.
Robert Coley was an older man, in his sixties, with tufts of white hair above his ears and a smooth rounded head. He had a dark grey moustache and brown eyes. He was clean and smart, and he did seem friendly, but she had met friendly people before whose kind faces had turned out to be nothing more than masks.
‘How are you enjoying the course so far?’ he asked.
‘It’s good.’
‘You seem to have a knack for it.’ He sipped on his coffee; his smile seemed disingenuous.
‘Thank you,’ she said. She didn’t want to tell him that she had studie the module before when she went to university the first time in Exeter, she didn’t care if he knew she had an advantage, but she didn’t want the questions about why she’d left. She had put that part of her life behind her. She had come here for a fresh start. A new life.
‘I’m going to be starting a study group after Christmas for my most promising students and I wondered if you might like to be involved?’
‘I’ll have to see if I have time,’ she said, aware this was an opportunity she shouldn’t dismiss out of hand purely because of her trust issues. ‘I have some evening commitments.’
‘You’re not from Bristol, are you?’
‘No, Devon.’
‘Devon is a pretty place. How are you enjoying the city?’
‘It’s been very welcoming. Lots of nice places to walk,’ Abbey said. She stood up and picked her backpack off the ground. ‘I have to get to a class now, Professor.’
‘Please, call me Rob.’ He stood up and held his hand out for her to shake. She didn’t want to take it, but she did anyway. She felt uncomfortable and she didn’t know why. He was just being friendly. Was she being oversensitive or was something deeper at work here?
She pulled away and he sat back down. She could feel him watching her. Did he know that she had lied? She didn’t have a class, but she wanted to get away from him as soon as possible.
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