Daddy's Girls

by Sarah Flint

  Silence returned; only the murmur of the gentle breeze could be heard, brushing against the surrounding trees, and the odd familiar creaking of floorboards and pipes, expanding and contracting as the heating system cooled.

  Slowly, she allowed her mind to go blank, struggling to force her brain to let go. Her whole body felt fatigued.

  A noise came again; this time closer. It was the sound of the draught excluder on her front door brushing against the mat. She’d recognise that noise anywhere. A waft of cold air and the gentle murmur of the wind, more distinct now, not hushed through a wooden barrier. Then the same sound again. The door closing; the brushing of the mat, a dull click, the wind muted. A pause. Then footsteps along the hallway, the stairs, getting closer. There was someone in her house.

  She reached out in panic for the landline next to her bed. There was one handset in the lounge and one next to her bed, just in case of emergency, her daughter had said. Amy. She must phone Amy. Her daughter would know what to do. Or the police. Her fingers were shaking. Her hands were shaking. She pressed the buttons, three times – 999.

  She let out a whimper as the footsteps grew closer, her voice strangulated. The voice was not her own. She couldn’t speak, but as she held the phone to her ear, she realised there was no one to speak to. The phone was silent, dead. She let it drop to the floor, heard it clatter, as the doorway filled with the shape of a man, even blacker than the shadows around him, wearing black, his face covered in material as black as the rest of his clothing.

  The figure stood still, staring in her direction, before shining a torch at his own face, his cheeks and forehead black and shiny, his teeth and eyes lit up in a brilliant-white, maniacal grin.

  She opened her mouth as if to scream, but her voice caught again, in terror.

  The man walked across the room, knelt down beside her and reached across, stroking both gloved hands over her hair and down her cheeks until the forefinger of one hand rested on her lips.

  ‘Shhh, Florence,’ he whispered. ‘I won’t hurt you. I love you. And you have nothing to fear if you do what I say.’

  2

  George Cosgrove fastened the button on his jacket and straightened his trousers as he waited for Flo to answer the door. It was spot on 2 p.m. George prided himself on punctuality and arriving ten minutes before Countdown was due to start gave them just enough time for the tea and cake to be served, before sitting down to settle their quizzing rivalry. He had with him a small bunch of daffodils picked from his garden and a bottle of non-alcoholic elderflower wine. It was Florence’s favourite.

  She always took a while to answer her door, but today she was taking longer than usual. He took a deep breath and knocked again. Maybe she had been busy the first time and hadn’t heard.

  His attention turned to the living room at the front of the house. The curtains were open, so she must be in. It was the first thing she did in the morning. The room was gloomy though, the light off and no warming glow coming from the gas fire that would still be needed at this time of the year.

  He stepped towards the window and peered in. Everything appeared as normal, but the door was shut and the gas fire unlit.

  A spike of anxiety shot through him. He banged on the door again, this time louder and more urgent, and peeped through the letter box, noticing the presence of a letter on the mat. Something was wrong. The door to the kitchen was closed and there were none of the usual baking aromas permeating throughout the house. Something was definitely amiss. Flo always baked a cake in readiness for their afternoon get-together.

  He placed the flowers and wine down on the doorstep and hurried back to his house. There was a spare key for Flo’s address hanging on the key rack in his hallway. For a second, he wondered whether he should phone her daughter, Amy. It had been she who had insisted that he should keep one, much to her mother’s displeasure and chiding. Flo had argued that she was quite capable of looking after herself, so Amy had chosen the easy route, taking George into her confidence without Flo ever knowing. For that very reason he had never used it before… and for the same reason he was nervous to use it now.

  His hands were shaking as he selected her key. He wouldn’t phone Amy just yet. It might be nothing, so he didn’t want to worry her… and he wanted to get back to Flo straight away. She might be ill and there was no time to waste.

  The front door to Flo’s house was still shut when he returned. Fumbling with the key, he reached up and turned the lock, pushing the door forward and listening for any sound of movement over the swish of the draught excluder. There was nothing.

  ‘Flo,’ his voice faltered as he called her name. ‘Are you there?’

  He stepped forward, moving into the familiarity of the house.

  ‘Flo? Are you all right?’ The sound of his footsteps was magnified in his ears as he moved around the ground floor, but there was no response. The air was cool, the thermostat not having been turned up, and the kettle was cold and empty.

  With a heavy heart, he started to climb the stairs, his legs moving independently of his mind, knowing without doubt he would be facing only one of two possible scenarios: his great friend would be lying comatose, but still alive… or she would be dead. He could barely entertain the second option.

  The doors to the spare rooms and bathroom were open and the spaces within empty, leaving only the main bedroom with its door shut. He called out her name again, pausing with his hand on the door handle to listen for any response. There was none.

  Turning the handle, he pushed the door ajar and stepped forward, sucking in his breath at the sight before him. The curtains were open and the room was bathed in light. Flo lay in her bed, facing upwards, her eyes closed as if in sleep, her arms by her sides, her mouth and lips still. The duvet was pulled up around her neck, lying unmoving over her ribcage, tucked precisely underneath her chin. Her head lay centrally against the pillow, with her hair brushed from her face, the skin of which was white and pasty. He knew immediately that he was too late.

  As if to confirm what his eyes were telling him, he moved forward and stretched out his hand, allowing a finger to come to rest on her cheek. Her skin was cool and waxy to the touch and she made no response. He pulled his finger away, lifting it instead to his own mouth to stifle a sob. Grown men didn’t cry, yet now he was.

  ‘Oh Flo,’ he whispered, wiping a tear from his cheek and noticing the phone on the bedside cabinet, its handset still set in position on the base unit. ‘Why didn’t you call me if you felt ill?’

  For a few minutes he stood, his mind lost in the past years of their friendship, remembering her first stumbling attempt at an introduction and the last words she had said the previous morning; how upbeat and joyful she had been.

  The memory stirred him into action. He had to tell Amy. She would want to know how happy her mother had been just a few hours previously, and that she had died peacefully, asleep in her bed.

  An old well-thumbed phonebook sat next to the telephone with Flo’s distinctive spidery handwriting scored across its front cover. He picked it up, thumbing through it until he found Amy’s number and dialled each digit carefully, before pressing the receiver to his ear. As he did so, a swell of panic started to seep through his body – a trickle of unease at first, then gathering strength when he started to comprehend the scene before him. The ringtone was missing and the overpowering silence was eerie and unbearable. The phone was dead – Flo would have been unable to summon help, even if she’d tried.

  Wildly, he stared around the room, his eyes flicking from wall to wall, his discomfort growing. The phone had been in its stand. Everything was in its place. Flo’s clothes were folded carefully on the chair in the corner. The curtains were open. The bed covers were smooth and unruffled. The whole room was neat and tidy… too neat and tidy. Even Flo, cold and dead in the safety of her bed, was neat and tidy.

  *

  The police car came within minutes, its occupants pounding up the garden path towards George. The old man stood a
shen-faced outside his own house, having returned to use his landline. The words tumbled from his mouth, but as he explained what he had seen to the uniformed officers, the reason for his worry seemed irrational, stupid even. The house was secure; with no sign of a break-in. Flo was old, only a few months away from her eighty-third birthday and only a few months since hospitalisation from a hip replacement. Perhaps there had been a complication that, until now, no one had recognised. And the house was, after all neat and tidy.

  The fact that all the curtains in the house were open and the telephone had no connection was, on the face of it, the only thing that he could put his finger on as being suspicious, but even this was not extraordinary enough to suspect foul play… and that was exactly what he was suggesting. No, even he had to admit, his misgivings were illogical. Phone lines were always going down and maybe she’d gone back to bed after starting the day as usual. They would think he was senile or, worse still, suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s, a dotty old man who couldn’t take in the fact that his friend was dead. But he knew without doubt something bad had happened. He just hoped they would believe him.

  The two officers were being unusually attentive. He had expected them to overrule his fear and trample immediately through Flo’s house, riding roughshod over his worries.

  Instead, he watched as one of the officers went to the corner of Flo’s house and stared up to where the phone line snaked across the road and down the side of her wall, carefully pushing the fronds of a growing shrub to one side to check on its progress through the brickwork.

  He listened as the same officer reported over his radio the fact that the wire appeared to have been cut and was instructed to enter the house, with due regard to forensics, and confirm George’s check on the status of the occupant.

  He waited with the officer’s colleague until the constable emerged a few minutes later, glancing over in their direction, his expression serious. He recognised the narrowing of the officer’s lips and the slight shake of his head that confirmed his assessment that Florence was not alive, before the officer lifted the radio to his lips.

  ‘Control from 922 receiving, over?’

  ‘Go ahead 922.’

  ‘Could you inform CID that the scene has all the hallmarks of Operation Greystream,’ he reported, frowning as he spoke. ‘But this time our suspect has done what we feared might happen. This time the occupant is dead.’

  3

  ‘Now he’s killed once, do you think he’ll do it again?’ DC Charlie Stafford stared down, appalled, at the body of Florence Briarly.

  Her day had started badly, tripping as she jogged up the steps into Lambeth HQ and landing flat on her face, almost at the feet of the Borough Commander. Her chin was grazed from the fall and her ego bruised with the indignity of being hauled to her feet in scruffy trainers, sweaty running gear and with an unruly wave of hair stuck squarely across her moist forehead. Not to mention the fact that the commander, approaching retirement, was at least twice her age, ten times as smart and a hundred times as accomplished. Even now, almost eight hours later, she was still smarting from the memory – and the fact that the accident had reignited a more recent sense of frustration that her life was not turning out the way she had hoped.

  ‘We don’t know for certain that he has this time.’ Her boss, DI Geoffrey Hunter, pursed his lips and raised his hand to stay her objections. ‘Hunter’, as he was better known, was almost the same age as the commander, but not nearly as dapper – being balding, ruddy-faced and with a vein on his forehead that swelled or shrank in line with the level of stress he was experiencing. He, unlike Charlie, had risen to the rank of inspector by the time he was thirty, and now had a son he was grooming to follow in his footsteps and a happily enduring marriage to the long-suffering Mrs H. Even her rather dumpy, old boss had achieved far more than she had – a fact that she’d also mulled over on their way to the crime scene.

  ‘We’ll have to wait until we get the results of the post-mortem on the exact cause of death and for SOCO to confirm this burglary is part of the linked Op Greystream series.’ His voice returned her to the job in hand. ‘But, presuming it is, which certainly looks likely, and presuming she’s died as a result, then yes, now he’s caused one death, I would suggest it’s a distinct possibility that he’ll crave more. The amount of violence has been gradually escalating, and if he’s crossed the line from burglary to murder, I would think he’ll want to do it again.’

  ‘I agree. I think he’s been building up to this for ages. Hopefully, now, the powers-that-be will see he’s not a simple burglar. Look at this house. It’s as if he’s hardly bothered to take a look around. At most, he can only have done a cursory search.’

  Charlie stared round the room, taking in the almost OCD nature of the scene, with carefully folded clothing, curtains opened wide and Florence Briarly placed perfectly in position, with the bedding drawn up and smoothed across to cover her body flawlessly. It was bizarre – and creepy – and it sent a shiver of revulsion down her spine. Ever since the series of burglaries had been identified and Operation Greystream set up, she’d doubted the motive being mooted by senior officers. These were more than simple break-ins to steal property.

  In her opinion, theft was not the main driving force – if anything, it was a smokescreen. Little of value was ever stolen. On one occasion, the suspect had even returned an item to its owner, swapping it for something different. The press had dubbed him, ‘the stalker with a conscience’ and the ‘burglar with a heart’. Up until now, he’d caused minimal damage, stolen only small amounts of property and listened to some of his victims’ requests. He’d left the elderly homeowners traumatised but alive, being more concerned with their conversation than any hidden treasures. The press, though interested, were not overly damning.

  Charlie knew differently though. There was, and always had been, something far more sinister. Their suspect took time, planning and executing each crime. He selected the elderly, both male and female, and always cut their phone lines, preventing even this small act of self-help. The most terrifying fact, in her opinion though, was the amount of time he stayed with each victim, masked and gloved, sitting on their beds, moving around, touching them, chatting to them. Sometimes hours would elapse, during which time he maintained full control, just his mere size and presence rendering them powerless to disobey his orders or fight his whims. In many ways it was this powerlessness that had affected his victims the most. Their suspect might not have taken much of monetary value, but he had stolen far more. He had taken away their peace of mind, their confidence, their security and their ability to sleep soundly in their own beds. Now, for whatever reason, he had taken a life.

  Her eyes fell on the antique carriage clock still in position on the bedside table. ‘Look at this clock.’ She bent down to stare as its tiny gold hour hand moved towards the four. ‘That must be worth a few quid, but he wasn’t interested. He wanted something else and this time it looks like he might have killed for it. If he was solely after property, he would have taken that.’

  Hunter nodded, turning to the uniformed duty officer co-ordinating the crime scene, who had just appeared at the bedroom door. ‘Do we know if anything has actually been stolen this time?’ he asked.

  ‘We don’t, as yet,’ the duty officer confirmed. ‘There’s nothing obvious and with the house being a crime scene it’ll be some time before the victim’s daughter is able to properly look. She’s on her way now.’

  ‘Well, when she is able to enter, ask her to check the more unlikely objects.’ Charlie tilted her head towards Hunter. ‘Remember the last crime scene with Leonard Boswell, the war veteran. Our suspect only wanted to take Len’s military war medals. He was more interested in their sentimental value than what they’d fetch.’

  ‘Until the poor man broke down and begged him to leave them.’ Hunter pulled a handkerchief out from his pocket and wiped his forehead.

  ‘He only agreed to swap them for cash and an oil painting, because f
or some reason he took pity on his victim – not because he really wanted the money.’

  Charlie turned towards the duty officer again, instantly recalling the way the old man’s face had crumpled at his perceived failure to better defend himself. How could she forget his tears of frustration and remorse, however hard she’d tried to persuade the old soldier that retaliation would have been futile? He was no match for the bulky intruder, dressed all in black, whose cowardly assault in the middle of the night had caught him at his most vulnerable.

  ‘Leonard Boswell did everything he was told, but it broke him. He was even able to build up a bit of a rapport with the man – but he never forgave himself for not fighting back.’ Her eyes flicked back to the body of Florence Briarly laid out silently in the bed. ‘Maybe that’s why Leonard Boswell is still alive – and Florence Briarly is dead.’

  *

  Amy Briarly knew her mother was dead. She had feared the worst when she had seen George Cosgrove’s name ping up on her phone. Her mother’s next-door neighbour never phoned unless there was a problem and as soon as she heard the hesitancy in the staccato message, delivered by the lovely old man, she had recognised the meaning behind the words.

  What she hadn’t anticipated though was the presence of a police cordon, halfway down the road, preventing her from getting to her mother’s house. Working as a criminal defence lawyer, she knew that police would be required at any location in which a sudden death had occurred, but this was way above the usual unobtrusive police presence. If unsuspicious, it would usually be dealt with in the privacy of the home, not with police vans, cordon tape and an officer with a clipboard barking out news of her arrival down a radio.

  She turned on hearing the radio, to see people heading towards her from several directions. On one side was George, shuffling forward unsteadily, clasping a walking stick, his face pale. On the other, walking purposefully from her mother’s house, were three police officers.