by Sarah Flint
Maybe it was this that had allowed him to operate for so long under the radar. Nobody would believe that this innocuous-looking man could be capable of carrying out the crimes of which he was suspected. But Charlie did. Staring at his image, she could well imagine the frustration and anger simmering below the surface of the outwardly respectable bus driver.
His record told the tale. Twice, he had been arrested in his mid-twenties for outraging public decency in public toilets around South London, and five times in fairly quick succession soon afterwards he had been arrested for unprovoked attacks on members of the public. It seemed that under the mild exterior was a young man who was bubbling with uncontrolled violence. Cast out from the army he loved for being a gay man, at a time when homosexuality was frowned upon in the forces, he had turned his anger towards any person who he considered to have ‘stared at him in the wrong way’.
No wonder he hadn’t wanted the care home to see his criminal record, however many years had elapsed. In Charlie’s experience, that sort of violence never truly went away.
And no surprise either that he was able to use the skills he’d learnt during his short service to carefully recce his victims, carrying out advanced surveillance and orchestrating well-honed attacks.
To Charlie, it also explained why most of his victims were old. Only the elderly would have recollections of war, and with the loss of the military career that he had loved, perhaps his only recompense was to seek out ex-soldiers or other folks connected to the military – and the older, the easier. Maybe at first he had wanted just to talk, to hear their experiences and share some of his, a bygone time when he had been happy, before his sexuality had meant expulsion from his chosen career. Maybe with each break-in, his frustration had grown until, bang, just like the unprovoked attacks of his youth, one wrong word or look had caused his tightly controlled temper to erupt. Now, with his rage again holding court, they needed to intervene before the single known murder became a succession.
The room was filling with officers and anticipation of the impending operation was growing. Naz kicked through the door and her eyes sought out Hunter, waving the warrant in the air towards him.
‘Got it,’ she shouted over the animated buzz of conversation.
With a nod, Hunter collected the paperwork and strode to where Charlie waited, pointing towards the image of Roy Skinner. ‘Right, troops, quieten down and take a good look at your target. He might look like a bit of a loser, the man-next-door who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he’s not. He is a well-organised, devious predator with military experience, who is out of control and has targeted the weakest and most vulnerable in society. You all know what you have to do, so let’s get out there and do it. Tonight it is our job to bring this failed soldier to book, before he can strike again.’
Charlie watched her boss as he lifted the warrant overhead and waved it in the air. For a second, it almost reminded her of a call to war, a motivational Churchillian shout that wouldn’t have gone amiss in The Darkest Hour. She jumped to her feet, his last words forbidding any dissent, echoing the warning resounding through her head.
‘And this time we can’t afford to fail.’
34
The door was flimsy and succumbed to the first blow from the heavy, red enforcer. Charlie followed the first wave of helmeted officers through the entrance, waiting eagerly for the anticipated shout that Roy Skinner had been located. As each room yielded no trace of him, her heart sank. Where the hell was he? It was just gone two-thirty in the morning and there was no trace of the only occupant living at the premises.
‘Clear,’ the last shout came from the officer entering the final room.
Charlie ran up to the master bedroom, desperately rechecking for signs of the occupier but there could be no doubt. Roy Skinner was not there.
Hunter puffed up the stairs to join her and they stood staring at the contents of the room. The bedding lay untouched, its pillow smooth and the sheets and blankets tucked in precisely at each corner, almost as if laid out ready for inspection. Polished shoes stood side by side on shoe racks, and jackets and shirts were crisply pressed and hanging, perfectly spaced out, along clothes rails in several fitted wardrobes. A trouser press stood in the corner, with a pair of work trousers slotted into place and its leather belt coiled to one side.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ Hunter exhaled noisily, stepping across the lino borders and onto a slightly faded but freshly hoovered old-fashioned, patterned rug.
Charlie moved to where he stood, staring at a line of military photographs hung symmetrically along the wall, all showing a young Roy Skinner dressed in military outfits: a brown serge army uniform, camouflage gear, posing with a beret pulled down over his head and carrying an assault rifle. In one, his face was almost completely covered by green netting as he crouched amongst bushes and shrubs on a military exercise.
‘I don’t know where he is, but he’s a master of camouflage,’ she commented.
She moved across to the window staring out through open curtains at the roofs and gardens of the houses opposite in the dark, residential street, wondering what the neighbours would have to say about their suspect. Would they think he was a gentle man, caring towards the elderly, eager to do his bit for the community? Or would they recognise the darkness within? Clouds scudded across the black night sky, their grey, billowing shapes the only thing that moved amongst the abandoned police vehicles spaced out along the road, lights off and radios turned to mute, the silent approach exercised with exact timing and precision.
‘Do you think he might have heard us coming?’ she asked, turning towards Hunter.
Hunter shook his head in denial, but she already knew the answer. Skinner had not heard them coming – because he was already out.
The question was, where was he and what was he doing?
And if he was doing what they dared not articulate, were they already too late to stop him in his tracks?
*
The man got up and stretched, rubbing his back against the bark of a tree like a huge brown bear just emerging from hibernation. It felt like he had crouched dormant in his spot on the common for far too long.
Lazily, he gathered together his belongings. There was not much – a flask of water and some empty energy bar wrappers, just a few snacks to stave off any hunger while he waited. The wait had been slightly longer than usual, the occupants of a nearby house having been entertaining guests until late. It was quiet now though. The old man would be in his deepest period of sleep.
He grinned to himself. He was going to enjoy this one. The old fool had unashamedly put his head over the parapet and it remained to be seen how he would pay. Florence had been a bit of an accident – more of an admonishment for speaking her mind – which had gone too far. She’d been dead even before he’d released the pressure. Sometimes he didn’t realise his own strength.
And, well, Violet had deserved everything she got. She’d had a nasty tongue on her which needed silencing.
He smirked to himself again. Keeping control always had been one of his issues and that withering look of hers had brought all his insecurities back to the fore.
With two under his belt and no sign that the cops were any closer, he was wondering whether, in hindsight, he should have killed a few of the others. They were interesting to chat to and he loved their stories – but now he loved killing them even more.
He checked his watch. It was time to get started. Carefully, he removed any obvious signs that he’d been there and pulled out his gloves and mask. The feel of the latex lit the touchpaper in his head. Every sense in his body was heightened and he revelled in the euphoria. He would enjoy this very much. The old man had issued an invitation.
Who was he to turn him down?
*
‘Boss,’ Charlie shouted over the noise of the search. ‘Come and see what’s in here.’
The room was almost the last to be searched, the box room that in most cases contained the junk that people had no use for.<
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She waited until Hunter joined her, recoiling once again at the sight before her eyes. So focused had the officers of the entry team been on looking for the man himself, they’d failed to see the writing, literally, on the walls. This was it, the room where Roy Skinner obviously planned all his night-time excursions, the place where he displayed all his trophies. It was like a wartime operations room.
A large desk dominated the space along one wall, with writing implements laid out precisely to one side, along with compasses, set squares, pencils and an iPad. Dark teak bookcases stood guard on either side of the desk, with an assortment of photos, books, diaries and memorabilia positioned along each shelf.
As Hunter entered, she pointed to an old painting of a Spitfire, which stood on the top shelf, positioned high as if still in flight. ‘That looks like the oil painting Len Boswell had stolen. I remember his description of it emerging through the clouds.’
‘And here’s the model steam train from one of the other burglaries, and the Tonka toys.’ Hunter leant forward peering at each item up close. A miniature milk-float caught his eye and he shook his head. ‘I had one of those as a child. It belonged to my father, but he passed it on to me. I still have it now.’
‘It’s all the sentimental things the old people treasured, the bastard. They’re irreplaceable.’ Charlie couldn’t help herself as she glanced at a range of faded black and white photos propped up against books on the shelves. ‘As are all these photos.’
She turned away, for a moment lost in thought, before a large map, pinned across the wall between the book shelves, caught her interest. She took a few steps forward, switching on two spotlights on the wall just above the map and staring appalled as the beams illuminated a magnified version of the area. It looked like the sort of campaign map she’d seen in war films, pinned on walls to show the positions of small battalions of tanks and artillery. Small fluorescent circles marked specific addresses, with thin threads leading out to the side of the paper, where an explanation of the significance of each circle was printed in black capital letters. She leant in to better see what was written.
‘Shit!’ she exclaimed out loud. She couldn’t believe what she was looking at. ‘Boss, look, it’s only a map of his burglaries. Look, here’re the five we know about from last month.’ She pointed towards five clustered around the SW16, SE19 and SE27 areas, each address circled and given a number, with details of each venue, occupant and the date of entry. The numbers ranged from twenty-nine to thirty-seven and weren’t all completely sequential.
She pointed to a few others with lower numbers. ‘And these are some of the addresses that we had down as possibles in the linked series; obviously some were from his earlier tries.’ She paused, flicking across from one address to another before leaning in even closer. ‘Look though, guv. Some of the circles are scored through with a single red line. I wonder why?’
‘Maybe some weren’t successful?’ Hunter queried.
She thought about the theory as Paul sauntered in, staring at the map before bending forward to pick up the iPad in gloved hands. She waited for him to move to one side and then followed her finger to an address they all knew.
‘You’re right, look. It’s Sunny Meadows Nursing Home, where we got that CCTV of the intruder looking through the windows. He failed there, didn’t he? It appears to be the only care home he tried. He must have decided after that to concentrate on private houses. Maybe they’re not so well secured.’
‘But there are a lot of addresses that aren’t scored through.’ Hunter grimaced. ‘It looks like he’s done a lot more that we weren’t even aware of.’
She was about to say the same thing, when she came to number thirty-eight, recognising it immediately as Florence Briarly’s address. It too had a circle round the house with Florence’s name and address in tiny legible capitals, but this time it had an upright, heavy black cross scored across it, like the symbol for a church on an Ordnance Survey map.
‘His first killing.’ She shuddered visibly as a cold chill rippled up her spine on seeing another address marked as number thirty-nine, with an identical black cross some distance away. It had the name Violet Nicholson scribed by its side and a date of 28/03/18 next to the address. The name had no relevance to her, but in the back of her mind she knew exactly what it meant – and it was exactly what they had feared. Skinner had struck again. He had claimed another victim while they had been otherwise occupied chasing after Thomas Houghton and Karl Ferris.
She stared across at Paul, as the date provoked an even more distressing revelation. While they had been fighting through the bars and clubs of Soho, Violet Nicholson had been fighting for her life.
‘Bloody hell, guv! What do you think he’s got this for?’ Paul’s stunned question broke into her thoughts, as she skipped to a last circle, marked number forty. The circle was round a house just two doors away from the heavy black cross at number thirty-eight.
Charlie stopped dead in her tracks as her head processed what was before her eyes. There, staring out from a news bulletin, freeze-framed on the iPad held tightly in Paul’s hands, were the faces of two people she knew only too well; a proud old man and a smartly dressed woman, staring directly towards a camera as they appealed for assistance to catch a killer.
35
George Cosgrove was not a heavy sleeper. In fact, since his great friend and neighbour Flo had been murdered, he’d barely slept at all.
It was just as well because his ears were now straining to pick up every sound, since that first unexpected clatter in the garden. It had only been a small noise, probably just the scuffing of a plant pot against the concrete as a foot caught against it, but now he was wide awake and listening for anything that would alert him to the presence of an intruder.
The next sound had confirmed what he already knew. He pressed the receiver to his ear, but the house phone line had gone dead just as the sound of the snip had carried up from the garden below. Flo’s killer was there. He was outside and very soon he would be making his way up the stairs and into his very own bedroom.
He pulled out the Nokia phone that Amy had bought him and checked it was working before slotting it back in his top drawer. She’d shown him how to work the new little gadget and, when he was ready, he would pull it out and make use of it, but it was not the right time. The man was still outside. He had not yet gained entry to his house.
He heard another scuffling, this time from round the side, where the louvre windows in the kitchen were situated. For years they hadn’t quite closed. For years he’d meant to do something about them. They were a weak point in the otherwise solid exterior. He’d watched programmes warning against keeping them, advising homeowners to switch to a solid pane of glass. Burglars could remove them one by one. Right this second, a burglar was doing just that. He could hear the muffled scraping as each length of glass was pulled out from its casing, laid out next to the window on the grass below. One, two, three, then a click and a slightly louder scrape as the larger window below the louvres was pulled open. The man’s arm would be in his house now. Very soon, the man would be too. It would be a tight fit, but the man would be able to squeeze through. George had done so once or twice himself when the door had slammed shut, locking him out. There was little left on the inside windowsill these days for just that eventuality.
The grandfather clock in the hallway struck up the three quarters. Soon it would be three o’clock.
George folded the collar of his pyjama top round his neck and lay back on his bed, closing his eyes, practising the pretence of sleep. He could feel the hairs on his arms prickling and his heart beating harder against his chest wall.
Below him, the noise had stopped. Was the man now in? Could he be walking round the kitchen, perhaps selecting a knife? Or was he still outside, unable to fit through the window, pacing around looking for another point of entry. He wasn’t sure.
The air felt cool. Was it his imagination or was it cooler than it had been? His mouth was bone
dry. He could feel his heart thudding even harder against his ribcage as he reached out again for the Nokia phone. He had to keep his nerve. Wasn’t he an old soldier who had been in far worse situations during the course of his lifetime?
Recalling his instructions on what to do when in danger, he took several long, slow breaths, filling his lungs with oxygen, maintaining control of his diaphragm, trying to stop his whole body from starting to shake. But as his hand reached towards the phone in the drawer, it was trembling so hard that he didn’t know whether, when the time came, he would be able to use it.
*
The man slid to the tiled floor and brushed himself down, reaching back through the window to locate his Parka coat. It had been too tight a fit wearing the heavy jacket. He pulled it back on, lifting the hood until it met the top of his mask, no part of his face and head on display. The kitchen smelled of that night’s cooking. What was it? Stewed lamb and boiled vegetables. There was still a saucepan on the hob containing the remnants. Gingerly, he lifted the lid with his gloved hands, smiling ruefully at the large bone sticking from the broth. Old people were so frugal; every part of every ingredient was used. Nothing ever went to waste.
Placing the lid back down carefully, he tiptoed towards the door to the hallway and stopped, listening. The mask muffled the outside noises slightly, but he could still hear the rhythmic ticking of the full-length grandfather clock in the hallway. His breath was coming fast, the inside of the latex now warm and slightly wet. It was how he liked it. The warmth made him strong. It reminded him of the hours spent on manoeuvres, his face hidden behind netting, his hair damp with sweat under the helmet. Those were the days.