by Matt Brolly
He didn’t know what she wanted from him. He was never good in these circumstances. She’d always lamented the fact that at times he was unable to share, and there was nothing he could think of saying now that would make the situation between them any better. He could tell her he felt betrayed, and utterly alone. That Jane’s birth somehow distanced him further from his dead daughter, and from Sophie herself. He could describe in detail his hatred for Jeremy Taylor, and what he’d done to his family. Everything made him sound self-absorbed so he just shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m doing fine. Work is busy. Look, Soph, I’ll do whatever I can for you and her.’ He looked at the buggy, at the still sleeping figure of the baby which looked so much like Chloe that it caused him physical discomfort.
‘Okay, Michael, whatever you say,’ said Sophie, standing up.
‘Come on, Soph, don’t be like that.’
‘I need to get back, I told Mum we wouldn’t be too long. Bye.’
As Sophie pushed the buggy down the hill, Lambert felt a sensation of déjà vu, as he remembered a time twelve years ago where he’d watched her wheel Chloe away. Then he’d felt the loneliness, having to return to a case when he would rather have spent time with his new-born child.
Now, he couldn’t wait to return to work.
Chapter 14
The cold air of the flat was a welcome relief to the heat of the day. The shutters were pulled tight on each window, ensuring the cool air remained within. The man undressed and hung his suit on a hanger next to six identical garments. He placed his shirt in one of the white linen baskets in the room, his underwear in the second, and changed into a fresh set of clothes.
The main room had everything he needed. The bed he’d made that morning with the hospital corners, and the small immaculate kitchen area where he prepared the staples of his diet. The only furniture in the white walled room was a lone desk and chair where he ate his meals. To the side was a bathroom, scrubbed clean on a daily basis.
Things were moving faster than he’d expected. It could have been coincidental but he had waited too long to jeopardise things now. He made dinner – protein, vegetable, carbohydrate – washed the dishes and put them away. He scrubbed the table clean and switched off the light.
In the darkness, he moved to a third room.
He unlocked the door, and pulled it open a touch as his eyes adjusted to the glare. A bank of television screens blinked back at him, his gateway to the lives of others.
He’d taken down the cameras from the Sackville residence, reluctantly accepting that it was too risky to witness at first hand Eustace Sackville’s decline. There was still enough to keep him interested, the images from each residence changing every few seconds.
An alert flickered on screen two, as a woman entered the front door of her house. He checked the other cameras for the residence and noted with satisfaction that everyone was at home.
Chapter 15
They were almost too old to be kissed goodnight, especially the boy who was eight going on eighteen. Jake had an almost incessant rage, interspersed with occasional moments of compassion and tenderness which nowadays surprised and warmed her, and filled her with a dread that they would not continue for long.
‘Can I go up?’ she asked her husband, Sam, who was busying away in the kitchen coming up with one of his increasingly elaborate creations.
‘Best not, they’ve been down an hour now and they were all tired. No point in waking them because you’re late.’
She sighed. The last comment was unnecessary, but she decided not to respond. She poured a glass of red wine from the open bottle and topped up Sam’s glass. He was five years her senior but had the energy and exuberance of a man half his age. He dashed through the kitchen like a professional, adding dashes of seasoning, and turning ingredients in the hot pans.
‘Smells delicious,’ she said.
He put his thumbs and forefinger to his mouth and blew out a kiss. ‘Let’s hope it tastes as good.’
‘Did Hannah get her homework finished?’ she asked, as they sat down for dinner. Hannah was ten, and would be entering her final year at primary school in September.
‘I think so.’
‘Oh come on, Sam. It’s important.’
‘I know, I know. I don’t want to push her too much. It’s nearly the summer holidays and she is absolutely knackered.’ Sam rubbed his beard, a new affectation he’d told her he’d grown to keep up with the cool kids. Sam was a photographer, and ran a small studio in Covent Garden.
She sighed, and took a bite of the lamb Sam had prepared, her stress fading as she savoured the moistness of the pink flesh.
‘How was your day?’ said Sam.
‘Fine. Same as any other, the sick and wounded. Mr Peartree finally went.’
‘Went as in went?’ said Sam, pulling his hand across his neck in a cutting motion.
She turned her head and pulled a face. ‘Yes, as in went. It was very sad actually.’
‘I’m sorry, how old was he?’
‘Ninety-four.’
‘Good innings then.’
‘Yes, but he had no one, the poor man. The last people he ever saw were the resuscitation team. No one came to see him, apart from a bored lady at his care home.’
Sam pulled a second bottle of wine from the rack and moved his eyebrows up and down. ‘It is a Wednesday,’ he said.
‘You should cut down at your age,’ she said.
‘My age,’ he said, in mock outrage, moving towards her. He began tickling her, the fuzziness of his beard rubbing against her neck and sending tingles through her body. She reached up to kiss him when they were interrupted by the doorbell.
‘Christ, what time is it?’ said Sam, putting the wine bottle on the table. ‘Whoever is there is going to receive the full force of my wrath,’ he flashed his eyebrows up and down again before pretending to storm off.
She put the wine away, deciding she had other plans for the evening. She heard Sam exchanging words with someone as she started clearing the table. Sam returned, the jovial look she’d seen as he’d headed for the door had vanished. Her focus moved to the faceless man behind him, and the thick blade pressed against her husband’s neck, and understood why.
Chapter 16
After meeting Sophie, Lambert had returned to the office only to be frustrated by the day’s lack of progress. He left the office early, but spent the evening into the early morning on The System, and going through old newspaper articles written by Eustace Sackville. Eventually he’d gone to bed at three, his descent into sleep easy for a change, and woke at five-thirty. It was six forty-five now, and he was back at the incident room waiting for everyone to arrive for the seven a.m. briefing.
Kennedy appeared just in time, nursing a giant coffee. Her face was drawn, her unkempt hair tied back in a messy ponytail. The team gathered around him expectantly. Both the forensic and autopsy reports had been returned, not revealing anything they didn’t know.
Moira Sackville had died from exsanguination, otherwise known as bleeding out. The best guess was that it had taken her three hours to die, though she was probably unconscious after the first hour, which corresponded with Eustace’s testimony.
On the whiteboard, Lambert had listed a number of names. Eustace Sackville, Charles Robinson, Curtis Blake, Noel Whitfield. Below them, he added the names of Prue McKenzie, Moira’s best friend, and the librarian, Sandra Levinson. He may as well have added the names of anyone else they’d talked to in the last two days, given how few real leads they had discovered.
‘I’ve spent the evening going through Sackville’s old press cuttings, which I’m afraid are numerous,’ he told those gathered. ‘Nothing springs out, but I think we could do with second pair of eyes on it. As you know, I visited Curtis Blake yesterday. Any further approach needs to be cleared with DS Harrogate, though come to me first if it’s pressing.’
‘Charles Robinson has agreed to see me again today,’ said Kennedy.
‘Okay. Go easy on him.
If he was stalking Moira then I’m sure he’ll come up with a bullshit reason. We should get the librarian in here to make a formal identification, even if it is just a photo at this stage.’
‘Sir?’ One of the team, DS Walker, lifted his finger. Lambert noticed that Kennedy bristled at the man’s voice and wondered why. ‘Don’t want to sound out of turn, sir, but have we considered that this is motiveless? A motiveless murder by some nutcase off the street?’
Tillman had warned him about Walker. ‘Ballsy and arrogant,’ being the exact words he’d used.
Lambert had been considering the same thing ever since he’d been assigned the case. ‘And what if we approached every case that way?’ he said, knowing that sometimes it ended up being the only option, that some crimes would go unsolved, that certain people did terrible things for seemingly no coherent reason.
‘Yes, sir, but…’
‘Go with Kennedy to speak to Charles Robinson,’ said Lambert, interrupting.
Kennedy looked over, her tired face animated with annoyance.
‘See what you think of him.’
He was about to wrap things up when his mobile began beeping. The noise echoed around the room, as the rest of the team received notification. Lambert looked at Kennedy. ‘What is it?’
‘Jesus,’ said Kennedy.
‘Jesus indeed,’ said Tillman, barging through the glass doors of the incident room.
Lambert signalled to Kennedy and they both followed Tillman to his office as nervous chatter spread through the room. ‘You need to get over there now,’ said Tillman. ‘A team of uniforms is there, and the SOCOs have been called, but we can’t afford for the crime scene to be contaminated.’
‘It’s definitely our man?’
‘Looks like that way. All three victims have the same marks on their wrists according to the report. There’s a survivor like last time. Laura Dempsey. She’s still at the scene. She was still tied up when the cleaner arrived this morning. You better be quick as she’s on her way to hospital. They haven’t managed to get a coherent word from her. It’s possible she’s spent the last few hours alone looking at the damage this bastard has caused.’
The SOCOs beat them to it and had sealed off the scene. Lambert found the first officer at the scene, and was surprised to see it was the nervous looking constable who had been guarding Eustace Sackville’s room the other day. ‘You’re having some busy days, officer,’ said Lambert.
‘You could say that, sir.’
‘What can you tell me?’
‘I was on patrol around the corner when the call came in.’
‘The cleaner?’
‘Yes, sir, she’s over there.’ He pointed to one of the ambulances where a woman was sitting, wrapped in a foil blanket despite the heat of the morning sun.
‘She was waiting outside, shaking, and telling me to help Mrs Dempsey. She was in such a state that I went in alone. I thought she might need help. I made my way into the living room, and I saw it.’ Sweat poured from the young man, his face a deathly pallor, his eyes low.
The constable shook himself, and impressed Lambert by continuing. ‘At first I thought all four of them were dead. It was clear the husband and the two children were gone but I checked Mrs Dempsey and her pulse was healthy. I couldn’t get any sense from her, and we had to wait until the fire service arrived before we could cut her out of the handcuffs. She was still in a state of shock when we put her in the ambulance. Hardly surprising considering what she must have gone through.’
Lambert was allowed to put on a SOCO uniform and attend the scene. The pathologist, Dr Rachel Walsh, spoke to him before he was allowed to enter the building. ‘I don’t need to tell you, but I will anyway. Don’t move anything. Find a spot and keep it to it.’
He braced himself as he entered the house. The atmosphere always felt the same to him in murder cases. It was probably all in his mind, but he felt the coldness as he moved through the threshold of the house. The sense that something irrevocable had changed within the brick walls that no amount of scrubbing would ever eradicate.
If he’d seen a worse crime scene in his time on the force, then he couldn’t recall it.
It wasn’t necessarily the dead bodies which troubled him, more the way they’d been arranged. Five chairs were placed in a makeshift circle. Two chairs, one where Laura Dempsey had sat, and one where the killer had presumably sat, were empty. The other three were occupied by Laura Dempsey’s dead family. Lambert had read their names on the way over.
Samuel Dempsey sat between his two children, Jake and Hannah. All three victims had their wrists slashed in an identical manner to Moira Sackville.
The SOCOs were busy taking photos of every possible angle, examining the blood which pooled around each of the victims. Lambert knew they would be some time. Reluctantly he moved behind the chair where Laura would have sat. He tried to imagine how she would have felt as her family were murdered before her, but it was beyond his imagination. He scanned the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary which may have given them some clue as to what had occurred. The living room was a cluttered mess. Rows and rows of books filled every inch of space, a small television was placed in one corner of the room as an afterthought. Despite the coldness which spread through the room now, the many family photos of smiling faces suggested a happy home. Why would someone take that away, and in such a brutal manner?
Once out of the room, he had to resist the temptation to send a message to Sophie. She and the baby were not his family any more. He updated Kennedy outside. ‘Exactly the same MO on the three victims. Only it looks like he’s escalating his work.’
‘We have two officers with Laura Dempsey,’ said Kennedy. ‘Are you going to see her?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get anything worthwhile out of her at the moment. We need to find out everything we can about her and her family. Every minute detail about her and her husband’s work, past and present. Check The System and search for any links, however tenuous, with the Sackvilles and anyone else we have under investigation. This can’t be random.’
‘What about Charles Robinson?’ asked Kennedy.
‘Leave him to me. Check the details on The System as I said. Then, if you have time, go with Walker and see Whitfield if you can track him down.’
Kennedy rolled her eyes and Lambert chose to ignore her protests. The Dempsey house had been cordoned off and the police tape had attracted a number of visitors, neighbours and the general public drawn to the scene by morbid curiosity. Lambert grimaced as they lifted their mobile phones, taking photos and videos of the building. Presumably the images would be all over social media within seconds. He hated this kind of voyeurism, couldn’t understand what people achieved intruding on the hurt of others. He called Tillman and updated him.
‘Trouble follows you around, Lambert,’ said his boss.
‘Seems that way.’
‘We have absolutely nothing to go on at the moment, I take it?’
‘Just the leads we mentioned this morning. We’re looking for a link between Dempsey and Sackville. We’re currently looking at a killer who’s becoming more confident but, as yet, with no obvious agenda.’
‘You’ll find a link,’ said Tillman. ‘This was planned, orchestrated. He was clearly sending a message, otherwise why the marks on the wrists.’
‘I agree, we just need to find out what that message is. There could be any number of reasons why he kills them this way.’
‘Thanks for telling me that, Lambert. That’s not something I’d considered after thirty years in police work. You can’t imagine the grief I’m getting over this. Sort it out, sharpish.’
‘Sir,’ said Lambert, hanging up. Lambert was used to sarcasm from Tillman but was surprised to hear him sounding so stressed. It had been many years since he’d heard him voice any concerns about his superiors. Tillman was a force of nature. He didn’t normally let his concerns for other people affect his decisions or actions. Lambert wondered again
why Tillman was suffering such pressure on this particular case. The killings were certainly brutal and they’d now escalated by a considerable extent. But it still didn’t explain the interest and demands that Tillman seemed to be experiencing from above.
Lambert summoned over the nervous looking constable. ‘You’ve done a good job there,’ he told the young man, noticing the beads of sweat which had formed on the man’s forehead. ‘Get back to the office and write up the report. Then go home, you may have some long days ahead of you.’
He instructed Devlin to stay at the scene. ‘Call me if anything happens, however minor,’ he said.
‘Sir.’
Lambert headed towards the tube station. He loosened his tie, passing a huddle of sweaty tourists, lethargic and flushed in the heat. He was about to enter the station when his phone rang. It was an unknown number. He usually ignored them, it was most likely a sales call or an opportunistic journalist trying to find an unofficial route to him, but decided to take the call anyway.
He answered, stopping abruptly in the street, a woman pushing a pushchair had to swerve to avoid him. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed silently to her as he answered the phone.
‘Lambert.’
‘Michael Lambert?’ said the voice.
‘That’s correct.’
‘I thought it time we were acquainted.’
‘Who is this?’ said Lambert.
‘Who do you think?’
Lambert pulled the phone tight to his ear, focusing all his concentration on the voice. It was a male baritone. If he had to guess the age he’d say anywhere from thirty to fifty, well spoken. He didn’t seem to be using any voice modifying software.