The Killer Inside

by Lindsay Ashford

  ‘Hmm. If that’s the case, she’d only answer this number if she was innocent: if she really was Patrick’s girlfriend and had nothing to do with the drugs.’ Megan took her phone out and stared at it, wondering what to do.

  ‘What will you say if she answers?’

  Megan shook her head, shoving the phone back into her pocket. ‘I’m not going to risk it,’ she said. ‘I need to find her: talk to her face-to-face. I haven’t been able to contact Carl Kelly’s girlfriend – her last letter to him said she was going on holiday – but I’m worried now.’

  ‘Worried? Why?’

  ‘I’m wondering whether whoever’s behind this might have got to her; decided she was dispensable once she’d done her job in Balsall Gate.’

  ‘And you think the same thing might happen to this Rebecca Jordan?’ Ronnie frowned.

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it? What if she’s still got the phone? Hasn’t got rid of it because she doesn’t expect to be rumbled for what she thinks was a routine drugs run? She might do this sort of thing all the time and get away with it – I don’t mean murdering people; I mean smuggling heroin into prisons. So if she gets a phone call from me she might tell her boss, who would realise someone was onto him.’ With a shrug, she spread her hands in front of her. ‘She’s the weakest link, so it’s goodbye Rebecca.’

  Ronnie considered this. ‘You could leave a message. Something that won’t arouse her suspicions.’

  ‘I could, but I think it’d be best just to go to the hall of residence. Catch her by surprise.’

  ‘You’ll still have to come up with something pretty convincing to say, won’t you?’

  Megan nodded. ‘I’ll have to pretend to be a welfare officer or something. Say I’ve been told she’s having financial problems and I’ve come to offer some advice.’

  ‘Yes, that could work – but what happens after that?’

  ‘I’ll have to play it by ear, I think,’ Megan replied. ‘Once I know what she looks like I might have to do some tailing; see if she’ll lead me to the person who’s masterminding this – if there is such a person.’

  ‘Okay, but I hope you’re not thinking of doing this on your own? You are going to get the police involved, aren’t you? I mean, the kind of people you’re likely to run up against wouldn’t think twice about disposing of you if they thought you posed a threat. You can get a hit man around here for five hundred quid. Life is cheap. Don’t risk it.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying and I promise I haven’t got a death wish but, so far, the police haven’t shown the slightest interest. I will be careful though.’

  ‘You make sure that you are.’

  The Saturday afternoon train was much quieter than the one she’d caught yesterday. A few minutes into the journey she dipped into her bag for the packet of prunes. There was only one left so she decided to visit the buffet car. It was a relief to be able to wander along the carriages without fear of losing her seat. Before she reached it the smell of grilling bacon wafted towards her. Saliva trickled under her tongue. Her stomach felt empty – all she had eaten since the Hobnobs first thing that morning were two pieces of dry toast: one hers, and one that Ronnie had been unable to eat more than a corner of. If she’d been eating toast at home she would have smothered it with a thick layer of easy-spread butter and a dollop of Manuka honey (the pricey honey was her token attempt at eating something with health benefits). But seeing poor Ronnie’s face when she opened the fridge had made it next to impossible to eat a proper breakfast. Despite her friend’s protests, she’d decided that a bit of sisterly solidarity was called for. So dry toast it was – and that had been six hours ago.

  There was only one other person in the buffet car, a ruddy-faced, pot-bellied man in a suit, and the bacon was for him. She watched him smother it in brown sauce as he waited for the woman behind the counter to whizz up a cappuccino topped with squirty cream. She wasn’t sure if it was the sight of the sauce oozing from the corners of his mouth or the smell of his armpits as he raised the sandwich from the plate, but suddenly she felt quite nauseous. By the time the woman glanced round to take her order, all she could face was a cup of black coffee.

  She took it back to her seat, taking deep breaths as she put a good distance between herself and the sauce-dribbler. As soon as she took a sip of coffee her stomach began to rumble. Damn, she thought, I can’t go back there now: I should have at least bought a packet of crisps or a biscuit. The gurgling from her insides was getting so loud she was sure the other people in the carriage must be able to hear. So for once it was a relief when the shrill notes of her mobile drowned her out.

  ‘Megan, can you talk?’ It was Delva. ‘I’ve got some news about the Serious Crime Squad.’

  ‘Oh, what?’ Megan grabbed her coffee and walked as fast as she could down the carriage. She propped herself against a wall outside the toilet. With the sliding doors to the carriages on either side shut, she was confident no one would overhear her conversation. ‘Have you found Moses Smith’s father?’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ Delva said. ‘His name’s not among the list of the men who were prosecuted, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, only a few men were ever punished for what they did,’ Delva replied. ‘A lot were accused, but in the end just seven men were convicted – for fairly minor offences. What we’ve found out, though, is that the names of all the officers involved first came to light around the time that Moses Smith was murdered: it was between 1989 and 1991 that the information was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service.’

  ‘Right,’ Megan nodded as she took this in. ‘So anyone with links to the CPS could have found out the names of all the men who’d been accused?’

  ‘Exactly. It brought the whole thing into the public domain for the first time.’

  ‘So you think Smith senior could have been one of the ones who got away with it?’

  ‘It’s possible, yes, but we still haven’t got any firm evidence that Ron Smith was a copper at all. Tim tried to do some more digging yesterday. He asked the CPS for the list of names to see if Ron’s was on it but they blew him out. Said the records were only accessible to authorised personnel.’

  ‘Hmm. Hardly surprising, I suppose.’

  ‘I know. He tried stinging them with a Freedom of Information request but you can imagine how that went down. I think the official line was that any approach for information would be turned down in the interests of the security and safety of the people on the list.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s understandable.’

  ‘To his credit, he didn’t give up, though. He tried sounding out a few of his mates in the force to see if he could get them to go to the CPS on his behalf. No one was keen – they were all worried about jeopardising their careers – but one of them did tell him about a letter the force received at the time the Serious Crime Squad scandal broke.’

  ‘What kind of letter?’

  ‘The sort that threatened severe retribution. Tim managed to get his hands on a copy. It was addressed to “The Bastards of West Midlands Police, Torturers of Free Irishmen”.’

  ‘Not pulling any punches, then.’ Megan’s tongue clicked against the back of her teeth. ‘Any clues as to who sent it?’

  ‘No, it was anonymous. Tim reckons, though, that the higher echelons of the IRA made it clear at the time that they would hold individuals accountable for the actions of the Squad’.

  ‘So the crucial thing now is to find out if Ron Smith’s name is on that list. Has Tim got any more ideas?’

  ‘He’s supposed to be phoning me later on this afternoon,’ Delva replied. ‘He said there was one possibility but he didn’t want to say any more until he was sure it was a “goer”, as he so quaintly puts it.’

  There was a rush of sound as another train hurtled past the window. Delva was saying something but Megan couldn’t make out what it was.

  ‘I said you haven’t told me what’s been happening at
your end,’ Delva repeated. ‘Where are you, anyway? Sounds bloody noisy.’

  ‘I’m on the train – should be back into New Street in about forty minutes.’ Megan gave her a shorthand account of what had unfolded in Manchester.

  ‘So you’re going there tonight? To Linden House?’

  ‘Yes. I want to catch Rebecca Jordan when she’s likely to be up and about. No point waiting till tomorrow – most of the students I know don’t surface before mid-afternoon on a Sunday.’

  ‘Can I come along?’

  ‘Well, yes…’ Megan hesitated. She hadn’t planned to take anyone with her. But she thought about what Ronnie had said to her before she’d left Manchester: it probably wasn’t sensible to go alone. ‘Are you sure you want to, though? I’d have thought you’d have far better things to do on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Well if I get a better offer I’ll let you know,’ Delva chuckled, ‘but otherwise it’s a takeaway on my lap in front of Strictly Come Dancing. Anyway, what about you? I thought the red hot lover was on his way back from Oz for the weekend.’

  ‘Sore point,’ Megan replied, grimacing at her reflection in the train window. ‘He’s blown me out for a younger model. More than twenty years younger, actually.’

  ‘His daughter, huh?’

  ‘You got it in one. It’s brought things to a bit of a head, as it happens. I’ll tell you later.’ Keen to change the subject, Megan asked Delva if she knew where Linden House was. She didn’t, so Megan offered to pick her up. They lived just a few streets away from each other in almost identical Victorian houses. Like her place, Delva’s was a nightmare as far as parking was concerned. ‘I’ll be there at seven and I’ll pip my horn,’ she said. ‘Make sure you’re ready, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll probably get lynched by that neighbour who told me off for blocking his drive.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s on holiday,’ Delva replied. ‘But I will be ready. I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘God, you’re even sadder than me!’ Megan laughed. ‘Okay, see you later. Oh, and by the way, you’d better wear sunglasses and something frumpy – we don’t want anyone recognising you.’

  ‘Cheeky cow! I don’t own anything frumpy! But I’ll do my best…’

  The phone beeped as Megan pressed the ‘end call’ button. A few minutes later it beeped again as a text message came through. It was Ronnie this time, with the news that the toxicology report had come through. So it was strychnine. No real surprise, but seeing the word spelt out suddenly brought home how potentially dangerous the situation was becoming. She was glad that she wasn’t going to be venturing out alone tonight.

  As the train rumbled through the green fields of north Staffordshire Megan’s mind turned to the murder of Moses Smith. The IRA thing was something they were going to have to keep an open mind about until Tim could make some headway with those records. Perhaps the story Carl Kelly had told Dom was just that: a fictionalised version of the real reason behind the attack. If Kelly had had sympathies with the IRA there was no reason why he couldn’t have been recruited by someone hellbent on revenge. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a drug dealer back then, nor would it have stopped him carrying on being a drug dealer. He and his mates could possibly have been offered a lot of money by someone who knew that Moses Smith trusted them and would let them into his home.

  The face of Patrick Ryan lying on the mortuary slab in Manchester flashed in front of her. If Ryan was a second member of the gang that had killed Moses – and at the moment it was still a very big ‘if’ – who was the third? If revenge for Moses’ death was the motive for the poisoning of Kelly and Ryan, that third man could be in mortal danger. She needed access to the court records of the case Kelly and Ryan were sent down for: there was just a chance that all three had remained part of the same gang and if that was the case, that third man could have appeared in court alongside them.

  She cursed the fact that it was the weekend; that there was nothing she could do about it until the court office opened on Monday. Perhaps by then, though, she might have a lot more to go on. She muttered a silent prayer for Rebecca Jordan to be there when she and Delva arrived at Linden House.

  The hall of residence was a series of interconnected grey rectangles, typical of the brutalist architecture of the 1960s. The steps outside the main block had been colonised by a group of smokers. Some were sitting, some leaning against the wall and most had a can or a bottle in the hand that wasn’t holding a cigarette. The girls were clad in their flimsy Saturday night finery, cleavages heaving as they dragged on low tar Marlboro’s, belly bars glinting in the dying rays of the sun

  Megan noticed heads turn as she and Delva threaded their way through. Delva had not heeded the advice to dress down: in fact dressed up would be a better description of the way she looked. She had wound a brightly coloured scarf round her braids, its vibrant red and orange hues echoed in the African-style robe that swathed her body. The outfit seemed to add at least six inches to her height. No wonder the students were staring: they must look a very odd couple.

  Leaving the smokers behind, they found themselves in the relatively deserted lobby of the building. The smell of battered fish lay heavy on the air and the distant clatter of plates and cutlery could be heard. Evidently they had arrived just as the evening meal was being cleared away. Directly in front of them was a honeycomb of pigeonholes, each with a letter of the alphabet above it. Megan glanced across at the reception area. A middle aged, bespectacled woman wearing a yellow polo shirt with the university crest on it was handing a key to a girl in sports kit who had a hockey stick in her hand. From what she could make out the girl had locked herself out of her room. An amiable but involved discussion seemed to be taking place and Megan decided to take advantage of this. ‘Stay here a minute, will you?’ she whispered to Delva.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Delva hissed back.

  Megan jerked her head towards the row of boxes. She headed for the one marked ‘S’. She was well aware of the privacy guidelines for students’ correspondence but she needed to see if there was any mail for Jodie Shepherd. If she really was on holiday there ought to be at least junk mail waiting for her. As she took out the letters she heard Delva come up behind her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Delva! I’m trying to sneak a look at the post!’ Megan gave her an exasperated look. Go back to the door – please! You might as well have a neon sign above your head saying “Look at us!”’

  ‘But what are you looking for?’ Delva persisted.

  ‘Anything for Jodie Shepherd.’ Megan stepped sideways, away from Delva, hiding the bundle of letters inside her jacket.

  Suddenly a voice boomed across the lobby. ‘Good evening. Can I help you?’ They wheeled round. A tall, slim man who looked barely older than the students was coming towards them. His black hair was brushed back behind his ears revealing an angular but handsome face, quite in keeping with the resonant voice. He was looking at Delva. Megan stepped between them. ‘Sorry.’ She offered him her hand almost in a reflex action. ‘Dr Rhys – Department of Investigative Psychology. I’ve just come to enquire about a student.’

  ‘Dr Rhys!’ His lips parted in a wide smile. ‘Delighted to meet you in person. I don’t know if you remember, but we spoke on the phone a few months ago about my PhD thesis.’ She looked blankly at him. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t introduce myself: David Dunn – Department of International Politics. I’m the warden here.’

  ‘Oh, David, yes, I remember,’ she said, relieved that she was suddenly able to place him. ‘Your doctorate was on post-conflict stress, wasn’t it? I gather it was rather well-received.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you to say so,’ he replied, two spots of pink colouring his cheeks. ‘What you told me really helped. Perhaps I can repay the favour. What can I do to help?’

  ‘I… er… I need to speak to a couple of students.’ She hesitated, not wanting to give too much away. She certainly didn’t want to spell out the real reason she was there – not
at this stage, anyway. ‘They haven’t been replying to emails and I’m a bit concerned. My friend and I were just passing so I thought I’d pop in on the off-chance.’

  ‘Have you got their student numbers?’

  ‘Not on me, no.’

  ‘Oh well, no problem. What are their names?’

  ‘Well, one of them is Rebecca Jordan. The other is called Jodie Shepherd.’

  ‘Jodie Shepherd?’ He looked at her, slightly bemused. ‘But she hasn’t been here for months.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘She was involved in a car crash the week after she arrived here. It was terrible – hit and run. She was in a coma – still is, as far as I know.’

  Chapter 17

  Megan’s mind was racing ahead as he led them through to his office. A stolen identity: someone had used this accident victim as a cover. It was ideal – a student legitimately registered, with postal and email addresses set up, but no longer in a position to collect or respond to any letters or correspondence. When the visiting order was sent from Balsall Gate prison the imposter would simply do what Megan herself had done: choose a suitable moment to take whatever mail had arrived.

  Megan and Delva perched on a low-backed brown leather sofa while the warden tapped the keyboard of his desktop computer. ‘Here it is.’ A printer whirred into life somewhere in the direction of his feet and he bent down to retrieve the sheet of paper. ‘Rebecca Jordan – she dropped out just before Christmas. Says here that she vacated her room on the seventeenth of December.’

  ‘Does it say why?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Should do.’ He flipped the paper over. ‘Yes, here it is: “Reason for departure: Dissatisfied with the course. Taking time out to travel before returning to new course next year.”’ He looked up. ‘Can I ask why you’re particularly interested in Rebecca Jordan and Jodie Shepherd? They were both outside of your faculty, weren’t they?’