by Andrew Lowe
‘Yes. And the police came to arrest me and one of them must have taken it and passed it off as the one found at the scene.’
Sawyer suppressed a smile. ‘Do you know how difficult that would be in practice? To make sure that nobody along the chain of enquiry picks it up or suspects anything?’
Klein closed and opened his eyes, absorbing something. ‘Difficult. But not impossible.’
‘I think the hammer had already gone. I think it was taken from you with the express intention of framing you for the murder. I’m going to help you get out. And I’m going to find out who took it and how. Then I’m going to find out who used that hammer on Jessica Sawyer and her two sons.’
Klein sat back and regarded Sawyer down his broad nose. ‘And then?’
‘And then, all will be well.’
Klein sighed. ‘Mr Robbins. When I was a teacher, a long lifetime ago, I wanted to write. Poetry, at first. Then novels. I started to keep a daily diary. A log of my thoughts and feelings. Jessica and I became close, but I never wrote about her in my diary because she was married. It must have been obvious, though. Soon after I got to know her at the school, about a year before she was murdered, she said she wanted to change her life, that she’d got herself into something and couldn’t get out of it. I told her the fact she was talking to me showed she was halfway to making the change. Halfway to making a decision. She wouldn’t tell me any more.’ He closed his eyes again, kept them closed. ‘You’re right. I didn’t kill Jessica Sawyer. I loved her.’
Sawyer vaulted a low perimeter wall and jogged across the prison car park. Dusk was moving in, and he wanted to get back to The Reading Room and settle in the library with Cocaine Nights, in the hope he would catch Beth as she left for dinner.
He cued up the first Secret Machines album and steered through the main gate. The walloping intro drums to ‘First Wave Intact’ rattled the Mini’s bodywork.
As Sawyer merged onto the private boundary road and turned towards the road back up to Ashbourne, a burgundy BMW eased away from the kerb and fell in a few cars behind.
30
Sawyer faced the mirror and worked through the second Wing Chun form, Chum Kiu (‘Searching for the Bridge’). Its focus was stability while in motion, synchronising the body’s movements to work as one unit.
After completing the one hundred and fifty-two components, he flopped back onto the bed and reached down to the pile of books on the floor. He shifted Cocaine Nights from the top, and took out Maggie’s book, The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. He read the introductory anecdote about Kelly, a woman who had almost lost her life after failing to read the danger signs displayed by a man who had charmed his way into her apartment. Sawyer still thought of intuition as an intellectual force, something that was more based on experience and observation than anything physiological.
He opened the laptop and accessed the flash drive sent to Georgina’s husband. The image was murkier than Toby’s video, but it was clearly a young woman lying prone, eyes frantic, thrashing her head from side to side. Again, the killer had restricted the footage to the final minute of his victim’s life. Sawyer leaned in close, watching Georgina’s eyes as they darted around, casting into the blackness. Was she reacting to the hopelessness of her situation, straining to make sense of the nightmare leap from a friendly dinner to restraint and entombment? Or was this something primal, animal; something inside her that he couldn’t connect with?
As with Toby, in the final few seconds of the footage, Georgina seemed to wilt, to lose hope. She had run out of air, out of life.
But it was her reaction at the start of the footage that interested him: that panic for survival, a hardwired rally against oblivion. He had a memory of once feeling it himself: as a child, on the verge, on his knees. Grasping at the grass. Soil on his face.
Jake! Run! Don’t look back!
His phone rang. Shepherd.
He closed the laptop and answered. ‘Mr Popular.’
Shepherd sighed. ‘It’s bullshit.’
Sawyer took the local newspaper off the bedside table. The front page report quoted from the press conference and featured a cropped image of the table with Keating and Shepherd. He had already read the story twice, but the headline still made him cringe.
POLICE ASK FOR HELP IN SERIAL KILLER HUNT
The images of the bearded man were set in a large box at the centre of the front page, with a note on Keating’s appeal and the contact details.
‘It’s alarmist,’ said Sawyer. ‘But we both know it isn’t bullshit.’
‘Keating is steaming about my comment.’
‘The “we need three for a serial killer” thing?’
Shepherd paused and cleared his throat. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Old acquaintance. Anything from Sally? DNA from The Farmyard Inn?’
‘Thousands of prints on the chair and door, cross-reffed through NDNAD. Nothing. Glasses had been washed. Nothing on the table.’
Sawyer switched the phone to speaker and set it down on the bedside table. He flicked through the Cocaine Nights paperback. Beth had bookmarked her spot with a business card. ‘How about the tooth?’
‘Drummond says both vics have all their teeth intact. No signs of extraction.’
He turned the card over. Email address, Twitter handle, mobile number.
Bethany Lawrence
Dietician & Advanced Nutritionist
‘Doesn’t surprise me.’
‘Why not?’
‘You tell me.’
A few seconds of silence from Shepherd’s end. ‘Killers usually keep intimate trophies private.’
‘And there’s too much effort involved. Setting it into a ring. If you’re excited by the constant presence of a part of your victim, why not just stick it on a bit of string and hang it round your neck?’ He slipped the business card back into the book. ‘Maybe it’s the tooth of someone he’s killed who we don’t know about yet. But it feels more talismanic. Like something he’s using to keep him inspired.’
‘I could have a look into cults or niche religions? Anything that incorporates teeth or body parts into rituals?’
‘Too Hollywood. He’s a loner.’
Shepherd sighed. ‘We found the two authors of Caves of the Peak District. Got through to one. Lives in Denmark now, but he gave me a few local caving contacts. We’re circulating the suspect images around local caving groups, climbers. And there’s one more thing.’
Sawyer lay flat on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling. ‘Let’s hear it, Columbo.’
‘We’ve had a call from someone local who says he’s seen the bearded man.’
Sawyer turned his head to the phone. ‘Are you interviewing him?’
‘Lives in Warslow. Old fella. You busy now?’
‘Why?’
‘He says he wants to speak to you.’
‘Nice place.’ Shepherd nodded back at The Reading Room as they moved off in his Range Rover. ‘Not too far from the Valley. Took Theo cycling along the old railway path last year. Says he wants to be a train driver.’
‘I take it you haven’t broken it to him that by the time he’s old enough to work, train drivers will be algorithms?’ Sawyer unwrapped a soft white baguette filled with too much grated cheese and not enough lettuce.
Shepherd looked over and winced. ‘Dinner?’
‘I couldn’t resist the bright lights of the Esso garage.’
‘Cheese looks too yellow.’
Sawyer took a bite and spoke with his mouth full. ‘Matches the car. Nice and inconspicuous.’
Shepherd laughed. ‘This from Mister Bright Orange Mini.’
‘Key word there is “Mini”. Small and perfectly formed. Who are we seeing? Did he ask for me specifically?’
‘He did. Morris Bowen. Retired landlord. Says he saw you at the conference on local telly.’
‘And he wants to get to know me better?’
‘Maybe he knows you from your pre-London days? Hopefully it’s not a grudge
thing. Someone you put away?’
Sawyer opened the baguette and plucked out the lettuce. ‘Don’t recognise the name. I’ve been meaning to ask, Shepherd. When Keating married us off and you had a quick stalk, how deep did you go?’
Shepherd kept his eyes on the road. ‘Had a look at your file. Just wanted to know about who I’d be working with.’
‘Nothing wrong with that. I’d do the same.’
Shepherd glanced over. ‘And I know what happened with your mother. I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’
‘Was your dad a copper when it happened?’
They crossed into the National Park. Sawyer stared out at the towering, tightly packed beech trees, blocking his view of Dovedale.
‘He worked at the station, yeah. Keating was a sergeant. He made the arrest. Still don’t know how my dad carried on.’
‘Tough fella?’
Sawyer rewrapped the half-eaten baguette. ‘On the outside, yeah. That’s men, though, isn’t it? Hard outside, soft centre. Needs to be reversed, that, don’t you think? We should be less about the front. Focus on the back.’
Shepherd’s eyes flickered towards Sawyer again. ‘I will talk to someone.’
A silence. The trees thinned as they passed through Milldale, with the River Dove running parallel to the road, like a phantom lane, shimmering in the headlights.
Shepherd broke the lull with a cough. ‘Dr Johnson came to Ashbourne, you know. Fella who wrote the dictionary.’
‘I’m aware of his work. Or at least Robbie Coltrane’s portrayal in Blackadder.’
‘I like his attitude. He said, “Let not the barren name of the Peak terrify you. I have never wanted strawberries and cream.” Some think he said “never wanted for strawberries and cream”, as if it was a pleasant English fantasy land. Built for tourists. But I like the idea he was celebrating the rougher side, the jagged edges.’
‘You said you liked climbing and hiking. Got out much, lately?’
Shepherd scoffed. ‘No chance. No time. Best I can manage these days is cycling, very slowly, with Theo.’
‘Did you get a bollocking from Keating for the serial killer comment?’
‘Sort of. He doesn’t really do bollockings. It’s more parental. A dark little chat about “disappointment”. I got the impression it was a verbal warning, though.’
Sawyer moved in for a second crack at the baguette. ‘Whatever you think of it round here, tourist trap or wild and wonderful landscape, it’s never been a hotbed for serial killers. Can’t really blame the press for pouncing on it.’
‘I was reading about repeat killers the other day. It said that they’ve probably been around for longer than we think, and that werewolf and vampire folklore might have been an interpretation of horrible human acts in close-knit areas. People couldn’t accept that horrific murders could have been committed by “normal” human beings, so they created these aberrant monsters. The idea stuck, and it got tabloidised.’
Sawyer lowered the Range Rover’s window and leaned out into the evening, his words smothered by the roar of rubber on asphalt. ‘We’re going to need more than a silver bullet with this one.’
They passed through Warslow village centre and turned into a side road barely wide enough for the Rover. It tapered to a short lane with a modest grouping of grey stone semis with overgrown gardens.
Shepherd parked on a slanting verge and led the way through a freshly painted white gate, into the garden of the second house along. When they were halfway up the path, the front door opened and an elderly man hobbled into the frame. He was short and plump, with a smooth scalp shining beneath a halo of feathery white hair.
‘Hello there!’
‘Mr Bowen?’ Shepherd reached the door first. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Ed Shepherd. This is Detective Inspector—’
‘Oh, I know who he is!’ Bowen nodded, delighted. He was plummier than Sawyer had anticipated. ‘Mr Sawyer, so lovely to see you. Please come in. Both of you.’
Sawyer and Shepherd moved in to the cramped hallway, shaking Bowen’s hand as they passed. ‘Please have a seat in the front room. Would you like some tea?’
Sawyer shook his head. ‘We’re fine, Mr Bowen. What did you want to talk to me about?’
Bowen ushered them into the first room off the hall. It smelt of sweet tobacco and unwashed dog. A royal blue sofa and matching armchair faced a TV at least ten inches too small for the room. Flames crackled at the centre of a faux-classical fireplace, beneath a shelf crowded with mismatched nick-nacks. A hefty black Labrador lay in a makeshift pet bed in front of the fire; it raised an ear at their entrance.
‘Don’t mind Shane. His postman-chasing days are over.’ Bowen took the armchair; Sawyer and Shepherd squeezed onto the sofa together. ‘Now.’ Bowen clapped his hands together. ‘I saw you, Mr Sawyer, at the press conference. And you, of course, Mr Shepherd. And it all came back to me. It must have been ten years ago. My lad was beaten up, rather badly, at a ghastly little dive in Matlock. The Saracen’s Head. It closed down a couple of years ago.’ He faltered, and seemed to struggle for a memory. ‘I say lad; Robert was around twenty-five at the time. Anyway.’ Bowen pivoted in the chair and faced Shepherd. ‘The other coppers. They wouldn’t go near the place. I was the landlord of The Green Man, up in the village. We knew what went on in the Head. Drug dealers from Manchester. Rumours of guns. They were looking for a place to base themselves, so they could start selling round the Peaks. They wanted somewhere inconspicuous, you see. They practically owned that pub. My lad was a vet, and he saw a group of these frightful people mistreating their dog outside. Teasing it, kicking it around. He confronted them and received a beating for his troubles. I went up there to have it out with them, and caused quite a commotion, I have to say. And then, Mr Sawyer, you arrived, and you just walked in there, despite the danger and the rumours, and you dragged out two of the “top boys”, I remember they called themselves. And they were coming out with the most appalling abuse. Threats. You blew that bloody place wide open. Yes. I remember what you did for my boy, Mr Sawyer. I still can’t decide if it’s the bravest or the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’
Sawyer nodded and shared a side glance with Shepherd. ‘Thank you, Mr Bowen. I’m glad to have made such an impression.’
Shepherd leaned forward and petted the dog. Its tail thumped on the edge of the hearth. ‘Mr Bowen. You said you’d seen the gentleman with the beard. Our suspect.’
Bowen seemed lost for a second. He startled and his eyes widened. ‘Oh, yes! Now, I saw him a couple of months ago. Dirty-looking chap. Small hat, big beard. There was a spate of local cats going missing, you see. A mystery. Quite a few of them turned up dead. Now, I went to the toilet in the middle of the night and I saw him out of the upstairs window on the landing. He was all alone, standing on the corner, across the lane. And he was carrying what looked like a shoebox. Very odd behaviour for that time in the morning. Maybe 3am. I mean, you’re detectives. It’s pretty obvious what he was up to. God alone knows why. And I went to the police and told them, but they wouldn’t hear a word of it. I did tell them, though. That I’d seen the cat killer.’
Sawyer and Shepherd stayed silent as they walked back to the Range Rover. They stumbled up the verge and climbed inside.
Sawyer sat back in the passenger seat. He turned and puffed out a breath, misting the window. ‘He’s testing his synthesis and solution. The hemlock. It’s low risk. He can just dump the cats once he’s killed them. I can’t imagine there was a lot of investigation into the ones who were found.’
Shepherd started the engine. ‘Maybe he’s tested the human dosage on people who haven’t been missed. Homeless?’
Sawyer nodded. ‘Get one of the intel cells on it. Anyone who’s gone missing in the area in the last few months.’
‘I don’t really see how this helps all that much.’
Sawyer sketched a broad question-mark into the window condensation. ‘It clears up the picture. We’ve found our man. Now
we just have to find him.’
31
In the queue outside the Stockport Plaza, Lily Sherman turned to Eva Gregory and drew her into a hug.
‘Thank you so much for this, honey. I know you think it’s all nonsense, but it means a lot that you’re indulging me.’
Eva endured the contact, but was brisk in pulling away. Lily was the receptionist at their accountancy firm; at least twenty years older than Eva, with broad, flabby arms that threatened to crush Eva’s longer bones. ‘It’s a pleasure, Lil. Really. I’m open minded. Not quite a non-believer. I used to love reading the stars in the paper with my mum. I still haven’t quite broken the habit.’
Lily reached into her handbag and pulled out a fistful of fun-size Snickers bars. ‘Do you want a couple of these, honey? Nibbles for the show?’
‘I’m fine, Lil. Thanks.’
She pushed the chocolate into Eva’s leather shoulder bag. ‘Take a couple for Luka. How is he?’
‘He’s had dizzy spells. A couple of blackouts. They want to keep him in for another week at least. He’s weirdly happy, though. The staff are lovely. My mum is with him tonight. I feel a bit guilty about coming here, actually.’
Lily backhanded her across the shoulder. ‘Don’t be daft. You need to get yourself out and see some life.’
They shuffled through to the steps and paused in a bottleneck outside the box office, beneath a billboard for the evening’s event. The words PSYCHIC FAYRE screamed out in gigantic gothic lettering, surrounded by a ring of four disembodied heads: one white-haired woman and three middle-aged men, all unkempt and startled. The performers’ names were stamped below their heads in a cheap and lurid font: HAZEL COLLINS, BARRY ABBOTT, RUBEN KENNEDY, JOE ALVARADO. At the centre, a larger head and shoulders posed in studied arrogance. This man wasn’t young, but he was well preserved compared with the others, with dark hair slicked up into a quiff. His legend read, MASTER MEDIUM AND REMOTE VIEWER! VIKTOR BECK. A circular splash had been pasted in next to Beck’s head: PARANORMAL CHALLENGE WINNER—SEE THE MAN WHO DEFIED THE DISBELIEVERS!