The Principle of Evil: A Fast-Paced Serial Killer Thriller (DCI Claire Winters, Book 2)

by T. M. E. Walsh

  Her long chestnut-coloured hair was piled high in a messy ponytail, strands hanging down, framing her thin face.

  Her blue eyes glanced over each file, then paused when she found the right one. She flicked through it, but didn’t bring it back to her desk. She read a few of her personal notes, then replaced it, locked the cabinet and sat back in her seat.

  ‘The last session was no different to the others.’

  Her words were met with a wall of silence. She sighed, rolled her eyes then added, ‘I haven’t seen anything within the marriage that would suggest the possibility of foul play. They do love each other. They’ve just… lost their way.’

  ‘So no financial worries?’

  ‘They both come from rich backgrounds, Inspector, and are in very well-paid jobs,’ she said, addressing Stefan. ‘Neither needs money to the degree they are willing to kill for it.’

  ‘We have every reason to believe Sara is alive, Mrs Curran,’ Claire said.

  Stephanie shrugged. ‘Kidnap with a view to murder… whatever the motive, I wouldn’t believe Gregg was involved. I see a lot of people from every walk of life passing through my office. I can easily weed out the bad eggs from the good ones, and believe me, there are some bad ones, but Gregg isn’t one of them.’

  Claire stared at her and Stephanie grew uncomfortable under her gaze.

  A sharp knock at the door broke the silence.

  Someone opened the door before waiting to be invited in. A middle-aged man of average height, with dark hooded eyes and a mop of dark hair, walked in, carrying an air of arrogance with him.

  ‘Anything wrong, Steph?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ she replied, looking at Claire. ‘Chief Inspector, this is Mitchell Curran, the senior psychotherapist.’

  ‘Curran?’

  A smug look appeared across Stephanie’s face. ‘Yes. My husband.’

  Stefan looked surprised as Mitchell offered his hand to them both.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he said, as Claire took his hand. ‘I hope my wife is not in any sort of trouble.’ He laughed, half meaning it as a joke, the other half deadly serious.

  ‘They’re here about that missing woman,’ Stephanie said. ‘Sara Thornton.’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘Oh?’

  ‘They think maybe I know something.’

  Claire shook her head. ‘We’re just trying to get a clearer picture of what’s going on in Sara’s life. We think her disappearance may be linked to the death of another girl.’

  Mitchell looked surprised. ‘Sounds ominous.’

  Stefan’s face was serious. ‘Do you know a Nola Grant?’

  Mitchell flinched, a very small gesture, which would have gone unnoticed by the untrained eye, but Claire and Stefan saw it immediately.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Do you watch the news, Mr Curran?’

  ‘What sort of question is that?’ he asked, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Sometimes I do. Mostly not, it’s too depressing, and I get enough of everyday woes in my office.’ He smiled, an attempt at humour that failed to stir so much as a twitch.

  Stefan explained Nola’s death and the link between the man caught on CCTV abducting Sara.

  ‘I really don’t know what to say,’ Mitchell said when he’d heard everything. ‘I’ve never met or even heard of a Nola Grant, and I doubt Sara would associate herself with a prostitute.’ He shook his head again. ‘I’m sorry I cannot help you.’

  ‘What about you, Mrs Curran?’ Claire said.

  ‘Never heard of her.’ She rose from her chair. ‘I hate to rush you but I have clients to see. If we’re finished?’

  She gestured towards the door.

  *

  In the car driving back to the station they remained quiet, with only the sound of the radio playing softly in the background. Stefan parked the car back at the station, and walked to the big glass entrance doors. Claire pulled on Stefan’s arm before he could go into the warm.

  ‘You saw his eyes, didn’t you?’ He knew instantly she was referring to Mitchell when they’d mentioned Nola Grant.

  ‘Yeah, I saw it.’ He leaned up against the wall by the entrance. ‘You think he knows something?’

  She nodded.

  ‘He may have paid her at one time, you know. Maybe it’s all innocent.’

  ‘Curran? With a prostitute?’ she said, sceptically. ‘Why deny it?’

  ‘Maybe he’s embarrassed? And I doubt he’d say anything with his wife standing there.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, that’s not it.’ Stefan shrugged and looked longingly at the warmth of the station.

  ‘Can we at least talk about this inside?’

  CHAPTER 31

  David Matthews had been chosen to break the news to Claire. He stood waiting for her to react, and he gripped the back of the chair opposite her desk, praying she wouldn’t shoot the messenger.

  Claire looked stony-faced, her eyes dull, staring down at her desk. She accessed Google via her BlackBerry, and saw the news was spreading across all the tabloid newspaper websites.

  Sara’s disappearance had gone national.

  ‘They’ve started talking about Nola Grant as well. Nothing’s been confirmed or denied of course but we’ve had journalists ringing up non-stop since news broke,’ Matthews said, trying to gauge her reaction. ‘Donahue has set up a press conference.’

  ‘He’s done what?’

  Matthews looked away.

  ‘When?’

  ‘In a few hours.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ She looked at her watch.

  12:03 p.m.

  ‘How’d the press know about the link to Grant?’

  Matthews avoided her eyes. Claire’s eyes seemed to ignite. She knew there was nothing good to be said as soon as she saw his face. Inside she anticipated what was coming next but wanted to hear it from his own mouth.

  ‘Out with it.’

  ‘Press know Grant was pregnant. I wish I knew how, but–’

  ‘I’ll tell you how, Matthews,’ she exploded, cutting him off. She pointed out to the incident room. ‘Someone out there fucking leaked it.’

  CHAPTER 32

  Claire paced the room. She eyed every man and woman on her team and scowled. ‘I want to know which one of you is responsible.’

  Her eyes shot back and forth, from face to face, but saw nothing she could glean from her team, other than a look of dread.

  ‘DI Matthews has informed me we’ve had prank calls relating to this already and a few men ringing in claiming they were the bloody father of Grant’s child.’

  She raised her hand and began firing off points, tapping each finger in turn as she went. ‘Time. Money. Manpower. More statements that probably won’t amount to anything but a waste of police time, not to mention extra pressure for fast results.’

  She paused for breath. ‘One of you,’ she said, pointing to no one in particular, ‘leaked it, and I want to know who.’

  Silence.

  Claire eyed Elias closely, but he remained poker-faced throughout. Claire had worked with every member of the team before, except Elias. Right now, he seemed the likely culprit.

  ‘Claire,’ a voice said behind her. She turned around and saw DSI Donahue. His face was grey, his eyes heavy with shadow as if he’d been up all night. ‘I need a word, please.’

  *

  Donahue stayed close to Claire as they walked towards his office. ‘Any thoughts as to who did it?’

  ‘If I said DS Crest, would you believe me?’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘You have proof?’

  She shook her head as they entered his office. ‘I don’t have any proof but I do know that everyone else on my team is trustworthy. Obviously Crest is new… If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say him.’

  Donahue sat in his chair and offered her a seat, flexed his fingers, then rested them on his belly. ‘I’m not going to jump to conclusions. Right now I’m more concerned about how you handle the press conference.’
>
  Claire pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to focus. ‘I think we shouldn’t reveal too much at this stage,’ she said at length. ‘I don’t want to drive our man underground or push him into harming Sara. If he thinks he’s cornered or running out of time, he might panic. There’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered criminal. Sara’s my priority.’

  Donahue nodded, but looked deep in thought. Claire briefed him on everything they had so far – what leads they were following up, which were dead ends, and the talk she and Stefan had had with Stephanie and Mitchell Curran. She mentioned Mason Clarke, and said there were no obvious links between Nola Grant and Sara.

  ‘No one cares much about Grant,’ Donahue said. ‘No family has come forward, and if it wasn’t for the fact she was pregnant, she would be getting hardly any airtime or column inches.’ He paused and stared at her hard. ‘Sara Thornton is the golden girl here as far as the press and public are concerned.’

  ‘Nola was a person too, Cliff. We’re as much trying to bring her killer to justice as we are trying to help Sara.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, frowning, ‘but you know how the public feel about girls like Grant. I’m not saying her death is less important or less tragic–’

  ‘I know what you’re saying.’ She sat forward and looked at him hard. ‘I’m not going to let the media sway the public’s emotions on this, Cliff. It’s dangerous. It’s playing with fire.’

  She sat back in her chair. ‘We need to agree on how much we’re putting out there today and stick to it.’

  CHAPTER 33

  20th November

  Twelve agonising days. That’s equal to 288 wretched hours or 17,280 unbearable minutes. 1,036,800 crushing seconds.

  This was how long it had been since Gregg had last seen Sara, and it was killing him, eating him away from the inside out. It felt like an eternity of having his body ripped apart and stitched back together, only to have the misery relived at the start of each new day.

  Since the press conference, which he had attended with his in-laws, his mother and Mason, there had been little progress. There had been no more sightings of the man who took Sara. There had been no ransom note, so kidnap with a view to extort money was quickly ruled out.

  The police had been in touch with Gregg constantly and he had a regular FLO, but nothing could ease his mind, and the longer it went with no news or leads, the more a little piece of him seemed to die every day.

  He sat with Mason most evenings, when they weren’t working on the business. Some nights they barely spoke and there was some kind of emotional strain between them. It’d crossed Gregg’s mind several times that maybe Mason wanted more with Sara. It was no secret to him that Mason fancied his wife.

  She was pretty, successful and intelligent. What wasn’t there to like? Still, he could never quite find the inner strength to ask him about it. He was afraid of what he might hear. He’d already lost his wife; he didn’t want to lose a friend as well. He didn’t know how much longer he could go on pretending he was OK, and his mobile never left his side, in case Sara might ring, telling him she’d escaped and that she was all right. Frightened but alive.

  The press had spent the last twelve days blaming the police for not finding Sara, and they’d had a field day exploiting the pregnancy of Nola Grant. There had even been a reconstruction on Crimewatch for the night Sara had disappeared, and although Mason had watched it, Gregg could not bring himself to. He blamed himself for her disappearance. If only he’d stayed on the phone to her, and not caused a row.

  He’d spent hours beating himself up about every little thing before that night, blamed himself for everything, and there was nothing that could pull him out of his own self-pity.

  The search for Sara had well and truly run cold.

  Claire and her team’s spirits were all but broken. No one had admitted to leaking any information to the media, and Claire’s attempts to prise any incriminating information from them had been fruitless. She still suspected it was Elias, but she didn’t openly admit this to anyone, although sometimes her eyes betrayed her true feelings. This had not gone unnoticed by Elias, who did his best to keep his head down. For Claire, this only confirmed his guilt.

  DSI Donahue had also become more involved, and he and Claire had both assumed it would only be a matter of time before their man would kill Sara, if he hadn’t already. Claire knew in her gut they were looking at a serial killer, and this only frustrated her more and lay heavy on her shoulders.

  Iris had thought about going back to Spain but decided she would stay on until Christmas, as she’d originally planned. For once she felt too much guilt at the prospect of leaving her daughter, when she felt Claire needed her most.

  Everything Claire had on the investigation was being scrutinised. By the end of it all, she felt completely worn down, like she’d been chewed up and spat out.

  While most murderers are caught through a process of elimination, after detectives follow up every lead, the man they were looking for had simply vanished. He’d gone from being brazen and arrogant, snatching both women in public places, and being knowledgeable about where the CCTV cameras were located, as well as about the women’s movements, to suddenly dropping off the radar.

  After the initial wave of prank callers regarding the paternity of Nola’s unborn baby passed, all had gone quiet. To say Claire and her team were deflated was a huge understatement.

  ‘Bayley’s is a dead-end.’

  Claire paced the incident room floor, arms folded, face determined, but her eyes revealed how tired she was.

  ‘I spoke to the manager,’ said Elias. He was standing opposite a huge whiteboard, staring at the key information collected on the case, his hands on his hips. ‘Turns out their security cameras are just for show. Nothing’s recorded.’

  ‘What about the employees?’ Stefan asked.

  Harper said, ‘Not a lot to go on. The girl working the counter doesn’t remember him.’

  Claire ran her hand through her shoulder-length hair in frustration. ‘Matthews,’ she said, ‘where are we with Sara’s mobile?’

  ‘Recovered but smashed to bits. SIM card was shattered on the roadside and the records from her service provider haven’t shown up anything we didn’t know already.’

  Claire stared at the still photographs on the wall of Sara and the man, taken from the CCTV footage.

  Her eyes were scrutinising every inch, every line, every gesture.

  Sara, where are you?

  CHAPTER 34

  21st November

  Sara Thornton was a clever woman. She’d excelled at school and later through her university years, and sailed into her current job. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she would go on to do great things and, ever shrewd in her business life, this translated well to her personal life as well.

  Being trapped against her will in the basement had tested her, more than she could ever have imagined. She’d learned in a small space of time that this man who abducted her was easily angered. He would appear incredibly charming and, dare she admit it, likeable one minute – but devoid of any reason or conscience the next. He never told her his name, not even a fake one for her to use, no matter how much she begged him to give her a name.

  Any name.

  She did, however, know he was familiar to her. She couldn’t place him but couldn’t shake the idea that their paths had crossed either. She felt fairly sure she’d never have socialised with someone like him, yet she knew him somehow.

  That aside, she’d learned that to survive, she had to play his game and bide her time. Every day she would oblige him and respond well to his ‘teaching’. He tried to mould her into his idea of a perfect woman.

  He gave her little essays to write, all based on some kind of moral dilemma, then he’d check and scrutinise her answers. He tried to analyse her, and teach her everything about science and psychology. It almost made her feel like she was back at school. Most of the time she wished she was and this was all some horrible
nightmare she had yet to wake from.

  Thoughts that he wanted her for sexual gratification, thankfully, seemed unrealistic now; he treated her with the utmost respect when she was compliant with his rules and agreed with everything he told her.

  Some days she thought he was close to letting her go, but then he seemed to change his mind almost instantly. The very real possibility had struck her that he might never be able to let her go.

  She knew too much.

  But what would be the point in keeping up the charade? She’d been gone for quite some time, although she couldn’t be sure just how long. The man never responded when she asked him the date or time. He just became withdrawn and quiet, but she could tell deep down he was seething.

  She gave up asking.

  There had been one time when she had answered him back and he had struck her hard across the mouth. She had spat blood on the stone floor, once by accident, twice on purpose.

  Leave DNA behind, no matter what.

  After that he’d left her without food or water for some time.

  Another lesson learned the hard way.

  He told her she was spoilt and had lived a life of privilege, not knowing or caring how it was in reality for most people in life. She swallowed his sermons and lapped up his words of wisdom, for appearance’s sake, but deep down, she was always plotting.

  She had started making mental notes about when he left the house. Although she had no clock, she had estimated how long it would be after he brought her breakfast before she heard the floorboards creak when he walked past the basement door.

  That path lead straight to the front door, and since she never heard the floor creak for long periods in between, she assumed he’d left the house. There would be silence for hours, then he would reappear, bring her lunch, then nothing until dinner.

  The first time he had let her out of the basement was two days ago. Usually she had to make do with a bucket to use as a toilet, but after some careful planning, she had gained enough trust for him to unlock her restraints and let her go upstairs to use the small toilet at the end of the hall.