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

by T. M. E. Walsh

  Millar coughed into his hand and shook his head. ‘She’s so young. I’ve got a niece her age. It brings it all home to you, how fragile life is.’ He turned his attention towards the incident tent far down the lane.

  Claire followed his gaze.

  The wind picked up again and the police tape vibrated in protest, the only sound she could hear, until black crows above her started squawking. She looked up, saw them circle, then come to rest on the branches of a skeletal tree flanking the side of the lane.

  Spectators to the grim scene.

  Claire’s face looked pained, as if the Grim Reaper himself was resting upon her shoulder sharing a burden. Stefan shivered, his eyes fixed on the birds in the tree. They screeched, ruffling their black feathers. They cut a sombre shape in the grey skyline.

  ‘A murder of crows,’ Claire said, to no one in particular. Elias watched her face, set like stone, in a hard stare.

  ‘Guv?’ Elias said, eyebrow raised.

  ‘That’s what they call a gathering of crows,’ Stefan said, thrusting his hands deep into his coat pockets. ‘Fitting.’

  Then they all heard the screaming.

  They turned on their heels in unison.

  Claire’s eyes narrowed at the lady running towards them, who was swiftly followed by uniformed officers.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Millar said. He pointed to another uniformed officer, now standing near Claire’s car. ‘She’s breached the tape, get her back.’ He strode forward ready to intercept her.

  The woman didn’t show any signs of stopping.

  Then Claire recognised her. Following after Millar, she came up close beside him.

  ‘What the hell does she think she’s doing?’

  ‘That’s Hannah Davenport.’ Millar turned to face her, his eyes questioning. ‘Felicity’s mother,’ she clarified.

  As Hannah ran closer to Claire’s car, an officer in pursuit grabbed hold of her from behind, stopping her dead in her tracks. She dropped to the floor and wailed, her face chapped and slick with tears.

  ‘Is it Felicity?’ Her eyes were pleading, desperate. The officer who held her tried to pull her to her feet.

  ‘This is a crime scene. The road is off limits.’ She pushed him away, fell forward on her hands and tried to crawl from his grasp.

  ‘They’re saying it’s my Felicity! Tell me it’s not her. Tell me it’s not my baby?’

  Claire’s eyes widened as Hannah’s anguished cries rang through her ears. She felt the weight of the woman’s desperation, her sorrow and her pain all at once. She bit her lip but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the scene unfolding before her.

  Millar was now running towards Hannah. Claire focused on his back, as if it might drown out the cries of grief.

  But Hannah didn’t stop.

  Despite her voice growing hoarse, rattling from her throat, she wouldn’t stop.

  ‘Felicity!’

  She screamed again and again, until Claire couldn’t take it any more. She turned her back on Hannah.

  Stefan was staring at her.

  He watched her edge closer to him. Her eyes were staring beyond his shoulder, down towards the body, but her mouth was close to his ear.

  ‘I want this bastard, Fletch.’

  He turned to stare into her eyes.

  Hannah’s anguish seemed to engulf them both but Claire’s resolve hardened again.

  ‘I want this bastard.’

  CHAPTER 49

  27th November

  The man lay back on his sofa watching the flashing lights coming from the TV in the corner of the room. The screen was filled with paparazzi, cameras flashing, then the screen changed to show a news conference. The sight of the Davenport family roused his interest immediately.

  Clark, Hannah and Wesley Davenport sat along a large table with microphones attached to it. The news camera panned along their faces, moving on to the officers leading the investigation.

  The man paid no attention to the news reporter speaking over the image. Instead he read the captions running along the bottom of the screen. ‘Breaking News – Concern grows as the body of a third girl is confirmed as that of missing schoolgirl Felicity Davenport, believed to be the third victim of the same killer attacking women in and around Haverbridge.’

  The man scoffed when he read the caption.

  He hated the fact the reports were making him out to be someone who just picked women at random for the sole purpose of butchering them, but he did like the fact the news had gone national. The time he’d spent agonising about the blood on his hands, the deaths of these women, seemed a long time ago.

  He was growing and evolving.

  The feeling that he was in control of a person’s life, and had the ability to save it or take it away, excited him. He smiled, listening to the Davenports pleas for the killer to come forward. They could forgive him if he gave himself up and stopped the madness.

  Cheek to call me mad.

  He leaned back in his grandmother’s chair. She’d have been so proud if she could see him now. She’d be able to see what he’d done. What he’d tried to do.

  It wasn’t his fault these women didn’t want to change their lives, didn’t want the help he could offer them. He’d tried. That’s enough, isn’t it?

  True, he’d wept for the loss of Felicity but he hadn’t any choice. After he caught her trying to take her own life in his basement, trying to open her veins with the sharp edge of broken china that was once her dinner plate, he knew she was a lost cause.

  They’d all been responsible for their own fate. Felicity had been no different.

  On the TV, Hannah Davenport had started to cry again. He couldn’t be listening to that. It irritated him. He lowered the volume.

  Then Claire Winters filled the screen.

  He didn’t turn the volume up, he didn’t need to. She would be talking about the crimes, the victims, how he should give himself up… Blah, blah, blah.

  Keep telling yourself you’re not interested in her… I dare you, he thought to himself.

  True, he’d been captivated from the moment he’d first seen her, but she would be a big risk. She was the investigating officer, trained to track people like him down.

  Things had got close for him already. He daren’t risk it.

  I’m not interested…

  He’d done some digging on her already. He knew she would be perfect. Risky but perfect. A new thought flooded his senses. It rippled out into every limb.

  Come on, it’s not like you’ve not thought about it before.

  He could find out more about Claire Winters, a great deal more than he knew already, if he wanted to. She looked hard, strong, but despite the intensity of her eyes, he saw what lay just underneath the surface. She had stories to tell, and flaws to be fixed before she could be perfect to him.

  She would be worth getting caught for.

  He reached out his hand and touched the screen tenderly.

  Soon.

  He’d changed his plans because of her and she was fast becoming his new obsession, he couldn’t deny it. There was the other girl, true, but the more he thought about the possibility of cleansing them both, the more it excited him.

  I could have her on her knees begging for her life.

  He switched the television off, hummed to himself, and sat his laptop on his knees. He brought up Google, typed in Claire’s name. A series of articles popped up in a list, both local news and national. He swapped to image results, smiling when Claire’s face filled the screen.

  They weren’t particularly flattering shots. Most were taken of her leaving court or shots at a press conference, nothing to get excited about, but he still saved a few to his hard drive. He flicked back to the articles and selected one that had been about an investigation the previous year.

  The murdered priest.

  His eyes narrowed as he read the particulars again. There hadn’t been any case to rival it before. It’d given Claire column inches and respect, but there was mention of
less savoury accounts on that case, and her conduct.

  This pleased him.

  You’re flawed, Claire Winters… beautifully so.

  He knew he held the key to her salvation. He clicked on another thumbnail image, opened it to full resolution.

  He went to save the image along with the others, but stopped.

  He had never really believed in ghosts, but at that moment he did feel a sudden change in the air. The tiny hairs on his neck stood on end, and he looked over his shoulder to make sure he was alone.

  He’d never understood it when people on the TV, or featured in magazines, said they had felt an other worldly presence come into a room, but he was beginning to understand it now.

  He felt as if he wasn’t alone.

  He’d always thought that if ghosts existed, it would be his grandmother who would come to visit him.

  If this ill feeling that was creeping into him was something real and not imagined, he knew it wasn’t his grandmother.

  It was his mother.

  She’d never approved of him looking at women, but he would be defiant until the end.

  He reached out to the laptop screen, touched Claire’s face, fingertips smearing across the screen.

  ‘Together we can learn so much.’

  1991

  His lungs were fit to burst.

  Eyes were wide, stinging as he thrashed his head from side to side. His legs kicked out but skidded. Any moment now and he wouldn’t be able to fight his body’s natural reaction to open his mouth and just breathe.

  He felt nails digging into his neck where her hand was clamped down with surprising strength, holding his head underneath the bath water.

  As he struggled, his arms thrashing about in vain, water lapped over the side of the bath, soaking the floor.

  His mouth opened then. His chest felt tight.

  Then he heard a scream, muffled as it was under the water, but he knew it was her, come to save him.

  The hand at his neck was wrenched away, his grandmother pulled him up and slapped his back. She was screaming at his mother, but he couldn’t make out the words. He leaned forward and brought up bath water.

  He then sat back into his grandmother’s arms and wept. When he opened his eyes, he saw his mother clasping her face and a huge welt beginning to surface around her left eye.

  He looked down at his grandmother’s hands. The knuckles on her right hand were cut and he knew what she’d done to protect him.

  His mother was shouting at her, at them both, then she reached for the toilet and vomited.

  Another drunken binge on her part had ended in violence once again.

  Sixteen years old, and here he was, reduced to almost nothing, cradled by the only person he knew how to love.

  Five minutes later, and his mother managed to scrape herself up from the floor, and stumbled out of the bathroom without so much as a backward glance.

  His grandmother turned to him. ‘What did you do?’

  He coughed, chest heavy, his throat burning. ‘I answered her back.’

  She looked down into his eyes. They looked alive with blood – bruised and bloodshot.

  ‘She came in here when I was in the bath.’ A tear rolled down his cheek. ‘She’s been–’

  ‘Drinking,’ the grandmother said. ‘Yes, I know.’

  He cuddled in close to her, breathed in her familiar scent. It gave him comfort. ‘Why, Nanna? Why does she do this to me?’

  ‘She’s not worthy. When I think about all those poor souls who have no choice, who have to fight to survive in this world, I feel sick knowing she’s wasting her life.’

  He gripped her hand tight. ‘She doesn’t deserve the chance. That’s what you’re saying.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, she doesn’t.’ She looked to the empty doorway, heard the crashing sound of broken glass in the kitchen, knew her daughter had reached for yet another bottle of whatever she could find.

  ‘But,’ she said, glassy eyes returning to look down upon his, ‘we teach, we steer, we influence the troubled, best as we can. One day, I won’t be here any more and you’ll be the only one left to carry on what I started.’

  He kissed the back of her hand. ‘I never want you to leave me.’

  She ran her fingers through his wet and matted hair, but felt little warmth in her bones.

  CHAPTER 50

  30th November

  Dress size 10, shoe size 7, aged thirty-eight and fast-tracked to a DCI. He also knew she hated peas. He’d managed to find that out on his own after following her to the local store and overhearing her irritating mother babbling on about veg.

  He’d spent two days finding out what he could about Claire Winters and it’d been interesting to say the least. There weren’t any surprises though, not really. One failed marriage under her belt, to another copper no less! No regular boyfriend, no real life outside of the job, or friends who weren’t fellow officers.

  She’d put a girl in hospital once. Seventeen stitches to some bitch’s head after a direct hit with a changing-room mirror at the local swimming pool when she was a teenager.

  He’d smiled when he read that part. It’d been self-defence.

  No one had bullied Claire after that, he reckoned.

  Fitness. She liked to run and that was what brought him here, today, waiting in her local park. Shame it was so bloody cold.

  He nestled down into the bushes.

  It was early, just after 6:30 a.m. The snow lay thin on the ground where he hid, so he didn’t mind kneeling on the ground too much. He’d become quite accustomed to the cold.

  Dark thoughts turned back towards his childhood, where being cold was something he endured mentally as well as physically. He dismissed the thought. He didn’t like going back there, the darkness inside his head, filed away, controlling him if he didn’t keep it in check. Memories of his mother could be torture and he needed to concentrate.

  Claire had left about ten minutes ago. He’d sprinted the opposite way, cutting across the neighbouring roads in the village and into the park, knowing he had around five minutes before she would come this way. From his vantage point, he would have the perfect line of vision.

  He could watch her in her full glory.

  He’d made good use of the last few days. Watching her movements, learning a great deal in the small amount of time he’d had. He’d even got to know her gestures. The way she unconsciously flicked her hair over her shoulder before getting into her car. The way she gave one last look out her front door before closing it for the night when she got home from the station.

  Old habits that would never die.

  He had loved every minute of it, but he wanted contact. He longed to hear her voice, to smell her hair and touch her skin.

  The minutes ticked by.

  He ignored one or two early morning joggers, dismissing their importance, as he adjusted his own tracksuit. He wasn’t used to wearing anything like this. The material was cheap, felt nasty against his skin, but it would do. It was for appearance’s sake anyway. He would dispose of it soon, once it served its purpose.

  Another thirty seconds ticked by before he saw her. Blonde hair flailing in the light wind, a smart-looking grey tracksuit, and a determined expression on her flushed face.

  *

  Claire had taken up jogging as part of her fitness regime. What at first had started out as a chore, had now become something of an obsession. She worked out at a gym, but it’d been Stefan who introduced her to running in her local park, and despite the snow, Claire was determined to push herself.

  Her face was cold, but the rest of her had worked up a sweat, her body feeling warm. When she reached the main entrance to the park, her pace slowed. She felt for the iPod secured to her waistband and turned the volume up.

  She always listened to what her mother called ‘angry music’ when she exercised, and when the sound of The Chemical Brothers pulsed through her ears, she tore off into a fast sprint.

  “This is not what I
wanted. I hoped you wouldn’t remember this place.”

  The words spoken to her a year ago suddenly shot into her head so fast she almost lost her footing as the flashback of His face clouded her vision.

  She shook her head. Not today, she thought. Go away.

  “Feel like pleading for your life?”

  Claire stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Fuck’s sake…’ she hissed, her breathing laboured.

  Why were His words coming back into her head right now? Was He going to taint her days now as well as haunt her nightmares?

  “Are you ready to die?”

  Claire remembered those words. Her reply would be burned into her soul for eternity.

  “Don’t…”

  She felt saliva pool in her mouth and she thought she was going to be sick. She ran to the nearest cluster of bushes and emptied what little remained in her stomach.

  Another jogger passed her, glanced, saw her cast him a cold look, so carried on in the opposite direction.

  Claire wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She wished she’d brought water with her this time. Her tongue felt thick in her dry mouth.

  She stood with her hands on her hips, breathing slowing. She glanced at her watch, knew she couldn’t stop the pace.

  She forced herself on.

  When she jogged past the children’s play area, she didn’t notice a man in a black tracksuit begin to follow her.

  *

  His eyes were trained on the back of her neck.

  What the hell was all that about? She’d been sick? He hoped she wasn’t pregnant. He didn’t want another repeat of Nola.

  This might be something he’d have to evaluate when the time came. He came out from the thicket of trees where he’d stood when he had seen her stop.

  He carried on after her.

  Despite his own fitness level being fairly good, he still found his body working overtime trying to keep up with her. It was difficult on the path. The ice was melting where many people had passed over it, but he still nearly lost his footing a few times.

  He kept a safe distance behind so as not to arouse suspicion but even if he had been close enough to touch her, he doubted she would’ve noticed. She was lost in her own world, the music blaring in her ears.