by A. J. Cross
Hanson registered Corrigan’s pause before he spoke again. ‘Tell us about the person who offered you help.’
Amy gave a small shrug. ‘I didn’t see him. He was somewhere behind the car when I was trying to start it and by the time I managed to get it running he was gone.’
Corrigan asked, ‘When you first got back to your car did you notice anyone near it?’
Amy shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. There were people milling around, arriving and leaving but nobody I particularly noticed.’ She gave a heavy sigh.
‘I just felt lucky that it was still there.’ She looked up at him. ‘I hadn’t locked it. That’s what it’s been like these last few months. My midwife says it’s pregnancy amnesia.’
‘Can you recall what the man in the car park said to you?’
She looked uncertain. ‘Not much. Something like, “Do you need help?”.’
‘But you didn’t see him.’
‘No. I just heard his voice. But that was at the fair. That was ages before anything happened.’
‘Can you say anything about his voice?’
Amy shook her head. ‘No. It was nothing unusual, just ordinary. He didn’t sound local.’
Corrigan paused. ‘Tell us all you can about the drive from the fair to the garden centre.’
‘I took the A456 which runs past it and all I could think about was the car and whether it would make it and …’ Annoyance appeared on her face. ‘I’ve just remembered something. There was a car. It drove up behind me and just sat on my tail for what seemed like miles. He could have passed me easily but he didn’t. He just sat there, his lights full on, dazzling me. I was trying to stay calm but I was getting really edgy and then he zoomed out, overtook me and disappeared.’
‘You’re doing well, Amy. Can you describe that car?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It was really dark and his lights were too bright. I just got an impression as it passed that it was a man driving.’
Amy’s face was flushed now. Hanson looked at Corrigan, trying to gauge what he was thinking.
His voice low and calm, he said, ‘This is a safe place you’re in now, Amy.’ Amy lay back against the pillows, her hands clutching the bedcover.
‘When you were at the fair, were you aware of anyone who was giving you any kind of undue attention?’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘A stranger who maybe tried to strike up a conversation? Anyone you thought was hanging around too much?’
Amy shook her head. ‘No, nothing at all, apart from the man who offered to help. When you’re the size of a house you don’t tend to attract much attention like I think you mean.’
Hanson smiled faintly.
Corrigan slow-nodded. ‘So you arrived at the garden centre.’
Seeing the colour ebb from Amy’s face, Hanson folded her arms tight against herself. We might have to stop this soon. But if we do, she’ll probably be upset even more than she is now.
Amy swallowed. ‘I’d opened my door to get out and he just appeared. He said something like, “Have you got change?” She looked up at them. ‘There’s a Coke machine at that place. Then he grabbed me.’
She lifted both hands to the neck of her hospital gown. ‘It’s all mixed up inside my head. He grabbed me and pulled me out of the car. He said, “Come on. You have to turn round. I’m going to turn you round to look at me.” And he did and he had his arms around my shoulders and then across Pickle …’ Her lips trembled. ‘The pressure made me feel sick.’
‘Nice and slow, Amy. Take as long as you want,’ said Corrigan.
Hanson’s pen sped, turning Amy’s words into shorthand strokes. Looking up she saw bright tears. We’ll need to make a decision very soon. Right now, we’re better placed than Amy to decide what’s best.
Amy wiped her face. ‘This is all mixed up … He told me to do what he said. He moved his arm from Pickle and put his hand against my neck and I knew he was going to hurt me, like strangle me or something but … he didn’t. He just kept running his hand over my neck and … staring at me.’ She stopped, looked up at Hanson. ‘This might sound weird but the way he touched me – it felt like the way Eddie does sometimes, you know.’
Hanson wrote down Amy’s words, already trying to wring some sense out of what she was hearing.
‘How about we take a break?’ said Corrigan quietly.
‘No, please. I’ve got to get this out of my head.’
She looked up at him, eyes welling. ‘All I could hear was pounding in my ears, my head. I couldn’t breathe. I was passing out and he hit me on the side of my head – that might have been earlier, and then he said, “I have to see your eyes blaze”.’ Tears were running freely now, falling onto the bedcover.
‘He said, “Keep your eyes on me.” He went on and on, insisting I look into his eyes, which frightened me because if I knew what he looked like and was able to identify him …’ She stopped, pressing her fingers against her lips. ‘That’s when I knew,’ she whispered. ‘He wasn’t going to let me go.’ She looked across at Hanson. ‘He told me I shouldn’t be there on my own. He said I needed somebody like him …’ She began to sob, her hand against her mouth. ‘To keep me safe.’ Nobody moved. Hanson was scarcely breathing.
‘It made me so angry, that he was doing this to me and saying I was safe with him.’
The atmosphere in the low-lit room was taut. The technician’s gaze was on Amy, the laptop forgotten.
‘But it was when he said the word “mother”, I knew I had to do something. He could see I was pregnant. He didn’t care. I had to get away from him for Pickle’s sake. If I didn’t I knew he’d finish us both.’
She leant back, tears sliding into her hair. Hanson caught Corrigan’s look, saw the almost imperceptive shake of his head.
Amy covered her face with her hands. ‘Sorry.’ She sobbed.
‘You’ve given us a lot of really vital details, Amy,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave it there for today.’
‘No.’
Wincing, she pushed herself upright. ‘I want to make the picture of him while he’s still in my mind. I want him caught. Please.’
Hanson went and placed her hand lightly on Amy’s shoulder, hearing the subtle click of laptop keys. Amy took some deep breaths.
‘Please let me try.’
Hanson looked to Corrigan. He nodded and the technician carried the laptop, placed it in front of Amy and explained in basic terms how the process worked. She listened, gave a quick nod, her face revealing nothing.
Hanson looked at the pale young woman. She understood the ambivalence of the doctors to what they were doing here. Whichever decision was made, to proceed or stop, Amy would be distressed. She gazed towards the window, listening as the process unfolded, hearing Amy’s rhythmic responses as she viewed the faces displayed on the screen. They had to see what Amy had seen.
The quiet, steady responses continued for a couple of minutes.
‘That one. Number five.’
‘Number four.’
‘Number … three.’
‘… Five. No … I can’t …’
Picking up increasing hesitancy, Hanson turned to Amy. There was a round spot of colour on each of her cheeks. The technician looked up at them with a quick headshake. Corrigan came to Hanson, keeping his voice low.
‘As each of her choices adjusts the main composite it’s upping her tension.’
‘Let’s end it,’ she said.
Corrigan returned to the bedside and put his hand on the technician’s shoulder. ‘Stop now.’
Amy’s eyes, huge and shadowed, were turned from the screen. ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t do it.’
She sank against the pillows. Hanson lightly squeezed her hand. ‘It’s OK, Amy,’ she said, knowing that for the young woman it really wasn’t.
After they’d left Amy’s hospital room, Hanson made a call. Her phone to her ear, she waited for Julian’s voicemail message to end. She glanced at her notebook which she’d
left on a chair. She wanted a data search but was unsure of the details and what Amy had told them wasn’t any obvious help.
‘Hi, Julian. When you get this, run a search on all sexually-motivated attacks on females between the ages of … sixteen and thirty in the Kidderminster area during the last twelve months.’ She cut the call.
Back in UCU the technician started up the EFIT-V programme as Julian handed a print-out to Hanson.
‘Got the search results you requested, Kate.’ He pointed at them. ‘There are a lot of hits for sixteen-to-thirty age range in the area, from exhibitionism to rape.’
‘Sorry, Julian. I should have set some search limits.’
‘No problem. I thought about the Williams and Bennett cases and had a go at refining it. I added “athletic” because of the Williams case, plus Amy Bennett’s attack occurring in a fairly rural area got me thinking about the kinds of females who tend to use the open countryside, such as dog walkers, so I upped the age range.’
He passed her another print out. ‘One MISPER. Female, active, sexual attack suspected. She’s not what I’d describe as young. I’ve put all the details on the board.’
Hanson looked up and saw details of a disappearance in 2010. Jean Phillips. Age forty-five. Unmarried schoolteacher. Enthusiastic hiker. Failed to return from a planned ten-mile hike in the Wolverley area, near Kidderminster.
Julian had also found a data entry for the Phillips disappearance. She read it. The only witnesses who came forward at the time were a hiking trio of retirees, two women and a man. They described Phillips as well-built, dressed in black shorts, white T-shirt, hiking boots, a bright red sweatshirt tied around her waist. She was carrying a small black backpack. One of the witnesses stated that Phillips was walking in a way which suggested she’d sustained some kind of minor injury. The other two hadn’t noticed this. All three described her demeanour as cheerful.
Hanson took the sheet to the table. The area in which Jean Phillips disappeared was in the same general location as that in which Amy Bennett was attacked. Beyond the ‘athletic’ descriptor there was nothing to link her disappearance to the murder of Elizabeth Williams.
‘There aren’t enough similarities to our two cases. We have zero information about what happened to Phillips after she was seen by those three people.’
He took the sheet from her. ‘File it?’
Hanson nodded and got out the notes she’d made at the hospital, flicked pages and looked at Corrigan.
‘You heard what Amy said about the man in the car park.’
‘Sure did.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I know what you think,’ he said. ‘He might have caused her car problems.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Maybe,’ said Corrigan. ‘And maybe he followed her along the road.’
Doubts edged inside Hanson’s head. ‘But how would he have known she’d stop at that garden centre?’
Corrigan considered it. ‘If he knows enough about cars to disable them, maybe he had an idea how far she’d get before she had to find somewhere to pull over. He was prepared to wait for her to reach that garden centre. If she’d passed by he could easily have resumed his tracking of her. Cat and mouse.’
‘Is that what you think happened?’ Hanson pressed, knowing Watts’s deep dislike of maybes.
‘I know as much as you, Red.’ He turned to the technician.
‘Let’s take a look at what Amy did.’
They studied the unfinished composite. Hanson looked up from the unfamiliar face to the technician.
‘Would you try again if the witness is willing?’
He gave her a quick headshake. ‘Doubt it. She more or less froze as we progressed through it.’ He closed the laptop. ‘But you know where to find me if things change.’
They watched him pass Nuttall who was on his way inside UCU. Nuttall inspected the board, instructing Julian to summon up all the information gathered. He read through it, then frowned at Corrigan.
‘You’re giving a lot of time to the Kidderminster Road attack on this pregnant woman.’ He turned as the door opened and Watts came inside. ‘The chief agrees that the attack on Amy Bennett is linked to the Williams murder,’ he said. Nuttall’s gaze swept over each of them. ‘Three of you taking on two cases simultaneously means you’re spreading yourselves too thin.’ He looked at Hanson and shook his head.
‘I know what you’re about to say. “Get us some extra help.” I’ve tried. The chief says no. Williams is the designated cold case as far as UCU is concerned so that’s your priority. I want it off the books or back to “cold” before I leave at the end of the month.’
Hanson’s view of Nuttall was not wholly negative but he was going a step too far with this. ‘We’ve got verbal evidence which links the attack on Amy Bennett to the murder of Elizabeth Williams.’
He gave her a direct look. ‘In that case it’s a matter of finding Williams’s killer and you’ll have the Kidderminster attacker as well.’
Annoyed at what she considered a lack of logic, she aimed her words at the closing door as he left. ‘And if we investigate both simultaneously, it gives us two chances of identifying him!’
Pushing Nuttall from her mind, she fetched her notebook, went quickly through the notes she’d made of Amy’s words as uttered by her attacker. It was unlikely they’d get more from her. Those words were all they had to help them identify the shadow man who’d said them. He’d assigned Amy a role in a terrifying, two-character scene of his own creation. A role and a scene which Hanson didn’t understand.
TWENTY-ONE
Ellen, the worker at The Sanctuary was giving Hanson an uncertain look. ‘You want to ask him to tell you again what he saw?’
Hanson shook her head. ‘What he heard. We need him to try to remember all of it.’ She chose her words. ‘The thing is we both know Michael’s tendency to say things which aren’t strictly true.’
Ellen nodded. ‘You mean his exaggerations. The trouble with him is that we think there’s a bit of truth in a lot of what he says. Like when he goes on about being in the SAS. He showed me a photo of himself once in army uniform. But that’s how he is. What do you want me to do?’
‘Let Michael know I’m here and say that I need to talk to him again. Afterwards, I’d appreciate your telling me if there was anything unusual about his demeanour when he arrived today.’
‘Like what?’ asked Ellen, bemused.
‘Anything which you think might have impacted on his ability to remember. For example, did he seem his usual self when he arrived? Did he appear unusually tired, troubled or distracted? Was his mood low? Did he appear to have had alcohol? You’re more likely to pick up on those things because you know Michael really well.’
Ellen’s eyes stretched. ‘Alcohol? Michael? He doesn’t drink. I’ve never known it in the five years I’ve been here and nobody else has mentioned it.’
Hearing this, Hanson wondered how many other people like Michael Myers might benefit from having someone like Ellen supporting them. ‘OK but I need you to tell me about anything else you notice about him. I need to get as much as I can from him about what he remembers of his visit to that field by the reservoir last year and I need it as soon as possible. If he is distracted in any way today, I’ll have to come back another time and I don’t want to do that. Time is something we don’t have a lot of.’
Hanson didn’t add the other reason for her reluctance to return. If UCU identified Elizabeth Williams’s killer, there would be a court case and a defence team ready to pounce on anything they might construe as undue pressure on a witness, particularly one as vulnerable as Myers.
Ellen stared at her. ‘You’re a psychologist. Can’t you make him remember?’
Hanson shook her head. ‘No, and anyway it has to be up to Michael to tell me whatever he can. He’s a valuable witness. It has to be his recall of what happened.’
‘I didn’t realise it’s so complicated.’ The implication be
hind Hanson’s words dawned on Ellen. ‘Witness? You’re saying Michael could be made to go to court? I don’t think he’d be very good at that.’
Hanson silently agreed. The criminal justice system was not renowned for its positive handling of people like Myers.
‘If he does have more information, if he gives it to me in a straightforward way without exaggeration it could help us stop whoever killed that young student from doing the same to someone else.’
Ellen looked doubtful. ‘That sounds like a lot of “ifs”.’
‘When do you expect him?’ asked Hanson.
She looked at her watch. ‘Any time now. It’s tea and biscuit day.’ Her smile faded. ‘I’d help if I could.’
Hanson studied her open face. ‘Actually, you can, Ellen. After he arrives and you show him in, could you stay? You won’t have to do anything but I’ll know that you’re listening to what I’m saying. It will keep me focused so that I don’t encourage or lead him. It’s an easy trap to fall into.’
Ellen hesitated. ‘I hope I don’t get mixed up in any trial.’ She sighed. ‘OK. I’ll stay.’
The doorbell rang and she stood. ‘That’s probably him. I told you we can set the clocks by him.’
Hanson watched her leave the room. She picked up the sound of the door opening and Myers’s voice, followed by Ellen telling him that Hanson was here and would like to talk to him again. He came into the room. The improvements made to smarten him up for his headquarters interview were gone.
He gave Hanson a wide grin. ‘Back again? People will start talking, you know.’
She smiled. ‘Sit down please, Mr Myers.’
He took a nearby chair, watching as Ellen chose one in a corner. ‘See? Ellen thinks we need a chaperone.’ His face changed. ‘I can only spare a few minutes. They’ll be making the tea soon and there’s some right greedy so-and-sos in this place. If I’m not in there pronto I can wave the biscuits ta-ta.’
‘I’m sure they’ll save you some,’ said Hanson.
She chose her words, keeping it brief. ‘Tell me again what you heard at the field last year.’
‘Why? Have you forgotten?’