Deep Fear

  Chapter 51

  ‘Kelly Porter.’ Kelly answered her phone, ignoring the door. DCI Cane walked in anyway. Kelly held up her hand and he waited impatiently, listening to her conversation. She put the caller on speaker phone. Cane pulled up a chair and sat down.

  ‘Miss Porter? It’s James Tate. Do you have time to talk?’

  ‘Mr Tate? How can I help?’ Kelly hadn’t spoken to the husband of the first victim (the first they’d been allowed to find) for what seemed like a very long time. In fact, it was barely two weeks.

  ‘Good evening, Detective. Can you talk? I know it’s a tad late, but I think there’s something that might be of interest to you.’

  ‘Yes, of course I can. I’m in my office. How may we help?’

  ‘Splendid, I was hoping I’d catch you. I only ever seem to catch up on my calls when I’m driving. It’s a beautiful evening.’

  Cane furrowed his brow and Kelly shrugged her shoulders. She mouthed ‘I don’t know’ and looked out of the window.

  ‘It certainly is a beautiful evening, Mr Tate. Unfortunately I’m not outside but I can see from my window.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sure you are quite busy. I won’t keep you long. I heard about the dreadful goings on. It’s quite appalling.’

  ‘It is, Mr Tate. Do you have any news for us?’ Kelly was hopeful that he, or a member of his family, might have remembered something.

  ‘I doubt it, I’m afraid, it’s just a query that I thought you might be able to help me with.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Cane paced up and down. Kelly felt irritated and looked away from him, turning her back and staring out of the window.

  ‘I’ve been sorting through Moira’s estate,’ Mr Tate carried on. Kelly’s stomach tightened. Death is only the beginning for the loved ones, the fallout goes on for years. A vision of Moira’s body, naked and cleaned, dumped on the grass outside the parish church of All Saints, came to her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Tate. How’s it been?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest with you, a nightmare. Moira’s estate was easy, it’s her mother’s that’s caused the headache.’

  ‘Really?’

  Kelly’s mind wandered to her sister and she wondered if Matt had heard anything. Uniforms had been dispatched to visit Nikki’s friends, her place of work, the children’s schools, as well as shops and supermarkets, and so far they’d all drawn a blank. Kelly could only approach the case like she approached everything and she had to let all of the officers involved do their jobs. She could only make a difference if she kept her head. Mr Tate was still talking.

  Kelly rubbed her shoulder with her free hand. She’d forgotten about Cane.

  ‘Well, apart from taking an eternity for the lawyers to verify everything, and her signing ninety percent over to her grandson – Moira would be turning in her grave – we’re having trouble finding another benefactor, and I was hoping you could help.’

  It was an odd request, but Kelly was happy to do what she could.

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Catherine left ten percent of her entire estate - and let me tell you, detective, that is a lot of money…’ Kelly did the calculations in her head, and she already knew that Warren Downs stood to gain just short of five hundred thousand pounds. That meant that the other benefactor was looking at around fifty grand. Kelly wondered where the old lady had got her money from, but she hadn’t asked.

  ‘Mr Tate, if you don’t mind me asking, how did Catherine end up with such a fortune?’

  ‘Moira helped her with some lucky investments. Her last husband was fairly wealthy, and Catherine just got lucky, thanks to Moira.’

  ‘I didn’t know Moira was a market expert.’ She winced, instantly regretting the insensitive remark, but Mr Tate didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘She wasn’t, but some friend of hers was. She would be spitting feathers if she could see what has happened to it.’

  ‘She knew, Mr Tate. Catherine told Moira what she intended to do with her money.’ The line went quiet.

  ‘Mr Tate?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake call me James.’

  ‘James.’

  ‘Did she know about the nurse?’ he asked.

  ‘What nurse?’

  ‘The other benefactor: it’s a nurse who treated her apparently. There’s a letter in the will. It was added two weeks before Catherine died. I’ve transferred the money, but now my calls are not getting through.’

  ‘You’ve transferred the money?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘All the details were on the letter.’

  ‘Isn’t that odd? Didn’t you contest it? A terminally-ill patient making a nurse benefactor, two weeks before she died, is surely grounds for contest, James.’

  ‘I honestly didn’t think of that. I was just following Catherine’s wishes.’

  ‘What’s the name of the nurse?’ Kelly asked. A creeping sensation down her back made Kelly’s hands sticky at the wheel.

  She put the phone down and turned around to come face to face with Cane.

  ‘Christ!’ Kelly caught her breath.

  ‘Sorry. I’ve been here the whole time,’ he said. ‘What is it, Kelly? Who was that?’

  Chapter 52

  Over the last two weeks – and most of those in the last couple of days – almost seventy police men and women had notched up over thirteen thousand working hours. Hundreds of volunteers canvassed neighbours, looked into tips and leads, and hundreds more tourists prolonged their holidays to volunteer to search woodland, fields and fells. The mountain rescue, over every one of their twelve areas, clocked up hours of overtime to search the most inaccessible areas of the Lakes, to see if any shred of evidence could be found around the dump sights. They each had a list, and day by day scoured the countryside looking for shreds of evidence, meanwhile holding down their day jobs.

  Today, Johnny took Hart Crag.

  He walked slowly. His brief was to notice anything out of the ordinary, anything that didn’t belong on a mountainside. Johnny had spent hundreds of hours out here in the wilderness, either for pleasure or to save someone’s life, and he knew the contours and crannies of most peaks. Despite the pressing importance of his searches, and those of his colleagues, he also took time to admire the beauty surrounding him.

  The fell was silent and no-one ventured to this particular peak today; either that, or they’d been already and gone home. It was, after all, six o’clock in the evening, and the sun’s glow was turning to silver. He took the Boredale Hause route this time, just in case he found something that had been overlooked. The Lake District National Park was fairly anomalous regarding typical human behaviour, in that people tended to keep it tidy. Whether out of respect, or the fact that most visitors weren’t British, wasn’t something looked into by a select committee of researchers. It was just a fact. The mountains were almost pristine. Johnny came across the odd apple core, and a few fag butts, but nothing stood out.

  The area was easy to search in the sense that it was exposed, however, some of the elevations were a challenge, and the tourists trying to get to where a body had been dumped were usually frustrated. He’d hiked the steep and satisfying Hawk Crag, and was now coming up on his final destination. The sun was falling behind Helvellyn to the west and the wind picked up. Kelly had told him to look under bushes and rocks that seemed out of place, and he did so, as he walked slowly towards the summit of Hart Crag.

  The vision of the girl sitting there, as if taking a break from her climb, came back to him. He remembered her uneven breasts, and the paleness of her skin. He couldn’t get Aileen out of his head.

  He’d touched her cheek, not knowing if she was real, but he’d recoiled from her and wiped his hand unconsciously. They’d played a song that he didn’t know at her funeral, but it didn’t matter: it did what it was intended to do – make the congregation cry. He remembered thinking that he would ensure that no-one sang sad songs at his funeral. It was different to the other funerals he’d attended. Funerals o
f soldiers.

  Military funerals were distinct, in that the army tended to take over and no-one knew who the young man behind the flag really was. The family knew: the sister, the aunt, and the dad – they all knew. But the congregation (mainly of other military personnel and their families) were there to honour a colleague. The atmosphere was that of the brave, courageous warrior, and warriors didn’t cry.

  He did see soldiers cry, just once. It was at the funeral of a twenty-two-year-old who’d been blown up at a checkpoint in Afghanistan, two days after becoming a father. The boys – as Johnny called them – lived in bunks together, six or eight a throw, for seven months. They weren’t just family, they were flesh and blood. Muckers.

  He tripped over a clump of bracken and swore. He wasn’t concentrating. Fat lot of good he’d be to Kelly, if he just came up here and wandered aimlessly, day dreaming and feeling sorry for himself. He stopped and looked around. He was almost at the location where Aileen had been found.

  He walked round the largest boulder and was startled to find a figure sitting in the exact spot. For a moment, Johnny’s body filled with electricity, but then he calmed and laughed it off. The figure had the same reaction, and they laughed together.

  ‘God, Sorry!’ Johnny said. ‘I nearly had a heart attack,’ he added.

  The figure stood up.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see anyone up here so late,’ said the stranger.

  ‘I prefer it when it’s quiet,’ Johnny said.

  His military past, always just under the surface, even now, rose up in him and something told him not to divulge the reason for his visit.

  ‘Me too,’ said the stranger.

  Johnny committed details to memory: the shortness of the hair that wasn’t yet grey or thinning, the walking boots, the height, eye colour and face shape. Johnny thought it an unusual place to take a break: above the boulder, in the most exposed and dangerous place on the fell.

  A silence descended, and the figure stood up.

  ‘Enjoy the rest of your walk. I’ve finished here,’ the stranger said. Johnny thought about asking what he’d finished, but he kept his mouth closed. He moved backwards to let the stranger pass, and he caught a whiff of pungent masculinity. It took him by surprise. It seemed primeval, base, and guttural. It was like the scent an animal gives off when informing a rival to back off.

  Johnny stood still.

  The stranger moved away, towards the Place Fell route.

  They didn’t look back.

  Quickly, Johnny pulled out his phone and zoomed in as much as he could, before taking a photograph. It wasn’t very good, but it was something.

  He turned back to where the stranger had been sitting, and noticed something in the spot where they’d sat so peacefully. He went closer and bent over. The sun had caught the metal and made it shine.

  It was a gold pen.

  And it was engraved.

  Chapter 53

  Sometimes, Kelly thought she’d have been better suited to the Wild West. Clint Eastwood never had to wait for warrants. As she waited, she took a call from Ted Wallis.

  He’d found a poem inside the body of Nicola Tower.

  It was the confirmation they needed to make Nicola officially their fourth victim. Reporters had been camping outside the Penrith and Lakes, as well as Clifton House: now they’d get a new tidbit. The Lake District National Park was becoming world famous for more than its bid to become a UNESCO world heritage site.

  ‘What do you mean inside her, Ted?’ Kelly asked. Ted coughed. In the forty years he’d been dissecting bodies, he’d performed perhaps fifteen hundred autopsies, and only a hundred of those were for the police. The job at hand had always engaged him enough in its detail, to turn off his emotions and concentrate on precision. An autopsy was the last communication a homicide victim might send, and this noble pursuit drove him on, beyond the horror, beyond the gore, the stench and the brutality.

  But today, he’d removed his head set, and his glasses, and wiped his brow. He couldn’t ever remember doing that, apart from when he’d autopsied Lottie Davis.

  ‘It was rammed into her throat so forcefully, Kelly, that it broke three cervical vertebrae,’ he said.

  Kelly paused for a few seconds, letting the news sink in.

  ‘Can you read it, Ted?’

  He’d stood over her body and unfolded the piece of paper with gloved hands, as he had all the others, and peered at the brown dried blood. The words were fresh in his mind.

  ‘Yes. I won’t forget it in a hurry. It’s Wordsworth. The Prelude. It reads: ‘Gently did my soul put off her veil’. It’s about ridding oneself of pretension, Kelly. I’ve become an avid reader of The Lakes poets recently.’ Kelly thought that was the nicest thing she’d heard in days. He had her back.

  ‘The Prelude is generally accepted as Wordsworth’s autobiography, Kelly. Do you think that’s significant?’

  ‘Emma said something about that.’

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. DC Hide, one of my detectives. Something about the narcissism of romantic poetry, and how birth and death are pivotal to life. Every time he kills, he’s reborn somehow.’

  ‘Like a journey?’

  ‘Yes. Like a cleansing. Like teaching and learning.’

  ‘So the journalists are on to something.’

  ‘Maybe, Ted. Or maybe I’m just going crazy. I take it you swabbed for semen?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Ted replied.

  ‘I don’t think it will make a difference.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. He was affronted, as if Kelly was giving up on him; giving up on herself.

  ‘There is never any seminal fluid on the victims, is there?’

  ‘It’s always difficult to preserve the integrity of DNA when it’s exposed to the elements, Kelly. You must know that. We’ll find some that hasn’t been degraded, and we’ll be able to use it in court, don’t you worry.’

  ‘I’m not explaining myself properly. I don’t think you’ve found any seminal fluid, Ted, because there is none.’

  Ted laughed out loud, and instantly regretted it. ‘What do you mean?’

  The penny dropped and Ted caught on. ‘Because objects were used instead?’ He’d seen it many times before. ‘Sexual aversion perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. Like I said all along. The sex thing is separate; incidental almost. It’s the punishment which is paramount. Gently did my soul put off her veil. Naked as in the presence of her God.’

  ‘Yes, I read the whole thing too. It’s very beautiful,’ he said, and it was.

  ‘I have a new theory.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  It was getting late. The chances of finding a senior magistrate to sign the search warrant at this hour was slim, and Cane had told her to make the circumstantial as convincing as she could. At the moment, it was a mixture of hunch, conjecture, coincidence and a few leaps of faith. Cane wasn’t confident enough to take it to Ormond, but he was willing to get a warrant, if (it was a big if) they could get one signed tonight. Tomorrow was Saturday, and their time was running out.

  Failing that, Kelly was prepared to walk into the Penrith and Lakes and confront the sister of the ward directly. They had an address, but no-one was home.

  The address, on the Scaws Estate, was an ex-council property, and a database search confirmed that it had cheap grey carpet laid in the correct timeframe for their fibres.

  The profile of The Teacher had been blown wide open.

  The Coniston anomaly also bothered Kelly and she hadn’t been able to give anyone – least of all Cane – an explanation for it.

  Until she’d phoned the hospital.

  A conference was organised for the weekend. It was for medical professionals learning new modules on palliative care. But that wasn’t the point. The conference was being held at a sprawling five star hotel near Coniston, and their new suspect was on the guest list.

  Chapter 54

  Nikki shivered.
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  She lay on a concrete floor, staring up at the ceiling. The inside of the roof was covered in rusted metal railings and structural beams. The ceiling itself was flat and, in one corner, water ran down the wall. The source of the water was a small crack, and this is how Nikki knew if it was day or night. She could no longer see daylight, and so she knew it was evening. She’d had nothing to eat or drink, her mouth tasted of metal, and her tongue was swollen. She knew that she was in some kind of out-building, like a garage, and it was boiling hot. Her head pounded, and she’d begun to drift in and out of consciousness. She thought that she might have been drugged.

  Anger and rage had given way to fear and panic, and now, her only thoughts were of her daughters.

  Her biggest fear was that no-one would ever know where she was.

  She’d got in the car willingly. Why wouldn’t she? The floor was cool, but she didn’t mind. She rocked back and forth, trying to make the raging thirst lessen in her thumping head.

  She’d never wished so much to see Kelly Porter’s face.

  She’d tried shouting and banging, but one of her legs was attached to a wall by a series of plastic straps, which tightened when pulled. Her ankle pulsed with pain and the strap had bitten deep into her leg. Occasionally, she examined it for signs of infection: it was scabby, but there was no puss, just cuts. She’d stopped shouting hours ago as her throat and lips dried up, and so now, simply swallowing was an effort.

  She’d tried to talk to her captor initially, for the sake of reason and compassion, but she soon realised that any attempt to converse earned her a punch to the side of her head. She’d persevered at first, but now she remained quiet. It was perfectly obvious that no-one could hear her from the outside. And she was scared.

  She’d always thought herself tough. Her and her friends strutted round the clubs and bars of Penrith in an impenetrable pack, as a warning to anyone brave enough to ask them to make a space at the bar, or wait their turn in the lavatory.

  This was different: she wasn’t in control.

  Her captor only spoke to give orders: ‘hands up,’ ‘sit down,’ ‘shut up,’ for example.