by Aaron Fisher
Paul ignored the terrible sound of screaming inside his mind, begging to be let in.
“We didn’t come here to talk about religion,” Richard told Giacometti suddenly.
Giacometti turned to face Richard. At first it looked like his remark had angered the man, but then his voice erupted with joviality, “But of course you are correct, my friend Richard! We are here to do business! But first I find myself asking, how is it I know I can trust you?”
“You either do or you don’t. That’s up to you,” Richard replied. His voice was unwavering, and carried with it the tone of a man who had been tried enough for one day. “Either way I’ve had enough of these pathetic little games.”
“Games? What games do you speak of?”
“The magical, mystery tour of Cardiff bay. The changing of vehicles. To me, to you. I’m not a fan of the chuckle brothers. You contacted us. Show us what you want us to do, or show us the door.”
Paul was impressed. He didn’t know his brother had it in him. His words certainly seemed to have an impact on their host. Giacometti’s face was all thought. This was the moment where he either had them executed by his guards or welcomed them with open arms. Watching his face Richard could visualise the gears turning inside his head, but if he said he was certain his gamble would payoff, he would be lying.
A smile, wider and with a visible depth of authenticity, spread as Giacometti nodded happily, “You’ve spoken well, my friend.” Without warning he practically jumped out of his seat, clapping his hands. “Come, follow me.”
Obediently the twins turned and followed Giacometti. Richard did his best to make eye contact with his brother as they headed towards the door but Paul made no effort to return the favor. Richard couldn’t help feel a stab of guilt about putting Paul in this situation. He knew Paul wasn’t entirely mended yet, and he hoped that being here didn’t hinder his healing anymore.
The Red Dragon Centre, Cardiff Bay
Tony Horton was very tempted to use his sidearm on this security guard. The portly, middle-aged man had done nothing but moan since Tony’s arrival had forced him to get off his fat backside and open the door for him. The main doors didn’t open before eight, and many of the venues inside didn’t start until nine o’ clock. The security guard had found it a great inconvenience to have to come all the way from his comfy monitoring desk to let the M.I.T. agent in.
“I don’t get paid to be a bloody doorman, you know,” he carried on.
The security guard had told Tony his name when he met him, but now, mere minutes later, it escaped him. It wasn’t because he had a forgetful mind; it was because Tony hadn’t thought it important enough detail to remember in the first place.
“Look, David-”
“John.”
“John, do you think we could get to the monitor room quickly? Preferably without a lecture on how hard your life is. Because after just seeing the mutilated corpse of a sixteen year old girl, I’m really not in the mood for your trivial annoyances.”
That shut him up. The rest of the short walk to the security office was in silent. Tony liked silence. When he could actually hear himself think, concentrating became a lot easier.
An Abandoned Warehouse, Cardiff Bay
Out of the office, Giacometti led the way along one of the suspended walkways. Richard and Paul followed close behind with Dean and the other guns, keeping a watchful eye on them.
Richard glanced down. Beneath them were a dozen or more vehicles with various people rushing about in between, carrying boxes or checking wooden crates.
This is no small operation. Richard thought to himself. These guys definitely mean business.
They reached the end of the warehouse and Giacometti opened a door to lead them into the next terraced building. Richard was immediately hit by the contrast between the two. Whilst essentially they were identical, this one was so much cleaner in a very clinical sort of way. Almost as if the entire thing had been whitewashed and turned into a makeshift pharmacy.
Richard wasn’t far from the truth. As the two brothers peered over the edge, they saw beneath them a vast, extensive laboratory functioning like a production line. It wasn’t like any of the drug farms Paul had seen in the movies. A bunch of people wearing masks in the buff, cutting up coke in some back alley flat. This was professional. They even wore lab coats.
Giacometti seemed pleased by their reaction, as Richard caught him watching them. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
Richard nodded, failing to find appropriate words.
“Plug is forty percent more powerful than ecstasy, twenty eight times more addictive than heroin, and much cheaper to manufacture than any other drug of its kind.” Giacometti paused, enjoying their astonished attention. “All the ingredients are perfectly legal. Items you could buy over the counter at your local pharmacy. The tricky part, as you would say, is acquiring such vast quantities.”
Paul turned, “So how do you do it?”
Giacometti paused, his smile rising only half way. “That, my friend Paul, would be telling.”
The Red Dragon Centre, Cardiff Bay
When they arrived in the security office Tony stood with his arms crossed for a few minutes whilst John the security guard fiddled about, searching for the right DVD. When he asked for the second time for the date they were looking for, Tony pushed past the round man and flicked through the drawers himself. Finding the correct recording in seconds, he promptly inserted it into the right slot and pressed play.
Tony took his notebook out of his inside pocket and sat down as the footage began to play out. He turned a few pages back and looked at the time he noted Jenny Williams said she and the nineteenth victim, Lucy Green had gone to the cinema. Hitting the fast forward button, Tony could feel John’s angry breath on the back of his neck. He ignored it, if he had waited for that old man, they’d still have been searching for the right DVD in five hours time.
He slowed the tracking speed down fifteen minutes prior to the time in Jenny’s statement and began scanning faces in the ice cream queue as people came and went on screen. Recognising the face of the corpse he had seen earlier today instantly, Tony hit pause and rewound a few seconds so that he could watch her come into frame again.
Lucy Green was just like any other fifteen year old girl in Cardiff. She had dark hair, worn long with her fringe brushed over the top and held back with a clip. She wore a low cut top, showing off her already developed cleavage and a very short skirt. Tony couldn’t help but feel a twinge of blame towards her parents for letting her go out like that at her age. Her friend, Jenny was dressed in similar attire and as they joined the ice cream stand queue, they both began fiddling with their designer handbags.
The queue was long as the cinema was busy with teenagers as it always was on a Friday night and for the longest time the girls were alone at the back of the queue. Tony did his best to spot any people watching the girls in the background but with this quality video anyone more than fifteen feet away from the camera was just a blur of assorted pixels.
A group of five boys passed near the girls, closer than they needed to. The girls smiled and giggled to each other as the boys spied them. As they exchanged their flirting glances a figure moved up behind the two girls. At this distance his image was still out of full resolution but it was clearly an older man. His jacket was patterned with dark shapes and with his prior knowledge Tony was certain that it was camouflage.
At first glance, there was nothing immediately suspicious about the man. As the queue progressed and he moved further forward he cleverly concealed his face from the camera’s view by using one of the cinema’s free magazines. He rhythmically tapped it against the side of his head, the kind of action any person might do as the stood bored in line for ice cream. Except conveniently the side he had the magazine on was also the side facing the camera. This one knew what he was doing.
“Are they any other cameras that cover the ice cream stand from a different angle?” Tony asked, without turning.
“Um...”
Too much hesitation. Tony paused the feed and pushed away with his feet, sliding the chair over to the map of the forecourt on the wall. He checked the marked camera positions. “No.”
Tony returned to the monitor and hit play again.
Distracted by the boys, Lucy didn’t realise it was her turn at the stand until Jenny nudged her. She quickly stepped forward and made her order and took her purse out. Flicking her fingers through the pouch, the realisation that she was short became fast apparent on Lucy’s face.
The vender held out both his hands, one clutching Lucy’s ice cream and the other expectant of currency. Lucy turned to Jenny, said something, but before her friend could respond, the man behind Lucy stepped forward and handed the vender a note.
Jenny was clearly not impressed by the gesture, probably suspicious of this old man’s motives.
Quite right too, Tony noted.
Lucy, however, was just how Jenny described, flirtatious. Her body language changed posture, pushing her chest out and her waist in. She smiled, biting her bottom lip as she mouthed the words “Thank you.”
Jenny had said that Lucy was a fantastic gymnast, a brilliant painter and the best friend a girl could ask for, but she flirted with anyone. Even her killer.
The girls collected their ice cream and left, Lucy’s smiling over her shoulder at the man in the camouflage jacket. Now his turn he quickly pointed to something and walked away without taking his change.
Tony pressed the pause button again and tracked back slowly. The man had kept the magazine up to the side of his head the entire time, but when he had turned to go, Tony was sure he had exposed his face, maybe just for an instant. Crawling back frame by frame, Tony couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride and excitement.
There!
It was less than a second but the camera had captured the moment to last long enough for Tony to study it for as long as he wanted. Printing off the screen grab Tony allowed himself a smile. Now his suspect had a face.
Rebecca’s House, Heol Cefn Onn, Lisvane
“Will you get going already!?” Rebecca had to laugh at her mother. If she didn’t have an ID pass hanging from her neck to remind her, she’d probably forget what her own name was.
“Cheers, sweetie.” Her mother kissed her on the cheek and smiled with a wave.
Rebecca couldn’t help let slip a sigh of relief when the front door finally closed behind her. She loved her mum dearly but she could be hard work at times. She picked herself up together and made a start on the trek up the stairs.
A quick, relaxing shower before I get changed and head off to college for the day.
Finally reaching the top Rebecca gathered a couple of towels from the airing cupboard and dumped them on her bed as she entered her bedroom. She pulled her top over her head, took off the rest of her clothes and untied her hair, throwing the lot on top of the heap that was gathering on the floor in the middle of her room. Snatching up the towels again she, went into the bathroom and hung the first towel up on the hanger, ready to dry herself when she was finished. Then she bent down to lay the second on the floor so that she wouldn’t make the carpet wet when she stepped out.
As she stood up a gloved hand suddenly clasped round her mouth, pinning a piece of wet fabric to her face. Rebecca struggled but a second arm, strong and firm clenched her tightly around the waist, holding in her place until consciousness left her.
47
06.24 BST (British Summer Time)
Present Day
Cardiff. Wales. Great Britain.
Hawthorn Road East, Llandaff North
Traffic was starting to build up on Cardiff’s roads as the working day began for most of the population. However, luckily for Tony, the traffic was going in the opposite way. After gathering a few print-outs from the CCTV footage and making several more copies of the footage itself, he had quickly left the security guard to his devices and jumped back in his car. It hadn’t taken him long to power up North Road and over the Gabalfa flyover, as the commuters slowly crawled to gridlock on the other side of the road.
He had telephoned Denise Sanders’ mother en route to tell her he was on his way round, the possibility that she might still be asleep only entering his mind after he had finished the call.
Now as he pulled up alongside her house, Tony couldn’t hide his surprise at seeing Craig Hughes leant against his M.I.T. licensed, black Ford Kuga. Tony parked up his own Audi TT in front of his colleague’s car and did his best to regain his composure.
“Craig, what are you doing here?” Tony asked, walking towards him.
Craig chuckled, “I could ask you the same thing. Where’d you get to? Sneaking off and leaving me to do all the work.”
“Colgan wanted to see me on my own about something,” Tony said, trying to give as little away as possible.
“And that something led you here? Small world...”
Tony was irritated. Craig obviously had something but just like himself, he was keeping his cards firmly to his chest. The only difference was Craig seemed to be loving every minute of it. He sighed, impatiently, “You first. What do you have?”
“I did just what I was told to do. I checked Lucy Green’s background against the other victims. The local police took statements off all Lucy’s friends and families when she went missing. What she was doing in the days before her abduction. Who she was with, where she went, all that stuff. Luckily for me, the old coppers had the good sense to type the statements up. After obtaining the digital copies I ran a scan checking for any common keywords and phrases. There was a lot of crap came up, even with the filters on, but amongst it all something sparked my interest,” Craig paused, with a smile. The next two words he pronounced slowly, as if savouring their taste. “Camouflage jacket.”
Tony forbid his face to react.
Craig continued, “Lucy Green’s friend said that a man in a camouflage jacket bought them ice cream before she went missing and Denise Sander’s mother had also said she noticed a man in a camouflage jacket watching her daughter at her birthday party.” He stopped, waiting for a response. None came. “Oh come on! It’s a stretch I know, but it’s something! I was going to speak to Lucy’s friend, Becky first but when I phoned Mrs. Sanders to see when she’d be in, she told me that you were already on your way round. Now you must be here for a reason.”
“I am,” Tony said.
“Yeah? Care to share what that reason is?”
Tony made for the Sander’s house, “Go back to the office, Craig. I’ll update you when I get back.”
“Oh no you don’t!” Craig said, following Tony down the garden path.
Tony sighed under his breath, as he knocked on the front door. He could order Craig back to the office but that would upset Craig and make him suspicious, and he didn’t want that. Besides Denise’s mother was already expecting him anyway.
When the door opened Tony was shocked by the sight that faced him. He had spoken to Lorna Sanders before, when it had been confirmed that her daughter was a victim of the “Blind Lover”. A lovely little nickname the papers had come up with for the killer around the time of the eighth victim.
She had been a state then. Her eyes red, swollen and sore from the prolonged crying that he had seen with every mother who had been touched by these murders. Now, almost three months later, she had worsened. She had the appearance of a living corpse.
Forty-three going on Sixty-three.
Her skin, tired and uncaring, hung from her weary frame as loose as her clothes. Whilst her face remained puffy her eyes themselves were no longer bloodshot and strained but just empty.
So much for time being a healer.
Keen to get to the task at hand, Tony quickly refused the offer of a cup of tea or coffee and felt an infuriating swell of annoyance when his colleague accepted.
Craig sat down on the worn sofa straight away. Tony hovered around longer, glancing at the photos that remained around the room. He had been in this
house before and given it the detective’s snoop already but he found it helpful to have another scan anyway. Getting a feel for the place, gave him a feel for the people and it was always good to familiarise himself again. They were on victim nineteen now, details could be forgotten and missed if people were too careless.
Lorna Sanders was a single mum, probably one of the reasons why she looked the worst out of all the mothers who had lost their children. She had no one left now. No brothers or sisters. She had severed all ties with her parents when she had got married. Tony’s instincts told him they hadn’t reconciled in the wake of their granddaughter’s death.
From what Tony remembered the husband had only hung around long enough to get his wife pregnant and then he had disappeared out of existence. They had tried to track him down once Denise’s body had been discovered. He was even suggested as a suspect at one point. They never did find out where he went.
Craig thought it was strange how a home can change depending on the feelings of the people who lived there. There was no gathered dust or dirt in the living room, and none of the wall paper or furniture were grey, yet that’s exactly how he would describe it. Grey. It was as if someone had turned down a dial and lowered the brightness of every colour in the house, giving it a depressing, de-saturated look.
Lorna carried in a mug in each hand. She handed one to Craig his arm already outstretched, and the other to Tony who nodded his thanks despite not wanting the drink. Horton thought that she was going to head back into the kitchen to retrieve her own but instead she quietly sat herself on the edge of the armchair opposite Craig. Tony finally sat down next to him.
Tony let Craig go through the usual routine. They were very sorry for her loss and assured her that they were doing everything they could to catch her daughter’s killer. Mrs. Sanders seemed numb to the whole speech. Her eyes down, her mouth closed and responding only with the occasional nod of her head.