by Tania Carver
He ignored them, concentrated on getting out of his paper suit. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the window of the downstairs flat. Tall, just over six foot, and his body didn’t look too bad, no beer gut or man boobs, but then he kept himself in shape. Not because he was particularly narcissistic, but his job entailed long hours, takeaway food and, if he wasn’t careful, too much alcohol. And it would be all too easy to succumb, as so many of his colleagues had done, so he forced himself to keep up the gym membership, go running, cycling. Someone had suggested five-a-side, get fit, make new friends, have a laugh and a few beers afterwards. He’d turned it down. It wasn’t for him. Not that he was unsociable. He was just more used to his own company.
He tried not to conform to the stereotypical image of a police detective, believing that suits, crewcuts and shiny black shoes were just another police uniform. He didn’t even own a tie, and more often than not wore a T-shirt instead of a formal shirt. His dark brown hair was spiky and quiffed, and he wore anything on his feet rather than black shoes. Today he had teamed the jacket and waistcoat of a pin-striped suit with dark blue Levis, a striped shirt and brown boots.
But his eyes showed the strain he was under. A poet’s eyes, an ex-girlfriend had once said. Soulful and melancholic. He just thought they made him look miserable. Now they had black rings under them.
He breathed deep, rubbing his chest as he did so. Luckily the panic attack he had felt in the flat hadn’t progressed. That was something. Usually when they hit it felt like a series of metal bands wrapping themselves round his chest, constricting him, pulling in tighter, making it harder and harder for him to breathe. His arms and legs would shake and spasm.
It was something he had suffered since he was a child. He had put it down to his upbringing. Given up for adoption by a woman he never knew, he was bounced from pillar to post in various children’s homes and foster homes as he grew up. Never fitting in, never settling. He didn’t like to dwell on those times.
Eventually he was sent to the Brennan household and the panic attacks tailed off. Don and Eileen Brennan. He wasn’t one for melodrama, but he really did believe that couple had saved his life. Given him a sense of purpose.
Given him a home.
And they loved him as much as he loved them. So much so that they eventually adopted him.
But the panic attacks were still there. Every time he thought he had them beat, had his past worked out, another one would hit and remind him how little progress he had made.
Don Brennan had been a policeman. He believed in fairness and justice. Qualities he tried to instil in the children he fostered. So Don couldn’t have been more pleased than when his adopted son followed him into the force.
And Phil loved it. Because he believed that alongside justice and fairness should be order. Not rules and regulations, but order. Understanding. Life, he believed, was random enough and police work helped him define it, gave it shape, form and meaning. Solving crimes, ascribing reasons for behaviour, finding the ‘why’ behind the deed was the fuel that kept his professional engine running. He was fairly confident he could bring order to any kind of chaos.
He turned away from the window. Do it now, he told himself. Put yourself in order.
He would start with the two previous murders.
6
Lisa King and Susie Evans. The two previous murder victims. Phil pulled those two names from his mental Rolodex, focused on them. He had seen their faces so many times. Staring out at him from the incident room whiteboard, imprinted on his memory.
Lisa King was a twenty-six-year-old married estate agent. She had arranged a viewing of a vacant property on the edge of the Greenstead area of town. She had never made it out of that house. She was discovered later that day by one of her colleagues. Laid out on the floor of the house, drugged, brutally knifed. Her stomach ripped to pieces. Her unborn child mutilated, killed along with her.
There had been a huge media circus and Phil and his team had doggedly followed every line of inquiry, no matter how tenuous or tedious. The appointment had been made over the phone, from a cheap, unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile bought from a branch of Asda with cash. Lisa had taken all the details herself; the client was hers. A woman’s name had been given, according to the file in the office. No such woman existed.
Phil and his team had tried their hardest but failed to make any headway. No forensic evidence, no DNA, no eyewitnesses coming forward, no CCTV pictures. Nothing. It was as if the killer had materialised, murdered, then vanished into thin air.
Appeals had been made to the woman who had called the estate agent to come forward. She was promised protection, confidentiality, anything. Lisa’s husband had been brought in, questioned, and released. The usual informants, paid or otherwise, came up with nothing. Everyone was talking about it; no one was saying anything.
Then, two months later, Susie Evans was murdered.
A single parent living in a council flat in New Town. Pregnant with her third child and, as she had laughingly said to her friends in the pub, between boyfriends. A part-time prostitute and barmaid, she hadn’t made such a sympathetic victim as Lisa King, but Phil and his team treated her exactly the same. He didn’t hold with the view that one life was somehow worth more than another. They were all equal, he thought, when they were dead.
Her body was found in a friend’s flat. She had asked the friend if she could borrow it as she had a client who was going to pay her handsomely. Her eviscerated, broken body had been dumped in the bath, the walls, floor and ceiling covered in arterial blood sprays, the baby cut out, left on the floor beside her dead mother.
A door-to-door had been mounted, but it was an area that was traditionally unsympathetic to the police. A mobile station had been set up on the estate but no one had volunteered any information. Again there was no DNA, no forensic evidence and certainly no CCTV.They had speculated on many things: that it might have been a particularly twisted punter with a pregnant woman fetish. Even that it had been an abortion gone horribly wrong. And, most worryingly, that it was the same person who had killed Lisa King and his crimes were escalating. But the investigation went nowhere. And they were left with just a dead mother and child.
Then nothing for another two months. Until now.
Phil took out his mobile. Eileen Brennan, worried that he was in his thirties and unmarried, had been trying to fix him up with Deanna, a friend’s daughter, a divorcee the same age. They had never met, and weren’t particularly keen to, but had agreed on a date to keep the two older women happy. This evening. He had to phone her and, with not too much reluctance, call it off.
He had the number dialled, was ready to put the call through, when his phone rang. Grateful for the diversion, he answered it.
‘DI Brennan.’
DCI Ben Fenwick. His superior officer. ‘Sir,’ said Phil.
‘On my way over now. Just wanted a quick chat beforehand. ’The voice strong and authoritative, equally at home in front of the cameras at a news conference or telling a joke to an appreciative audience in an exclusive golf clubhouse.
‘Good, sir. Let me tell you what we’ve found.’ Phil gave him the details, aware all the time of the missing baby, the clock still ticking inside him. He was pleased the rubberneckers on the bridge couldn’t hear him. He hoped there were no lip-readers in the crowd. Hid his mouth just in case.
‘Oh God,’ said Ben Fenwick, then offered to deal with the media as Phil knew he would. It wasn’t just that he never missed an opportunity to get his face on TV; he had so many media contacts he ensured the story would be presented in a way that would benefit the investigation.
‘Sounds to me like we’ve got a serial. What do you think? Am I right?’ Fenwick’s voice was tight, grim.
‘Well, we’ve still got the party aspect to pursue, the boyfriend to question…’
‘Gut feeling?’
‘Yeah. A serial and a baby kidnapper.’
‘Wonderful. Bad to worse.’ He sighe
d. It came down the phone as a ragged electronic bark. ‘I mean, a serial killer. In Colchester. These things just don’t happen. Not here.’
‘That has been mentioned, sir. A few times. I’m sure they said something similar up the road in Ipswich a couple of years ago.’
A serial killer had targeted prostitutes in the red-light area of the Suffolk town. He had been caught, but not before he had murdered five women.
Another sigh. ‘True. But why? And why here?’
‘I’m sure they said that too.’
‘Quite. Look. This is a priority case. God knows how long we’ve got to catch this bastard and get that baby, but we’ve got to step up.You’re going to need a bit of help.’
‘How d’you mean, sir?’
‘Different perspective, that kind of thing. Psychological input. Profile.’
‘I thought you didn’t go for that sort of thing.’
‘I don’t. Not personally. But the Detective Super’s been on the phone from Chelmsford. Thinks it would be helpful. Sanctioned the money too. So there we are. Another weapon in the arsenal and all that.’
‘Who did you have in mind?’ A shiver ran through Phil, as if he had just plugged his fingers into a wall socket. He had an idea of what Fenwick was about to say next. Hoped he was wrong.
‘Someone with a bit of specialist knowledge, Phil. And I know you’ve worked with her before.’
Her. Phil knew exactly who he was talking about. His chest tightened again, but this wasn’t a panic attack. Not exactly.
‘Marina Esposito,’ said Fenwick. ‘Remember her?’
Of course Phil remembered her.
‘I know it all ended rather unfortunately last time-’ Fenwick didn’t get to finish his sentence.
Phil gave a bitter laugh. ‘Bit of an understatement.’
‘Yes,’ said Fenwick, undaunted. ‘But by all accounts a cracking forensic psychologist, don’t you think? Or at least as far as they go. And, you know, what happened aside, she got us a result.’
‘She did,’ said Phil. ‘She was good.’ And an even better lover, he thought.
He felt his chest tightening again at his own words, tried to ignore it. He sighed. He remembered the case well. How could he not?
Gemma Hardy was in her mid-twenties, a dentist’s receptionist who lived in a shared flat in the Dutch Quarter. She had friends and a regular boyfriend. Life was good for Gemma Hardy, she was happy. But that was all about to change. Because Gemma had also attracted a stalker.
At first it was just texts, then letters. Love letters, dark and twisted, the writer telling her that she was the only girl, his true love.That he would kill anyone who got in their way.That he would kill her rather than let her go with someone else.
Scared, she contacted the police. Phil was handed the case. He and his team went through Gemma’s life intimately. They found no one, nothing that could possibly point to the perpetrator. They arranged for her flat to be watched. Saw no one apart from her friends and boyfriend. They were getting nowhere, she was still terrified. Then someone suggested bringing in a psychologist.
Marina Esposito, a lecturer in psychology at nearby Essex University, was called in to consult. She specialised in deviant sexuality. The case was tailor-made for her. Along with Phil she examined every aspect of Gemma’s life, and they found their stalker: Martin Fletcher. Her flatmate’s boyfriend. He was arrested and confessed.
And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Not for Marina.
‘I doubt she’d do it, to tell you the truth, sir.’
‘I thought a bit of persuading, perhaps.’ Fenwick sounded surprised.
Phil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Persuading? Last time she worked with us she nearly died. Severed all links.You sure you want her?’
‘Super mentioned her personally. Good a place as any to start with. And if ever a case was right up her alley it’s this one.’ Fenwick’s voice changed gear then, moved from politician to friend, counsellor. Phil didn’t trust him when he did that. ‘Leave it to me, Phil. I’ll talk to her, see what I can do.’
Phil closed his eyes. Marina was there. He shook his head. Marina was always there. He sighed. Fenwick was right. Whatever else had happened, she was the best. And he needed the best on this case. ‘Well, good luck with that.’
‘Thank you.’ Phil couldn’t tell if Fenwick was being sarcastic or not.
There was a silence on the other end of the line. Then: ‘Are you sure you can handle this, Phil?’
Phil was jolted back. ‘Don’t see why not. I’ve been CIO on high-profile cases before.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ Fenwick’s voice was quiet. Solicitous.
Phil couldn’t speak for a few seconds as he absorbed the impact of Fenwick’s words. He knows.The bastard knows.
His heart started to beat faster again. It’s the case, he told himself, the baby, the seconds ticking away. That’s all it is, not… ‘Yes, sir, I can handle it.’
‘Good. Then I’ll talk to her. Because we’re going to need all the help we can get on this one. There’s a budget for this; it’s been upgraded as high priority so we don’t need to worry about that aspect. Extra manpower too. Personpower I should say. Let us not speak the language of dinosaurs in this department.’ He gave a snort.
Phil wasn’t listening. He had butterflies in his stomach.
‘Right. Well, we’d better get going. The clock’s ticking and all that. ’
‘Right you are, sir.’
Phil broke the connection. Stood staring at the phone, stunned at Fenwick’s words. But he didn’t have time to think about them now. He had another call to make.
Somehow it didn’t seem to matter too much.
Clayton emerged from the block of flats, joined him.
‘Ready, boss?’
‘Nearly,’ said Phil. He looked at Clayton, looked at his handset. Do it now. Get it over with.
‘Just got a call to make. Won’t be a moment.’
He walked away for privacy, dialled the number. Hoped Clayton was out of earshot.
It wasn’t good for morale to hear your boss get told off by his mum.
7
He had done it. Actually done it. Gone out and got her a baby, just like she had asked, just like he had promised to. Hester couldn’t believe it.
But she looked down at the baby and frowned. It wasn’t right. Not right at all.
She knew what babies looked like. Especially newborn ones. She’d seen them on TV. They were always happy and smiling, with hair. This one wasn’t. Small, wrinkled, shrivelled and pinky blue. More like Yoda than a baby. And it didn’t smile. Just twisted its face up and made a gurgling, wailing noise, like it was being tortured underwater.
But it was a baby, so Hester would have to make the best of it. A baby of her own. And when you had a baby, you had to clothe it and feed it and make it grow. She knew that.
It was wailing now. Hester brought her face into a smile.
‘Do you want feeding, baby?’ Her voice was an approximation of baby talk. Like she had heard on TV. ‘Do you?’ More wailing. ‘Mummy’s got something for you.’
Mummy. Just the word…
She went to the fridge, took out a bottle, placed it in the microwave. She had given him a list of what she wanted and he had got the lot. Powdered milk. Bottles. Nappies. Everything the books said.
She waited for the ping. Took it out.
‘Just right,’ she said, squirting some into her own mouth. She stuck the teat into the baby’s mouth, waited while it sucked hard. ‘That’s it. That’s better…’
Yes, it was tiny and pink and shrivelled. Yoda. But unlike Yoda its eyes wouldn’t open all the way, no matter how much Hester pulled at them. That wasn’t important, though. She looked down at the infant. She had wrapped it in blankets because that was the right thing to do, but it still looked cold. Like its skin wasn’t the right colour. But it didn’t matter. Hester had a baby. At last. That was the important thing. An
d she had to bond. That was important too.
She looked down at it again, feeding, managed a smile. ‘I’ve been through a lot to get you,’ she said, her usually broken voice sounding like a baby coo, ‘a lot. I could have just walked in somewhere, taken you, but that wouldn’t have been right, would it? No… Because you’d have been someone else’s by then, wouldn’t you? You’d have a different mummy and you’d have to forget her before you met me.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, I’ve been through a lot. But you were worth it…’
The baby spat the teat out, began to cough. Hester felt anger rising inside herself. It wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. It should take all the bottle. The book said. TV said.
‘Don’t you fuckin’ do that,’ she said, no trace now of baby talk. ‘Take it…’
She shoved the teat back in the baby’s mouth again, forced it to drink. Pushed the rising anger back down.
The baby stopped coughing, took the teat. That was better.
It was shrivelled and the wrong colour. And it wailed and shat all the time. She hated that. But it was a baby. And that was all she had wanted. So she would put up with it.
‘But you’d better start to be like the TV babies,’ she said to its bare head, ‘the proper babies, or there’ll be trouble…’
The baby kicked and wriggled, tried to get away from the bottle.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you need to be big and strong. And you’re not finished until I say you’re finished…’
Milk ran down the baby’s cheeks. It had finished feeding. Hester kept the teat in place.
She smiled, looked at her watch. Closed her eyes. It would be time for her husband to go out soon.Yes, she had a baby now but his work wasn’t done. There was still the list to be attended to. Then, when he had finished, he would come back to her and they would all settle in. A real family. Complete. She opened her eyes. Smiled. Content with her life.