Ricky’s eyes froze, then glazed, then rolled in their sockets. Two seconds later, blood was shooting out from the wound at the side of Ricky’s head as he fell, lifeless, into the canal. The air trapped in his puffer jacket, and the reeds at the edge of the water under his feet, kept him afloat.
Ben watched, emotionless, until the screams and cries for help from Alexia snapped him out of his trance. He tossed the brick into the canal.
Alexia was frozen to the spot where she stood, fear and panic rooting her feet to the ground. Urine began to drip from the bottom of her school skirt.
She fell silent as Ben covered her mouth with one hand and then grabbed the hair on the back of her head with the other. He yanked her head backwards and forced her to the ground.
Ben sat on her chest with his knees pinning down her shoulders and grabbed fistfuls of her hair, either side of her head. She managed to scream one more word, ‘Please,’ before Ben violently lifted her head then smashed it down onto the concrete floor, as hard as he possibly could.
She didn’t scream anymore, but Ben didn’t stop cracking her head until blood, hair and bits of skull formed a lumpy puddle beneath her.
Ben sat, looking down on his victim and laughed. He laughed at the blood on his hands and the stains on his jacket before snapping back to reality.
He was a killer, now suddenly in survival mode. He stood and looked both directions along the canal. Nobody was in sight.
Ben dragged Alexia’s corpse to the edge of the water and rolled her in. Again, the reeds played a big part in keeping the corpse from sinking, so he pushed down on her body with his foot until she was submerged, but as soon as he lifted it again, the reeds forced her back to the surface.
He stepped to the side and lowered himself back down on his knees and washed the blood from his hands and face in the filthy water then stood and again checked for witnesses. He took off his jacket and folded it over his arm, planning to ditch it in some random rubbish bin, far from here.
He took one more look at the bodies floating on the surface of the cold, canal water.
‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you fucking kids had to push me.’
He walked away from the ugly scene, guilt and joy wrestling for prominence in his mind.
12
Summers stood in front of a large whiteboard. The photos of her twelve selected victims along with their names and basic information and details of death were written up and taped to the board, in chronological order, earliest death on the left, numbered one.
Summers gently touched the photo of victim five, Dr Andrew Summers, then stood back and took her hip-flask from her desk drawer, gulped from it and put it back just as Kite walked back into the office with more coffee. Summers acknowledged him as he placed one coffee in front of her and took a sip of his own.
‘You drink too much of that crap,’ she said, ‘it’s not good for the body.’
Kite bit his tongue before making a rash comment about his superior’s drinking habit. It wasn’t quite midday and he had already twice seen her with a hip-flask in hand. As a teetotaller, he didn’t know if it was Rum, Whiskey, Gin or what she had a taste for. He knew it was alcohol, and he didn’t approve. He also knew if he mentioned it to a colleague, or worse still, to Watts, she would be out of the door in a flash.
But he wouldn’t say anything. He’d keep a close eye on things, but figured that if Summers was half as good a detective as they say she is, then she’d be the one to solve the riddle of who The Phantom is, regardless of a few sips of alcohol.
Besides, The Phantom had killed her dad, victim number five. It was common knowledge within the establishment that she only joined the force to seek justice for her father and put his killer behind bars. She brought a passion to this case nobody else could match.
Of course, there had been numerous arrests and charges against suspects, but none could stick. How could they? There was never any real evidence, only circumstantial, at best.
If The Phantom took the time to hide or destroy the bodies, as he did to cover his tracks and destroy and legible evidence, then these files wouldn’t be murder cases, they would be Missing Person files.
Summers sat in her chair and gestured for Kite to go to the map of the city that was taped onto a wall of cork, to the side of the whiteboard. She told him to put yellow pins on the map where the twelve Phantom case corpses were found and green pins where the other five bodies had shown up. He did so then took a seat.
The five green pins were randomly dotted on the map, whereas the yellow pins were grouped in the north-west of the city.
‘So there were some bodies found further away from the main cluster, it doesn’t mean they aren’t linked by the killer,’ said Kite, playing the devil’s advocate. ‘Maybe he drives, or uses the tube or buses.’
‘But he doesn’t,’ said Summers. ‘If he drove, we’d have him somewhere on camera. The same goes if he took the tube or a bus.’
She stood and gestured to the twelve yellow pins on the map.
‘He lives here. He kills here,’ she said. ‘There are housing estates, fields, parks, places without CCTV.’
‘But the other five had no CCTV,’ Kite said.
‘Irrelevant.’
‘Irrelevant? How comes?’
‘Because they don’t fit!’ exclaimed Summers.
She explained to Kite again that the methods of killing were different in the five cases, that the places were too far apart, and that her hunch was the killer is a man who jogs or walks his dog, sees an opportunity to kill and quenches his thirst.
Kite nodded thoughtfully. He could see she had reason in her thinking, and to narrow down the hunt for clues and witnesses would make things easier for them, even if it did still leave nearly three square miles hosting twelve different crime scenes, ranging from eight years to two months old.
Kite flicked through the dates of the five separated case files and noted that they were all at least two years old.
‘If you’re right,’ he said, ‘we could probably ship these off to the Cold Case Department. Not that the governor’ll be pleased when you spring this on him.’
‘I imagine he already knows,’ she said.
Speak of the devil. Watts stuck his head around the door.
‘Right, you two, a couple of bodies have been found in the canal by Old Town Road. Uniforms are there already. I think you want might want to get down there,’ said the DCI before leaving as quick as he came.
‘Two bodies?’ said Summers. She looked at the map. Old Town Road ran right through the middle of the killer’s territory. ‘Let’s go.’
13
Mrs Lily Green, in her mid-forties, was clearing out what her late husband called his office, one of the small rooms in her now near-lifeless home. She put details of Graham’s clients in a black rubbish bag, along with quotes and invoices he had prepared.
She gathered the picture-frames of Graham and Ben fishing, the picture of Ben graduating from university, an old polaroid of herself when pregnant with Ben, twenty-seven years ago, and another with her and Graham, a much older man, with arms wrapped around each other. She dumped them all in the black bag with all the other junk.
Satisfied, she looked around at the room. All that remained was a desk and two chairs, a computer and a printer.
Through the window she saw a black cat in the garden, an unwelcome visitor who left Mrs Green a present every other day on her lawn, be it a dead mouse or just cat poo. She wrapped her knuckles on the window and the cat scarpered. Then she heard a key turn in the front door, so dropped the rubbish bag and walked to the hallway to greet her son, in her own, special way.
‘Thought you’d come and see if I was still alive did ya?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, Mum. You know I haven’t been feeling too well,’ he replied, defensively.
Ben now looked pale and had guilt written all over him from his earlier activity.
‘Ignoring my phone calls,’ she said, accusingly.
‘You haven’t phoned me, Mum,’ he protested.
‘You and that slag you live with, laughing at me,’ said Mrs Green.
‘Jesus, Mum. Have you stopped taking your pills?’
Mrs Green had been on antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs for as long as Ben could remember. She used to see a psychiatrist who wanted her hospitalised, for her own good, but she refused.
Her husband, Graham, could only do so much, and found himself carrying the responsibility of raising Ben almost single-handedly as well as caring for his mentally unstable wife. Maybe that’s why he loved working so much; he just needed some ‘me time’, away from the house, time to blow off some steam, even.
Now Graham was gone, Mrs Green was rapidly declining into full-blown madness.
Ben walked past her and sat down at the large table in the kitchen. His mum followed him and with a smile offered him a cup of tea, that’s how quickly she could change, Ben forced a smile back.
‘Thanks Mum.’
She made his tea as Ben explained about losing his job, how Charlie was a selfish bastard, and then going home to find Natalie in bed with another man, who happened to be his old friend, David. Annoyingly to his mother, Ben explained that he was partly to blame for Natalie’s disloyalty, as he had been so lost in his own little world recently.
‘That’s nonsense, Ben, utter bullshit. She was always a slippery one, that Natasha,’ said Mrs Green.
‘Natalie,’ he corrected.
C-CLINK
Ben jumped at the sound of the local newspaper being pushed through the letterbox. Mrs Green noticed and asked why he was so nervous. He denied anything was wrong and stood to get the newspaper. He avoided his mother’s gaze as he sat back at the table and laid the paper down in front of him, ‘ANOTHER DETECTIVE GIVES UP ON THE PHANTOM’ read the headline.
Ben skimmed over the article. The words ‘MURDERS, DEATHS, VICTIMS’ jumped out at him from the page. He pushed the paper to one side and caught his mother’s eyes still staring at him.
‘What are you not telling me, Ben?’
‘I’ve told you everything, Mum. I lost my job and my girlfriends shagging one of my mates,’ he said, struggling to maintain eye contact with her. He shifted awkwardly in his seat.
Mrs Green knew when her son wasn’t telling all. It might not have been pure love, but there was a very special bond between this mother and son. She knew when he was happy or sad. She had a great instinct when it came to her son, they shared the same blood, but it was more than that. She could read him like a book.
‘You’re sweating, Ben,’ she said. ‘And pale. Go look in the mirror.’
‘No,’ Ben snapped.
Mrs Green reached across the table, grabbed Ben by the wrists and stared deep into his eyes. She saw something, something that shocked her, although it was a pleasant surprise. She let his wrists go and sat back in her seat.
‘I’ve seen those eyes before,’ she said.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Ben.
She smiled to herself and sipped her tea as Ben took back the paper and flicked through the pages, anything to keep him from having to talk to his mother. He came across the page which gave details on local events and meeting groups. He scanned down and fingered the advertisement for a local anger management class.
‘That won’t help you,’ said Mrs Green, reading his thoughts. ‘You had the urge, didn’t you, my darling?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mum. I think we need to get you back to the doctor,’ he said.
‘I can see it in your eyes, Ben. You’ve crossed a line. You’ve done it haven’t you?’ she persisted.
Ben made a mental note of the time and address of the meeting that night. He explained to his mother that he had just popped round to check she was ok, and if she needed him to just call. But she was paying no attention to the words he said as he made his way to the kitchen door.
‘Ben.’
He turned his head to face her.
‘Your father was just the same, Ben.’
She reached across the table, closed the newspaper, and placed her hand on the article involving The Phantom.
‘It’s in your blood,’ she said.
Ben took a moment to digest what his mum had just said.
‘Keep taking your pills, mum,’ he said, then left.
14
Two uniformed officers had sealed off the crime scene, unofficially identified the bodies using the identification found on them, and taken down a brief statement from Mr Wilson, who was walking his dog along the canal when he made the unfortunate discovery of two young corpses floating in the murky water.
He had fished the bodies out and made a fruitless attempt at CPR before calling the police. It was only after he’d put on his glasses to use the phone, that he clearly saw how dead Ricky and Alexia really were.
They had been in the water at least an hour, concluded Summers, as she stood over the recently deceased. She noted the giant wound on the side of Ricky’s head.
Her medical training enabled her to give a rough assessment, fatal blow to the head and damage to the neurocranium. More specifically, his head had been hit so hard that the synarthrosis joint between the Parietal and Temporal bones on Ricky’s left side had cracked open. The Temporal bone jolted inward and probably pierced his brain.
It took a few seconds for Summers to register Alexia’s cause of death, a brief moment before she saw the back of the girl’s head was held together only by matted hair. It seemed the Occipital bone, and one or both of the Parietal bones, the bones at the back of the skull, had been smashed to pieces, exposing and damaging the brain.
Both bodies, battered, cold and soaked, didn’t make for a pretty picture.
As the corpses had already been moved, there was no need to leave them exposed to the few members of public who had now gathered. Summers called out to one of the uniformed officers to help the coroner bag up the bodies, so they could be taken to the lab.
The chances of finding any DNA evidence was extremely slim due to the circumstances, but she asked the other uniformed officer to take a swab from Mr Wilson, in order to eliminate his DNA from any alien DNA found on the bodies. She had already ruled him out as responsible for the deaths; his alibi had been confirmed by phone where he was all morning until thirty minutes ago. Besides, she could see he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t look capable; trying to save two people, yes, to murder them, no.
Summers joined Kite who had just taken a photo of a bloody mess on the floor. She pointed out small bits of brain in the blood.
‘Thanks for that,’ he said.
Summers positioned herself between the sprays of Ricky’s blood and the canal, facing away from Kite, with her right side closest to the water.
‘This is where the boy stood when he was struck, facing this way,’ she said, thinking out loud. She looked at the lines of claret on the ground, ‘It looks like four, maybe five squirts of blood before he fell, or was pushed, this way,’ gesturing toward the canal, ‘into the water.’
She turned around and Kite stepped to the side so as to not block her view, of what they had rightly assessed to be the girls blood and pieces of brain.
Summers moved to approximately where the girl’s feet would have lay at her time of death, looked back at Ricky’s blood and then again to Alexia’s.
‘He killed the boy first,’ said Kite, answering the question he thought Summers was pondering.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘which means she watched him die, and waited to die herself.’
‘Maybe she panicked, couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee,’ said Kite.
He was right, Summers thought to herself.
She had checked the hands of Alexia. There were no bruises on the knuckles or palms nor any skin or fibres under the fingernails. She didn’t fight. She didn’t flee. She was paralysed by fear. She paid the price as well.
Kite stated the obvious, that Alexia had had her head bashed against the co
ncrete until she was dead. But he wasn’t sure on the weapon used on Ricky.
‘It wasn’t a blade of any sort, maybe a hammer? But you’d expect the hole to be more…’ he paused, ‘round?’
He flashed the close-up image on the screen of the digital camera.
‘It almost looks like a point, but what could make a hole like that?’ he asked.
Summers took another look at the photo; the corner of the brick had left a clear indent in Ricky’s head. They both surveyed the ground, seeing stones, litter, cigarette butts, more stones, and the occasional broken brick.
Summers turned to the wall that went from the ground up to the bottom of the bridge. It was old, and a few of the bricks had literally fallen from the wall on to the pathway over time. She carefully picked up a broken brick in her latex-gloved hands.
‘If I were to smash this brick extremely hard, into the side of your head, what kind of wound do you imagine it would inflict?’ Summers asked Kite.
She examined the brick and found no traces of skin, hair or blood so tossed it into the canal.
‘And that’s where it’ll be,’ said Kite.
Both detectives knew the murder weapon would hold no DNA evidence if it had been discarded into the water, no prints would be found on the rough surface of the brick, so there was no point in sending in a team to search it.
Their best hope at this point was to speak to as many people in the area and try to find a witness. Summers would still have the area combed for the murder weapon, more a PR stunt than anything. The search would likely be a waste of time for the six officers called out to do it.
Summers and Kite spoke briefly with the small crowd who had seen the police cars, it turned out they were just being nosey and had nothing of value to add to the investigation, other than one old lady, another dog-walker, who had seen the young couple together around two hours ago, walking in this direction. Over the next day or so, the detectives would also have to speak to family and friends, to see if anything was amiss or anybody knew something of interest.
Son of a Serial Killer Page 3