ONE STEP AHEAD: detectives hunt a serial killer who knows all their moves (The DCI Jeffrey Brandt Murders Trilogy Book 1)

by Denver Murphy

  Nevertheless, for all Brandt’s maverick tendencies, he knew how to play the game and, whilst not courting opportunities that would lead to him encountering Franklin, nor had he avoided them. Each time he had feigned pleasure in seeing his old colleague, an emotion always reciprocated by Franklin, who was only too happy to use the occasion to pick his brains on whatever case he was currently working on.

  Brandt had fully expected his retirement to end their connection, but it seemed that he had underestimated the friendship that Franklin believed they had developed. On one of their recent phone calls, Franklin had confided that he and his wife had recently split and wanted Brandt’s advice on how to cope with going through a divorce process. The initial pride he had felt at successfully giving the impression that he had actually coped with his wife’s departure soon faded into frustration at, not only having to relive the pain of their parting, but also having to listen to the problems of someone he wasn’t in the least bit interested in.

  ‘…and the hardest part is that my children are siding with her.’ Franklin was now close to tears. Brandt was pleased; this latest, and somewhat repetitive, monologue had been going on for minutes. Franklin’s need to pause in an attempt to compose himself allowed him an opportunity to speak.

  ‘I can imagine,’ he said, meaning nothing of the sort. At least you’ve got children. The fact that you had children and still managed to fuck it up shows what a complete dick you really are. If we’d had children… Brandt couldn’t, wouldn’t, complete the thought. He was allowing this fucker to drag him down and he had been feeling so much better recently. Time to wrap this up. ‘Look, hold on in there… buddy,’ the last word almost choking in his throat. ‘We really must get together sometime.’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Saturday. Let’s get together this Saturday.’

  Brandt’s mind was racing. No, not Saturday. Saturdays were his special day. He had so much momentum now…

  ‘Jeff? Are you still there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Not got plans, have you?’

  ‘Well…’ Well what? he thought sarcastically. Well, aside from my latest serial murder, my diary is looking pretty free that day. ‘Well, sure.’ Think Brandt, think! ‘Look, I’ve got to go but let’s shore up plans later on in the week.’

  I’ll just avoid his calls and make up a good excuse for when I next have to speak to him, Brandt thought.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Franklin asked, as though completely ignoring what Brandt said.

  ‘Er, let’s go for a drink that evening.’ Yes, that was it! Keep it to the evening and I can still do both. A few drinks to celebrate my latest triumph and few more for this prick’s misery.

  ‘Perhaps that’s not such a good idea. You see, since Louise left I’ve been er… I’ve been overdoing it a little. I realise now that it’s just making things feel worse. Can we meet for a coffee instead?’

  ‘Yes. Fine.’ All the fight had drained out of Brandt.

  ‘Shit, shit, SHIT!’ he shouted, smashing the receiver repeatedly against the wall. His conversation with Franklin had only lasted a couple more minutes so that a café could be agreed upon and a time in the early afternoon.

  He went and slumped in his armchair, unconsciously reaching for the whisky bottle. As the amber liquid gave the familiar and comforting burn to his throat, he decided that would be the first and only drink of the evening. He would need a clear head to work this out.

  About an hour later he felt better. Not just better; really good. Perhaps a drink was in order. Confirming once again to Brandt that he must be following some pre-ordained path, rather than allow his unwelcome date with Franklin to become an obstacle that he would have to work around, he used it as an opportunity to establish how to take his campaign to the next level.

  This was the perfect time for a watershed moment; something that would require a bit more planning than the few days between now and Saturday would afford. Leaving the murder weapon in Canterbury did not just allow the connection to be made to his previous acts, but would also mark the transformation to the next stage. He would wait to see what the press made of it over the following days, but he already had a plan formulated.

  Central to this was wanting to spend more time with his next victim. It would prevent his actions being pigeon-holed as random stabbings. By this being more, it would represent an undeniable escalation that would negate the apparent slow down between incidents and even trump the impact of his reach going far beyond Nottingham.

  For a short while he considered deliberately switching the gender of his next victim. A man would serve the purpose of indicating a change in approach, but he eventually settled on his next job being a woman. He wanted to cement the impression of sexual motivation so that, when he switched to a man, it would completely toss into the air all their preconceived assumptions of the perpetrator. Keeping everyone guessing would ensure that he remained one step ahead of his pursuers and, more importantly, serve to keep his actions centre stage in the national consciousness.

  A by-product of all this, but perhaps not as much of a secondary consideration as Brandt would like to admit, was that spending time with a female victim would allow him to explore the mixed emotions he had been experiencing. As he reflected on his work so far, his greatest satisfaction had come from the task on the River Trent. He could only surmise it was because he felt a greater synergy with that woman, as a result of spending more time in her company prior to their union. Canterbury had been a unique thrill, partly through relief that, having failed with his initial target, he had still managed to complete his mission, and also because of his decision on how to delay the discovery of the murder weapon. Only a small element was the actual taking of that woman’s life, a fact illustrated by it providing him with little inspiration once he had returned home. Consequently, his next act would enable him to build up the connection with his victim and, having to simulate sexual assault, rather than deriving genuine pleasure, would prove the purity of his purpose. For whilst Brandt embraced the idea that one should feel satisfaction with a job well done, it was important to him to believe that this all served the wider purpose of waking the people of Britain from their complacency.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  He liked St. Albans. In a world which he felt had changed almost beyond the point of recognition, the city where he had spent much of his childhood remained familiar, especially in the historical parts like St. Michael’s, where he was now parked. Sure, the Roman museum and its gift shop, which he briefly visited in order to get change for his parking ticket, was more recent, but the surroundings of Verulamium Park remained largely the same as when he had visited it so frequently in the 1970s.

  Yet, whilst Brandt had allowed time for a touch of nostalgia in his schedule, he was here for a much more specific purpose. The correct way to have prepared for his latest endeavour would have been to make a reconnaissance trip to reduce the number of variables he would encounter on the day. But this would have been too obvious and would have provided the police with an advantage they would surely exploit. When attempting to narrow things down they would be looking for patterns of behaviour and people noticing something similar. Someone hanging around near a train station is unlikely to arouse suspicion but the same person doing it twice may cause something to lodge in someone’s mind. The easiest solution would be to carry out the preparatory visit well in advance, long enough ago not to trigger people’s memories and, even more importantly, beyond the realistic scope of CCTV footage comparison.

  Brandt’s timescales hadn’t allowed such a luxury. Consequently, he had needed a location he knew, but also one that could not conceivably be linked back to him. The police would be busy trying to establish the connection between Nottingham and Canterbury. Whilst that would prove fruitless, he did not want his third setting to provide any clues.

  With sufficient contextual knowledge of the area, Brandt had been able to conduct his reconnaiss
ance using his trusted Google Maps, identifying any changes with the locations he would be using. Moreover, rather than throw up any problems, some of the more recent residential developments beyond the lakes might play to his advantage.

  However, the one thing he had failed to appreciate in his time since living in St. Albans was how restricted parking had become in the city streets and how astronomical the charges were in the municipal car parks. Tempted as he had been to simply pop his debit card into the meter, he decided it more prudent to risk breaking a note in the museum. In fact, the lady at the admissions desk seemed far from surprised when he said he simply wanted to pick up a gift for his grandson. Perhaps many visitors to Verulamium found they had insufficient change and followed a similar tactic, or maybe it was because people wanted a souvenir from the historical site without having to inflict on themselves the boredom of viewing a load of old pots and coins.

  Regardless, minor hiccup out of the way, Brandt took a deep breath of the late April air, which was turning chilly as the sun made its way towards the horizon. He had allowed himself an hour to make his way across the park to Holywell Hill, a journey that could easily be completed in fifteen minutes if needed. He wanted to go via the lakes, so he set off down the familiar path that took him by the Inn On The Park, which still served as a café.

  The path veered off and down a slight incline towards the much smaller of the two lakes. On his left was a low hedge, beyond which was an unkempt field with a few sheep, backing onto an enormous Edwardian house. For the first time in four decades Brandt wondered what type of family lived there and how he had never noticed its front when walking through St. Michael’s. Whereas once there had just been parkland on his right interrupted by the occasional large oak tree and sections of the old Roman wall, there was a splash zone, closed until the warmer summer months arrived. The various pipes and spouts, painted in a variety of gaudy colours, clashed with the natural tones of its surroundings. Brandt could just imagine all the middle-class mothers and nannies attempting to navigate their expensive pushchairs down this path one handed, holding their obligatory coffee in their other, before unleashing the offspring to charge around the fenced areas whilst they got back to checking Facebook, Twitter and whatever else was on their precious mobile phones.

  He stopped by the first lake; more a pond really, fed by the overflow of the main one; cunningly housed under the bridge that linked one side with the other. Although it was only home to a few ducks and a coot, he remembered Sundays where the still conditions would be used by young, as well as old, radio-controlled boat owners to navigate the still waters, whilst drawing an audience from passers-by. Brandt wondered whether that still happened, but suspected that a combination of ridiculous health and safety laws and kids being more interested in sitting at home on their games consoles had conspired to kill the tradition.

  Saddened, he continued, rounding the smaller lake and taking the path by the larger one that had the River Ver running parallel on the left. Half way along, and still with plenty of time to get to his destination, he rested on a bench for a while, perpendicular to one of the lake’s two islands. The silhouette of its trees was imposing with the sun’s weak rays behind them. Save for the occasional honk of Canadian geese, and pedestrian footsteps, there was a peacefulness here that Brandt found enriching. He felt his mind, so often overcrowded with thought, begin to quieten.

  It occurred to him that he could stay in this very spot until either the sunset or the growing chill forced him from the bench and simply return home. He could find a new direction, perhaps something that would allow a permanence of the serenity and tranquillity he now felt. But he knew that was just a selfish pipe dream. Even if he could accept denying the people the new-found respect for life that his actions were provoking, he could not allow the sacrifice of his three women to go unrewarded. He owed it, not just to them, but also to their families’ suffering. Whilst he never expected them to understand his actions, much less accept them as the necessary part of restoring society’s humanity, he was content to play the bad guy if it meant he could die in the knowledge that he had done good.

  He roused himself from his thoughts, left the bench and continued on his way. There was more purpose to his walk, partly through his renewed determination and partly seeking to eradicate the cold which had permeated his body. As he rounded the top of the lake and saw the small bridge leading to the Fighting Cocks pub, he turned right along the treeline and followed the path, more heavily populated with people walking from the city centre to the King Harry housing estate, until it opened to allow him to cross the field that led to the Westminster Lodge leisure centre and the main road beyond. Brandt remembered when the pool there had first opened, and it was where his father had taught him to swim. Although it was a conventional rectangle, and the subsequent water flumes had yet to be installed, the diving boards had been a source of fascination to Brandt. He had only seen people use the medium board, but the top 10 metre one, a concrete shelf rather than a spring-loaded plank, had held his gaze on many occasions.

  He had sworn to himself that one day he would scale it and launch himself into the terrifying space between it and the water below. It was a promise he had never kept but, in the particularly dark times when he considered how he would like to end his suffering, he came back to thoughts of plunging. In the weeks and months after his wife had moved out, he had often drifted into alcohol-fuelled unconsciousness; fantasising about the rush of air to his body as he stepped off from whatever ledge had entered his mind that night.

  That a place that had once held so much enjoyment and hope for the future, now represented a life unfulfilled and tinged with regret, both upset and angered Brandt in equal measure. He resolved not to even glance in its direction on his way back and, instead, to revel in the moment of what he will have soon achieved.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  It had been a long day; the only comfort being that it was still light as she left the office. Lily James supposed that people dealt with stress in their own way. Whilst a number of her colleagues had decided to head into town for a few drinks, what she was looking forward to most was getting home and shoving something simple in the oven, which she would eat watching last night’s recording of MasterChef. Once she had eaten, she would give her mother a quick call and have a bath; maybe treating herself to some of the scented candles that had been bought for her last Christmas. Then she would tuck herself up with her book and have an early night. Sure, the others would probably have unwound even before she had got off the train, but Lily knew who would be better able to cope with another day of ridiculously short deadlines and outrageously demanding clients tomorrow.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t tempt you, Lil?’ Steven, a guy from her department, called as they went through the automatic door exiting the building. She hated being called Lil, almost as much as she hated how, after roughly two drinks, Steven would start patting her leg as he spoke to her. ‘We could even start at The Flag in case you change your mind,’ he said, pointing down the road in the direction of the pub next to Watford Junction station. It was a large establishment designed to house bands at night but, during the day, was too big for its catchment – mostly the sort of people who couldn’t bear the thought of going home to what awaited them without having at least one drink inside them.

  ‘No, you’re alright, Steve, if I hurry I should make the next train.’ Most of her colleagues lived in and around Watford or in nearby towns like Hemel Hempstead where rent and house prices were comparable. Lily lived in St. Albans and, although in her mid-twenties, had only been too happy when her comfortably-off parents had offered to buy her a place, convenient to the station, in the town in which she had grown up. It wasn’t that she was a snob; in actual fact she went to great lengths to mask the privilege of her upbringing. Whereas some people have a telephone voice, a tone that is more well-rounded than their natural way of speaking, Lily masked the quality of her elocution; small things like dropping the occasional t a
t the end of a word or sometimes pronouncing th as f, in order to better fit in with her colleagues. What’s more, when asked about her weekend, she sometimes swapped things like horse riding with going to the cinema.

  Lily didn’t see her charade as deceitful, just a way of being allowed to concentrate on her work without sticking out. She had also fallen victim to a few failed relationships where men had viewed her as a potential meal ticket, having judged her by the way she spoke and the expensive but conservative way she dressed. The fact was that all her potential inheritance, save for the share of her parents’ property, which would have to be divided between her four siblings, had been pumped into her small terraced house, and her job paid nothing more than the typical decent graduate could expect in this economic climate. Maintaining a horse, with all the various associated costs, had meant forgoing a car; something even her closest friends found incomprehensible. However, living a short walk down Holywell Hill from St. Albans city centre, and only a few minutes from the train, meant she had little need for a car.

  The station entrance was packed with people milling about; some finishing off a cigarette, others either being collected or dropped off by cars. As Lily attempted to navigate the throngs, any hope of making the earlier train faded. She still had a couple of minutes until its departure time but its position on the furthest platform meant she would have to run, something she had no intention of doing. Instead, and against her better judgement given the time of day, she ordered a coffee from the station barista and browsed the shelves of the newsagents for a suitably vacuous female-interest publication for her bath.