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

by Denver Murphy

  He could scarcely believe how hard it was to move her; this body that had felt so energetic beneath him just a few minutes before. Rather than manage it in one go, and with no sense of irony whatsoever, he went through the stages of putting her in the recovery position. The relief of spotting the knife where she had lain was short-lived as the panic that it might have punctured her skin took hold. Frantic moments of checking her still-warm skin revealed an imprint of the hilt but no wounds.

  He left her on her side in the hope this would be more likely to aid the indent to disappear and, besides, he preferred how she looked in this almost foetal position.

  Satisfied that he hadn’t overlooked anything else, Brandt exited the house.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  DSI Potter sighed. ‘Look, is this because I said that unless we made some progress soon we would have to scale back resources?’

  ‘Not at all, guv,’ Johnson replied. She was telling the truth. When he had first warned of this earlier in the week, she had fought her corner, but reluctantly accepted the situation. He had agreed to let her continue to use PC McNeil and knew that she could get the whole team to be redeployed if they uncovered some crucial evidence.

  ‘Look, I backed you on the Canterbury thing but this… I just don’t see it.’

  ‘But I was right about Canterbury, wasn’t I!?’ Johnson knew she was starting to sound like a sulky teenager and, from experience, when Potter had made his mind up he wasn’t easily swayed. However, equally she knew that if anyone could change it, it was her. They had worked together long enough for him to know that her flights of fancy sometimes paid off.

  Not today it would seem. ‘But that was completely different.’

  ‘What you said at the time, guv, was the absence of a direct link didn’t mean that there wasn’t one. Remember when I called you from Canterbury? You said that we needed to keep our minds open until we found evidence that discounted our guy?’

  ‘Look,’ said Potter, leaning forward on his desk. ‘With St. Albans, everything seems to discount our guy…’

  ‘She’s a young woman…’ Johnson knew this was a feeble response.

  ‘But everything else is wrong. Wrong location, wrong method, wrong motivation… even the wrong day of the week for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I think I can explain all that.’

  Potter sighed again. ‘Okay, I’m listening but I think we’re just going round in circles.’

  ‘The leaving of the murder weapon in Canterbury symbolised the end of the first phase. He has established that he was targeting women and that he could strike anywhere. It makes sense that the next one would be different.’ Johnson was frustrated with herself for not being able to explain it better. ‘The only constant would therefore be that it would be a young woman.’

  Potter sat for a moment thinking. ‘Do you really think it’s him? I mean really think it’s him?’

  It was her turn to pause. She didn’t feel this was the usual question that, if answered with a positive, would lead to being told that he trusted her instincts and that she could follow this up. It felt more than that; it was more than that. She knew the pressure he was under, the constant phone calls and even visits from the top brass. He would have considered all this even before she came to see him to argue the link and, if he even had the slightest belief this could be their guy, he would have jumped on it; if nothing else but to look like they had some leads and thus buy them more time.

  Her answer to this question could have deep ramifications for her. If she pushed this and, as was possible, it turned out to be false, then it would undermine her credibility and, more importantly, his trust in her.

  Maybe being completely honest and admitting to all the doubts she had, might not only restore his confidence in her but allow her a little leeway in terms of what they did next. ‘No, guv. I still believe it’s possible that he is changing his approach, which may explain the delay from what seemed a well-established weekly pattern, but this isn’t like him. It’s messy. Plus, he would have left some kind of calling card. Why go to the effort in Canterbury of showing us the murder weapon only to do something radically different and provide no link?’

  ‘Yes, I do have some thoughts on that. Perhaps he thought we might be onto him with what he did here and so he did the Canterbury murder to throw us off the scent.’

  ‘But we don’t have anything, guv. What would make him think that?’

  ‘Well, firstly it could just be paranoia. Who knows what drives someone to commit such terrible crimes, but clearly they are not of sound mind and judgement. Alternatively, his decision to go elsewhere and then lay low might be based on fact.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, guv.’

  ‘He did something wrong here in Nottingham and left some evidence that he was worried about.’

  ‘But we don’t have anything,’ she repeated but, in doing so, realised what Potter was getting at. ‘You want us to rework the evidence, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s the best we have to go on. Unless he strikes again all we can do is go over what we have so far, rather than try and introduce something like St. Albans which may only serve to contaminate what we have.’

  ‘But…’ Johnson felt deflated and yet, at the same time, knew what the DSI was saying made sense.

  ‘Maybe, Stella, you never know, going back over everything might throw up some DNA which might match with what was found in St. Albans?’

  If this had been an effort to placate Johnson and to motivate her into the joyless task of revisiting all the previous evidence, the look she returned Potter showed it had failed.

  ‘What’s the alternative? I hold a press conference where we talk about a link which you and I both know doesn’t exist?’

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  There was no press conference; but that wasn’t to suggest there wouldn’t be one. There had been no link made in the national newspapers; but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be one. If Brandt had thought the days following his trip to St. Albans waiting for the news to break had been agonising, this was worse.

  He had not slept since Lily James’ parents had gone around to her house and discovered her dead body on the sitting room floor. The only emotion Brandt felt towards them was anger. Apparently, they had become worried when she hadn’t made her usual phone call to them that evening. And yet it had taken three days, three whole days, and only then after being contacted by her employer to express concern that she had failed to turn up yet again without explanation, for them to make the short trip across town to find her. Lily’s mother, interviewed by a local television station, explained, through tears, that she had hoped Lily had found a nice young man and had been swept off her feet.

  Brandt had spent those three days waiting and wondering, with increasing paranoia, why there was nothing. By the end of the second day, by which time he was certain she would have been reported missing, he became convinced that the police must have ordered a media blackout. That could only mean one thing, they knew it was him and were about to pounce. Twice he had gone to his car and sat there, key in the ignition, willing himself to flee. But where? If they knew it was him, all the sea and airports would be looking for him and he couldn’t hope to travel anywhere in Britain by road without being tracked by the network of ANPRs.

  No, the time for escape had passed. That would have needed to be done before the connection was made. Brandt had two choices: allow himself to be captured or kill himself. He favoured the latter because, much as he still believed that he had been acting in the best interest of the country, he didn’t think he could cope with the humiliation of arrest. Having spent a lifetime catching, interviewing and locking up criminals, he didn’t think he could cope with being on the other side.

  The only way to maintain some kind of control of the situation would be suicide. Whilst he always imagined the grand gesture of plunging to his demise, where he lived was nowhere near the coast, nor did it have the sorts of mountains or even hills where that would be
possible. It would be too much of a risk to travel, with the police just waiting to pounce. Brandt knew, if he put his mind to it, there were plenty of options: find a tall building nearby or even a sufficiently high bridge over a road, but he favoured an alternative method given the circumstances.

  He wanted the satisfaction of imagining all that pent-up anticipation, something he had felt so many times in his career, of the officers waiting for the order to storm the property turning into the bitter disappointment of finding his lifeless corpse slumped in the armchair.

  Between the plentiful supply of whisky and all the various pills and capsules his wife had left behind, he was sure he had enough to finish the job. He never understood how so many people were cited as attempting to take their own life and failing. To Brandt that was just confirmation of how pathetic they were and consequently how frustrating it was that they had been unsuccessful. If you were so useless in life that you couldn’t even manage death, then there really was no point in living.

  As he had sat there that evening, forty-eight hours after being in St. Albans, he convinced himself he had until the small hours of the morning to swallow the pills. The police, knowing how dangerous he was, would be waiting until then to increase the chances of him being asleep. He didn’t know how long the pills would take but if he left it until midnight he would be long dead before they burst in.

  Brandt had awoken the next morning with the light around the drawn curtains confirming that it was day. A confused stare at the clock on the mantel piece told him that it was after 7am. With the pills counted out and still sat on one of the nest of tables, it would seem that the serenity Brandt had found in deciding on the only logical course of action had sufficiently relaxed him that he fell asleep, ironically into an uninterrupted slumber that had lasted far longer than he could remember in years. What’s more, there had been no pre-dawn raid and, as he pulled back the front curtains, he was met with a view outside no different from any other day.

  He slumped back in his chair and switched on the news. There was still nothing about the woman, and although he took the precaution of bringing in a knife, in case he needed to slash his throat quickly upon hearing his door being burst open, he became less and less sure that the police were just around the corner. By lunchtime he even made the walk to the local shop to collect some supplies and, paranoid as he was, he didn’t spot anyone who could even conceivably be keeping him under surveillance. Feeling much better he considered how he should have put more thought into what to do if things went wrong. The first thing he would require was money, and plenty of it. Once being chased, something as simple as walking into a bank and withdrawing it was a sure-fire way of getting captured. One of the very first things done by the police is to trace any transactions. Brandt resolved that as soon as he was certain he was in the clear, he would ensure he had enough cash to make his getaway. Given the surveillance would extend to public transport and his registered vehicle, he would need to have a sum large enough in case he needed to buy a second-hand car. Stealing one could only ever be a last resort because, as soon as the theft was reported, the police would be able to trace him through the vast network of ANPR cameras.

  The other thing Brandt wanted was a gun. He had absolutely no desire to use it on any of his jobs because, notwithstanding the immediate attention firing one would bring, they were inelegant, cold, impersonal weapons. Anyone could pull a trigger, but it took proximity and a certain strength of character to use a knife. But Brandt was willing to forgo the symmetry afforded by ending of his own life with a blade. If he found himself in a similar situation to earlier, where plunging to his death was not an option, he would rather blow his brains out than cut his throat. That way there was no chance of him bungling it sufficiently that someone could stem the bleeding until the ambulance arrived. Similarly, if on the run, the gun would be a more effective deterrent for any potential have-a-go heroes who considered intervening. It would also enable him to quickly get what he needed from people. Clearly obtaining one was going to present more of a challenge than getting hold of his savings, but a career working the streets made Brandt confident he knew the right places to go.

  When the report finally came through that Lily James, as they had named her, had been murdered, it wasn’t so much relief he felt but anxiety. Much as fear of being caught had brought him to the brink of suicide, it was something he had known was a possibility from the first Saturday he headed to Nottingham. The dread he now felt was different. Now that he no longer was concentrating on the likelihood of being arrested, he had to focus on the much darker reality of what he had done. Whilst he waited for the connection to be made with the St. Albans murder, he contemplated how this would be presented by the police and how it would be perceived in the press. Every hour that passed without him being provided with the answer was torture; an agony fuelled by snippets he found on social media whilst constantly searching for the news to break.

  Previously Brandt had never understood the attraction of sites like Twitter; much less their use, except for famous people to write in haste what they would later regret. Yet he had become aware of what people had been saying since he had embarked on his new career. Initially he had stumbled on comments whilst completing internet searches linked to his actions, but he soon realised that they were a barometer of people’s perception of what he was doing. He had originally gauged reaction from what was in the news, but social media allowed him to bypass much of that and get straight to the national consciousness. This was because there were always a few people, if you read enough of the replies, that approved of what he was doing. It would seem there was a small section of society that believed women’s liberation had gone too far and that the way many women now acted and presented themselves was inappropriate. They said that what he was doing was reminding women of the need to be more conservative. Although this hadn’t been Brandt’s actual motivation, he could see some sense in what they had been saying. He thought back to the situation with his wife. If they had been married decades ago, she would have stood by him and provided him with what he needed; for that would have been her job, rather than focusing selfishly all the time on what she wanted.

  It wasn’t those who seemed in support of him that gave him the greatest strength. Conversely, it was the vast majority of those who commented. They were quite vociferous in their condemnation of his actions and, from that, he drew comfort. An increasing number of women were posting about concern for their safety and being more careful where they went, especially if unaccompanied. For Brandt, their perception reflected the reality of what he saw day in and day out when he was in the police. The streets had become more dangerous; Britain had become less safe and yet the Government, the media and, to a certain degree, the police itself had chosen to ignore this; relying on the public’s apparent desensitisation to violence and crime to leave the truth unspoken. What Brandt had managed, even if it was just on a small scale at this stage, was to cause it to be spoken about and make people sensitive to what was happening. He considered some of the nature documentaries he so enjoyed on television. What better way to attempt to illustrate the impact of global warming, something that most people know is bad, but few do anything about, than to show a polar bear unable to feed her new born cubs because the seals they would look to feed off are resting on ice that has become detached from the mainland. It matters not to the filmmakers that what they are observing may just be because the region has entered the summer months and there is something of a natural thaw; the perception is that global warming is melting all the icecaps so they make the perceived reality of what they are shooting fit that view. What Brandt was doing was artificially magnifying the horrors in British society to the point where they could no longer be ignored.

  But the link to St. Albans could undermine all that. Social media was already speculating on what kind of a person killed Lily James. With the news of some bungled attempt at rape, or however they chose to describe it, the focus would switch from the victims to the
attacker. Until this point there had been the odd random speculation as to his identity, each as fanciful and fantastical as the last, and none had been latched on to by the media. Of course, with them being women, there was some talk about a sexual motivation but there had been no evidence for that. Clearly Brandt had planned for this in St. Albans but whilst he had seen sexual violence as something for people to fear, the apparent notional quick fumble was going to be ridiculed.

  As Brandt waited and waited, and with that delicious and enriching sleep of a few nights ago a fading memory, he became certain he would be described by the papers as impotent. In the limbo that seemed to exist solely for those on the point of exhaustion, he was visited by memories of his wife asking him, with a mixture of pity and frustration, whether he needed to see a doctor.

  On one particular evening she had cooked a special meal; special in the sense that it was half-way edible. He knew something was up when she watched him closely as he poured his first measure of whisky, which, as was typical back then, came almost before he had removed his coat. Feeling her stare on him, he only half filled the glass; her smile that followed telling him that he had done the right thing. She had bought wine to accompany the dinner in order to add to the mood, but kept the bottle on her side of the table so as to be in control of its dispensing. That she had drunk the majority was a source of curiosity to Brandt, the reason revealed when she announced she had also prepared dessert but, rather than going to the fridge, excused herself and went upstairs. Unsure what to do next, he had remained seated, listening to the creak of the floorboards and the associated noises of his wife’s movements to give clue as to what was happening.

  She returned in lingerie that had clearly been bought for the occasion. A black lace bodice with pink fluff around its edges, along with stockings and suspenders and a pair of shoes with heels way too high for her. Brandt had only seen such an outfit in his increasing internet usage. Whereas before it had made the models look sultry and seductive, here on his wife it just looked contrived. It served to hold in her stomach and accentuate her curves but the cellulite on her substantial thighs stood out in stark contrast. Nevertheless, whilst not being a turn on for Brandt, nor was it a turn off. In fact, as he sat there gazing at the sight before him, something his wife took to mean he was impressed, it was more the implication of the outfit than the look itself that provided him with hope. If she went to this much effort, in a slightly misguided attempt to aid her appearance, it surely meant she might actually do something in the bedroom besides lying there motionless. Not only might she put some effort in herself, but she might be willing to engage in foreplay designed to do more than just make him sufficiently hard that he could enter her.