The Creeper

by Tania Carver

  ‘I know. Just tell me your name. Then I know who I’m talking to.’

  Another sigh.

  ‘Julie. My name’s Julie…’

  45

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Fiona Welch turned, stopped. She was kneeling on the counter in Paula Harrison’s kitchen, hands in the overhead cupboards. A jar of instant coffee lay on its side, still rolling, spilling brown granules as it rocked from side to side.

  ‘I’m… just getting something… for the tea…’

  Phil closed the kitchen door behind him so Paula couldn’t see in. He crossed the small kitchen until he was standing directly in front of her. She turned, still kneeling, and towered over him.

  Phil’s hands were balled into fists at his side. He flexed, unflexed them. ‘Get down.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay here, thank you. Harder for you to be angry with me if I assume a physically dominant position.’

  ‘Get down.’

  The sultry librarian smile appeared again. ‘Don’t you like dominant women?’ She frowned, quizzical. ‘Is that a police thing, d’you think? An alpha male response?’

  He was shaking with anger. He managed to keep his voice steady. ‘If I have to come up there and get you down, you won’t like it.’

  He stared at her. She locked eyes with him.

  Eventually she looked away. Climbed down.

  Phil made no attempt to help her.

  When she was on her feet he grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is someone’s house. Someone whose daughter’s gone missing.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Fiona said, picking up his rage and flinging it back at him, her voice an angry hiss, ‘I was looking for clues, evidence. Anything that I could find to help me build a fuller picture of Adele Harrison. I mean, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, isn’t it? Putting together a profile?’

  ‘Of whoever’s taken her. Of whoever killed Julie Miller. Not…’ – he gestured round the kitchen. The coffee had stopped spilling out now, the jar motionless – ‘… this.’

  Fiona Welch looked unrepentant. ‘Did you see the living room? Not a single book on a single bookshelf. DVDs, yes, but no books.’

  ‘So? These are real people here. With real lives. Not everyone gets all their ideas from books.’

  A strange smile playing on her lips as if she was filing away his words, mentally storing them for use in some future thesis. That just made him even angrier.

  ‘I think it’s best if you leave. Right now.’

  She blinked. Twice. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t want you with me any more.’

  ‘But Ben said-’

  ‘I don’t give a stuff what Ben said. I’m running this investigation and I don’t want you here. OK?’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Go. Now.’

  She gave him one last look of blazing defiance and opened her mouth as if to say something then closed it again, thinking better of it. She turned and left.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Phil said, putting a mug of tea down before Paula. The mug was big and looked well used. On the side it had a cartoon of a smiling woman holding a baby in one hand and a vacuum cleaner in the other and underneath was written: World’s Best Mum.

  ‘Is that your mug?’ said Phil.

  ‘Adele’s,’ said Paula, sipping from it. ‘Got it on Nadine’s first birthday. Told Adele it was from the baby.’ She choked back a sob.

  ‘OK,’ said Phil, putting his mug down and leaning forwards, keeping Paula focused long enough to talk to him. ‘Questions.’

  She took a deep breath. Waited for him to start.

  ‘Tell me about Adele.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘What she’s like… how she seemed before she went missing, that kind of thing.’

  Another deep breath. ‘She was… before she disappeared she was lovely. Best I’d seen her in years.’

  Phil frowned. ‘Why? What happened before that?’

  ‘Well, she was… wild. You know what kids are like. Her dad ran off, left us. Just me, Adele and her brother.’

  Phil glanced at the photos on the wall of the young soldier. ‘That’s him? Adele’s brother?’

  Paula nodded, head down. ‘Was.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He died. Just over a year ago. Helmand Province. Afghanistan.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Paula kept her head down, nodded. ‘Roadside bomb. IED, they call them now.’ She sighed. ‘Got my letter from the Prime Minister. That was somethin’.’

  Her tone of voice told him it wasn’t.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Wayne.’ Still looking into her lap.

  ‘How did Adele take it?’

  Paula looked up, thought for a while before answering. ‘It hit her. Hard. She’d been runnin’ round before then, ever since her dad…’ She sighed. ‘… her dad left, she’d be off with boys, sometimes for days on end. Then she got pregnant and that was like a wake-up call, you know? Like an, an intervention.’

  Too much Jeremy Kyle, thought Phil. He nodded.

  ‘She settled down. Got a job.’ Paula looked directly at Phil. ‘I know what you think. What DS Farrell said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Adele was a prostitute. A whore. Well, she wasn’t. Maybe she liked her boyfriends to give her something, presents, and that, but she wasn’t a whore. Definitely not.’

  Phil nodded. ‘She was a barmaid, wasn’t she?’

  Paula nodded.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘The Freemason’s Arms, Military Road.’

  ‘I know it.’

  Paula gave a small smile. ‘I bet you do. It’s not as bad as people think, though. And, anyway, that was just temporary for Adele. She was savin’ up, goin’ back to college. Get some A levels first. Then…’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Somethin’.’

  ‘And there was nothing to show that she was going to run away again?’

  Paula leaned forward. ‘Nothin’. At all. Nothin’.’

  Phil talked with her a while longer, asking more questions. Adele had left the Freemason’s Arms after a shift to walk the couple of streets to her home. She never arrived. Between Paula reporting the disappearance and DS Farrell’s investigation starting, any possible forensic evidence had been lost.

  Adele had no boyfriend. Studying too hard for that, Paula said.

  Phil had a look in her room but felt like there was nothing he could find there. Farrell had already done it and it was clear Paula had tidied things away.

  He came back downstairs, ready to go. He looked at the photos on the wall. There was one of Paula’s two children together. Taken at a barbecue, the young man wearing an apron and holding up a speared sausage. The young woman at the side of him holding a bottle of some violently coloured alcopop, both smiling for the camera, laughing as if they would stay that way forever. Life would always be as good as that moment.

  ‘That’s her,’ said Paula. ‘With Wayne. Just before he went back to Afghanistan. Just before…’ She sighed.

  Phil kept looking at them. Adele had long dark hair. Just like Julie Miller. Just like Suzanne Perry. Just like the unrecognisable corpse on the lightship.

  ‘It’s always us that gets hit worse, isn’t it?’ said Paula. ‘The poor people. The ones who live round here. Never them in the posh houses, is it?’

  Phil thought of the body he had found the previous morning, the trip to Julie Miller’s parents house.

  ‘Not always,’ he said. ‘Sometimes grief is grief, whatever or whoever.’

  He left.

  46

  Mickey Philips was bored. There were people who probably enjoyed this kind of thing, scrolling through lists on screens, working their way down printouts and sheets of numbers and details. But he wasn’t one of them.

  He would watch TV shows like Spooks and CSI and watch the tech guys doing what he was doing, except on better computers and in more moodily lit
offices, and it only took them a few seconds to get a match. Then they’d up and off, guns out, shouting and roping in the bad guy before the end credits.

  How he wished real life could be like that.

  Instead he sat at his desk in the incident room at Southway, cup of something dark and brown masquerading as coffee at his side, pen in his mouth, while he scrolled down a screen and cross-referenced the numbers he saw there with the list in front of him.

  The incident room was in the bar. He had found that a little strange at first, but Phil had assured him it was always the way with a major case. Tables had become desks, upholstered seats, stools and banquettes office chairs. The pool table had been covered over and was now home to a scale-model cityscape made out of files and papers. The whiteboard had been placed in front of the shuttered bar itself, photos of the two dead girls and two missing ones linked by spider-web felt-tip lines and circled names. A constant reminder, should anyone look up from their desks, of what they were engaged in, what was at stake.

  Couldn’t have been more obvious, thought Mickey, if someone had put a ticking clock next to it.

  He sighed, took a sip from the mug of brown water with grit in it, grimaced, went back to his lists. This was the part of the job he hated most. He knew that didn’t make him unique but it wasn’t something he’d done too much of in his previous posting. Although, considering how he was back then, this kind of thing might not have been such a bad idea. Would have kept him out of trouble, at least.

  Or in less trouble, at any rate.

  He had spent most of the morning printing off photos of vans, 4×4s and pickup trucks, then had headed back to see his burger van guy. Needless to say, he wasn’t pleased to see him. After Mickey had left he had been questioned yet again, his alibi checked and rechecked and his background gone into, none of which had helped to improve his mood.

  But Mickey had persevered, reminding him of the good business generated by the police working the scene of crime. When that didn’t work he played on his conscience, saying he owed it to the murdered girl to find her killer. When that appeal fell on deaf ears he told him the way he’d been questioned up to now was nothing and that he’d hit him with everything he could, both him and his van and his family if he had to, if he didn’t help. That did it. Reluctantly, the burger van guy had looked through the photos.

  Mickey had watched him doing it, gauged his reaction. Eventually they had the make and model narrowed down to two: a Ford Fiesta van or a Citroën Nemo. When pressed, he had narrowed it down even further: a Citroën Nemo. Mickey had thanked him for his time and told him not to go away; he would be back if he needed to see him again. The burger van man was clearly overjoyed at that news.

  So there was Mickey sitting in the office. Finding Nemo. It was all a matter of circling round, narrowing down, moving in. He had discounted any Nemos that weren’t black. Then he had discarded any that weren’t registered within a hundred-mile radius. There were still more than he would have liked. Then he made a separate list of vans registered in Colchester. Again, still more than he would have liked. That was where he would start. If he drew a blank with that list, he would start again. He just hoped he struck lucky. If not he would have to try van hire and leasing companies and, if that yielded no results, go nationwide. But whatever happened, he knew he wouldn’t be up and running with his gun out, shouting and roping in the bad guy any time soon.

  ‘Hi.’

  He looked up, startled out of his reverie. Fiona Welch stood before him, head on one side, smiling.

  ‘Oh. Hi.’ He turned away from the screen, rubbed his eyes. ‘How you doing?’

  ‘Fine.’ She smiled. Perched herself on the edge of his desk. ‘Thought I’d come back and start on my report. Think I’ve got enough to be going on with now.’

  ‘Did Phil show you round everywhere?’

  She smiled but something flitted behind her eyes, something fleeting and unpleasant. ‘I’ve seen as much from him as I need to see.’

  ‘Good. Well, I’ll let you get on with it…’

  Still sitting on the edge of Mickey’s desk, Fiona Welch stretched, arching her back and in the process thrusting her breasts out. He tried not to look, glancing everywhere and anywhere rather than at her, but couldn’t resist.

  A quick look. And another. Nice, he thought. Very nice. Not his type, but still… boobs are boobs.

  She finished stretching, put her arms by her side. Smiled at him.

  ‘So what you working on, then?’

  He gestured towards the screen, the printout. ‘The van. Got a sighting of a black van near the quayside. Working my way through all possible combinations, trying to find the right one.’

  She was still smiling. He returned the smile.

  ‘Not like the kind of thing you do. Proper, good old-fashioned police grunt work, this.’

  ‘Everything has its place,’ Fiona Welch said. She leaned forward, looking at the list, the screen. ‘So how d’you do it, then? How d’you find the right van?’

  Mickey found it hard to look at her face. Once again her breasts were dominating his vision. Since she had leaned forward he also got an unimpeded view down her low-cut top. The curve of her breast, the edging of her bra – white lace – the shadow of her cleavage when she moved around…

  ‘Sorry?’ He looked up. ‘What?’

  She was smiling at him. Innocent, seemingly unaware of the effect she was having on him. ‘I said how do you know you’ve got the right van?’

  ‘Oh, erm…’ He could feel himself blushing. He looked down at the screen, away from her, started talking. ‘We, er, I cross-reference. Get a list of everyone who owns the van we want then check it against…’

  He looked up again. Fiona Welch was no longer looking at him; her eyes were jumping between the screen and the printout, scanning her way down both, lips moving as she read. He stopped talking. It took her a couple of seconds but she stopped reading, looked back to him. ‘And you know what kind of van it is.’ she said, more of a statement than a question.

  ‘A Citroën Nemo.’ He smiled. ‘Finding Nemo, eh?’ He had been waiting for an opportunity to do that joke.

  Fiona Welch didn’t laugh, just nodded. Looked around once more, checking desks and empty spaces. ‘So where’s everyone else?’

  ‘Anni’s looking into Suzanne Perry and Zoe Herriot’s background, Rose is checking on Julie Miller and Phil, well, you know where Phil is.’

  She nodded, made to stand up. ‘Nice chatting to you. Got to make my report now. But thanks. Knowing what he drives, the van, it all helps.’

  She turned and, before he could say anything else, walked away from him.

  He watched her go, her legs striding across the office to where a makeshift desk had been made for her.

  She was an odd one, he knew that much. Probably because of all that academia, that learning. They forget how to talk to people properly in the real world. And she wasn’t his type, not at all.

  But the way she arched her back, her breasts…

  He wouldn’t say no.

  Probably.

  Mickey looked at the screen once more. Tried to get his attention back on the job in hand. Glanced across the room to Fiona Welch. She was sitting at her desk, BlackBerry in her hands, thumbs working away. Making notes or texting or something. Lips moving with the words, head cocked again on one side, smiling, nodding as she wrote.

  Lucky bloke, thought Mickey. Then admonished himself. Was he really falling for a mousy little thing like her? Was he getting jealous over who she was talking to?

  Her legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankles.

  Nice legs, too.

  He shook his head, tried to force himself away from the direction his thoughts were heading in, the feelings running through him. Tried very hard to ignore the growing bulge in his trousers.

  He took a sip of the cold brown water, grimaced. Looked at the screen.

  Forced Fiona Welch out of his head.

  Himself back to wo
rk.

  47

  The Creeper was missing Rani.

  Lying there, slowly rocking, the gentle sway going from side to side, should have been comforting, lulling.

  But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what he had had. It wasn’t back in the flat with Rani.

  That was what he lived for. Planned for, worked towards. The time they could spend together. And when it was cut short like that it hurt. Especially when she hadn’t spoken to him yet, given him her next location.

  Maybe he should get up, go for a walk, see if he could spot her. No. He’d tried that before. Daytime made him too visible. Too obvious. Attracted too much attention. He worked better in darkness, where he could use the shadows, practise stealth. And even then he might not find her. At worst, he would just settle for someone who reminded him of her. And that didn’t satisfy anyone.

  He knew. He’d done it before.

  So he would wait. Be patient. Lie low. Even though it was killing him.

  The reason it felt so bad this time was because he felt so… unconsummated.

  It was the third time she had appeared. Each one better than the last. Closer. And in the flat, just the two of them… that was the best so far. Perfect. Living with her, watching over her, looking out for her. They had eaten together, watched TV together, even slept together. Him right above her, watching over her in bed. He smiled, his heart sang again at the memory. Sure, certain people got in the way and had to be dealt with but that was nothing. That always happened. The course of true love, and that.

  And then she said she was leaving. And he had to dump the husk. It wasn’t right. All his plans, his ideas… never got to carry them out. And that upset him. He had such plans for Rani, such exquisite plans… she would have been screaming in pleasure at them.

  But no.

  Or rather, not yet.

  He sighed, looked round. At least he could see Rani from where he was. He had covered the walls with pictures of her in her various incarnations. He saw her everywhere. Sometimes glimpsed only through TV and magazines. Newspapers. Sometimes tantalisingly close, near enough to reach out and stroke, but just too far away. And sometimes right beside him. With him. He had photos from all of that.