Trust Me

by T. M. Logan

  Police have been hunting the killer since late August after previous attacks which left two women dead.

  The kettle clicks off but I ignore it, scrolling down through the text of the story, trying to work out what this might have to do with Mia. There are more details of the two previous victims, Sienna Parker, aged twenty-four, and Louise Taggart, twenty-nine. Both sex workers from the Northolt area, killed two weeks apart, both found in woodland off the same stretch of the A40 in north-west London. There are head-and-shoulders pictures of both women in happier times, both young, pretty, smiling. No anonymity for them in death.

  There’s more background, more comments from the unnamed police source, thinly-veiled speculation that the perpetrator had not realised his third victim was still alive when he dumped her, and somehow she was still clinging to life when she was found by passersby a short time later; that the killer may have been disturbed in the act of disposing of the body, before he could check his latest victim was dead; hope that she might be able to identify her killer if and when she recovered. Not a whole lot of concrete progress in terms of finding the person responsible, the vacuum filled by yet more disposable speculation on social media that he was a forensic scientist or some kind of CSI expert turned killer, like the fictional Dexter from the eponymous TV show.

  Lower down, far below the unnamed – and possibly made-up – quote from ‘a Met Police source’, is an attributed quote and a name I recognise instantly.

  Detective Inspector Stuart Gilbourne, who is leading the hunt for the Ghost, appealed for potential witnesses to get in touch: ‘Somebody will know the man who’s done this. He’s a neighbour, a colleague, maybe even a friend. Any information you have, however insignificant you think it might be, could be key to the investigation. We’re also very keen to speak to the owner of a dark blue or black estate car seen in the vicinity on the night of the attack.’

  There’s a phone number to ring, and a description that says the suspect is thought to be a white male between thirty and forty-five, around five eight to five ten, average build, dark hair. It doesn’t exactly narrow it down much; there must be a million men that fit that description in greater London alone. There’s no photofit image of a suspect, which presumably means no witness managed to get a good look at him. It sounds like the police were desperately short of leads and clutching at straws. I scroll back up to the five-word headline at the top of the story.

  Has The Ghost Struck Again?

  What’s that thing Tara always says about headlines with a question mark at the end? The rule is, ninety per cent of the time it means the answer to the question is ‘No’ – but the headline and the story are just too juicy not to publish. It’s one of those flippant things she says and I’m never sure whether she means it or not. But this story feels like it might be an exception to the rule. Reading the text for a second time, it feels true. It makes a sick kind of sense that this guy would keep on attacking women until he was caught. It makes sense that he wouldn’t stop.

  At the little desk, I pour water from the kettle into the mug, the tink of the spoon against white porcelain the only sound in the silence of my hotel room. The plastic bag of food I brought with me from home sits on the desk – bananas, apples, biscuits – but I can’t face any of it. My appetite has disappeared. Caffeine’s the only thing I can summon any enthusiasm for right now.

  I scroll to the bottom of the story on my phone, tapping on a headline that links to a more recent piece. An image of two grey-faced couples, the women holding up framed pictures of smiling young women, the same head-and-shoulders images used in the previous story.

  Families’ Plea For Justice As Ghost Probe Hits Dead End

  By Matt Simms, Crime Correspondent

  GRIEVING families of two women murdered by a suspected serial killer are demanding justice on the anniversary of the first attack.

  Detectives admit they are no closer to finding an attacker dubbed ‘the Ghost’ after it was revealed he had left no DNA, fingerprints or other physical evidence behind. He is believed to be responsible for a string of vicious attacks that left two women dead and a third fighting for her life.

  The families of Sienna Parker and Louise Taggart made an emotional appeal today for renewed efforts to track down the killer.

  Jacqui Taggart, mother of victim Louise Taggart, said, ‘We want justice for our daughter. Every day that goes by, every family birthday, it just gets harder knowing she isn’t here. Someone out there has information that will help the police bring our daughter’s killer to justice – I would just ask you to please, please pass that information on to the police.’

  Andrew Parker, father of Sienna Parker, said, ‘The police promised us they wouldn’t stop until they found the man who took our daughter away from us. But one year on, we’re no nearer to knowing what happened. It’s been a living hell.’

  Murder detection figures for the Met make worrying reading. Until 2015 detections remained stable, with only 5 to 10% of cases unsolved. But since then the proportion of unsolved killings has risen as high as 26% in the capital. Police insiders have blamed a shortage of detectives and forensic science provision, alongside increased demands on police.

  A Met Police spokesman said, ‘Behind every unsolved murder there is a family looking for answers. That’s why this investigation is ongoing and why detectives will continue to pursue this offender until he is brought to justice.’

  There’s no mention of DI Gilbourne anywhere in the piece. Perhaps he was taken off the case, or maybe just shifted on to other live investigations that came up in the meantime. There’s nothing from the family of the other victim either, the only mention is a single line near the bottom of the story. ‘The family of the third victim declined to comment.’

  I look up from the screen, a feeling of nausea rising up from my stomach. No wonder Gilbourne couldn’t tell me more about the case he’s working on. It also explains Max’s reaction when I went to Kathryn’s flat in Little Missenden, why he virtually slammed the door in my face: Kathryn’s sister was the third victim of an attacker who was never caught.

  49

  I pour two thimble-sized pots of UHT milk into my coffee and send a WhatsApp message to Tara.

  Can you talk?

  The coffee is strong and bitter, but the kick is almost immediate as the caffeine hits my bloodstream. I stir in half a sachet of sugar to make it a little more palatable and take another sip. A selfie pops up in reply to my message: Tara on her sofa, birds-nest hair and bleary-eyed from sleep. Charlie, her youngest, is on her lap, thumb clamped in his mouth, both of them wrapped together in a large blue blanket. They look so cosy together I can’t help but smile, despite what I’ve just read. The message below the picture reads:

  Not right now, deep into Paw Patrol. But can text.

  You read Daily Mail story?

  Yes, grim. The three attacks definitely

  connected then?

  It’s not actually confirmed on the record by police.

  Daily Mail and all that

  I take the coffee back to bed, tucking my legs under me and wrapping the duvet around myself. My phone buzzes with another message from Tara.

  Looks to me like the story is solid. Simms is a sleazeball

  but he’s a good operator. Good contacts. If Met had

  squashed the connection theory he wouldn’t still be

  touting it around a year later

  So Kathryn’s sister was third victim of this guy?

  He wouldn’t say it out loud or put on email, got

  very cagey. But I used my charms

  The message ends with an emoji of a laughing/crying face. I type another message.

  How did he know her name?

  Wouldn’t say. My guess: £££

  changed hands with a police contact

  So she recovered then if still got anonymity?

  Assume so

  I wonder what it’s like, having to live your life knowing that the man who attacked you is stil
l out there, carrying on as if nothing has happened. Recovering from terrible injuries, all the while worrying that he might be watching you, stalking you, ready to strike again if the mood took him. Ready to finish the job he’d already started. I also wonder how this story managed to pass me by when it first happened, when it was making headlines like this one. It rings a vague bell, but it was around the time of our last go at IVF, when I was focused on that to the exclusion of almost everything else – even Richard’s affair, I realised later.

  I read the whole news story again, more slowly this time, lines jumping out at me as I scroll down.

  ‘. . . woman attacked and left for dead . . .’

  ‘. . . sustained and brutal attack . . .’

  ‘. . . bears all the hallmarks of previous crimes . . .’

  My mind spins back to Thursday, to Leon Markovitz in my house. Lying in wait for me, his face almost totally covered by a balaclava. Fingerless gloves with latex gloves beneath them. ‘Murder detectives have reportedly been unable to find ANY fingerprints, fibres or traces of DNA.’ And there was something else odd about the way he looked, something I noticed on the train but was too preoccupied with Mia to fully take in.

  His eyebrows. Shaped and plucked, perfect fine lines. No, not shaped but gone completely. Plucked out and drawn in again. His head shaved tight to the scalp. No hair or eyebrows to leave a trace at a crime scene. I remember his podcast, Inside the Killing Mind. The retelling of dozens of sadistic murders in graphically gruesome detail, for a large online audience. Victims – mostly women – stabbed and strangled, their bodies battered and violated and dismembered. Buried in shallow graves, disposed of as if their lives were nothing, meant nothing, had been nothing. How deeply could you immerse yourself in that world before it started to have an effect on you? How long before it started to distort the lens through which you viewed everyday life? A shiver flashes through me as I remember the encounter in my spare room, his black-clad form emerging from behind the door, dead eyes flat and unblinking in the moments before he raised the stun gun to my neck. The split-second of helpless fear, of agonising pain before I blacked out. I pull the duvet closer around me, willing the memory away.

  No matter. The article has given me an idea. I finish my coffee, the last mouthful already tepid, and send another message to Tara.

  Thanks for this. Really helpful xx

  No prob. You going to tell me

  what’s happening?

  Soon. Need to ask you another

  favour though in meantime

  Of course. Anything to distract me

  from Paw Patrol

  I send her a longer message telling her what I need, and there’s a ten-minute wait before she replies to say she’ll see what she can do. I finally put down the phone and lay back into the scratchy cotton pillows, still damp with sweat, staring at the ceiling of this anonymous hotel room.

  There’s something else nagging at me, scratching at the edges of my consciousness. Kathryn’s sister is the missing piece of the story, silent, anonymous, unrepresented. An absence, never named, never pictured, a victim who has maintained her silence. I started off with the assumption that Kathryn was trying to protect her own child. But there’s been something sitting quietly at the centre of the story in front of me, something so obvious I can’t believe it’s only now that I’ve finally seen it.

  I grab my phone again and scroll to the top of the story, below Simms’s by-line, where the date is listed. Time slows as another piece slides into place, and I have the feeling I knew this already, had known it as soon as I read the first lines of the article.

  The date on the first news story is September 14th just over a year ago.

  And Mia is three months old.

  50

  The inside of Langtry’s, a basement bar away from the bustle of Kensington High Street, is cool and dark. It’s not busy, just a few office workers enjoying a lunch-time drink, and a handful of tourists taking a break from the shops. I find who I’m looking for sitting alone in a booth against the back wall, two high-backed wooden benches facing each other across a ring-stained wooden table. He’s in his late thirties, a couple of days’ stubble on his cheeks and dark bristly hair cut the same short length all over. ‘You’ll recognise him from his by-line picture online,’ Tara had told me earlier. ‘Just add ten years and twenty pounds to bring him up to date.’ He’s scrolling on his phone as I walk up, a half-drunk pint of bitter on the table in front of him.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, and slide into the booth opposite him.

  He looks up in surprise, already shaking his head in apology. ‘Sorry, love, that seat’s taken.’ He glances around the bar. ‘I’m waiting for a friend, she’s due any minute.’

  ‘You’re Matt, right?’ I stay where I am. ‘Matt Simms, Daily Mail?’

  He sits up a little straighter in his seat, eyes narrowing. ‘Sorry,’ he says again. ‘Who’d you say you were looking for?’

  ‘My name’s Ellen Devlin. I’m a friend of Tara Richardson.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Tara for a drink.’ He checks his watch. ‘Like, now.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, holding my hands up in apology. ‘Sorry about that, I asked her to ask you. I wanted to meet you face-to-face but I didn’t think you’d do that for a total stranger.’

  ‘Tara’s . . . not coming?’

  ‘Afraid not, but she said to say hi from her, and thanks for the chat yesterday.’ I flash him a smile. ‘Can I buy you a drink instead? Then I’ll explain.’

  Simms shrugs as if he’s still trying to decide whether he’s annoyed about being played. ‘Err . . .’

  ‘Pint of London Pride, is it?’

  The reporter looks down at his pint glass, still half-full. ‘Why not?’ he says.

  I get up to fetch the drinks, watching his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He straightens his tie, tucks his shirt in and runs a hand through his hair, patting down the unruly strands before taking a generous gulp of his bitter. When I return to the booth, with another pint for him and a large tonic water for myself, he seems to have gathered his wits and greets me with a grin.

  ‘Cheers Matt,’ I say, clinking my glass against his.

  ‘So, Ellen,’ he says, leaning back and spreading both arms along the back of the booth. ‘It was you who wanted to know about the Ghost, was it? Not Tara?’

  ‘You wrote a couple of pieces about the victims and their families.’

  ‘If you want to complain about a story in the paper you need to use the proper channels, go through the managing editor, he deals with all that—’

  I take a sip of my drink. ‘I don’t want to complain,’ I say.

  He looks at me dead-on, straight in the eyes, looking for any flickers of deceit. ‘Are you recording this, Ellen?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘So you’re a journalist? With the Express, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m a friend of Tara’s from way back. We were in the navy together.’

  He takes another pull on his first pint, still studying me over the top of his glass. ‘Well, if Tara’s vouched for you, that’s good enough for me,’ he says finally. ‘So what’s your interest in that story? There’s not been anything new on it for ages.’

  ‘I know the sister of one of the victims. And . . . I think that story, the Ghost, is about to blow up again.’

  ‘OK.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘You’ve got my attention. What makes you say that?’

  ‘Can I ask you a few things about the case first? Strictly off the record?’

  ‘Sure, you can ask.’

  ‘You contacted the family of the third victim, right?’

  ‘A few times.’

  ‘So when it says in your story that someone “declined to comment”, does that mean you couldn’t actually get hold of them, or . . .’

  ‘I tried, but they weren’t interested. Went out to the house myself the first time but never got past the gates. Sent a casual a couple of times after that, it’s a rig
ht ball-ache to get to from here, you can waste half the day going there and back.’

  ‘A casual?’

  ‘One of the general news grunts, given three or four casual shifts a week,’ he says as if this should be obvious. ‘New guys, paid on a day rate rather than a permanent contract.’

  ‘Right,’ I say with a nod. ‘So you know where the family lives?’

  ‘Makes the doorknock more straightforward if you know which door you need to knock on.’ He gives me a wink. ‘I mean, yes, I managed to get hold of the parents’ address.’

  ‘How’d you do it?’

  ‘Does it matter? Anyway, like I said to Tara on the phone, the name of the third victim is covered by anonymity, so I can’t really discuss it with you.’

  ‘I already have her name, I’m not asking you for that.’ I run a finger around the rim of my glass. ‘I’m just intrigued. Tara said you were a good operator, one of the best. She speaks very highly of you, how you get stories that other reporters can’t.’

  Simms shrugs, but allows himself a small smile. ‘Called in a few favours, that was all. Then it was just a case of making some calls, asking the right people the right questions, wearing out the shoe leather the old-fashioned way.’

  ‘The thing is, Matt . . . I really need to see them. I know they’re in Prestwood Ash, but I don’t have a street address.’

  ‘And you think I’m going to hand it over, do you?’

  I lean forward, my hand inches from his on the stained wooden table. ‘I need to see them urgently, Matt, and I would really appreciate your help.’ When he doesn’t respond, I add, ‘Please?’

  Simms leans forward on the table too, his head close to mine. The move is familiar, almost intimate, and brings with it the smells of exhaled beer and old clothes not properly dried from the rain.