by LJ Ross
“Well, hello, sweetheart. I was worried for a minute you weren’t going to come around.”
Her body began to tremble violently at the sound of his voice and her heart stuttered against her chest in sheer animal panic.
At her bedside, he drank it in, savouring the power like an addict, tipping his head back in ecstasy.
“See?” he said thickly. “I’ll bet you never thought you’d see me again, did you? You surprised both of us, darling.”
He adjusted the makeshift drip at her bedside, surveyed the wounds inflicted the previous day, and then perched on the edge of a chair. He was covered in a plastic boiler suit and didn’t worry about leaving any part of himself behind.
Nicola heard him rustling somewhere nearby and her fingers clutched at the bedclothes, trying to find purchase. Pain was beginning to bloom all over her body, from the innumerable slashing cuts he’d inflicted the day before. They traced the route he would later take to remove her limbs and torso but, for now, they were a road map of shallow red lines that stung whenever she moved.
“Now, I don’t want you to worry about infection,” he was saying. “I’ve taken the liberty of administering a little cocktail that will keep you fighting fit for as long as I need you. The fact is, Nicola, I have another woman in mind, but I’ll have to wait a few days.”
He sighed, affecting an air of regret.
“Now, don’t be jealous. We’ve had a wonderful time together, but I’ve never been a one-woman kind of guy.”
Quick as a flash, he leaned forward—so close she could feel his breath against her skin, could see his pupils dilate at the prospect of ending her then and there.
“Women love a bad boy, don’t they?” he growled. “Want me to show you how bad I can be, Nicola?”
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and her bowels loosened.
“Tut, tut,” he said. “Do you expect me to clean that up? There’s very little point in changing the bed linen, considering you won’t be with us very much longer.”
“Please,” she gasped, feeling her throat burn with the effort. “Please don’t—”
She fell into a coughing fit and he watched impassively, settling back against the chair and crossing his legs to make himself comfortable.
“I know what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling, Nicola. You’re wondering, ‘why me?’ and, ‘what did I do to deserve this?’ ”
Her chest rose and fell as she tried to regulate her breathing.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Nicola,” he said, conversationally. “You didn’t do a thing except exist. You’re just unlucky. In a parallel world, you’d have gone on to live a long and healthy life, probably marry a doctor and have a couple of kids.” He heaved a self-effacing sigh. “Unfortunately, I’d much rather see what your insides look like and I’m unable to do that without killing you in the process. It’s a pity but I’ve always been a selfish creature, really. That’s what the agony aunts say, isn’t it? You can’t change a man; he can only change himself. How right they are.”
He heaved himself up again, rising above her like a towering demon.
“I can’t stay long, this time,” he whispered, reaching for his bag and the scrap of vomit-soaked material he’d used to gag her the previous day.
“N-no,” she gargled.
“I’ll have to make do with a quickie.”
* * *
At four o’clock, Ryan’s team re-assembled. Most of his workforce had mustered enough strength to stay for the duration, so the Incident Room hummed with a sense of renewed purpose. Strategic teams huddled in groups while telephone operatives occupied a corner fielding a constant stream of prank and nuisance calls from the public. Crime analysts requisitioned four tables at the back of the room and were seated in silence, eyes trained on their computer screens as they scrolled through pages of data. Lowerson and MacKenzie had stationed themselves in the centre of the room and sifted through an avalanche of paperwork, learning all there was to know about Isobel Harris and Sharon Cooper. Phillips had taken a seat as far away from them as possible—no doubt an act of self-preservation—while he harassed other law enforcement and government agencies for the information they held. In the corner of the room, a wall-mounted television had been tuned to the local news channel with its sound muted and subtitles enabled. News of another murder had taken the city by storm and reignited a state of panic, causing ordinary people to imagine a killer lurking in every shadow and behind every door. Even if they had wanted to, there was little the press could do to subdue an increasingly restless mood. After all, if the police could not protect themselves, what hope did they have of protecting the rest of them?
These sobering thoughts had been echoed by the Chief Constable and Superintendent, who had issued Ryan with a stark reminder of the consequences they faced as a constabulary if justice was not seen to be done.
Having extricated himself from the stuffy confines of Gregson’s office for the second time in as many days, Ryan now stood in the doorway surveying the activity in the Incident Room. He was pleased to see anger harnessed into productivity but considerably less pleased to see another sensational news report rolling across the television screen. With growing resentment, he watched a reporter walk down the street where Isobel Harris had lived, gesticulating towards the solitary constable whose unfortunate job it was to remain and protect the scene from intrusion. The camera zoomed in on his bored face and Ryan rolled his eyes heavenward, making a mental note to schedule a mandatory session on media training once it was all over. The segment moved on to another reporter, this time stationed outside Police Headquarters capturing footage of DCS Gregson dishing out a few soundbites earlier in the day.
“I want to reassure the public that we are sparing no resource in our efforts to bring to justice whoever is responsible for the deaths of Isobel Harris and Sharon Cooper—”
“So, you believe they are one and the same, Superintendent?” one of the reporters shouted. “We were led to believe that John Dobbs killed Isobel Harris. Are you saying an innocent man committed suicide? Have you heard from his family, Superintendent? Will there be an investigation?”
“Dropped the ball there, Arthur,” Ryan murmured, folding his arms across his chest.
“I cannot confirm or deny anything that would prejudice an ongoing investigation,” Gregson said, back-peddling furiously. “That’s all I have to say for now.”
“Superintendent! Who has taken over the investigation?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Ryan will be leading a joint investigation. Anyone with relevant information should contact the Incident Room number. That’s all I have to say.”
Across the room, Phillips slammed his phone down with alacrity.
“Bloody, buggering hell!” he roared.
Ryan decided it was an apt description for the train-wreck he’d just witnessed on television but presumed the outburst related to something other than shoddy public relations.
“Another ambulance-chaser trying to flog you OAP life insurance?”
Phillips snorted.
“I should be so lucky. I’ve just had some trumped-up, pen-pushing moron from Cooper’s bank telling me they can’t release her accounts information without a warrant. Same shit as usual.”
“Privacy laws,” Ryan commiserated.
“If I ever find the jobsworth who drafted the Data Protection Act, I swear, I’ll wring their scrawny neck for them and consider it a public service.”
“So, what’s the upshot? They won’t release her information without a rubber stamp from the magistrate?”
“Aye, that’s about the long and short of it. I’ll get the paperwork signed off this afternoon and get things moving.”
“Alright. Money doesn’t look like the motivation here, but it’s usually involved somewhere.”
“Money talks,” Phillips agreed. “Cooper wasn’t rolling in it, but she did alright for herself.”
“It’s enough for some people,” Ryan said, then b
roke off the conversation as Tom Faulkner, the Senior CSI, stuck his head around the door and gave Ryan the ‘thumbs up’ sign.
“Alright, listen up!”
Ryan hitched a hip onto the edge of his desk and waited until he had their full attention.
“It’s been over twenty-four hours since Sharon’s body was discovered. What have we got to show for it?” He let the question hang in the air. “Let’s start with the basics. Sharon was a forty-nine-year-old woman in the prime of her life. She went through an acrimonious divorce six years ago but there’s no evidence to suggest her former husband is involved; he’s sailing around the Mediterranean with his new wife, happy as Larry.”
“Alright for some,” Phillips remarked.
“Sharon had one child from that marriage. William, a twenty-four-year-old dentistry student.”
Ryan nodded towards the image of Will Cooper he’d tacked onto the murder board. On the outer edge, perhaps, but still firmly on the board.
“As far as we know, there’s no suggestion of a new man in Sharon’s life. She’d dated over the years and used several online sites including LoveLife, but not recently. In summary, she was a woman devoted to her work and her son.”
There were murmurs of assent around the room.
“The statements taken from her friends and neighbours corroborate that, sir,” Lowerson chimed in. “Nobody recalls seeing a man visiting the house, except her son.”
“Which was a couple of weeks ago, in any event.”
Lowerson shook his head, rifling through his file with quick fingers.
“No, sir. Her neighbour at Number Five says she saw Will Cooper arriving the night before Sharon died.”
Ryan looked up sharply, thinking back to his discussion with the man only a few hours before. He was a grieving son, some might say. He was entitled to forget things, to make mistakes. On the other hand, there were some things you just didn’t forget and that included the last time you’d seen your mother alive.
Without a word, he slipped off the edge of the desk and moved the photograph of William Cooper closer to the smiling picture of his mother in her dress uniform. While the room watched the action with dawning comprehension, he rapped out the next order.
“Phillips? Light a fire up the magistrate’s arse. I need to know if Will Cooper had a motive. Easy enough for somebody to replicate an MO, if he was privy to that kind of information.”
“On it, boss.”
Phillips shrugged off the sense of betrayal, the uneasy knowledge that Sharon would have hated her son being implicated, and reminded himself that she was not here to defend anybody. If there was ever a time to be objective, this was it.
“Alright, let’s piece together what we know about Sharon’s last movements. Working backwards, we entered her home at around two o’clock yesterday afternoon, shortly after a response team was called out to the property. John Dobbs committed suicide an hour before that and Cooper was uncontactable throughout that time. Just after eleven o’clock, DCS Gregson received an e-mail sent from Cooper’s mobile phone, triangulated to her home address and copied to DC Hitchins and DI MacKenzie, telling them that she needed to take a couple of hours’ personal time and to continue with the surveillance until further orders—”
“Aye, and that was weird,” MacKenzie interjected. “I knew Sharon, but I wasn’t assigned to her investigation. I don’t know why she would have sent me an e-mail like that.”
“The pathologist thinks Sharon died no earlier than seven o’clock yesterday morning, no later than nine,” Ryan answered. “That being the case, it’s likely her killer sent that e-mail and selected recipients from her contacts list.”
MacKenzie cast her mind back.
“I sent Sharon an e-mail asking how she was faring and whether she wanted to have a quick drink after work if she could spare the time,” she murmured. “He must have seen it and assumed we were working together.”
Ryan nodded.
“You had no way of knowing,” Phillips murmured, surprising them both. “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent what happened.”
MacKenzie looked into his warm, button-brown eyes and wondered: had her emotions been clear for all to see, or was Phillips more perceptive than she had imagined?
“I—thanks, Frank.”
He shuffled in his chair, clearly embarrassed by his own insight.
“I’d say the same to anybody,” he replied.
MacKenzie turned away to resume the discussion with Ryan.
“So, if Cooper didn’t send those messages and the pathologist puts her death between seven and nine, we have to assume her killer gained access to her home around that time or even sometime before?”
Ryan nodded, bracing his hands against the desk while he skim-read the pathologist’s notes.
“Pinter thinks she was tortured for over an hour and she didn’t die until her arteries were severed, which would have brought on a severe cardiac arrest. It’s possible her killer accessed the house as early as five or six yesterday morning. We’ve already had it confirmed that Cooper made two outgoing phone calls yesterday morning. One was to her voicemail service, presumably to check messages, at five-fifteen. The other one was to DC Hitchins to check on the surveillance at around five-forty. Hitchins tells us Cooper sounded fine, if not a bit tired. She was planning to head into the office soon after. That narrows down the timescale.”
“Sir?”
Lowerson had his hand up again and Ryan reminded himself to have a word with him about it. They weren’t in a classroom, for pity’s sake.
“Jack, you don’t need to call me ‘sir’ all the time,” he went so far as to say. “Just…speak.”
“Thank you, s—” Lowerson swallowed the rest of that sentence and tried again. “Um, I was wondering how he managed to enter DCI Cooper’s home. She was an experienced officer—I don’t know how he could have managed it.”
Ryan laughed shortly.
“If I knew the answer to that, we’d all be out of a job,” he said. “Let’s start by considering the puncture mark on her neck.”
“Just one puncture wound?” MacKenzie queried.
Ryan nodded and thought, not for the first time, that she was a quick study.
“There were six or seven found on Isobel Harris’s body,” he said, pre-empting her next question. “What do you think that tells us?”
“He needed more sedative to take her out or maybe he misjudged the dosage?” Lowerson offered.
“Both plausible,” Ryan said. “But it could be simpler than that. What if Cooper didn’t interest him enough to prolong the execution? We don’t have the toxicology report back yet, but I’ll hazard a guess it will contain plenty of lorazepam but no adrenaline, unlike what we found in Isobel Harris’s bloodstream.”
“He had no interest in keeping Cooper alive for longer than the time it would take to set the scene,” MacKenzie concluded.
“Why?” Lowerson asked. “Why is the adrenaline important?”
Ryan ran a hand over the back of his neck and stood up to ease out the kinks.
“He gave Isobel Harris a shot of adrenaline whenever she was about to go into cardiac arrest,” he said. “It meant he could play with her for longer.”
Lowerson fell silent, struggling to comprehend the kind of deviant mentality they were searching for. Ryan wished he could tell Jack Lowerson the world consisted of good people who sometimes did bad things.
But he couldn’t.
Evil walked in human form. It hid in plain sight, walked amongst them, talked to them, deceiving them all. The sooner Lowerson came to terms with it, the better.
“It ties in with our theory about Cooper being a trophy kill, used to send a message,” Phillips was saying. “That doesn’t help us to figure out who he, or she,” he added swiftly, feeling MacKenzie’s eyes boring into the side of his head, “is going to target next.”
There was no question of whether there would be another target or of how they would die; only
a question of when and who.
Ryan looked across the room to Tom Faulkner, who nodded awkwardly and stood up to face the crowd.
“Ah, well. Actually, it’s likely that you are looking for a man,” he told them. “We already had a partial DNA profile from the samples we picked up from Isobel Harris. As of this afternoon, we isolated a match from a similar sample we found at DCI Cooper’s house yesterday. There’s no match on the DNA database but I can tell you it’s definitely male.”
“Where’d he slip up?” Phillips asked. “Was it the curtains?”
“Nope, it was the gate at the end of the pathway leading up to her front door. It’s possible he forgot to wear gloves on the way in, or he peeled them off after posting the door keys back through her letterbox and then forgot about the gate as he headed out. Easy mistake to make.”
“It’s not exactly a smoking gun,” Ryan said. “A decent defence barrister would have a field day ripping it to shreds, but beggars can’t be choosers. The chances of isolating the same DNA profile at the scene of two murders has to be off the chart and, besides, it’s all we’ve got.”
He headed over to the murder board, took a marker pen and drew a single black line through the centre of it. Then, he drew another one right beneath it.
“Ah, y’ know, there are computer programs that can do all the charts for you,” Phillips pointed out.
“Uh huh,” Ryan said, and continued scribbling pertinent events on the timeline for each woman.
Phillips pursed his lips but privately agreed there was no substitute for the visual impact of a murder board.
After a minute, Ryan replaced the cap on his pen and considered the graffiti-covered wall in front of him.
“If we assume we’re looking for one man and that his motivations for murdering Isobel Harris and Sharon Cooper were different, I think we’ll learn much more by understanding his reasons for killing Harris.” He looked at each person in the room, lingering on those he had identified as being potentially difficult. “Most of you worked on the case under Cooper, so you think you know all there is to know about Isobel Harris.”
He saw the complacent looks, heard a couple of muffled laughs from the back of the room and came to an instant decision.