by Kate Medina
‘You won’t be able to get into your own mind, to work out how you think, if you don’t get some sleep. And I need some shut-eye even if you don’t,’ Marilyn said, silencing her. ‘Eight o’clock. You’ve got three and a half hours, three by the time we get home. It’s a quick and dirty, not a luxury mini-break.’
‘Fine.’ She reached for the door handle and cranked the elderly car door open. ‘Eight o’clock it is. I’ll see you at eight.’
‘You will indeed. Now go.’
54
Oh God. There was something moving in the dog’s basket in the end cage on the right. The empty cage. Cherry could see from where she had stopped, halfway down the walkway between the dogs’ cages.
Her heart wedged in her throat, she took a couple of steps closer, stopped again. She still couldn’t see what it was, only knew that it was alien, shouldn’t be there, that it hadn’t been there when she’d checked the dogs’ cages and locked up last night. She liked to get in early, grab herself a coffee and spend that first hour with the dogs, alone, absorbing their individual moods, assessing how each was feeling, before her employee, Anne, arrived at eight-thirty and the working day began. But at this precise moment, with her heart jammed in her throat and knocking now like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, she wished that she had dropped that routine the moment she’d realized that someone or something was letting themselves into Paws for Thought at night.
Stepping sideways, she glanced behind her to the door to reception, which she knew to be unlocked, the reception area empty; she had just walked through it, looked sideways to the feed-room – a small space, but so many places to hide – then straight ahead to the door to the outside exercise field, which was definitely locked, wasn’t it? But as that thought entered her head, another pushed it straight out. The realization that she couldn’t rely on any doors being locked, if this nocturnal visitor who seemed to be able to walk straight through walls like a ghost had come last night. And – as her swollen, knocking pendulum of a heart reminded her – could still be here, inside, with her.
The hot military policeman had told her to be careful.
Do you think I’m at risk?
Someone has been accessing your facility, for reasons that you don’t understand. They haven’t yet done any harm, but I’d suggest that you take care. Until you understand their motivation, what they want, you don’t know how they might react if you disturb them.
So why hadn’t she listened to him and timed her arrival to coincide with that of her employee’s? Because she’d always been impetuous. Impetuous and stupid – or just plain stupid?
55
A knock.
‘Come,’ Marilyn said.
The door swung open and DC Cara stepped into the room, gaze downcast, shoulders slumped somewhere around his knees, as if someone had tossed a hundred-kilo sack of coal onto his back.
Marilyn raised an eyebrow. ‘That good, eh?’
‘Leo Lewin hasn’t been found, Guv.’
‘Yet.’
Cara nodded dispiritedly. ‘Yet.’
‘Update me.’ Marilyn indicated the chair directly across the table. Jessie, positioned at an elliptical angle, felt a twinge of pity for Darren Cara. Tension, driven by an overwhelming desire not to make any mistakes, show himself up in front of the boss, radiated from him like heat. Having to sit opposite Marilyn, pinned to the chair by that unremitting mismatched gaze, would do nothing for Cara’s confidence, particularly as he was clearly the bearer of bad news.
‘The, uh, the helicopter found someone out in the woods at six-thirty a.m., but it … it, sorry, he, turned out to be a dog walker,’ Cara began.
‘At half-six on a cold, drizzly autumn morning. For Christ’s sake, why can’t people stay in bed like I do, drinking coffee and bingeing on box-sets?’
Cara smiled and shrugged. ‘The poor old geezer got the shock of his life when he was surrounded by armed officers and told to hit the deck, so he’ll probably ditch the morning walk for a few days at least.’
‘Old?’ Marilyn wryly raised one eyebrow.
Cara shrugged again. ‘Mid-forties, he was at least.’
‘Stop digging, Darren,’ Workman, who had just stepped into the room, said with a smile.
‘What about the dogs?’ Jessie cut in. She wasn’t in the mood for humour: even the graveyard kind that she knew sustained investigations such as this, kept them from burying themselves too far underneath everyone’s skin. She still felt exhausted, physically and mentally, and at sea with this case. The thought that a little boy was out there somewhere, that they hadn’t yet found him, had no clues, no leads, no idea where to look, made her sick to her stomach and furious with herself – furious that she couldn’t see their perpetrator better, that the only image she held of him was of Lupo, of a dog, a huge, white, wolf-like dog.
‘They lost the trail,’ Cara replied.
‘Why? Because of the rain?’ Jessie asked.
Cara shook his head. ‘Evidently light rain helps dogs track. It freshens the scent, the dog teams told me, releases it.’
Marilyn grimaced.
‘So what happened?’ Jessie continued. ‘Why did they lose the trail?’
‘It took them a while to pick up the scent to start with. They were circling.’
‘In the garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember, Cara, when we talked to Denise a few days ago, that she said her son had woken up screaming, that he said he’d seen something in the back garden?’
Cara nodded. ‘A ghostie.’
‘Yes.’ White. Like Lupo.
Marilyn sat forward, looking from Jessie, to Cara and back. ‘What did Denise say?’
Jessie gave Cara an almost imperceptible nod, encouraging him to take over.
‘She said that her husband had left Leo’s curtains open,’ Cara said. ‘There’s a weeping willow in the middle of the back garden. It’s pale silver, there was a bright, gibbous moon that night and a breeze that was moving the willow’s fronds.’
‘So she dismissed the ghostie as the tree?’
‘Not entirely. Simon Lewin went out to check the garden, to make the little boy feel safe. When he came back in he told her he’d seen footprints in front of the tree.’
‘A man’s footprints,’ Jessie cut in.
Marilyn arched an eyebrow. ‘Watching?’
Jessie didn’t respond to his question.
‘The back fence is broken and beyond their garden is woods and fields,’ she said instead. ‘Dogs sometimes run into their garden from the public footpath that cuts along outside their back fence. Lewin persuaded Denise that the footprints were from a dog walker who had come in to fetch their errant dog, but I’m not sure she was convinced. I think that she wanted to believe, rather than did believe.’
Marilyn nodded. ‘We need to ask the husband and neighbours whether they saw anyone hanging around the woods near the back fence or even out front, in the street, in the days preceding the murder, or if he noticed anything else strange, anything out of the ordinary. Something that he might have dismissed before, like those footprints, which now seem more sinister given what has happened.’
Workman had flipped open her black notebook and was scribbling.
‘And the back fence,’ Marilyn asked. ‘When was it broken and how? Was it wear and tear, lack of maintenance, or did someone break a hole in it, an action that they might have dismissed as accidental? These are standard questions in any investigation, but given the footprints, the fact that Jessie is convinced our man watches his victims for a period of time before the murders, it’s even more important in this case.’ He turned to Cara. ‘Finish telling us about the search dogs, Cara.’
Cara nodded, taking a moment to mentally re-find his place in the telling. ‘Yes, uh, as I said, the dogs circled in the garden for a while, then one of the handlers took his dog to the gap in the fence, physically led it to the gap, and the dog picked up a scent that led out into the woods. But it got confused
again quickly, as if there were lots of trails.’
‘There were lots of trails, in the garden and in the woods,’ Jessie said.
‘Because of the watching?’
She lifted her shoulders, avoiding Marilyn’s searching gaze.
‘How do dogs follow scent?’ she directed the question back to Cara. ‘What specifically do they scent? Which, uh, which part of the human?’
‘Footprints,’ Cara said. ‘The scent laid by footprints is evidently the strongest, but people also continually shed skin cells, strands of hair, that kind of thing, and the dogs track the scent from those. And anything dropped, by the perpetrator or a child. The dogs can smell and see those well before humans can.’
‘That makes sense,’ Jessie said.
‘The scent was weak, anyway, the dog teams said.’
‘Whose trail were they following? Leo’s or the perpetrator’s?’
‘Both. They tried both. But Leo’s was too weak to follow.’
‘He must have been carrying Leo,’ Marilyn cut in.
‘Yes, but shouldn’t there be a trail from the child, even if he wasn’t walking?’ Jessie asked. ‘Because of the skin cells?’ Unless … unless he was wrapped in something. Dead, was he dead when he left the house? She voiced her thoughts. ‘Unless he was wrapped in something.’
Marilyn swung around in his chair to face her. ‘Are you saying that you think Leo Lewin was dead when he left the house?’
She shook her head firmly. ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. Leo was … is just three. It wouldn’t have been hard to carry a terrified three-year-old in a bag such as a rucksack, shove him in and tell him to be quiet or he’s dead too. Or … or pretend that it was a game.’
She met Marilyn’s gaze, recognized the flash of understanding in his eyes.
She turned her attention back to Cara again. ‘So there were multiple trails to start with and the scent from the child was very weak?’
Cara nodded. ‘And there’s a stream, cutting through the woods a few hundred metres from the back of the Lewins’ house. The dog handlers said that the dogs got confused when they reached the stream, couldn’t work out which direction they were supposed to go in.’
‘I thought dogs could track people through water? They do in Louisiana, in the swamps,’ Marilyn said.
‘In films,’ Jessie countered, with the ghost of a smile.
‘Like I said, nothing better than a box-set on a cold autumn morning.’
‘Stagnant water is fine,’ Cara continued, clearly not wanting to be knocked off his stride by banter. ‘The dogs just circle the water until they find the scent again. The issue with running water is that the water carries the scent with it. So if the perpetrator enters the stream and runs in the opposite direction to the flow of water, his or her scent is masked and the dogs follow the scent in the opposite direction.’
‘It can’t be that easy,’ Marilyn said.
Cara shrugged.
‘They’re dogs, not super-humans,’ Jessie cut in. ‘Or super-dogs, even if you’ve watched Bolt during one of your box-set binges.’
‘Bolt isn’t a box-set. It’s a film,’ Marilyn said with a theatrical roll of his eyes. ‘We can assume, then, that our man walked in the opposite direction to the flow of the water?’
‘Yes, which is what the dog teams concluded. They retraced their steps and followed the water upstream.’
‘And?’
‘Half a kilometre or so up, they reached a road that bridged the stream.’
Marilyn sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Jesus Christ, and don’t tell me, it’s a quiet, secluded country lane that no bugger ever uses, or certainly not in the middle of the bloody night in late October, when it’s brass monkeys outside.’
Cara shrugged. ‘The dogs are much more useful when chasing a fleeing perpetrator, evidently, than if the perpetrator has already fled, if they had a decent head start.’
Marilyn nodded. ‘Dr Ghoshal estimates that Denise Lewin had been dead for ninety minutes to three hours by the time we found her in that bath, so our man was long gone by the time the dogs started looking for him.’ He ground his fingers through his hair. ‘And that would put the time of the murder between nine-thirty and eleven p.m.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘We need to find witnesses. Anyone who saw a car, motorbike or bike – though clearly car is the most likely. That quiet country lane must join to a busier one. There weren’t any tyre prints, perchance, were there?’
He didn’t even need to wait for Cara to shake his head to know the answer to that question. ‘The dogs were never going to be able to track him, not with a stream out there, a stream that led to a deserted bloody road. The bastard was lucky.’
‘He wasn’t lucky. The dogs were never going to be able to track him, not in any conditions,’ Jessie murmured.
‘What do you mean?’
She didn’t answer. What do I mean? She had an image of a dog, a wolf-like dog, fixed in her mind. She thought of Lupo, how she had seen him early this morning, when she’d arrived home from the Lewins’ house, for her snatched kip. He had been lying on the doormat in the kitchen, gazing out of the glass doors into the back garden, the sun a strip of yellow-orange fire on the horizon. She had sat down on the cold floor next to him and looked into his ice-blue eyes, so similar to her own, and she had thought that she would be able to understand him, communicate with him. But there had been nothing – no connection. He had continued to lie on the doormat, his head resting on his paws, whining softly, unreadable and unreachable. For some reason, Jessie had an image of their killer as the same. Did she just have that image because of basic psychology – the weirdo loner – or was it more than that? She didn’t know. Yet. I don’t know yet.
‘At least he’s left footprints all over the place.’ Marilyn’s voice pulled her back. ‘Burrows confirmed that the footprints are the same as those from both the Fuller and the Whitehead murder scenes. We have something.’
Jessie gave a distracted half-nod, more to herself than to Marilyn.
‘I detect cynicism in that barely there, hugely unconvincing nod, Dr Flynn,’ he said.
Jessie shrugged. ‘He’s clever, well organised and careful and footprints are so obvious.’
‘They’re also unavoidable in muddy ground. He either had to come in the front way, on tarmac and gravel, which would have been fine at the Fullers’ isolated house, but significantly riskier at the Whiteheads’ and yesterday at the Lewins’.’
‘For what it’s worth, I think that Leo will be found alive,’ Jessie murmured.
Marilyn’s head swivelled in her direction. ‘Why?’
‘Because he could have killed Lupo, but he didn’t. He made a big effort to ensure that Lupo was found quickly, and in doing so he alerted the police – us – to the fact that he had murdered the Fullers. They were murdered on Saturday night. Workman has spoken to their friends who confirmed that, as far as they knew, the Fullers had no plans that weekend. They probably wouldn’t have been found until Monday or Tuesday when Hugo Fuller’s secretary started wondering where the hell her boss was and gone around to his house to find him or called the police. The perp set us on his trail days early, purely to baby a dog.’
‘Sure, but Lupo is not a child,’ Marilyn countered.
‘Lupo is a dependent, domesticated, kept as a pet, dependent on people in the same way that a child is. Sparing Lupo shows that he has humanity. And he also murdered the Whiteheads when Sophie was out. Again, I think that was deliberate, so as not to cause collateral damage among dependents.’
Marilyn rolled his eyes. ‘You’re telling me that we’re dealing with a gentleman killer, despite the fact that he gouges people’s eyes out?’
‘I’m telling you that we’re dealing with someone who has some humanity, yes.’ Jessie suppressed a smile. ‘Humanity and doganity. The teenager and the dog were spared and I’m sure that Leo will also be spared. Despite what he’s done, I believe that our killer isn’t a monster. He
has a reason for what he’s doing – a reason that makes total sense to him.’
‘I think you’ve officially lost it, Dr Flynn, but I would love you to be right. I would dearly love you to be right.’
56
When Cara had left, Marilyn tilted back in his seat and let out a heavy sigh.
‘Coffee?’ Workman asked, sliding her chair back and pushing herself to her feet. She looked as weary as Jessie felt. In fact, the three of them would be shoo-ins for bit-parts as zombies in Night of the Living Dead.
‘Please, Sarah, and toss three spoonfuls of sugar in it, will you. Despite the two coffees I’ve already had this morning, my brain refuses to engage, and I need to be vaguely awake when we interview Mr Simon Lewin. Perhaps a sugar hit will do the trick.’ He glanced at his watch. It was nine-thirty, sunny outside now, and though the breeze from the window that Marilyn had cracked open was chilly, it was not cold enough to shock any of them out of their sleep-deprived stupor.
‘Coffee, Jessie?’ Workman asked.
‘Yes, please, Sarah. Milk, no sugar.’
‘What are you thinking, Dr Flynn?’ Marilyn asked, when Workman had left the room. He smothered a yawn with the back of his hand.
‘I’m thinking the same as you’re thinking, Marilyn.’ She smiled an exhausted, ragged smile. ‘Or at least, I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.’
‘I’m wondering why murder scene three, Denise Lewin, was so different from the previous two, despite the footprints indicating that she was murdered by the same perpetrator. The only consistency is that Denise, as with the other wives, was drowned.’
Jessie nodded. ‘I’m wondering the same. Why was Denise killed and Simon Lewin spared? I’m pretty sure that our perp has a reason for killing the adults he’s killing, and a reason for killing them the way that he kills them. And why did he gouge one of her eyes out and leave the other? It’s as if he didn’t have the stomach to take them both out.’
‘Because she’s a woman?’ Marilyn ventured.
Jessie lifted her shoulders. ‘Perhaps. I think … thought that the reason he gouges the men’s eyes out is because they have seen something, watched something that he thinks they need to atone for. And he watches them first too – enjoys the sensation that he is watching them, while they are oblivious. Watching, waiting and planning, working himself up to … to the task.’