The Silent Dead: A gripping crime thriller with a stunning twist

by Graham Smith

  To make things even sweeter, her break-up with her boyfriend, and the way she’d been speaking indicated that she was the kind of person who did what she wanted, when she wanted. Her boyfriend wouldn’t know she was missing as she’d dumped him and stormed off. Her folks wouldn’t be worried about her, because as far as they knew she was with the boyfriend. The impression he’d got of the young man from her comments suggested he wasn’t likely to contact her parents to make sure she’d got safely home.

  The evening news had been full of the investigation into his project. There had been footage of a press conference, where the dumpy copper who’d spoken to him had sat beside someone and failed to answer any questions without humming and hah-ing at every turn. The journalists didn’t let the coppers deliver their statements, they just wanted news on the investigation into the murders.

  Except they weren’t murders, not in his mind. They were necessary sacrifices. An offering to earn appeasement and prove the worthiness of a son who’d never been loved by his mother. By recreating the dragon that Mother was, he could prove himself worthy of her love.

  He knew that if she was alive and aware of what he was doing, she’d be furious. As always, she’d want to manifest her anger both physically and verbally as she puffed on cigarettes and used him as her ashtray. Regardless of the years that had passed since her death, he’d never forgotten the pleasure in her eyes as she ground the cigarettes into his skin.

  He had two issues to deal with on his immediate horizon: the date he’d asked Sarah on and the missing link between Caitlin and Sarah.

  The plans he had for Caitlin would send a message to the world in general and the dumpy detective in particular. He just wasn’t sure the copper was smart enough to recognise what he’d be saying in his unspoken message.

  The date was something he was dreading. He’d have to make small talk. Feign interest in her likes and dislikes.

  He would, of course, be the perfect gentleman; he’d hold doors for her, stand when she came into the room, and make her feel every bit as special as she probably thought she was. To him she was only special because she’d be a part of his project. At least he could use the time spent with her to find out her routines. That way he could engineer a way to capture her. Like the hitchhiker, she’d get into his car without hesitation.

  At the end of the night he’d drop her off at her home and leave her there. Any offers to go in for a coffee would be refused. Sarah appeared to be a sexual woman, if her clothes and behaviour towards him were any kind of indicators. The last thing he wanted to do was find himself in a position where he was expected to sleep with her.

  Rather than go on a second date, he planned to capture her and keep her locked up until he was ready to use her for his project.

  It was the link between Caitlin and Sarah that troubled him. He needed another darling. He contemplated the one person he’d met who would fit, but as delicious and fitting as it would be to use her, she could be the hardest of them all to capture. She would be more wary, have greater awareness and take more precautions than the average person. But still she was perfect. And she would be the most fitting tribute.

  It would begin with surveillance. He’d recognise her routines, find a time when she was alone. Then he’d pounce.

  A smile crossed his face. Perhaps he should double her up with Sarah. A pair of beautiful women together. He could sacrifice them at the same time in order to keep his project on track.

  His eyes closed in pleasure as he thought of the impact their deaths would have. How they’d move his project so much closer to completion.

  DC Young would be the perfect darling.

  Sixty-One

  Beth tried to hide the yawn behind a hand, but there was no disguising the crack of her jaw as her mouth stretched wide. The fingers of her other hand curled and uncurled as she repeatedly made a fist. She wanted a target for the fist, something to aim her frustrations at. Not only were they failing to make any decent headway with the case, they now had the chief super on their back.

  The first thing she did once the chief super and DCI Phinn left the office, was check her emails. In among the departmental-bullshit ones, were a couple of gold nuggets. Dr Hewson’s friend, the burns specialist, had come back to him and given their verdict on the four victims’ burns. And, more significantly, the dental records team had come back with an identification for Woman 1.

  Fiona McGhie was confirmed as the first victim of the Dragon Master. There wasn’t a lot of information on her, beyond learning she was fifty-nine and lived in a cottage overlooking Derwent Water. Beth knew her priority would be to get every detail about the woman’s life that she could.

  But before she did, she wanted to see what the burns specialist had to say.

  The report confirmed Dr Hewson’s theory that different amounts of accelerant had been used on each victim. It also upheld the idea that the two men had had extra accelerant added to them once the initial amount had burned away. This all made sense to Beth in a sick and twisted way.

  The report was detailed to the point where she could picture each of the victims as their mouths were ignited. Fiona McGhie would have given a brief puff of flame before death; Rachel Allen had been overfilled, and when the flames travelling down her throat had died due to a lack of oxygen, the remaining petrol inside her had dissipated through her body.

  Of the two men, Angus Keane’s death would have been the quickest. The Dragon Master had lessened the amount of petrol he’d fed into Keane’s stomach, but the specialist still predicted that, after a brief flash of flame, the petrol would have burned out. The next amount added had increased his pain to the point where he’d gone into cardiac arrest and died of a heart attack.

  According to the specialist, Nick Langley’s death would have been slower, the amounts added smaller and, because his mouth had been held open by the piece of wood jammed between his teeth, the Dragon Master had been able to continuously add petrol so that his dragon kept breathing fire. The only problem Beth could see with this was that once Nick was dead, the flames wouldn’t have had the power of exhalation or screams behind them. Therefore the flames wouldn’t have shot from his mouth, they’d have gusted out at best before heading upwards as flames always did.

  Beth lifted her gaze away from the screen and looked across to O’Dowd. There was a determined set to her jaw and Beth suspected the DI was reading the same email and seeing the same mental images: terrified eyes straining in darkness, gagging, choking mouths trying to reject the foul substances forced into them and then the flash. Bright flames shooting from human mouths only to be replaced with gurgled screams.

  Suddenly very keen to distract herself from the unpalatable images, Beth got on with running Fiona McGhie’s name through the PNC. Nothing came back. No convictions, no charges. Not even any complaints.

  Her next move was to run the woman’s name through Google.

  A little to her surprise she discovered Fiona was a painter. She evidently sold her work through her website, and the ‘about her’ only mentioned living with a beloved cat. Her paintings were mostly watercolour landscapes with the odd commissioned portrait. From what Beth could judge by looking at the quality of her work, plus the prices Fiona charged for originals and prints, she would be classed as a successful artist.

  The landscapes were all Lakeland scenes; Beth recognised lakes Ullswater, Windermere and Coniston. Some of the paintings looked to have been created from a vantage point on the high fells and there was one she recognised as a recreation of Honister Pass due to its depiction of the craggy outcrops towering over a narrow, winding road.

  While she wasn’t a fan of watercolours, Beth could appreciate Fiona’s skill in capturing the beauty and primitive savagery of the Lake District.

  Beth looked for Fiona’s next of kin in the General Registration Office database, and learned that she was an only child who’d never married. Both her parents were dead and there was no mention of any partner on the database. Beth could ima
gine the long winter nights Fiona spent alone. Without a life companion her existence would be a solitary one. Perhaps the odd word with a postman or the person she bought her painting supplies from, but like so many of the creative arts, painting could be a lonely task. While Fiona may lose herself in the moment when she had a brush in her hand, she had nobody to share triumphs with or provide support on the bad days that life dealt out.

  A forlorn smile touched Beth’s lips as she realised the contradiction to her thinking. She herself lived alone, and while she also spent her nights alone, she had a job that saw her interact with other people during the day. Fiona’s was the kind of existence Beth dreaded. For a time after the bottle had been slammed into her face, Beth had wanted seclusion, to hide away and amuse herself with her own endeavours. Yet when she’d tried to cloister herself in her bedroom, she’d found the boredom stultifying. She’d needed company, interaction with other human beings and, most of all, a purpose. Friends and family had provided the interaction, and the police had provided her with all the purpose she needed.

  ‘What do you make of it, Beth?’

  O’Dowd’s question was a loaded one.

  The DI was now asking her opinion, canvassing her thoughts. While this gave Beth confidence, as she felt her contributions were valued, she was still wary of saying the wrong thing and changing O’Dowd’s opinion of her.

  The Dragon Master was a step ahead of them whatever they did. He left no apparent forensic traces; he flitted in and out of places without being seen. At Highstead Castle, none of the people who lived in the houses by the track had even heard a vehicle drive by. He’d not been detected at Arthuret Hall, and there seemed to be no connection between any of his victims, or the two locations.

  ‘I don’t know. If we’re right on the dragon theory, there has to be some kind of reason as to why he’s doing it. Whether he’s got a Game of Thrones fixation or he sees himself as some kind of modern-day necromancer, I believe he’s got a reason. Maybe when the psychologist has studied the other victims and their deaths, his next report will give you a better answer than I can regarding his motives.’

  ‘Agreed. But what about the victims? Two women and then two men. What’s the reasoning there?’

  ‘I don’t know, ma’am. Maybe they fit his pattern. Perhaps there’s a personal connection. Or maybe they just happened to be around when he needed his next victim.’

  ‘I take your point.’ O’Dowd pursed her lips. ‘But I think that he’s selected them for a reason. Everything he’s done in terms of staging the bodies and leaving no evidence tells me he’s not being random in any way. Even his experiments with making them breathe fire speak of refinement, a willingness to adapt and learn. That’s not slapdash, Beth, that’s organised, planned even. I want you to use that sideways-thinking brain of yours to see if you can find a connection between our victims.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  So far as Beth could see, O’Dowd’s theory about the victims somehow being connected was about the only thing they could investigate. The way the Dragon Master was experimenting with different amounts of accelerant may have given them some clues were it not for the fact that petrol was something that could be bought in a hundred and one places. Had he tried paraffin or a different combustible then it may have given them a lead to follow, but all the tissue Dr Hewson had tested had proven to have been petrol.

  If they’d been able to get a full sample of the petrol, they may have been able to trace it to a specific batch made by the refinery and then trace where it had been sold in Cumbria. However, even if they had CCTV footage for every petrol station, until they had a suspect, they’d do nothing but waste time watching endless footage.

  For all of the victims except Fiona, they had reams of reports and statements galore. By tomorrow, a team of officers would have gathered further information on Fiona McGhie’s life. In the meantime, the best thing Beth could think to do was to create a simple spreadsheet which annotated all the key details they knew about each victim. It would aid her thought processes by giving her a central source where she could take an overview of each of their lives.

  Even as she glanced at her watch, another yawn threatened to dislocate her jaw. She’d give it an hour and then go home. There was still half a bottle of wine in her fridge. It would help her deal with the day and slow her mind down to allow her to get some sleep. And after a few hours’ sleep and her morning run, she’d be better able to assess the finer details of the spreadsheet and hopefully highlight a connection between four very different victims. It was like a crossword. If there was nothing obvious, maybe there would be something cryptic that linked them.

  The problem was, with no clear clues, where should she start?

  Sixty-Two

  The day had been both torturous and glorifying for the man. He’d returned to the showroom and had spoken with the gorgeous Sarah for a paltry five minutes. She’d been disappointed he wasn’t going to buy a car, but that hadn’t worried him in the slightest. She’d looked like a model in the long skirt that flowed round her nylon clad legs and the way she’d tied her hair into a mussy ponytail had showcased that wonderfully graceful neck.

  Yet when he’d bade her goodbye, he’d felt a sadness within his soul. Never again would he get to chat to her, hear that melodic giggle and appreciate her beauty close at hand. From now on, his appreciation of her would have to be from a distance.

  As much as he wanted to have more reasons to see her, there could be no more visits to the showroom, no deliberate meetings on the street outside her house or anywhere else. They could not happen, because if he spooked her, she could take out an injunction or whatever it was called and then he’d never again be able to worship at the altar of his most beautiful angel.

  Today’s surveillance of Sarah had brought back a lot of memories. About being back in Kuwait with Olly during the first Gulf War. Olly had been one of the best snipers the British army possessed and he’d been Olly’s spotter. Many were the hours they’d lain up together waiting for the chance to take a shot.

  They’d had several successful missions until things had gone tits up. An Iraqi sniper had taken a shot at them. The shot missed Olly, who was the real threat, but it hadn’t missed him. On the 27th of February 1991 – the date was etched into his mind as it was his thirty-fifth birthday – he’d been crouched behind Olly, gazing through his binoculars, when the round had smashed into his pelvis. They’d repaired the bone and, although he now required a stick to walk, he’d retained the use of both legs.

  It was his genitals that he lost.

  Now he had nothing but scar tissue and a catheter.

  His wife had left him after two sexless years. Not only had his manhood been taken away from him, but with it, his sex drive had gone, never to return. Once upon a time he’d appreciated beautiful women because of the way they turned him on. Now it was all about how they carried themselves, the way they felt in their skin, the confidence they exuded and the effect they had on other men.

  These were his angels, the desirable and the unobtainable.

  He’d never been blessed with great looks and his own lack of confidence had seen him marry the second woman who’d let him see her naked. For him, his angels were everything; they were the ones who brightened his day whenever he thought about their beauty and sensuality. They were barmaids, waitresses, receptionists and a dozen other professions. He found them wherever he went, although he made sure that he frequented places where there was a good chance of finding angels to worship. They were the only thing that made him feel whole again.

  Sixty-Three

  Beth turned off the shower and reached for her phone. Its ringtone was the one she’d assigned to O’Dowd, which was the only reason she hadn’t let it ring out.

  She listened while the DI spoke and then hung up. All of the endorphins boosted by her early-morning run were dispelled by those few short sentences. Beth had expected another victim to turn up at some point if they didn’t identify the kil
ler. Just not so soon. It seemed the Dragon Master was further escalating his actions. There had been a line about how serial killers often did this in the psychologist’s report.

  Between O’Dowd’s brief intel and demand for her presence, Beth had learned that the latest find was different from the others. Rather than being arranged in the cellar of a grand house, this victim had been positioned outside the front of one.

  Unlike the previous locations, Beth knew this house well. Lonsdale Castle was a local landmark. There had once been a wildlife park attached to it, and since English Heritage had taken responsibility for the castle and its grounds, the gardens were being restored to their former glory. Lonsdale Castle was more than a crumbling old building, it was a tourist attraction.

  Once she was out of the shower she googled the castle on her mobile. Like Highstead and Arthuret Hall, it had been kissed by fire; although, in Lonsdale’s case, the fire had been contained to one wing, which had been rebuilt around the turn of the nineteenth century.

  Another thing bothering her was the victim’s identity. That another person had fallen prey to the Dragon Master sickened Beth. This girl had fallen into the clutches of an ingenious killer who had so far managed to evade all attempts to identify, let alone catch him. She was sure that the girl would have died in agony. Her young life taken by a monster trying to recreate a mythical beast.

  As much as Beth wanted to go straight to the scene and investigate what clues may have been left there, O’Dowd had instructed her to go into the office and search the databases first. Perhaps their young victim had been reported missing by a frantic mother.

  The image she had in her mind was that of Nick Langley’s wife, pining for the safe return of her husband. The faces may change, but the situations were the same for those who had family who cared about them. Family and friends would call their mobiles with increasing levels of regularity as their worry increased. As the hours scrolled by, they’d try contacting friends, and then the police and hospitals.