by Carl Goodman
Not a natural killer. She still felt convinced of that. Not someone whose primary purpose was murder, but someone with another motive that required murders to be committed. Murder as a side effect, as just another part of a process. The question was, what was that process?
Raj’s comments about him being a trophy hunter came back to her. She did not believe that either, but then again she did not have a better explanation. And what kind of trophy hunter targeted victims in order to perform such meticulous surgery on them? Without even thinking about it her hand drifted back to the sheet of paper that contained the names of the seven suspects from the previous murders. She ran through the names yet again.
Daniel Cox. Not only had his alibi for the previous killings checked out, but also he was now living and working in Leeds. He had witnesses to place him there at the times of the recent murders as well. Thomas Wells lived in Spain and had not been back to the UK for several months. Kevin Mason was married with kids and there were about a hundred witnesses who had bought sandwiches from him around the time of Irina Stepanov’s murder. Robert Poole was currently in police custody pending a charge of assaulting a police officer, but he too now had alibis for the times of the killings. Raj had seen David Mills, who had been working on a building site during the times in question, so only Martin Ward and Mathew Harred remained.
Harred’s connection with the previous case seemed circumstantial, but Eva still wanted to check him out. There had been something about the victims being in amongst small groups of students who had gone to see Harred’s work. It seemed like a stretch that he had even been considered a suspect in the first place. Ward came closest to fitting the bill, at least in terms of approximate build and the fact he had form for housebreaking. Was he a killer though?
She pulled his file from another pile on her desk. Flynn was keen on him, but then Flynn had been keen on Poole as well. To be sure Flynn knew who the local low-life were, but she also seemed a little too eager to settle scores. Ward, Eva thought. He still had to be worth a look.
Not another confrontation though, not if she could possibly avoid it. Eva leafed through Flynn’s notes on him. He was known to frequent nightclubs in the town centre, also a favourite haunt of students and locals alike. Flynn believed Ward was dealing drugs there, but then again Flynn would. There had never been enough evidence to warrant an operation and there probably was not now, but at least some low-level surveillance might prove the case one way or another. Eva could not see how it would help with the hunt for the killer, but then again evidence was still so thin on the ground she needed to keep an open mind.
She drummed her fingers on her desk. And where was Grigori Stepanov? Raj had tried phoning him seven or eight times but he had simply disappeared. She supposed he had every right to under the circumstances. He was not a suspect because apart from witnesses at his place of work there was also CCTV footage that showed Stepanov at Waterloo Station at the time of the murder, but Eva still needed to talk with him about Irina’s medical history. Damn it, she thought to herself as she turned back to her computer. Today is going to be one hell of a long day.
Eva saw an email. Sutton, she noticed. She read the contents, read them again, and then closed her eyes. The day was going to be even longer than she had thought.
Chapter Nine
‘I don’t think it’s any of you,’ Sutton said as she closed the door to the incident room. ‘I just need to hear you say it’s not any of you.’
‘Of course it’s not,’ Jamie Newton almost whined. Even the suggestion had outraged him, Eva saw.
‘None of us lot are going to go talking to the press,’ Flynn said. ‘It’s not like we actually like them or anything.’
Sutton held her hands up and patted the air. ‘Okay, I know. I’ve had questions from above, I’ve already told area it wasn’t any of you but the response to that was: have you actually asked them? So now I have, and I can get them off my back.’ She leaned against a desk and then dropped her crutch onto it. ‘So who the hell was it?’
‘Not one of Moresby’s men,’ Raj insisted, ‘not even drunk. They wouldn’t do that to him and anyway, can you imagine a journalist trying to out-drink one of that lot?’
‘There’s a hell of a lot of detail,’ Eva said. ‘They even mention Un Chien Andalou.’
‘That’s not all they mention,’ Flynn told her. ‘What’s all this about “DI Harris, known for her involvement with a major and violent drug dealer in the South East”?’
Eva glossed over that. ‘It was just an operation. It’s old news.’ Flynn didn’t seem convinced but she let the subject drop.
Raj didn’t, though. ‘Why do I know the name Colin Lynch?’
She walked over to where he sat in front of his computer. Her scalp crawled. Had Raj actually spoken that name? ‘They mention him? I didn’t see that?’
‘It’s an update,’ Raj told her. ‘The website is still building the story. Is that usual?’
Eva stared at the screen in disbelief, as though Raj were making it up. He wasn’t, though. It was there on the page as plain as day, major drug dealer Colin Lynch.
Sutton hobbled over too. ‘I thought Lynch’s name wasn’t for public consumption,’ she muttered in Eva’s ear.
‘It isn’t,’ Eva said. ‘It’s part of an ongoing investigation and there are security implications. And I have no idea how they would have got hold of it.’
When Sutton had left the incident room Eva sat and read the report again herself. Raj was correct. The article had been updated in the time since she had first seen it. ‘The investigating officer is DI Eva Harris,’ it now read, ‘who was seriously injured two years ago in an incident involving the gang of drug dealer Colin Lynch, thought to be one of the most significant narcotic traffickers in the country.’ Even as she read, the page refreshed itself; somebody was still updating the story. When Eva saw the latest addition she gasped.
‘Lynch,’ the article now continued, ‘who subsequently died in an incident involving a rival gang, evaded police capture until his death. That lack of progress raised serious questions concerning the integrity of several officers involved the case, which remain unanswered to this day.’
Eva sat frozen, unable to tear her eyes away from the screen. Two thoughts struck her, descending from somewhere above like meteors. The first was that it had to be a warning. Somebody knew about the investigation into Semion Razin’s contact and was sending her a message by dumping information into the media. The second was that Alastair Hadley would be apoplectic.
She was not wrong about the second. Barely a minute later her phone buzzed. Four words appeared on its home screen.
Call me right now.
‘I have no idea,’ Eva said before Hadley could speak. She stood in her cubbyhole of an office staring out at the street below. ‘But it wasn’t anyone in my team. It had to be from your side, sir.’
He hissed at her. ‘You think my people can’t be trusted?’
‘I’m not saying that, sir,’ Eva insisted, ‘but this lot don’t know anything about Lynch, so it can’t have been any of them.’ Even as she said the words one doubt crawled into her mind. Raj had said something about the name being vaguely familiar. Had it just been a mistake? It was not something she wanted to set before Hadley, though. She needed to give him a get-out clause so he would not come down on her like a tonne of bricks. ‘Sir, is there any possibility some third party knows about Lynch? One we haven’t come across so far?’
Hadley remained silent for far longer than she felt comfortable with. For a moment she wondered if he had disconnected, but the counter on her phone showed he was still on the line. ‘And you’re certain this has nothing to do with you?’ he snarled eventually.
You fucking scumbag, Eva thought, you always need to blame someone else. She knew she could not say anything remotely like that to him, though. ‘It wouldn’t do me any good, sir. I do think it’s a warning, though. Somebody knows we’re getting closer to Razin’s contact and wants us
to back off.’
‘Well, that might be true,’ Hadley spat, ‘if you were actually getting any closer, but as far as I can see you’re just wasting time. I want progress, Harris,’ he told her before he cut the call. ‘If I don’t see any soon you’re going to be finding out what it’s like to be an ex-police officer in jail.’
* * *
The next call came at 8.15 the following evening.
Eva was leaning over Jamie Newton’s shoulder going through reports from his database searches. Flynn sat at her desk writing up notes on her computer, and Raj Chakrabati was trawling through the stack of statements gathered as a result of door-to-door enquiries at the two crime scenes. Eva knew they needed to follow up on Martin Ward as a matter of urgency, as the one remaining unquestionably criminal suspect from the previous list. She could not be certain that the mere detail Ward was a drug dealer had any useful bearing on either case, but whatever the outcome, she knew she needed to close down that particular thread as soon as possible.
When she looked up she noticed Rebecca Flynn was watching her again. When Eva caught her eye she looked away quickly. She had been doing that all day. Eva had no idea why. Perhaps it was something to do with the article on the local news website. Whatever it was, it was starting to annoy her.
The phone at the front of the incident room rang. It seemed like a welcome distraction. Eva walked over and picked it up. It was Moresby. ‘Sorry to have to break the news,’ he told her when she answered, ‘but it’s round three.’
It took a moment for her to understand. When she did, she had to lean on the desk. ‘What and where?’ she asked.
‘Where is Stoke d’Abernon,’ Moresby said. ‘It’s just on the other side of Cobham, about ten minutes down the road from where Irina Stepanov was killed.’
‘Who’s the victim?’ Flynn, Chakrabati and Newton all looked up when she said that.
Eva heard Moresby take a breath. ‘Do you mind if I wait until you get here to talk about that? I think you need to see this one first-hand, without any preconceptions.’
She did not know what to say. She knew by then there was no way Moresby would play games with her unless he thought it was strictly necessary. Eva tried a different question. ‘Is it as bad as the other two?’
‘Oh yes,’ Moresby said. ‘Yes, it is.’
A half-dozen marked police cars, beacons flashing in the still night air, clustered around the open gates of the house. Another expensive residence, Eva thought as she drove up beside them, and presumably another rich victim. The road itself was several miles long. Narrow and winding, it began before Cobham town centre and for the most part ran parallel to the road that eventually wound up in Leatherhead. Like St Jude’s Hill, the houses were all new and large. She saw sports cars and 4x4s parked in most of the drives.
‘We’re in footballer territory,’ Jamie Newton told her as she drew to a halt. ‘Chelsea have their training ground down the road from here and a bunch of the players live around this way.’ Newton sat beside her. Flynn and Chakrabati had followed in Flynn’s car. ‘I don’t know why Moresby’s being cryptic though,’ Newton said. ‘It’s not like him at all.’
It almost sounded as though he was defending the uniform sergeant, Eva thought. He didn’t need to. The one thing she had come to realise about Will Moresby was that he always had a good reason for doing things. The thought depressed her. Whatever his reason she doubted she was going to like it.
‘Only one way to find out,’ Eva told Newton as she climbed out of the car. They ducked under the line of tape that crossed the drive. Flynn and Raj caught up with them at the front door, where Moresby himself stood guard.
‘In the kitchen,’ Moresby told them. ‘Judy Wren’s only just got here and forensics are still setting up, so mind how you go.’
‘You going to give us any clues, Will?’ Flynn asked him.
‘Nope.’ The look on Moresby’s face told them he was not playing games, though.
Eva led the way. Wren and her forensics team were preparing themselves in the hall outside the kitchen. ‘Gloves and overshoes,’ she told them as they approached. ‘I don’t need to say don’t touch anything, do I? Don’t brush up against walls or paintwork either.’
They did as they were told. Eva stepped into the kitchen. She could see the body. Naked, tied to a chair in almost exactly the same fashion as Irina Stepanov. The obvious difference, Eva thought as she walked slowly around the corpse, was that this body belonged to a man.
‘Fucking hell,’ Flynn gasped as she followed Eva in. ‘I didn’t see this coming.’
Neither had Eva. The man looked to be about fifty. Grey, thinning hair, a moderate bulge around the waist, pallid white skin and vacant holes where his eyes should have been.
‘The victim is Paul Markham,’ Moresby told them from the kitchen door. ‘His wife found him. Paramedics took her straight to A&E. She wasn’t so much in shock as catatonic.’
‘Not surprised,’ Flynn said. She glanced at Eva, but Eva could only stand and stare.
Where did that leave them? With all of the other killings there had been at least the possibility of a straightforward sexual motive, no matter how bizarre and twisted it might have seemed. Three young girls sliced up four years ago, then Stepanov and Swain, in their forties but attractive women none the less. Yet again she tried to put herself inside the mind of their imagined trophy killer. She almost could as far as the others were concerned. There was at least an aesthetic that they shared, tall, slim, not totally dissimilar looks and fashion. But Markham? Markham did not come within a stone’s throw of any type she could imagine being attractive to the masked and hooded killer she had seen in St Jude’s Hill.
‘I need everything we can get on this guy,’ Eva told the others. ‘Bank statements, properties owned, directorships held, names of relatives, clubs he belonged to, online chat rooms he frequented, porn he surfed, the lot. Then do the same for Stepanov and Swain. There has to be a connection,’ she told them as she stared at the body. ‘There just has to be.’
Chapter Ten
She needed a win, or at least a break in the case. Some step forward anyway. Three killings. Paul Markham made damn-all sense to her and now she had the press as well as Hadley breathing down her neck. You need to pull your finger out, girl, Eva told herself, or you’re going to be the shortest-lived DI in history. She needed to change something, some variable or some detail that might alter her perspective of the murders. When it came down to it, all she had were the previous suspects.
Eva made herself run through the list again. Of those remaining, only one name stood out. She doubted Martin Ward was a likely candidate for the murders, but he had to be good for something. He had a record and a reputation, and the chances of him not still being involved in dealing drugs seemed too slim to be worth considering.
Another thought struck her early the next morning as she sat at her desk poring over the physical files the case had thrown up. For no particular reason, Eva turned to her laptop and searched the Police National Computer database. What she found did not make sense. In the physical files, papers and printouts bound in manila folders, Martin Ward’s business in dealing class-A drugs and party synthetics was clear to see, but on the PNC almost none of the evidence had been recorded. It might have made a difference if it had been, Eva thought as she turned back to the files. Somebody senior might have seen fit to do something about Martin Ward then.
Nobody had. Was that just a coincidence? Ward had a slick operation going if the evidence from the files was to be believed, but none of the local teams had decided to try to shut him down. Alastair Hadley’s claim that someone was protecting Razin’s supply chain came to her mind then. A fixer he had called them, someone who made evidence go away. If he was right Ward at least fitted the profile of someone who could benefit.
Time to stir things up, she thought. Doing something is better than doing nothing. She lowered the screen of her laptop and closed the manila-bound files. He might be an unlikel
y suspect for the murders, but now Eva wondered if he could actually be of use in the investigation into whoever was leaking information at Kingston. Time to pay Martin Ward a visit, she decided.
* * *
Eva waited until Saturday night. Ward would be at his busiest then. He had his choice of nightclubs, but Flynn put her money on Embers, largest of three in the centre of the town, and Eva had no reason to doubt her.
Saturday night in Kingston. The air clung to her, hot and clammy. She felt sweat prick her skin. The temperature had plateaued but the humidity kept rising. Her thin cotton dress stuck to her almost the instant she stepped out of the station. Soon the weather would break. The forecasts predicted storms and she could almost feel the static charge in the heavy, oppressive clouds forming over the county. She checked her phone. Eleven o’clock, it told her. Pubs would be chucking out soon and so the real partying would begin. Frenetic drinking and dancing would carry on until around three in the morning, when nightclubs finally closed their doors and punters staggered home. Same as everywhere, Eva thought as she joined the queue waiting to get into Embers. Crowds of people, pissed or stoned, looking to get laid or looking for a fight, or both. Letting off steam at the end of another pointless week of slaving for the rent.
Somewhere down the road Moresby and a van of constables waited for her call. Flynn and Chakrabati lurked nearby. Jamie Newton was already in the nightclub. And so, according to Newton, was Martin Ward.
Heat and sweat slapped her in the face. There had to be a thousand people in the club. A few hundred crowded the dance floor, more sat at tables around the edge of the hall. Above her she saw a balcony that wrapped around the entire space with more tables and another bar. Spotlights flickered and switched in time to the beat. Suspended in shark cages, near-naked women danced furiously to skull-splitting electronica.
