Phobia

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Are these figures being reported to HMRC?’

  ‘Nope,’ Danny said, ‘already checked. These accounts are tied to his name but are not on the list of his business assets, meaning he’s not filing returns based on those incomes. There’s no paperwork against them, nothing to say where the money’s coming from.’

  Honor scanned the pages one more time. ‘It doesn’t make him our killer.’

  ‘No,’ Danny agreed, ‘but it means we’ll have to check his routes home on CCTV to confirm he at least went home when he said he did. The problem we have is that we know our killer is moving without being seen, so even if he can prove he got home when he said he did, how do we know what he did next?’

  Honor motioned for Danny to join her on her side of the desk as she turned her monitor around a little to face him.

  ‘What do you make of this? Seen at the same bars the victims enjoyed their last night out, before they died.’

  Danny leaned on the desk and peered at the images of the man standing at the bars that Samir had sent her. He said nothing for a few moments, then shrugged.

  ‘Tough to call, but it’s not impossible we’re looking at Wheeler.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Honor said. ‘We can’t afford to waste any time. We need to bring him in, question him before the press conference, see if he’s going to spill his guts.’

  Danny nodded, reaching for his mobile phone.

  ‘I can put uniforms on his construction sites and his home,’ he said as he began to dial. ‘We can get him in here and lean on him a bit, see what he says.’

  ‘I’ll tell the DI,’ Honor said as she got out of her seat. ‘Samir put me onto this footage, so he deserves the credit.’

  ‘It’s not solid yet,’ Danny warned her as he waited for an answer on the line, the phone pressed to his ear. ‘This could be a wild goose chase and our guy’s still out there. You gonna tie this to what you said on the phone last night?’

  Honor shrugged, unsure of herself, but these two latest revelations did provide some concrete foundations to the suspicion that Gary Wheeler might be their man, and it sure as hell gave her something to get her teeth into until something, anything better turned up. She could hear other detectives heading to the briefing room, and with a reluctant sigh she picked up her notes and read through them one last time before she walked out of her office and into the briefing room with Danny alongside her.

  The DI and DCI were already there along with twenty or so detectives, all involved with their own cases. The fraud unit, normally front and centre in such meetings given the close proximity of the financial district, were now playing second fiddle to Honor’s murder inquiry, which dominated the wipe board at the head of the room along with DCI Mitchell’s imposing form.

  ‘Good morning ladies and gents,’ Mitchell said as the door to the room was closed behind the last officer to enter. ‘Status briefing, no need to remind everybody that we have a press conference this afternoon regarding the Dukas and Carson murders. Honor, where are we?’

  Honor took her breath, her own voice sounding loud in her own ears and yet painfully inadequate.

  ‘We have two possible leads in the case,’ she reported. ‘The first is a member of the public seen in both bars that the victims frequented on the nights before they died, spotted by DC Samir Raaya. He’s a well–built male who seems to try to avoid security cameras. It’s not possible yet to determine age or identity, but we’re looking into the possibility of tracing older CCTV footage – the guy must have first checked out both pubs in order to know where the cameras are.’

  DI Harper nodded. ‘You want to lead with that to the press?’

  ‘It’s worth us asking the public to help identify the man, to eliminate them from our enquiries. It’s a tenuous lead, but if it plays out then we might be able to get this guy off the streets before he can strike again.’

  ‘And the second lead?’

  ‘Gary Wheeler, managing director of Wheeler Construction,’ Honor replied. ‘He’s got a number of financial discrepancies that suggest he’s running projects in the city that are probably for–cash jobs. If he lied about that, who knows what else he’s hiding? It’s also a tenuous lead, but Wheeler matches the height and build of the man seen in the pub CCTV footage prior to both murders.’

  ‘You think Wheeler might be the perpetrator?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Honor nodded, ‘we certainly can’t rule him out, and although he alibied out of Sebastian Dukas’s murder, we can’t place him anywhere for certain after he left the pub he was in the night of the murder. Plus, his alibis are all from family or his fellow workers, any one of whom might have reasons to lie for his benefit. We’re bringing him in for questioning to get to the bottom of it.’

  DCI Mitchell nodded thoughtfully. ‘What about the other CCTV sources like traffic cameras, or the river?’

  Honor’s skin flushed with heat a little as she replied.

  ‘Nothing, boss,’ she admitted. ‘He must use some kind of local knowledge. Fraud have identified mobile phone signals connected with the Southwark homicide of Amber Carson as pinging somewhere between Spitalfields and Whitechapel, but beyond that we don’t have more details other than what we can deduce from the killer’s methods and suspected motivations.’

  ‘Which are?’

  Honor felt the other officers in the room all watching her now with deep interest, the blink moment upon her. She recalled Danny’s warning. Better to air it here, than get it wrong in front of a few million viewers on live television.

  ‘The murder of Sebastian Dukas occurred on August thirty–first, with Amber McVey’s murder just afterwards, September first. Both victims were killed and displayed in a manner conducive with a killer who is seeking to make grand statements, showing a desire to be seen, to be noticed. Both murders occurred near the river, with Sebastian Dukas killed within a stone’s throw of Whitechapel. Although I cannot offer anything of true substance to support my suspicion, I believe that in some way this killer is seeking to replicate, in a modern fashion, the fame and success of Jack the Ripper.’

  The air in the room felt oppressive, unmoving. Honor stood motionless, staring at the DI as she stared back. Prickly heat tingled across the back of her neck and she felt her heart fluttering uneasily in her chest.

  ‘You’re giving the papers their headline before they’ve thought of it,’ DCI Mitchell murmured with something that could either have been a smile or a grimace. ‘You walk in there with that this afternoon and they’ll be all over it by the following morning.’

  ‘There’s more to it than just the Ripper,’ Honor said, eager to support her assertion. ‘I’ve been researching phobias, and one in particular stands out: Thanatophobia, the fear of death, and of losing close friends to death. The killer’s desire to see his victim’s moment of death seems paramount in his work, we see that in his use of cameras to watch the victims’ last moments. He’s killing based on phobias, but many people with phobias also have a fascination with the cause of those fears. I think he’s addicted, in the same way that some people became addicted to snuff videos a few years back, watching people die for real. That’s got to have a cause, a trigger point somewhere in his life, something that drives him to pursue the same experience time and time again.’ More silence. Honor began to feel the room turning against her, even though not a single officer other than the DCI had said a word. It was too wild, too far out there and also too obvious a motive: any killer in the square mile could easily be said to be

  emulating the Ripper.

  ‘Too neat and too Hollywood,’ DS Hansen said. ‘We need to keep anything about the Ripper out of this. Besides, there are too many theories now about how the Ripper didn’t kill prostitutes, wasn’t a surgeon and so on. Anybody basing their crimes on such myths is chasing rainbows.’

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathering, Honor noting a few stifled chuckles. So much for the brainstorming.

  ‘I agree, but we’r
e going public anyway,’ Honor pointed out. ‘What better way to grab people’s attention than an easy and memorable tag? They’ll swallow it up, everybody will be talking about it, and our person of interest on the CCTV will be on every front page by dawn.’

  DCI Mitchell nodded.

  ‘And if they’re innocent of any crime, they’ll be holding a bloody press conference of their own when they sue us,’ he replied. ‘We can’t walk on with that. We need something concrete or they’ll tear us to shreds, and God forbid if this nutter comes up with another victim before then.’

  ‘Yeah,’ DS Hansen uttered, ‘it’s a nice idea but we can’t afford to waste time chasing ghosts of the Ripper and miss something potentially useful. This killer’s a narcissist, it’s his own name that he wants to go down in history.’

  Honor waited to see what the DI would decide to do with her revelation. She didn’t have to wait for long.

  ‘We stick with what we know, which doesn’t sound like very much at the moment,’ Harper said finally. ‘Both families are on board with this, they want the killer found by any means possible, understandably. We’ll brief the press and focus on the murders themselves, unless something better comes up before then. DS Hansen, what’s the story with the Hollsworth fraud case?’

  Hansen was about to reply, when the door opened and an officer poked her head through.

  ‘DS McVey?’ she asked, and spotted Honor. ‘Gary Wheeler is downstairs in holding.’

  Honor grabbed the information like an anchor back to safety and immediately turned to leave the room. As she made her way between the other detectives, she intercepted a few bemused glances. A whisper from Hansen drifted her way, chased by muffled sniggers.

  ‘Don’t forget your top hat and cape, McVey.’

  Honor felt bile rise in her throat as she walked out of the room and into the corridor outside. She let out a breath that seemed to have been cooped up for hours, stale exhaust gusting into the cool corridor as she closed her eyes for a moment and sought a centre to herself.

  ‘Are you okay, ma’am?’

  A constable aged no more than twenty–five closed the door behind her, a look of concern on her face.

  ‘Another day at the office,’ Honor murmured in reply, her skin cooling as Danny Green and Samir Raaya joined her.

  ‘That didn’t quite go to plan,’ Danny said.

  ‘You know, I’m glad you’re here,’ she shot back. ‘I’d be lost without you.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Danny replied as they walked. ‘It’s too much, even if you’re right. Hansen and the others will latch on to it, say you’re off your game.’

  ‘They can say what they damned well like. Let’s go see what Gary has to say for himself,’ Honor snapped back, angry enough to take it out her partner.

  Danny raised his hands in defeat but said nothing as they walked toward the custody suite.

  15

  Honor entered the interview room to find Gary Wheeler sitting with a cup of coffee on the opposite side of a plain Formica table. Danny accompanied her into the room, while Samir carried out further examination of the financial records with a member of the fraud unit in an adjoining room.

  Wheeler looked perplexed but he raised his eyebrows in recognition of her and DC Green as they sat down. Honor noted that he was wearing a hooded top, just like the one worn by the person of interest in the pub CCTV footage.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Wheeler,’ Honor began, ‘I appreciate you coming here at such short notice. I would like to remind you that you’re not under caution, and that we’re recording this interview. The time is, oh–eight–fifteen hours.’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Wheeler asked, genuinely confused.

  ‘Got a busy day ahead?’ Danny Green asked with a smile. ‘Where are you working right now?’

  A pair of quick questions that required no deception. Watch the responses, the body language, gain an idea of what the suspect looks like when they’re telling the truth. Honor noted that Wheeler looked up to the left as he thought about his response.

  ‘Up to my neck,’ he said. ‘Out near Hackney this morning, then down to Camberwell this afternoon.’

  Wheeler was sitting straight, his gaze was clear, and he was cradling the coffee gently. He looked up to the left when thinking about the truth, which might mean he’d look up to the right when he was using his imagination, the hemispheres of the human brain affecting his body language in subtle ways that most folks didn’t even know about.

  ‘I see,’ Danny replied, the smile gone now. ‘Gary, we have some questions to ask you about your company’s books.’

  Wheeler eyebrows went up in surprise, as though they were about to run off of their own accord. Honor saw his shoulders rise and the coffee cup deformed a little in his hands as he squeezed it.

  ‘The books?’ he echoed. ‘I thought that you wanted to know something about the church?’

  ‘We check out everything in a murder inquiry,’ Honor informed him, her anger at how the briefing had gone now fuelling a predatory instinct within her. She could hear it in her voice, cold and hard. ‘There are some discrepancies in your income that we’d like to talk about.’

  Gary Wheeler’s eyes wobbled as though a seismic tremor had shuddered through them.

  ‘Talk to us about how many people you employ on your sites,’ Danny suggested as he gently laid down a file on the table between them, but did not open it, ‘and about how many sites you’re working, because what you’re telling HMRC and what your bank statements are telling us don’t add up.’

  Wheeler, a big and rough–looking man, looked as though he was himself now staring death in the face. His pupils were dilated, his forehead suddenly glistening with a faint sheen of sweat. For a moment, Honor thought that Wheeler might buckle–up and fight back, but then he sagged.

  ‘I’ve got a few off–the–books sites,’ he said, his normally deep voice a whisper, ‘I run them from time to time when things get tough, helps keep the money coming in.’

  Honor leaned back in her seat, watching Wheeler for a moment before she spoke. ‘How many, and where?’

  Wheeler sighed, glanced up and to the left.

  ‘Two in Hackney,’ he said, ‘another in Gainsford Street, south of the water.’

  ‘Southwark?’ Honor asked, and was rewarded with a nod. She exchanged a brief glance with Danny, the locations of both sites significant. ‘And these sites, they’re worked on by you, or by other people?’

  ‘I’m the site foreman for all three,’ Wheeler replied in a defeated tone. ‘The workers are hired by me.’

  ‘We’re gonna need names,’ Danny said, ‘all of them.’

  Honor was about to pull out a pen for Wheeler when she saw him wince. ‘What?’

  Wheeler rolled his big shoulders as he pulled his coffee closer, looking for all the world as though he wanted to dive into it and vanish from the room.

  ‘I don’t have any names.’

  Honor stared at Wheeler for a long moment. ‘You don’t have any names? I thought your site foreman Cooper handled security and personnel?’

  Wheeler shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘He doesn’t know anything about the other sites.’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything about them?’ Danny echoed, his tone flat.

  ‘I mean that the men were all hired for cash by me, no questions asked, I kept it to myself and…’

  Danny shot up out of his chair as he slammed his hands on the table.

  ‘This is a murder inquiry and you lied to us?!’ he boomed as Honor got up and put a hand on his shoulder to restrain him. ‘Didn’t you hear about the victim in Southwark?

  Amber Carson was buried alive under two tons of fucking concrete and you’re concealing information from us?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Honor said.

  Danny fumed for a moment longer. In that moment it looked as though he could murder Wheeler with his bare hands. Wheeler cowered, said nothing, as whatever he saw in Danny’s eyes quelled any resis
tance that he might have harboured.

  ‘You lied to us,’ Honor said to Wheeler as she and Danny sat back down. ‘How many people have worked for you that you can’t identify?’

  Wheeler winced.

  ‘Dozens,’ he replied. ‘We all do it! There isn’t a contractor in the city that can complete without hiring cheap hands, the Polish and the Lithuanians, they’re all over the place. My income dropped thirty per cent in three years, I had to do it to survive.’

  Honor took a breath, closed her eyes for a moment as she tried to rise above Wheeler’s pleading tirade.

  ‘You’re telling me that there could have been dozens of people on your sites that we’ll never be able to identify, people who could have accessed St Magnus Church and committed murder?’

  Wheeler stared at her for a moment, and she could see that only now was he beginning to calculate the consequences of what he had done.

  ‘Well, I, I hadn’t thought of that, and it’s not like they could just walk onto the site anyway and…’

  ‘Obstruction of justice,’ Danny snapped, staring at the desk as he counted off charges on the fingers of one hand, ‘lying to a police officer in the course of their duty, fraud, health and safety, building regulations, insurance fraud…’

  Wheeler’s face began to collapse in on itself. Honor leaned forward, glaring at him.

  ‘There are two dead people out there, one of whom was murdered on a construction site for which you’re the foreman, another who died horribly yesterday on another construction site that one of your former employees might have been able to gain access to, and you’ve delayed our investigations for days. You know what “accessory after the fact” means, don’t you, Gary?’

  Wheeler’s jaw dropped open and he stared back at her, wide–eyed. Before he could speak, Danny recited a legal line direct from memory.

  ‘Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted and punished as a principal offender.’