THE THAMES PATH KILLER an absolutely gripping mystery and suspense thriller (Detective Rob Miller Mysteries Book 1)

by BIBA PEARCE

  Thanks for letting me know you’re okay. I’m going to bed. Make yourself comfortable on the couch.

  She was pissed off, no doubt about it. He sighed. It couldn’t be helped. She’d known what he did for a living when they’d first met. He’d never kept it a secret from her. In fact, he remembered telling her that he worked unsociable hours, sometimes for days on end. It had been okay back then, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, but now, it seemed to annoy the hell out of her.

  His thoughts turned to poor Julie, lying semi-naked in the bush, bruised and battered, and what she must have gone through in the moments before her death, the terror she must have experienced.

  As he walked to his car, he vowed that this crime would not go unpunished.

  Chapter 4

  Yvette sulked all the way through breakfast, which consisted of a cup of coffee and a cigarette. She worked Tuesday to Saturday at Harrods in Knightsbridge, with Saturday being her longest and busiest day. Sunday and Monday were her weekend. That was the retail industry for you.

  “I’m heading out now.” Rob pulled on his jacket. Outside, it was cold and overcast. Spring had yet to kick in. “Don’t wait up, I’ll be late back.”

  Yvette shrugged but didn’t look at him.

  He ought to say something, try to explain about the case, about Julie or how it was his responsibility to catch the killer, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was her stony expression or the lack of empathy she showed towards him, towards his job. All he knew was he didn’t feel like labouring the point. Taking one last look at her petulant face, he sighed and walked out the door.

  * * *

  “I’ve got something,” said Celeste, a young female police officer who’d volunteered to trawl through the CCTV footage. She’d been waiting for him, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

  The adrenalin kicked in. That was quick. Rob dumped his rucksack on his desk and followed her into the studio, where three large monitors were set up next to one another with CCTV video footage of varying quality playing on each.

  “Where am I looking?” he asked.

  “Here.” She pointed to the third monitor, which was frozen on a shadowy figure in a balaclava and a dark hoodie, lurking beside the trees in the archive’s grounds. “It’s hard to see because he’s so well camouflaged, but that’s definitely someone watching her.”

  In the foreground, he could see the much lighter figure of Julie Andrews pausing outside the building. He scrutinised the screen. “It’s impossible to see who he is from this shot. His face is covered and he’s wearing a hoodie. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “I’ll keep going, perhaps there’s a shot of him without the balaclava further up the road.”

  “Hmm . . .” Rob was doubtful. Even if there was, unless he actually had the balaclava in his hand, it would be impossible to know if it was the same guy. Even the hoodie was black, with no identifiable logos or markings that he could see. It wouldn’t be enough. “Okay, thanks for that. Good work. Let me know if you find anything else.”

  Celeste took a seat in front of the monitor. “Will do, guv.”

  * * *

  Justin King was waiting in the interview room to give his statement. Rob sat down opposite him, the case file in front of him on the inhospitable metal table. Mallory was already there.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Rob began. “I know this is a difficult time for you.”

  Justin nodded. His red-rimmed eyes were ringed with dark shadows, and it didn’t look like he’d shaved or brushed his hair. It was sticking up more than yesterday, if that was possible. He was still in the same jeans, the same tracksuit top with the Nike tick on it.

  “I want to help catch this bastard,” he gritted.

  “That’s what we’re going to do.” Rob pressed a button on the electronic recording device. “Do you mind if we record this conversation?”

  “Sure, if it’ll help.”

  Mallory introduced them all for the purposes of the tape. Rob opened the folder. “Justin, right now we want to try to piece together Julie’s movements over the last week or so. If she was being followed, we might have a shot at identifying her stalker.

  “You think he’s the one who did this to her?”

  “It’s one line of enquiry,” Rob said vaguely. At the moment, it was their only line of enquiry. The shadowy guy in the CCTV footage could have been the stalker Julie described in the police report she’d filed two weeks ago, so it was definitely worth exploring.

  “Okay, well, she had the same routine every day. She left for work around eight in the morning — her hours were 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — and either took the bus to Kew or walked along the towpath, depending on the weather.”

  “Do you know which bus she took?” Mallory asked.

  “I think it was the sixty-five.”

  He made a note. “What about after work? Did she always come home via the towpath?”

  “Not always.” Justin’s voice quivered, and he stared down at his hands. “Yesterday was unusual, you see. We’d recently got engaged and I was making a romantic dinner.” He ended with a gut-wrenching sob and collapsed forwards onto the table.

  There was a brief silence as his words sank in. Rob was the first to find his tongue. “I’m sorry, mate. That must be tough for you.”

  He could see Justin fighting to regain control. His shoulders shook and he gasped a couple of times. Neither Rob nor Mallory moved. Eventually, Justin sat back up, his eyes haunted. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “When did you get engaged?” Rob asked.

  “Last month,” said Justin desolately. “But we only picked the ring out yesterday.”

  Ring? Rob frowned, casting his mind back to the victim’s bruised and battered body. He pictured her hands tied behind her head, discoloured wrists. “Would Julie have been wearing her engagement ring?”

  “Yes, of course. She was so proud of it, she wanted to show it off at work. Here, have a look.” He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and showed them a photograph from some social media site. It was of Julie’s left hand, proudly showing off an elegant engagement ring, a thin platinum band adorned with a single diamond. Probably one carat. He’d bought something similar for Yvette, except hers had been one and a half carats and a thicker band. Yvette liked chunky jewellery.

  Rob turned to Mallory. “The pathologist didn’t mention a ring. Was it in evidence?”

  Mallory shook his head. “No, I went through everything. There was no ring listed.” He frowned, worried he’d missed something. “But I’ll double-check.”

  “Do you mind if we make a copy of this photograph?”

  Justin shook his head. “Whatever helps.”

  Mallory held out his hand for the phone. “I’ll do it.”

  Justin passed over the device and Mallory left the room.

  “We didn’t find a ring on the . . . on her finger,” Rob explained. “So, either it fell off during the attack or her assailant took it.”

  “Do you think that’s why she was targeted?” Justin’s look was incredulous. “It wasn’t even that big, I couldn’t afford anything more than a carat.”

  Probably not. “It’s a possibility.”

  Justin stared at him. “But you’re not convinced.”

  “No, given the nature of the attack, I think he’d been watching her for some time, waiting for his moment.”

  Justin closed his eyes. “I can’t believe we didn’t see this coming. That psycho had been following her for weeks and we just shrugged it off. We thought he’d disappeared, when he was biding his time.”

  “Did you manage to get a look at him?” asked Rob.

  “No, I never saw him. It was only when Julie went out alone.”

  Rob turned the conversation back to Julie’s routine. “So, she usually took the bus home, but last night she walked along the towpath?”

  “It was quicker. The traffic at that time is crazy and the bus takes for ever to cross K
ew Bridge, so if it’s not raining, she usually walks. Last night was an exception. Normally, she wouldn’t walk in the rain, but she was eager to get home.” He choked up again and Rob felt bad for making him relive the nightmare. “She texted me just before she left the office and said she was on her way. That’s why I panicked when she wasn’t home an hour later. I knew something awful had happened to her.”

  Rob swallowed over the sour taste in his mouth and made a note to check the time of Julie’s text message. Her mobile phone had been found in her handbag along with her wallet containing the cash. It was still operational, which meant her attacker hadn’t thought to turn it off. Or perhaps he’d known he wasn’t going to be there long enough for anyone to trace her. They’d applied for her phone records, which were being sent over from the provider.

  “Okay, this was her daily routine. What about weekends? Did she go out without you last weekend?”

  “Hang on, let me think.” Justin rubbed his forehead. “We stayed in on Friday night and watched a movie together on the couch, then on Saturday morning we went ring shopping. Julie had been so looking forward to it. We had lunch in Richmond then came home, and as far as I can remember we didn’t go out again. On Sunday, Julie had coffee with a friend.” He clicked his fingers. “They met at a café in Chiswick.”

  “Friend’s name?” asked Rob.

  “Natasha,” said Justin. “I’m afraid I don’t know her last name. She used to work with Julie at the archives but left some time ago. They kept in touch.”

  Rob made another note for Mallory to follow that up when he went over to the archives. He tried to push Justin about events the weekend before, but he couldn’t remember it in any great detail. They’d gone to watch the football at the local pub, the Waterman’s Arms, on Saturday afternoon, he knew that much, and he hadn’t gone anywhere on Sunday. Julie may have popped to the local grocery store, but he couldn’t be sure what time.

  Rob called it quits after that. They had quite a bit to follow up on. He only hoped it was enough. It would be an extremely lucky break if they could catch a clearer glimpse of Julie’s stalker on one of the CCTV cameras in the area. Her phone records would also give them a better idea of where she’d been and what she’d been up to.

  Mallory came back in and returned Justin’s phone to him. “Thanks, mate, that’s extremely useful.” He glanced at Rob. “Definitely no ring.”

  Justin pocketed it, then looked Rob in the eye. “Please, you’ve got to find this guy. He needs to pay for what he did to my Julie.”

  Rob held his gaze. “I intend to.”

  * * *

  “What have you got for me on the stalker’s MO?” Rob directed his question to Will Freemont and Jenny Bird, two experienced sergeants who were working on that angle.

  Will, a bright, IT-savvy officer who’d previously worked in Scotland Yard’s Vice Squad, now a department under the Serious Crime Directorate, cleared his throat. “Julie Andrews did report him two weeks ago. She visited Richmond Police Station and spoke to the duty officer. He took a full statement.”

  “Good, what information did she provide?”

  “Not a lot, to be honest. She was fairly vague. Said he was tall, lanky, with a thin face and was wearing a hoodie.”

  “Matches the guy we’ve got on CCTV following her down to the river last night,” he said. “Anything specific about his appearance or his features?”

  “Nothing that will help to identify him, guv. She never got a good look at his face — it was always in shadow.”

  “But she was sure it was the same guy?”

  “According to her statement, she was adamant. She said she’d noticed him three or four times already, outside her home in Brentford, at the supermarket, on her way to work . . .”

  “Did you say supermarket?”

  Will glanced down at his notes. “Sainsbury’s.”

  “Her fiancé mentioned something about Julie going to the supermarket the weekend before last. Let’s see if we can dig up the CCTV on that. Sainsbury’s is bound to have cameras outside the store, particularly in the car park.”

  “On it, guv.”

  It was a start. If only they could get an ID on this guy. He checked his watch. The post-mortem was scheduled for noon. “I’d better get down to the mortuary,” he told Mallory, who was also getting ready to leave. “Did you get my message about her friend — Natasha?”

  “Yeah, the one that left. I’ll get her details from HR and follow up.”

  They parted ways in the car park. Rob drove to the Fulham Public Mortuary, where Julie’s body was being kept. The sprawling brick building sat behind a neat row of trees and an orderly car park. Rob pulled into an empty bay in front of a pot bursting with crimson geraniums. Was the bright, cheerful exterior supposed to prepare you for the desolation and hopelessness inside?

  He signed in and was escorted to the forensic lab where the post-mortem was being performed. The pathologist, Robert Gowan, was waiting for him.

  Once Rob had scrubbed up, Gowan began the procedure. The only other people in the room were the two trainee pathologists who were assisting, but judging by their calm, professional demeanours, they’d done this before.

  Rob stood a few metres away from the body, watching silently. This wasn’t his first post-mortem, but he still felt queasy as he stared at the discoloured corpse on the steel table in front of him. It was unrecognisable as the beautiful, happy woman who smiled down at them from the incident room whiteboard.

  “You okay?” Gowan paused, scalpel in mid-air. “You’ve gone awfully pale.”

  “I’m good.” Rob averted his eyes, focusing on the array of sterile equipment positioned around the edge of the room. Anything to replace the bloated, mottled remains of Julie Andrews. It wasn’t essential he watch every detail of the post-mortem, but if there was anything to be found, he wanted to know now, not in a week’s time when the report landed on his desk.

  “The victim is a well-nourished white female, twenty-six years of age, previously identified as Julie Andrews,” said Gowan.

  Rob took a deep, steadying breath. He desperately needed something on this guy, and he was hoping against hope that Julie’s body would offer that something up. A sliver of DNA would do the trick. A fragment of skin under her fingernails or a hint of semen in her vagina.

  “There are deep bruises around her neck and petechiae on the face and conjunctiva, indicative of asphyxiation.” He looked up. “In other words, she was strangled.”

  “Was that the cause of death?”

  “Yes. She has congealed blood in her nasal passages and her nose is swollen, which is consistent with a punch to the face, but while the swelling is severe, I don’t think that is what killed her.”

  The pathologist worked his way down her body, pointing out all the defensive wounds where she’d lashed out at her attacker or tried to fight him off.

  Brave girl. “Come on, give me something,” he muttered.

  The pathologist held her hand and scraped beneath her nails with a sterile instrument, which he then passed to one of his assistants, who transferred the sample to a test-tube for lab analysis. He repeated the process with every finger.

  “Anything?” Rob asked.

  “Not that I can see, but I’m taking samples, just in case.”

  Rob sighed.

  Gowan turned her wrists over and inspected the markings through an illuminated magnifying glass on a stretchy arm that allowed for 360-degree motion. “Her hands were bound, as is evident by the thick striations and bruising around her wrists. Want to see?”

  Rob moved forward and peered through the magnifying glass. “Looks like he used duct tape.”

  “Could be.” He moved down to the lower half of her body. “There is evidence of sexual assault. Inflammation and bruising caused by forced penetration.” He peered in closer, pulling the magnifying glass with him. “No obvious indication of semen present in the vagina.”

  Shit. Rob ground his teeth. The guy must have wor
n a condom.

  One of the assistants handed Gowan a metal device, which he inserted and opened to gain access to the vagina. Then, he used what looked like a cotton bud on a long stick to collect a sample. “I’ve taken a swab to be sure, but the results won’t be back for a few days.”

  “Thanks.” Rob got ready to leave. He’d seen all he needed to see, and he definitely didn’t want to be around when he sliced her open.

  “Wait a minute,” barked the pathologist without looking up.

  Rob froze. “What is it?”

  A pause. “I’ve found something wedged inside her vagina.”

  Rob’s pulse rate increased. Was it the condom? Had it come off and got lodged inside her? He held his breath.

  “Forceps,” snapped Gowan. An assistant handed them over. He gently inserted them and retrieved the object.

  “It’s a ring.” The surprise was evident on his face as he studied it under the magnifying glass.

  “A ring?” Rob moved closer to have a better look. “What kind of ring?”

  The doctor dropped it into a kidney-shaped bowl with a metallic clunk and thrust it under his nose. “It looks like a diamond ring.”

  Rob stared at it. “Fucking hell. It’s her engagement ring.”

  “I’ve seen a thing or two in my time,” said Gowan, wiping perspiration from his brow, “but I have to admit, this is a first.”

  * * *

  “Can I have your attention, please?” DCI Lawrence had barely raised his voice, yet it still rose above the normal humdrum of office banter. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to face him. The squad room blinds were drawn to keep the sunlight off the monitor screens, but nobody noticed the stuffiness. The air bristled with anticipation.

  “We have a new development. Rob, do you want to do the honours?”

  Rob looked at the faces of his team staring back at him. Eager, hopeful, expectant. He got straight to it. “During the post-mortem, the pathologist discovered a ring wedged inside the victim.”

  There were a few confused murmurs.