Bad Seed: a gripping serial killer thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book 3)

by Heleyne Hammersley

  She looked to Kate for corroboration but Kate simply raised her eyebrows, urging her to continue.

  ‘So that was that, I thought. He dumped me. I decided not to keep the baby and started looking into arranging a termination. And then… and then I was attacked.’

  ‘And it was him?’ Kate asked.

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I looked into his eyes as he strangled me and I was so sad that his would be the last face that I ever saw. Yes, I’m sure.’ Sarah turned to Hollis. ‘I hope you got all that because I don’t want to have to repeat it.’

  Hollis gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘I got it all.’

  Kate took a deep breath. ‘We need a name. Sarah,’ she said on the exhale. ‘If we’re going to arrest him, we need a name.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I can’t. If he finds out that I spoke to you he’ll kill me.’

  ‘How would he find out? Is he local? Do you still see him?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t live here if there was any chance I’d bump into him. But he’ll know. He’s clever.’

  Kate thought for a few seconds. ‘How about I give you a name and you nod or shake your head? Could we try that?’

  Sarah shrugged noncommittally. Kate wasn’t convinced that she’d get the truth but it was worth a try.

  ‘Was his name Tim?’

  The other woman shook her head. Kate felt sick. She’d been so sure that this trip was going to lead them to Matthias and now it felt like wasted time.

  ‘What about Mike?’ Hollis asked.

  Another headshake.

  ‘Max?’

  Kate realised what Hollis was doing. Siobhan had told them that Chloe was meeting a Mike or a Max. If he’d been using an alias he might have used the same one with Sarah. The young woman had started to cry, silently, tears running down both cheeks and dropping off her chin like the start of a heavy storm. Slowly, so slowly, Sarah turned to Kate and nodded.

  ‘Was Max his real name?’ Kate asked. ‘Did you ever hear anybody call him it? Or did you see any bills in his name?’

  Sarah was starting to curl up into herself on the armchair, arms folded across her chest against the barrage of questions.

  ‘Sarah,’ Kate continued, lowering her voice and speaking slowly. ‘Where did Max live? Did you go to his house?’

  ‘He had a flat on Portland Square in Carlisle. It was one of the big corner buildings but I can’t remember the number. It was Flat 5.’

  Inspiration suddenly struck. Kate grabbed for her phone and opened her email account. Cooper had sent her some of the stills from the CCTV footage. One of them was the clearest shot they had of Matthias.

  ‘Sarah, is this Max?’

  The other woman glanced at the screen and then back at Kate. Her eyes were wide with shock. She inclined her head, only once and only slightly.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate breathed. ‘Thank you. Sarah, I know this has been really hard for you but you might have given us what we need to get this man locked up for a very long time.’

  ‘It’ll never be long enough,’ Sarah muttered. ‘I know he’ll find me. But if I’d told the truth those two women would still be alive so I probably deserve it… I won’t testify though. You’ll have to get him for these other two because I don’t want to have to see him again. If he gets away with it, he’ll come after me. You don’t know what he’s like.’

  The sound of the front door opening prevented Kate from offering any reassurances. And, really, what could she say? If Sarah had identified her attacker four years ago there was a very strong possibility that Melissa Buckley and Chloe Welsh would still be alive. If she wasn’t prepared to face Matthias in court, then her evidence only served to confirm what Kate and her team already suspected. It was nowhere near concrete enough for the CPS without Sarah herself.

  Sarah’s mother took in the scene in her sitting room, dropped her bag of shopping and rushed over to her daughter.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ She glared accusingly at Hollis who was stuffing his notebook back into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Sarah’s been very helpful,’ Kate said, standing up. ‘She may have given us an important lead.’

  She looked at Sarah, make-up smudged across her face, dark tear stains on her t-shirt, and forced a smile. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ she said, heading for the door.

  ‘Shit,’ Hollis said as he closed the driver’s door of the car.

  ‘Couldn’t put it better myself,’ Kate responded. ‘Looks like we’ve got reasonable grounds to bring Matthias in. Trouble is I’m not sure we can get him for the murders. It’s all circumstantial at the moment. And if we question him about Sarah, it’s her word against his. Especially after all this time. And she’s said that she won’t testify.’

  Hollis started the engine.

  ‘You do think it’s him though?’

  ‘It’s him. I realise now why he seemed familiar when we met him. It was his accent. It’s a bit watered down but you can still hear the Cumbrian vowels. That’s what I was picking up on.’

  Kate’s phone vibrated in her pocket. An email from Cooper. She read it quickly.

  ‘Back to Donny,’ she said to Hollis. ‘Cooper might have something concrete.’

  She was about to slip her phone back into her pocket when it rang in her hand. She sighed when she saw Raymond’s name on the screen. She hadn’t wanted him to find out about her trip to Haltwhistle until she was back in Doncaster and really didn’t fancy explaining everything to him over the phone.

  ‘Kate. Where are you?’

  ‘Northumberland,’ she admitted.

  ‘What the hell are you doing all the way up there?’ From Hollis’s expression, Kate could tell that he could hear Raymond shouting at her. ‘No, don’t tell me. That can wait. You need to get back here now. We’ve got another body. O’Connor’s at the scene with Kailisa. I’ve sent Barratt over there as well.’

  ‘Same injuries?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Sounds like it,’ Raymond said. ‘A bit older this time. O’Connor thinks it’s a sex worker, based on the way she was dressed. Oh, and we’ve got an ID and she’s got a record. Suzanne Doherty? Ring any bells?’

  Kate glanced at Hollis. His knuckles were white, hands gripped like claws around the steering wheel. He’d heard every word.

  Chapter 34

  Kate stared down at the body on the table. She’d never met Suzanne Doherty but, even in death, the woman looked brash and brassy. Studying the face Kate searched for any similarities to Hollis in the hooked nose and strangely startled-looking blue eyes. Finding nothing she shifted focus, trying to concentrate on what Kailisa was saying rather than on the memory of Dan slamming the car door and marching away from her at Scotch Corner services.

  He’d driven from Haltwhistle in silence and Kate couldn’t think of a way to speak to him that wouldn’t sound trite or clichéd. When he’d eventually pulled in she’d tried to say something but he’d cut her off by storming away.

  Ten minutes later he’d texted her. Go back without me. I’ll sort myself out.

  She’d texted back – pleading with him to come back to the car but when he didn’t respond she went in to find him. She didn’t have to look far – he was in the queue at M&S with a bottle of whisky in his hand.

  Rather than make a scene, Kate had walked over to him, placed a hand on his shoulder and said quietly. ‘Get a taxi to the nearest railway station, Dan. Find me when you’re ready to talk.’

  Hollis had turned to her and nodded. That had been forty-eight hours ago and still no word.

  ‘…appears to be in her early to mid-fifties.’ The intercom crackled into life. Kailisa had started.

  The woman’s clothes had already been removed and the pathologist was working a high-powered magnifying lens along the body looking for trace evidence. He paused two or three times, leaning in, tweezers in hand to remove items that Kate couldn’t see. Each was placed in a plastic evidence bag, held by Kailisa’s eve
r-present, ever-vigilant assistant.

  Kate listened as Suzanne’s general health and any identifying marks were described in minute detail and then Kailisa reached the abdominal wound. A long pause as the pathologist tilted the lens left and right, up and down. He seemed unhappy about something. Kate pressed the intercom button next to her seat.

  ‘Problem?’

  Kailisa looked up to where she was sitting then back down at the body on the table. ‘Come down please, DI Fletcher.’ It was more an instruction than a request and Kate rushed to comply.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, tying the strings at the back of her gown and leaning in close to the body.

  ‘This abdominal wound is not the same as the other two.’ He pointed to the edges of the massive cut. ‘See here? The blade used was wider and not as sharp. There are hesitation marks on the right-hand side. My examination so far is superficial but I’d suggest that whoever made this cut was either inexperienced or in a hurry. There is also a section of the wound which is much deeper suggesting a stabbing. I’d suggest that the woman was still alive when this occurred as there is clear reaction from the tissue. Her assailant may have blood on his clothes. I think the longer wound is meant to disguise the fact that she was stabbed.’

  Kate studied the marks that Kailisa had pointed out trying to make sense of what she’d been told. What did it mean? She could clearly see the small red scratches around one side of the wound but, to her inexpert eye, the bigger cut looked the same as those inflicted on Melissa and Chloe – she couldn’t see the stab wound at all.

  Kailisa’s attention had moved to the dead woman’s neck. Kailisa tilted her head to one side and then the other holding a ruler against the bruises while his assistant took photographs. Kate watched him as he called up the digital images on a computer. He flicked backwards and forwards between these new photographs and two other sets.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  Kate moved closer, leaning in to see what he’d spotted.

  ‘The distance between the thumb and finger marks on this woman is different from the other two. See?’ He pointed at a set of figures running down one side of the screen which made no sense at all to Kate.

  ‘Whoever strangled this woman had smaller hands than the killer of the previous two.’

  ‘It’s not the same killer?’

  ‘It is not the same killer,’ Kailisa confirmed.

  Kate stared at the computer screen trying to work out the implications of the pathologist’s findings. Two killers? Were they working together? Or was Suzanne Doherty’s murder the work of a copycat? She silently cursed Duncan Cawthorne for his stupidity in speaking to the press. By sharing details of Melissa’s murder he’d opened up Kate’s pool of suspects to anybody with the means and opportunity to kill Suzanne Doherty.

  She turned back to Kailisa, who had turned back to the body again.

  ‘Has she been raped?’ she asked.

  Kailisa sighed, obviously irritated that she wanted him to check but he moved down the body and parted the legs.

  Kate turned away.

  ‘No evidence of recent sexual activity,’ Kailisa said, ‘I’ll take swabs to confirm but, judging by the condition of the vulvar tissue, I’d say that she wasn’t raped.’

  ‘And do you have any thoughts about time of death?’

  Another sigh. ‘Judging by the lack of rigor mortis and the skin slippage on the hands I’d estimate that she’s been dead for at least seventy-two hours, possibly longer. Of course, analysis of any insect activity, stomach contents and some tissue samples may be able to narrow that down.’

  Kate’s pulse raced as she thought back over the two days leading up to this woman’s death. She’d been thinking about motive and, if sexual assault was ruled out there wasn’t much else. The woman’s handbag had been found with the body in deep undergrowth around Town Fields and her purse was inside and intact. In addition there had been no ritualistic positioning of the body; it actually looked like whoever killed her had tried to hide what he’d done, judging by the crime-scene photographs that she’d seen. She could only draw one conclusion; whoever had done this had simply wanted Suzanne Doherty dead. And she knew of two people who might share that sentiment.

  Mockery. That’s how they’d decided to play it. Another dead woman so it has to be me who killed her. How can they even think that? I’d heard the news reports, listening avidly for clues that the police won’t have spotted. She’s a common whore for Christ’s sake! As if I’d have anything to do with a woman like that. But I’d heard a whisper that she was the third – that I was officially a serial killer. Couldn’t they see the difference? The radio report says that this woman might have been dead for a few days, hidden in undergrowth. Hidden! How could that possibly be connected with me?

  The wounds are ‘similar’. Impossible. I’ve had the training. I’ve been taught how to cut flesh with precision and confidence. I’ve seen inside a human being, held their life in my hands in a very literal sense, and seen how frail the body really is. If I’d stuck with surgery I would have been one of the greats; none of my fellow students had the empathy or the understanding to feel the raw power of the human spirit made flesh. Weaklings.

  And they thought I’d been the weak one for choosing a different route. For electing to study the mind rather than the body. If they’d only realised that it was my own mind that I wanted to understand, my own impulses that I wanted to either contain or indulge.

  So now I have to repeat my message. And go on repeating it until they understand. Until they all understand.

  Chapter 35

  ‘So we’re not going to arrest him?’ Sam Cooper looked at Kate in utter disgust.

  ‘Not yet,’ Kate tried to reassure her. ‘We don’t have the evidence. Everything we’ve got is circumstantial and could be explained. We can’t even prove that the image on the CCTV is Matthias. I could bring him in and question him under caution but I don’t think it would get us anywhere. If we had to let him go afterwards he might just take off.’

  Cooper shook her head in frustration. ‘What about the phone number he gave me? I know it’s not the same as the one that’s on Melissa Buckley’s phone but it shows that he’s offering his services outside office hours. Melissa’s car was found near his house. He was in the same bar as Chloe on the night she was murdered.’

  ‘He might not want his employers to know that he was moonlighting – that might be why he gave you the number with no witnesses present. And Melissa’s car could have been parked there for any number of reasons.’

  The room was heavy with tension. O’Connor’s team had finally located the missing umbrella in an alley two streets away from X-Ray and it had been sent away for fingerprint analysis. If Matthias’s prints were on it and on the database then it would add to the evidence against him and point to him following Chloe out of the club in the early hours of Saturday morning. They still had the hair that Kailisa had discovered on Chloe’s body – a DNA match with Matthias would be difficult for him to explain but Kate would have bet a large amount of money that he’d say it was consensual sex. Of course, the lack of semen and lubricant supported Sarah’s claim that Matthias had some sort of reproductive ‘issue’ but it would be very difficult to argue that the lack of evidence pointed to Matthias. They needed something more concrete. They couldn’t search his home unless he was arrested and they couldn’t arrest him on such thin evidence – the CPS would throw the case out straight away.

  ‘What about the latest victim?’ Barratt asked. ‘Anything on her?’

  This was the one question that Kate wanted to avoid. She hated keeping information from the others but she wasn’t sure whether it was wise to give them the opportunity to speculate about a second killer just yet. Not until she’d had a chance to confront Dan and Raymond. She was dreading the former discussion and couldn’t even contemplate the latter but she owed it to her colleagues to treat them with respect rather than launching in with accusations.

  The problem
was the timeline. Hollis could easily have killed his mother within the timeframe that Kailisa had offered, unless he had a strong alibi and, if Suzanne Doherty had been killed in the evening two days prior to her being found, then it was likely that Kate’s DCI would also have had the opportunity. Raymond was looking less likely though. He’d shown no reaction to Suzanne’s name or to the crime-scene photographs. She knew in her gut that the killer could be anybody, that it might have been a random attack made to look like the others, but she knew of at least one person with a strong motive for wanting Suzanne Doherty dead. Possibly two. There was no way she could ignore Hollis’s link to the victim. He’d admitted that the woman had been hounding him. What if he’d confronted her and things had got out of hand? What if Suzanne had approached Raymond and he’d lashed out? Were either of them capable of this? Kate truly didn’t want to believe it was either of her colleagues but her training was forcing her to consider the unthinkable.

  She focussed on Barratt’s enquiry. ‘Still waiting on lab results,’ Kate fudged. ‘Nothing conclusive from the initial examination. Similar wounds, found on Town Fields, time of death sometime on Tuesday night but that’s tentative at the moment.’

  ‘Similar wounds?’ Barratt persisted. ‘Not identical then?’

  Kate could see that she wasn’t going to be able to avoid the inevitable barrage of questions from Barratt. She loved his tenacity and the way he wanted to interrogate any situation but she’d been hoping that he’d accept what she said at face value. That he hadn’t said a lot about his character – and the fact that she’d tried to be vague said a lot about her own. Time to come clean.