by Carol Wyer
‘And of course, we have that sinister message cut into her back.’
‘I’m more convinced than ever that he brands his victims.’ Kate explained her thoughts and received a nod of agreement.
‘The cause of death was asphyxiation, same as Laura. He strangled them both.’
Kate was still going through the photographs, looking at Heather’s scraped hands. ‘Nothing under her fingernails?’
‘Earth, grass and a black cotton thread.’
‘No skin cells?’
‘None. Harvey believes the assailant kept a tight hold of her wrists and the thread might have come from a glove or a face covering. It’s been sent to the lab to be examined.’
Kate shuffled the photographs back into a pile and returned them to Emma before reading the pathology report, on the off-chance there was some clue they’d overlooked. She faced the whiteboard and the photos of the three victims. It could soon be four women, and a feeling of helplessness washed over her. Evil was out there, lurking and waiting to pounce again and still she had no fresh leads to follow or suspects to question. ‘Where are Morgan and Jamie exactly?’
‘Interviewing another ex-rapist. He was released two months ago.’
‘Does he own a black Honda motorbike?’
Emma’s nose wrinkled as if a bad smell had permeated it. ‘Erm, not exactly. He’s got a red and black Kawasaki.’ Before Kate could interrupt she rushed on with ‘We thought it might be possible he borrowed a Honda from a mate. He’s a member of a Stafford bike club. We decided it was worth looking into. The guy used to wrap his hand around his victims’ throats and threaten to kill them if they made any noise.’
Kate let it go. There were sufficient grounds to question him. If she’d been in the office when his name came up, she’d have sent somebody to interview him. They couldn’t afford to let anyone slip under the radar.
‘Still no CCTV footage of this motorbike?’
‘Nothing so far.’
‘I’ll see how far they’ve got.’ She punched Felicity’s name on the screen and got an immediate pickup.
‘Your ears must have been burning,’ said Felicity. ‘I was talking to Rachid and he’s spotted your suspect’s bike on the Stafford to Weston road, Monday morning at five thirty. We’re running the footage back to make sure, but there doesn’t seem to be any registration plate on the vehicle and the driver is dressed as your witness described. I’ll email you some captures in a jiffy.’
‘What about the cameras in Stafford or on the road to Abbots Bromley?’
‘We’ve been fixated on Stafford Road, so we haven’t got around to those yet. Rachid will email you anything as soon as he comes across it.’ Kate could picture the calm, smooth-faced young man who worked on all the technical data, alongside two other colleagues. In his late twenties, he was recognised as one of the department’s best technicians.
‘I’d appreciate that.’ She held on to the mobile. A man on a bike. It was all they had.
It only took the length of time for her to examine the faces on the whiteboard and consider why the assailant had shown such violence to the three women, before her inbox pinged. The image was grainy and slightly distorted but she could make out the back of a rider in a black leather jacket, dark trousers and boots on what appeared to be a black bike. There was no registration number plate. She stuck it on the board and wrote Stafford Road, Weston, 5.30 a.m. Emma looked up.
‘Our killer?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Clever son of a bitch, isn’t he? Nobody would give him a second glance. Plain bike, black clothing and no number plate. Anonymous.’
‘He’s becoming careless. Olivia is still alive.’
She rested her hands on her desk. Serial killers were not the roaming homicidal individuals portrayed in horror films and were far more likely to kill on their home turf. Like Jack the Ripper, who in 1888 stalked and killed in London’s Whitechapel district, today’s killers had a comfort zone, an area in which they’d operate, anchored by a point – their home or place of work – and crime statistics revealed serial killers were most likely to commit their first murder close to where they lived.
Their perpetrator was a local. There had to be some way of flushing him out.
‘This pay-as-you-go phone,’ Emma said. ‘We weren’t having any luck with it, so I asked a friend who used to work for Intelligence for help and he’s come up with some information.’
Kate’s head snapped up. ‘And?’
‘Heather was the only person who both made calls to and received calls from this number. Other incoming calls came from other pay-as-you-go numbers.’
Kate felt her eyelids flutter. Burner phones. Drug dealers invariably used disposable phones, throwing them away after one use so they couldn’t be traced. What had Heather got involved in?
‘She rang it a total of fifteen times, had four conversations, each lasting less than a minute and received only two calls from it, one on August the second, at ten o’clock in the evening, lasting five minutes; the other was made at five past nine on Friday morning, lasting only a few seconds.’ Emma pressed her lips together and looked at Kate, who shook her head from side to side slowly. It made little sense.
‘She made a call to that number immediately before she left Trentham House. How long did that call last?’
‘There was no pickup. My contact reckons by then the phone was no longer operational.’
‘Could it be connected to a case she was working on?’ Kate asked.
Emma’s thick eyebrows lifted. ‘I reckon it could.’
Kate scratched at a sudden itch on her neck. Operation Agouti?
Emma continued, ‘Anyway, my friend did some digging, discovered its IMEI number and found out it’s a Nokia 105 2G mobile handset that was first activated on July the thirtieth. It’s one of the cheapest pre-paid mobiles around, doesn’t have any web browser, no social network support and no camera, making it ideal as a burner phone.’
The itch was bothering Kate. She clawed at it again. She couldn’t understand why Heather would be in contact with the owner of the burner phone. Possibilities trampolined in her mind.
‘He thinks he knows where the phone came from.’
Kate held her breath.
‘Manchester Mobiles in Cheetham. It was one of forty handsets that were stolen on July the twenty-fourth. I contacted the lead officer on that case and he believes the phones found their way into the hands of local drug dealers and gangs.’
‘Another dead end, then,’ said Kate.
‘Erm, well, it would have been if my friend wasn’t an expert hacker.’ A smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘He reckons the first call made to Heather’s phone came from one of the red-light districts in Manchester – Strangeways – and the last was made at Stoke-on-Trent station. I checked with the tech team and they confirmed the tracker on Heather’s car shows she went to Stoke station soon after she received that call.’
Red-light district, Manchester, underage sex workers and Dickson. Pieces of what had been a complex puzzle shifted and interlocked to present a breathtaking possibility. Dickson had formed a small unit to track down underage sex workers, more specifically Farai’s girls, Rosa and Stanka. Why? He wanted to ensure they didn’t spill the beans about him sleeping with one of them at the Maddox Club. He hadn’t banked on Heather being so thorough at her job. Even after being dismissed from the investigation, she’d continued searching, found the girls and contacted them, determined to keep the information from the team she believed was untrustworthy. Why else would he have asked Felicity to delete information appertaining to the case from Heather’s laptop after first sending a copy to him? He’d wanted Operation Agouti to remain secret. That left one question unanswered. Who, on the team, had been tampering with evidence? It could have been one of the officers, or even Dickson himself. Chris would say she was making this fit what she wanted to believe and she needed facts. Her gut said this wasn’t make-believe; she felt this was righ
t.
‘There’s CCTV at Stoke station, so I suggest we run through it to see if we can find Heather and whoever she was meeting.’
Emma’s words became muffled and distant. If Farai had been truthful, Rosa and Stanka were in danger. She couldn’t let the girls be questioned at the station or allow Dickson to get wind of what the team had discovered. She’d have to confront the girls on the streets, keep them away from Dickson. The itch was worse than ever. She rubbed furiously at it. ‘Leave that with me,’ she said. She could feel rather than see the look Emma was giving her. ‘Until we can prove this meeting was nothing to do with one of Heather’s investigations, we need to keep this quiet. I’ve already been warned not to delve into territory that isn’t ours, so I’d appreciate it if you kept this between us for the moment.’ Emma bought it.
‘Sure. I understand.’
‘Good work, by the way.’
She didn’t like deceiving any of her team, but she couldn’t risk Emma, or anyone for that matter, finding out who Heather met at Stoke station. Her investigation into Dickson depended on secrecy. She had no idea how far up the ladder the corruption went.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Kate inhaled deeply in an attempt to steady the chaotic beating of her heart. She should never have come here, not in person. She still wasn’t ready for this. It wasn’t the cool wind that was causing the uncontrollable shaking in her hands, which she forced into her coat pockets, but the elaborate Jacobethan building with gables, finials and chimneys and a portico of eight arches, now filled in with arched windows and entrances, stonework and red bricks, the colour of dried blood. She could turn around, walk away and request the CCTV footage be sent to her email, yet the doors to the booking office slid open and her feet propelled her forwards, past the ticket machines and around travellers meandering around the foyer to the platform, as if they had a will of their own.
There were only a handful of travellers on the southbound platform and as an announcement sounded that the three-thirty train from Euston was now approaching, she stared up at the classic roof that spanned the platforms and half-expected a steam engine to chuff through, black smoke billowing from its stack like smoke from an angry dragon’s nostrils. The distraction was deliberate. This place held bad memories, for it was at this very station, from this very platform, that she’d climbed onto the outbound Euston train that fateful day in January, only to find carnage and, among the dead, her husband.
Some internal compass had sent her here, as if coming back would reverse time and Chris would dismount from the incoming train and throw his arms around her with a ‘Did you miss me?’ She dropped her gaze and spied the snout of the train, snaking its way into the station. Her palms became damp as it drew up to the platform, the driver passing her with barely a glance in her direction, and the first-class carriage drew level with her. There was no blood splatter on the windows, no faces with sightless eyes resting against the glass, only passengers wearing headphones, eyes closed or reaching for luggage in the overhead racks. A high-pitched alert indicated the doors were opening and, rooted to the spot, she waited, like a huge boulder in a fast-moving river, as travellers streamed past her. Chris did not disembark and she felt a tsunami of loss wash over her as the last passengers raced away. A whistle sounded and the train pulled away again. It was an ordinary journey on the Euston train.
The train rounded the bend and disappeared from view. The trembling in her limbs ceased as quickly as it had begun. Dr Franklin would undoubtedly have an explanation for it and she didn’t need a shrink to tell her what she already knew. She felt Chris’s lips brush her neck and heard a whispered, ‘You survived the experience. That’s my girl.’ She shook herself from her reverie and turned her attention to the platform opposite, reached either by a lift or the passenger subway, where only two men waited, one crouched on the floor, a can of lager in his hand, and the other with a satchel slung across his chest, eyes on his mobile. Anyone heading to or from Manchester would disembark at that platform, where there were no coffee shops, newsagents or first-class lounge, only a waiting room, toilets and a couple of benches. An online timetable had given her the information she needed. It took thirty-eight minutes to travel from Manchester to Stoke and a train had arrived at exactly five past nine on Friday morning.
She looked for surveillance equipment and, having decided the cameras were exactly where she’d hoped they would be, she continued along the platform to the British Transport Police offices where her arrival was expected.
The footage was grainy but good enough to make out the girl in a pale pink dress who got off the train, phone to her ear. The other passengers made a beeline for the subway with bags, briefcases and bikes, all jostling for space as they scurried towards the exit, but she did not, choosing instead to stand at the far end of the platform, overlooking the car park, where she stood motionless as if she was well accustomed to waiting.
She was petite with long dark hair held in a ponytail by a pink ribbon. At a distance, in the shapeless shift dress, with flat pumps, she looked exactly like a teenager to Kate, a girl out for the day, hoping to meet up with friends. How had she fallen into this industry at such a tender age? She didn’t have long to dwell on the matter as she instructed the officer to fast forward the footage until Heather came into shot, half an hour later. The two gravitated towards each other and, choosing one of the benches, sat down and talked. With heads lowered, there was no way Kate could make out what was said, but when they parted at ten past ten, Heather gave the girl a hug.
‘Can you do me a few captures of the girl’s face, please?’ she asked. ‘And send me the entire footage.’
Only one person would be able to identify the girl and confirm she had been sent to the Maddox Club that night in January. But he would be reluctant to speak to Kate again. Nevertheless, she had to flush Farai out and if it took all night to do so, then that’s what it would take.
It was gone six o’clock before Kate managed to find a striking youth, answering to the name Benji, who exited the Lounge Bar in a dingy street in Stoke, with a middle-aged man. They climbed into an estate car, parked on the far side of the road, and after the interior light extinguished, Kate approached the passenger side of the vehicle and tapped on the window. Benji’s head jerked up from the man’s lap.
Kate pressed her ID against the glass. Benji was shoved away and a trouser zipper ratcheted back into place. The driver door opened.
‘Look, Officer, I wasn’t—’
‘It’s perfectly obvious what was going on, but you could be in luck. I want a quick word with your friend. That’s all. Out you come, Benji.’
She opened the passenger door, holding on to it while he unfolded into the evening, lips drooping and arms folded in defiance.
‘I need to find Farai,’ said Kate.
‘He left.’
‘I know he’s in Manchester. I need to know where he might be tonight. It’s important.’
‘Can’t help you.’
‘Okay. You don’t know where he is, which is a shame, because it means, instead of looking for him, I now have time to take you down the station and charge you for soliciting. And you too, sir.’
‘Wait a minute. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. We were only chatting.’ The bloke straightened his spectacles and tried to affect an offended tone.
‘There was clearly no talking going on.’ Kate stared pointedly at his ring finger. ‘You married, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you’d like to give your other half a call to explain you’re going to be detained at the station for a while.’
He called across to Benji. ‘Tell her where this person is!’
‘I’d listen to your client, if I were you. You don’t want to spend a whole night at the station,’ said Kate. ‘Not when all you have to do is tell me where I can find Farai.’
Benji’s amber eyes seemed to glow as he turned towards Kate. ‘The Hangout Café near Strangeways. He’s there almost every evening.
’
‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ said Kate. Benji’s face remained expressionless. She raised her voice a little so it drifted across to the man, now shifting from one foot to the other.
‘I suggest you return home, sir.’
‘Wait a minute. I paid him.’
‘I ain’t giving no refunds,’ said Benji.
‘That’s robbery,’ the man blustered.
Kate cocked an eyebrow at Benji. ‘He has a point. After all, it isn’t his fault I interrupted proceedings. The gentleman paid for services he didn’t receive. Cough up.’
‘He got half a job so he can have half of it back.’ Benji pulled out a screwed-up ten-pound note and tossed it through the open door, onto the passenger seat.
‘Go home, sir,’ said Kate and shut the passenger door with a determined bang.
The man climbed back into his car, scowled at them both and pulled away.
‘You lost me good money,’ grumbled Benji.
‘But you got to keep your freedom and made ten pounds for doing very little. Now scarper before I take you in.’
He sloped off, back towards the bar no doubt to pick up another punter.
It took her a fraction under an hour to reach the Hangout Café, one of five run-down premises in an area undergoing a vast amount of development. Decades of exhaust fumes and traffic had transformed once white facades into grimy frontages streaked with soot. Little attempt had been made in recent years to jazz up the décor other than the obligatory graffiti that seemed to appear on boarded windows and doors in every city: names and words that meant nothing to Kate. The café, sandwiched between the graffitied building and MoMo’s barber, with a facade like deceased skin peeling away from its host, looked semi-presentable in the dimly lit street. As she pulled up opposite it, Kate made out three figures, huddled around a circular table in the window, one with a long, drawn, skull-like face. She’d struck lucky.
