Dead Souls: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist Book 6

by Angela Marsons

  Lynda turned away and started scribbling notes.

  He nodded towards Penn. ‘And, I think the detective inspector has a present for you.’

  Kim stood and took the photocopy from her pocket.

  He looked at it and then at the board. ‘Part of that note?’

  Kim nodded. ‘I think so. It’s faded and dirty but you might be able to figure something more from it.’

  He rubbed his hands feverishly. ‘Cool, thanks.’

  ‘And Wilma goes to Lynda today,’ Travis said, moving the plant across the room.

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ she said, placing it next to a photo of a Great Dane puppy.

  Bodies began to lift and move as the energy and purpose took hold.

  ‘Ready?’ Travis said from beside her.

  She nodded and followed him out of the door.

  ‘Well, thank you for allowing me to conduct my own briefing today,’ he said, smartly.

  Kim didn’t respond. Oh yes, she’d allowed him to speak all right.

  She was only waiting until they reached the car.

  And then it was her turn.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Bryant acknowledged that Lloyd House, located on Colmore Circus at Queensway, had to be one of the ugliest buildings he had ever seen.

  West Midlands Police headquarters lived in a plain, rectangle box with eleven rows of identical windows and concrete reaching up into the sky.

  The revolving doors guided them into an airy space of light wood, glass and a circular reception desk that reminded Bryant of a health club.

  As Dawson introduced them, Bryant pictured the first impression of Halesowen Police Station. Poor old Jack, the Custody Sergeant, stared at his own reflection in reinforced glass for his whole shift. But of course this wasn’t a police station. This was HQ.

  They took the journey through the metal detectors and headed for the second floor.

  At the top of the steps was a sign. They followed the arrow towards intelligence, and almost missed a door on the right bearing the nameplate of the man they sought.

  Dawson tapped twice and the door was opened immediately, as though the person behind was waiting for them. As the door opened further, Bryant could understand why. The desk and chair were forced into a small office also bearing cardboard storage boxes that rose six feet from the floor. It was a very short journey from the chair to the door.

  ‘Fred,’ the man said, thrusting out his hand. He fell short of Bryant’s own six feet height by two inches. His fair hair was thinning atop a ruddy, flushed expression.

  Dawson introduced them both.

  ‘If you don’t mind, we’ll head down to the cafeteria where we can sit comfortably.’

  The man looked to Bryant’s left, and Bryant followed his gaze. He was clearly in the way of something. He stepped forward as the man reached around him and retrieved a single crutch.

  ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to stay?…’

  ‘It’s a permanent injury, but thank you for your concern,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

  Something in Bryant’s brain shook free as they all bundled back out of the small space. He took a few steps forward and walked alongside the man who moved remarkably well.

  The rolled-up shirt sleeves revealed a line of scars along his forearm, like a tally score. If pushed he’d say razor blade.

  Bryant cursed his own forgetfulness.

  ‘You’re the Fred Windsor,’ Bryant said, as Dawson frowned. ‘The one that was held by the National Pride hate group ten years ago.’

  ‘Eleven, to be exact, but yes that was me.’

  Bryant felt bad for their assumption back at the station that this man could offer them nothing.

  He now remembered it clearly. Fred Windsor had worked undercover in the hate group for years, gaining their trust, learning of their plans, their motivations. Two months before he was due to be pulled out, he was sussed by someone he’d lifted for shoplifting as a constable. The group had held him captive for six days, torturing and humiliating him. Both his ankles had been shattered, ensuring he never saw active duty again.

  ‘The scars?’ Bryant said, unable to tear his gaze away as Dawson pushed open the door to the cafeteria.

  ‘One for every day I lied to them,’ he said, tonelessly.

  ‘And how long were you undercover?’

  ‘Seven hundred and twenty-two days, exactly.’

  Bryant hated to think what lay beneath those clothes.

  ‘Mr Windsor, I’m—’

  ‘Hey, I’m still just Fred,’ he offered, with a smile.

  ‘Okay, Fred, let me get the drinks,’ Bryant offered.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘The lovely Sophie will be over in a second.’

  A young, slim red-head wearing a plain blue overall had already clocked them and was heading towards them with a small notepad.

  ‘Inspector?’ she said.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Just Fred, please. I’ll have my usual and?…’ he looked towards the two of them.

  ‘We’re fine, we just need a few minutes.’

  ‘If you’re going to understand anything at all, Sergeant, you’re going to need more than a few minutes. I suggest you have a drink.’

  ‘Latte,’ Bryant said.

  ‘Orange juice,’ Dawson said.

  ‘Thank you,’ they said together.

  ‘Okay, let’s get started. A hate crime offender’s hostility is triggered by their perception of the victim’s ethnicity, race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.’

  Dawson nodded. ‘Yes, yes, we—’

  ‘Young man, if I have to focus on what you might or might not already know we will be here for days. It is best I just tell you what I’ve learned in my twenty-two years of experience, and you may then disseminate it at your will.’

  Bryant nodded for him to continue. The mild rebuke in Kev’s direction was thoroughly deserved.

  ‘To hold prejudiced attitudes is not a crime. To constitute a hate crime there must be two components: the actual offence, like assault or harassment, and evidence that the perpetrator’s actions are motivated by prejudice against the group represented by the victim.

  ‘The majority of hate crimes are aimed at individuals from social groups that have been historically subjected to institutionalised discriminatory treatment ‒ but that’s a subject for another day.

  ‘And then there are hate crimes against hate crimes. Indian kids beating up black kids. Jewish girls attacking goths.’

  Bryant shook his head. ‘But how does it all start, Fred?’

  ‘It often starts with low-level abuse; verbal, malicious gossip, intimidating looks, being ignored and isolated, all the way up to violent assault and murder.’

  ‘How does name-calling escalate to murder?’ Dawson asked. ‘Every kid got called something cruel at school. It’s a breeding ground for isolation, but how does it become particularly targeted towards minority groups?’

  He smiled and shook his head at the same time. ‘Racial hatred is not like picking on a kid at school because he’s fat.’

  Bryant saw Dawson wince at this. Fred could have offered no example that was closer to home for his colleague.

  ‘There are socio-economic factors to consider. Successive generations of white residents create environments that are hostile towards minority ethnic residents. Add in the groups and even political parties spreading hate. In this country we have the BNP, EDL, Combat 18. Some operate like conventional parties to gain power through the ballot box, like the BNP. Others favour an activist street movement, like EDL, but one thing they all have in common is intolerance.

  ‘All these groups promote xenophobia. They want people to be fearful of those from another country.’

  He paused and looked from one to the other.

  ‘So, now we understand some of the areas hatred can come from, you’re going to want to ask me what type of person commits such crimes?’

  They both nodded eagerly.

  ‘An
d that’s where we have our first problem.’

  SIXTY-NINE

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me about your wife, Tom?’ Kim screamed once they were in the car.

  She’d hoped to be off the car park before she started talking, but her mouth hadn’t read the memo.

  He spluttered like a thirty-year-old car.

  She could not wait for him to get his mouth in order.

  ‘I’ve met her and—’

  ‘Don’t talk about it, Stone. I’m warning you,’ he said, finding his voice.

  She hit reverse and then headed out of the car park.

  ‘Where you gonna go, Tom?’ she asked. Even he wasn’t stupid enough to try and escape her by getting out of a moving vehicle.

  ‘It’s none of your damn business,’ he raged.

  ‘Oh, but it is, Tom. The rumours of what happened around that time have followed me too.’

  ‘It didn’t affect my work,’ he said.

  ‘Like hell,’ she cried.

  ‘It had nothing to do with… what happened.’

  ‘Why are you still lying? It was four-and-a-half-years ago, wasn’t it? Exactly the same time as—’

  ‘I do not want to talk about this,’ he growled.

  ‘Oh, but you’re going to,’ she said, turning into a garden centre car park. ‘I’ve questioned everything about that day, Tom. Everything,’ she hissed.

  He refused to look at her, and she knew why.

  ‘Let’s get it out, Tom. You were too rough with that boy. He was fifteen years old and you were pushing him around like a prize fighter.’

  ‘He was selling drugs, Stone. To kids.’

  ‘I bloody know that, but we don’t choose who we get to treat professionally and you know it. Or at least you did before that day.’

  ‘He talked in the end,’ he defended.

  ‘Not because you’d roughed him up. He talked because his mother gave him a clip round the ear and told him to come clean.’

  He turned accusing eyes on her.

  ‘Why didn’t you report me?’

  ‘Because I knew there was something wrong. You were clearly—’

  ‘Not for that, Stone. For the other thing. For what happened later?’

  There it was. Now they were getting somewhere.

  ‘You mean when I challenged you about the kid and you punched me in the mouth?’

  The memory of the pain had nothing to do with her lip.

  Shame flooded his face but he kept contact with her gaze.

  ‘Come on, why didn’t you report me assaulting you. Was it so you had something on me?’ he accused.

  She shook her head. ‘No, it was clear that something wasn’t right.’

  ‘Get off it, Stone. You were young and ambitious. You put the information in your back pocket to use at a later date, didn’t you?’

  She allowed the horror to show on her face. ‘Is that really what you think? Or is it what you’ve told yourself to think?’ she asked.

  ‘You used that incident to get a step up. You threatened me with taking time off. You left me no choice.’

  ‘You needed some time away, to cool down, sort out whatever it was that was needling you.’

  ‘I didn’t want time off. I wanted to do my fucking job,’ he raged, punching the dashboard.

  ‘You needed to be at home,’ Kim said.

  ‘It’s no use saying that now. You didn’t know about Melissa then. You just wanted me out of the way. You wanted to further your own career at my expense. You knew sick time would count against me.’

  ‘Can you even hear what you’re saying?’ she cried in disbelief. ‘Assaulting a teenager and then smacking me would have counted a lot more if I’d wanted to affect your promotion, Tom. You took the leave—’

  ‘You left me no damn choice,’ he growled.

  ‘You came back after two weeks and you couldn’t even speak to me. We both went for promotion and you missed out. Fuck’s sake, Tom, we came up through the ranks together. You’d have had my vote for DI, and neither what happened with that boy or what happened later in the locker room was ever repeated to a soul by me.’

  Silence fell between them.

  ‘I’ll never understand why you didn’t tell me what was going on,’ she said.

  ‘And I still don’t get why you didn’t report me?’ he said, quietly.

  She thrust the car into gear and headed off the car park.

  ‘You’ll never understand if I tell you.’

  ‘Try me,’ he said. ‘If it wasn’t to further your own career or have something to hold over me, why didn’t you file a formal complaint?’

  She felt the hurt as though it was only yesterday. The way he’d looked at her when he came back. The way he’d treated her. The rumours he’d spread about her ruthless ambition.

  She packed the hurt away and offered him the only thing she had. The truth.

  ‘I didn’t report you, Tom, because I thought that we were friends.’

  SEVENTY

  Dawson couldn’t help the feeling of hopelessness that washed over him each time Fred Windsor opened his mouth.

  There had been a time he’d felt that there was only one kind of racist, and the picture had been clearly defined in his head; skinhead, tattoos and a swastika sign somewhere upon his person. His initial assessment of Gary Flint had been coloured by his outward respectability. His first instinct had been doubt that such vile threats could have come from such a man.

  Fred continued. ‘You need to understand that hate crime offenders differ in age, education, family background and the underlying causes of their acts and the type of hate motive expressed. You have serial offenders and one-off perpetrators. There is no simple profile of a hate crime perpetrator. The educated and middle class are well represented in the hate movement.’

  This kind of insight scared the life out of him.

  ‘Hatemongers once had to stand on street corners and hand out leaflets. Extremists now use mainstream social networking sites. The Internet is an invaluable tool. Far more insidious is the ability for many to psychologically affiliate with hate groups without physically joining and attending formal meetings. The Internet makes it much easier to hate.’

  ‘But how do normal, reasonable, educated individuals get turned towards racism?’ he asked.

  Fred smiled at him. ‘You’re making the assumption that all perpetrators are “turned” by a hate group,’ he offered. ‘There are families that have been raising and training their children from birth.

  ‘The years between the ages four to ten have been identified as the optimum chance of becoming a dangerous racist if exposed to prejudiced ideas. People are not born bigoted. They are made that way. I won’t bore you with all the theories of social learning etc, but nearly forty per cent of hate crime offenders are under the age of twenty-five. So evidence suggests the most common offender is a teenager or young adult acting in a group for excitement.

  ‘The second highest percentage are what we call “defensive” and covers about a quarter of incidents. This covers the hate crimes that are committed to protect a neighbourhood.’

  ‘So many different types and motivations,’ Bryant observed.

  Fred nodded his agreement and continued. ‘Retaliatory hate offenders make up a third aspect. They typically travel to the victim’s territory to retaliate against a previous incident.

  ‘And then there are the “mission” offenders. The fully committed “haters” who commonly have far-right leanings. Their allegiance to an ideological bias is much stronger than the other three. The smallest percentage but the most dangerous. Mission offenders mean business.’

  ‘But you’re saying that these hate groups are made up of totally different types of people, educated, upstanding members of society and yobs?’ Dawson asked.

  ‘And everything in between, Sergeant. We’ve come to understand that the groups can be made up of four types of people, especially for thrill hate crimes. You have the leader who is normally a mission of
fender, then the fellow traveller who joins in, the unwilling participant and potentially the hero who tries to stop it.’

  Bryant sat back and shook his head, seemingly overwhelmed by the information that was hitting his brain.

  ‘And then you have the lone wolf in extremis ‒ such as Anders Behring Breivik who killed sixty-nine people on the island of Utøya in Norway. Eight people had already lost their lives at his hand before he even got there.’

  Suddenly Fred turned towards him. ‘If you take one thing from this meeting, it’s this: if you continue to stick to your narrow-minded views on the appearance of a hate crime perpetrator, more people will die. And you can mark my words on that.’

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Kim wasn’t sure if she was imagining the grudging peace that had settled between them. A few spores of animosity seemed to have dispersed, despite the silence.

  She had never told a soul what had happened between them in the locker room or the events leading up to it. That day had been totally out of character for the man beside her. She had known there was something wrong with him. His mood had been pensive but contained, until that cocky fifteen-year-old had spat at him. Most police officers Kim knew preferred to be hit than spat at. But it hadn’t warranted her colleague pinning him to a wall and punching him in the stomach. More blows would have followed had she not pulled him away in time. Back-up had arrived seconds later. He had refused to offer any explanation as he’d driven them both back to the station.

  Had she known the truth, perhaps she wouldn’t have followed him into the locker room, demanding answers. Maybe she would have given him the space he’d asked for, begged for, before lashing out.

  She parked the car and, in what had now become a familiar pattern, Travis began walking away before she’d locked the doors.

  But two steps later, he paused and waited.

  ‘Listen, about…’

  His words trailed away as her phone began to ring.