THE WEST LONDON MURDERS an absolutely gripping crime mystery with a massive twist (Detective Rob Miller Mysteries Book 2)

by BIBA PEARCE

  “I think she’s on the mend now.”

  Lawrence sighed. “Listen, Rob. You know I’m not one to beat around the bush. Are you able to commit a hundred per cent to this case? Because if you can’t, if you need more time, I can assign—”

  “I’m fine.” Rob cut him off. “Yvette understands I have to work. I can’t put my career on hold for ever. We’ve talked about it. She’s okay with it.”

  Lawrence exhaled and Rob realized how relieved he was. “I’m glad to hear it. It’s good to have you back in the game.”

  Even though he’d been at work these last few months, he’d been on light duties, which had been frustrating from a professional point of view. He’d had to take a back seat while his team dealt with homicides and other serious crimes.

  After the much-publicized apprehending of the Surrey Stalker, Rob had given several interviews to the press and become something of a media star, albeit temporarily. That was another reason he’d escaped to France. The constant swarm of photographers and journalists outside his house had been doing his head in. Now he was back, he wanted to get stuck in again. He couldn’t let the rest of the team continue to carry him.

  “When’s the PM?” asked his boss.

  “Three o’clock tomorrow.” Rob wondered how SOCO were getting on with the lab results.

  Lawrence read his mind. “Any DNA from the scene yet?”

  “Not yet.” Rob shook his head.

  “Chase them up. Tell them it’s a priority. I’ve managed to keep this under wraps for now, but it won’t be long before the press get wind of it.”

  “Great.” Rob was well aware that once the media realized who was in charge of the case, the old news articles would resurface again.

  “I’ll get you to give a statement, once we know more,” Lawrence said with a wry grin. “At least the public will be pleased to hear you’re in charge.”

  Rob grimaced. Nothing like raising expectations.

  Lawrence chuckled. “It’s about time the public had a little faith in the police department.”

  “I hope they won’t be disappointed.”

  “Let the evidence show you the way, and trust your gut, Rob. It’s stood you in good stead before.”

  It wasn’t often that his boss offered such nuggets of wisdom. “Will do.” He stood up. “Thanks, boss.”

  Lawrence grunted. “Keep me posted.”

  Chapter 4

  Liz Kramer rang and said she could squeeze in Yousef’s post-mortem later that day, after all. The coroner had postponed the inquest into the motorway collision, which meant there was a rare gap in her schedule.

  Rob observed from the viewing gallery as Liz began, inspecting the body from all angles. Lying naked on the metal table, Aadam Yousef appeared smaller and more vulnerable than he had lying fully clothed on his living-room floor.

  Liz clicked on the recorder and began to speak. “The victim is a well-nourished forty-year-old male previously identified as Aadam Yousef. He is of Arabic descent. Initial observations show . . . nine stab wounds to the chest and abdomen.”

  Nine. Christ.

  Her assistant, a fresh-faced young woman in a lab coat, handed her a ruler. Liz laid it across the chest. “The entry wounds are three centimetres across and smooth, which means the knife was non-serrated.”

  “All made by the same knife?” he asked, pushing the button that allowed him to communicate with the room below.

  Liz glanced up and nodded. “Some haven’t gone in as far as others, but they were all made by the same knife.”

  “Like a kitchen knife?” Rob asked.

  “Yes.”

  That didn’t help much. Everyone had access to a kitchen knife. He wondered how the officers he’d dispatched to search the bins were getting on. It would really help if they could find the murder weapon. However, he didn’t think it was going to be that easy.

  The rest of the examination was unenlightening. Liz took samples from beneath Yousef’s fingernails but, although they were dirty, it didn’t look like there were any skin samples there. No defensive wounds either, so Yousef hadn’t put up a fight, a fact Rob found very interesting, given the size of him.

  “Is it possible he was drugged?” he asked the pathologist.

  “I’ve taken samples for Toxicology, but we won’t know until the results come back.”

  “When will that be?” There was no harm in applying a bit of gentle pressure.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Probably tomorrow now, unless the lab decides to rush it through.”

  Rob grimaced. “That would be great. I’m under pressure on this one.”

  “Aren’t we all,” was her response.

  * * *

  True to her word, though, the toxicology results landed on his desk at seven o’clock, as he was about to head home. He’d already rung Yvette and told her he was on his way. The rest of the team, other than Mallory and Mike, had left for the day.

  He sat down again and looked them over. They were pretty straightforward. No evidence of sedatives or anything else in the man’s bloodstream. He had not been drugged. Rob raised his eyebrows. That meant the attacker had relied on the element of surprise to down his victim. The first thrust must have debilitated Yousef to such an extent that he’d been unable to fight back. He pictured the scenario in his head — the initial stab taking him by surprise, Yousef falling to the floor clutching his chest, dropping his whisky glass in the process. A second blow, even more debilitating than the first. Yousef rolling in agony, gazing up at his attacker with wild eyes. The attacker standing over him, repeatedly stabbing in a frenzy of rage until Yousef was dead, perhaps even continuing after the life had drained out of him.

  He exhaled slowly, then went to discuss it with Mallory.

  * * *

  Yvette was sitting on the couch, her legs folded beneath her, watching an episode of The Durrells when he got home. She didn’t get up. Trigger, on the other hand, met him at the door, tail wagging. At least someone’s pleased to see me, he thought.

  “How was your day?” He went into the lounge and sat beside her. The air was thick with smoke.

  She shrugged. “Boring. How was yours?”

  “Why don’t you go out? See your friends?” She hadn’t gone back to work since the attack, even though eight months had passed.

  “You know I don’t like to leave the house.” He knew she was suffering from agoraphobia but had refused to speak to anyone about it. Personally, he didn’t like shrinks, but in this case, he felt it was warranted. She’d been through a particularly traumatic experience and didn’t seem able to pull herself out of it.

  He sighed. “Darling, it’s not good for you to be stuck inside all day.”

  “I have Trigger.” Her eyes were still glued to the television, although she had turned down the volume.

  “That’s not the same as human interaction.” He paused. This was always a sensitive subject but she was getting worse and he had to act now before it was too late. “Listen, there’s a woman at work, her name’s Becca and she trained as a trauma counsellor before she became a police officer. She worked with me last year on the Stalker case.”

  He saw Yvette go rigid at the mention of the Stalker.

  “I think you should talk to her.”

  “I don’t want to speak to anybody,” she said sulkily, her lower lip protruding in a pout. She still looked sexy despite not having brushed her hair or applied any make-up. That, in itself, was a sure sign she wasn’t in her right frame of mind. Yvette usually took so much care with her appearance.

  “I really think you should. Let me set up an appointment for you,” he pressed. “She can come here so you don’t have to go anywhere.” His voice was firm, but kind. He didn’t want her to turn into a hermit — it wasn’t healthy. A wave of guilt passed over him. It was his fault she’d been abducted, his case that had overflowed into his personal life, and she’d been the one who had suffered.

  Yvette reached for her cigarettes. The ashtray on the c
offee table was overflowing with butts. She didn’t reply, which he took to be a good sign.

  “I’m going to have a shower and then I’ll make supper. Have you eaten anything?”

  She shook her head. Her shoulders had become more pronounced of late and her hips stuck out above the tracksuit pants that she wore. She’d replaced food with cigarettes and was losing weight. Her beautiful, magazine-worthy body was becoming angular and thin.

  He felt an upwelling of emotion and leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you. We’ll get through this. I promise.”

  She turned to face him, her slanting eyes haunted. “Will we?”

  He took her into his arms and mumbled into her hair. “Of course we will.”

  * * *

  After supper, he took the case file and a beer, and sat in his favourite armchair to read. Trigger followed him in and lay down on his foot. He fondled the dog’s ears. When Yvette’s sister, Naomi, had first suggested they get a dog, he hadn’t been sure. He’d never had a pet before — his mother had been allergic to animal fur — but Trigger had grown on him and he’d got used to the Labrador’s silent, loyal companionship, and it was great protection for Yvette. While he was at work, Trigger stuck to Yvette like glue, but as soon as he got home, the dog switched loyalties and followed him around everywhere, even into the bathroom. It was like having a four-legged shadow.

  Mallory had typed everything up and added it to the system, but Rob preferred a hard copy. He liked to spread out the pages and look at the full picture like pieces of a puzzle, move them around and consider them from all angles. All the notes had been printed out and added to the file, along with the preliminary forensic and toxicology reports.

  Yvette had gone to bed, or rather, she’d gone upstairs to watch TV. They had a flat-screen mounted on the bedroom wall, which was a new thing. He had objected at first, but he had to admit, it made life easier. At least he had somewhere to work in peace, and Yvette could still watch her soaps and romcoms without him rolling his eyes and making inane comments.

  He opened the manila folder and withdrew the SOCO report from the crime scene. It wasn’t complete — they were still waiting on some lab results — but it had come in late and he hadn’t had a chance to read it yet.

  Two sets of prints were found at the crime scene, those of Yousef and an unknown person who wasn’t on the database. It could be the killer, but the same prints had been found in the kitchen and upstairs bedroom, so Rob was banking on the cleaner. They needed to find them.

  The guest’s whisky glass had been clean, not even Yousef’s prints were on it. Now that was odd. Yousef would have poured the drinks and his fingerprints were all over his own glass. Had the guest been wearing gloves? It was possible, given that it was a cold January. Except the glass had been empty with no saliva or lip marks on the outside and no whisky residue inside, which begged the question: did the killer wash the glass in the kitchen sink along with the murder weapon?

  The armchair had been swabbed for hair and fibres but had turned up nothing of interest. It was surprisingly clean for an armchair, but as the forensic technician had pointed out, it was fairly new.

  He read through Yousef’s personal bank statement found in the study. His account had a few thousand pounds in it, nothing remarkable. Rob gnawed on his lower lip. Where had the money for the house and car come from? Had he paid in cash? There had to be another, secret account or a business account that they didn’t know about. Even the shirt Yousef had been wearing when he died cost more than Rob’s weekly budget. He made a note to get Mallory to look into that in more detail. It would mean getting a warrant, which might pose a problem since Yousef was the victim, not the perpetrator, but then he’d had several prepaid phones stashed in his drawer — that ought to count for something. Hopefully, it would shed some light on why he’d been murdered.

  A few of the transactions caught his eye. Every week Yousef paid 200 quid to a ‘T Barszcz’. He read the name out loud and made a hash of it. How did you pronounce that, anyway? Were they the cleaner? He took out his phone and googled the surname. It was Polish.

  Next, he read the preliminary lab report. It turned out the blood in the kitchen sink belonged solely to Yousef. Rob leaned back in his chair and took a swig of beer. So, the killer left Yousef lying on the lounge floor, went into the kitchen and washed the blood off the knife and possibly cleaned the whisky glass before putting it back on the table and leaving the premises undetected. Those were both bizarrely calm gestures in light of what had happened, and in complete contrast to the frenzied nature of the attack.

  Rob wondered what his old friend Tony would make of it. Tony Sanderson was a criminal profiler of some repute and had worked for most of Britain’s law enforcement agencies at some stage over the last few years. He made a note to meet Tony for a drink. They were due for a catch-up anyway, and it would be useful to run this past him, unofficially, of course. The budget wouldn’t stretch to hiring a professional criminologist, and certainly not one of Tony’s stature.

  Upstairs, the television fell silent. Yvette was going to sleep. She didn’t come down to say goodnight and he didn’t go up. Instead, he took out the crime scene photographs and spread them over the coffee table. He studied the image of Yousef lying on the plush carpet, his blood pooling beneath him, the spilled glass only inches from his outstretched hand. He’d been smartly dressed in navy jeans and, according to the forensic report, a Giorgio Armani shirt. He’d also been wearing cologne — Rob had smelled it when he’d inspected the body. The gold TAG Heuer watch on his wrist was visible, and apparently, he’d had a wallet in his back pocket containing £300.

  The house contained several other expensive items, namely the enormous cinema-style TV screen, the laptop in the study and an assortment of watches the scene-of-crime officers had found in a drawer in Yousef’s bedroom. Their victim liked the good things in life.

  Rob yawned loudly, and Trigger, who was sleeping at his feet, glanced up in surprise. They could rule out burglary. This was a personal, premeditated attack. Someone had had it in for Yousef. Now he just had to find out why, and hopefully that would lead him to who.

  Chapter 5

  Rob was at the station early the next morning. He’d left Yvette to sleep, and after feeding Trigger had driven the four miles to the major crimes office in Putney. It was a crisp, blue-skied winter’s day and before he went inside, he turned his face towards the sun, enjoying the warmth. A smattering of frost covered the ground in shaded areas and in the background, someone was scraping ice off their windscreen. He preferred it like this — cold and sunny — to the dreary rain-drenched few months they’d had. Christmas had seen one of the worst rainfalls on record, which hadn’t brought much in the way of joy and glad tidings.

  Superintendent Lawrence was already in his office. Rob grinned. No matter how early he got in, the DSI was already there. Rob put the bulky file on his desk, took off his jacket and slung it over the back of his chair.

  First things first. Coffee.

  He made his way to the fancy new coffee machine that had been installed in the small waiting area, raising his hand in greeting at his boss as he passed. Lawrence was on the phone and didn’t respond, although his eyes followed Rob as he walked across the office. The squad room was unnervingly quiet without the whirring of the printers and the collective hum of the computers and office chatter.

  The coffee machine sputtered quietly as it poured him a semi-decent cappuccino. The smell reminded him of the inside of one of the cafés he and Yvette frequented in Lyon, and he inhaled before taking his first sip.

  “Rob, you’d better get in here.”

  Lawrence’s voice startled him. He hadn’t heard him open the glass doors to the waiting room. He followed his boss into his bubble office. By the look on his face, this wasn’t good news.

  “What’s up?”

  The Superintendent’s office was fitted with the same standard-issue desk and computer as the rest of the squad room.
He hadn’t wanted any special treatment. Rob respected him for that. Apart from the desk and executive chair, there were two small armchairs huddled around a coffee table for more intimate discussions. Rob had only seen him use them when the Deputy Commissioner came for a visit. The only window in the room looked out on to the high street, and on the other exterior wall hung several framed certificates and a photograph of a group of men in maroon berets. The Parachute Regiment. Apparently, Lawrence had enlisted straight out of school and had survived three tours in the Middle East before a leg injury saw him medically discharged. And that information had come from the Deputy Commissioner, with whom Rob had had informal drinks after they’d caught the Surrey Stalker. He’d never once heard his boss mention it. The picture on the wall was the only clue he’d served at all.

  Lawrence studied him. “You’re not going to like it, Rob.”

  A bad feeling gathered in the pit of Rob’s stomach. He sat down, put his coffee on the desk and waited for his boss to explain.

  “I’ve just been on the phone to the National Crime Agency. They have a particular interest in your victim, Aadam Yousef.”

  “Yousef? How come?”

  “It turns out he was on their watch list. They’ve been keeping tabs on him for several months in connection with a county lines drug network.”

  Rob stared at him. “You’re serious? Organized crime?”

  “It looks like it. Your vic may have been pretty high up in the criminal hierarchy.”

  “How high up?” asked Rob, his gaze locked on his boss’s face.

  “They think he’s part of an illegal supply chain selling thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs to small-time dealers and county lines networks across West London.”

  “Christ. So Yousef is a drug kingpin.” It was starting to make sense. The new house. The BMW. The cinema-like TV and the new furniture. This guy was raking it in.

  “So it would seem. Oh, and they’re sending a representative to work with you on the case.”