But he drew in a slow breath, he couldn’t do it tonight. He wasn’t ready.
Tonight was just for watching.
He shrank back into the shadows, and silently returned to his car.
Chapter Forty-One
Cass’s Cottage – 31 October
Cass awoke and stretched gracefully, working out the crick in her neck from the sofa arm. The sunlight was streaming in the window, offset by a clear blue sky. Smiling at the bright scene, she wiggled out of her blanket and made her way into the kitchen. A beautiful day like this deserved freshly brewed coffee and warm croissants, laden with strawberry jam.
She gasped as she saw Alex asleep at the kitchen table, his head curved into the crook of his arm.
Her first thought was how adorable he looked, her second how tired he must’ve been to fall asleep in that position. She worked quietly in the kitchen so as not to wake him. She had no idea what time he’d got in; she hadn’t stirred all night.
Humming softly to herself, she pottered about the kitchen and prepped their breakfast.
The sounds from the kitchen eventually woke Alex from his stupor. He yawned deeply and sat up, watching Cass dance as she hummed, her back towards him. He was filled with a sudden rush of love, and silently he padded over to her.
She didn’t know he was there until his arms clasped her around her waist and she felt his soft lips nuzzle her neck.
‘Good morning,’ he whispered against her neck, before turning her around and kissing her gently.
‘Morning back,’ said Cass kissing him again before focusing her attention on preparing the croissants. ‘You must have been late back?’
‘Yeah think it was around two when I rolled in. Sat down at the table and the next thing I knew you were here.’
‘Tough day, I’m guessing,’
‘Really tough. Had meetings all day. The DNA result came through late afternoon. You know Frank, our handyman? The DNA from the glove section you recovered is his. We’re still trying to establish all the links, but if that DNA is his, and we’ve established the link to all three murders using the triangles, there’s no reason to believe he didn’t commit them all. It’s really bizarre thinking someone we worked with all these years could be capable of something like this. How could he do it and nobody in the nick be any the wiser?’
Everything was black and white to Alex and the thought that someone he worked with, a member of the police family, could do something like this made him sick to the stomach.
Cass didn’t speak straight away. She wrapped her arms back around him and looked into his eyes.
‘You’re a good guy, McKay. You see the good in everyone. Why Frank did this only he can say. Not every police officer is bad, you know that. But there’s always a bad apple in every barrel. You’ll catch him though. That’s what you do, Alex, you catch the bad apples and stop them hurting other people.’
He smiled at her, a little sadly, but still a smile.
‘You’re amazing, Cass. Thank you.’
Cass’s Cottage – 2 November
Frank was once again leaning against a tree outside the cottage. He had watched as the sex slave had turned tail and ran. Granted he was probably going to work, but Frank had been too pissed off to care.
He’d been practically living in his old-man disguise now for four days solid. He had barely slept in the crap flat he’d chosen, thanks to the neighbours keeping him awake with incessant music, if it could be called that, playing constantly from dusk till dawn. He hadn’t tried to access his bank accounts, presuming they would have been frozen the moment his identity had been revealed, and despite having plenty of cash with him, that made him angry.
The money was his.
He wondered whether the police had visited address he called home, the address he had shared with his mother.
I bet they have. They’ll have kicked the door in and rifled through my stuff.
He felt his blood boil.
They’ll have been in my shed! How dare they. That’s my place. Who the hell do they think they are?
‘Her fault,’ he said into the dark.
He knew what he was going to do. He couldn’t go home; he couldn’t go to his unit. He knew the police were crawling around. But he’d found the perfect location to take care of Cass. The perfect place to make her pay for ruining his life. The only place that was right.
And nobody would find out, not until it was too late.
Then he might send a piece of her to Alex. A small part. Just enough to make him know he’d been beaten by Frank, that he hadn’t been able to save his lover.
Frank wanted to see him squirm. He wanted to watch Alex’s face as he opened the package and read the note. But that couldn’t happen. As soon as he was done he would be heading to the airport with the fake passport he had acquired from one of his many ‘contacts’ from the dregs of Sunderland.
It would take a little more prep time, but he would be ready soon. And then she would pay.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ryhope Police Station – 3 November
Alex had been called in to deal with a stabbing in the city centre – yet another incident caused by drink. The victim was going to live and had actually been shouting about revenge as he was wheeled down to the operating theatre.
It ended up being a big job. The kid had been stabbed near a bar in the centre, then staggered home where his girlfriend had called the emergency services. Alex had followed Johnny as he’d photographed the trail of blood – quite a feat when in the dark. He’d put the request in for daytime shots too – juries loved being able to follow the story all the way along.
The offender was a snip of a guy, short and skinny with a crop of ginger hair and a bad outbreak of acne. When Alex had spoken to him, he’d shown no remorse, merely said that the next time someone called him a ‘ginga’ then he would quite happily do the same again. The tattoos on his wrist and forearm indicated small-time gang affiliation – the victim had definitely messed with the wrong guy this evening.
Just another busy night in the town.
Working solidly, Alex prepared the file, so it was ready to be handed over to the day shift. He’d had a quick natter with the Duty Sergeant, updating him so he could hand everything over, and finally, he made his way down to the car park.
He considered going to the flat and not disturbing Cass. He knew it wouldn’t happen though. He wanted to be with Cass and Ollie at the cottage. He felt the now familiar flutter in his stomach as he thought about her. It had been strange at first, he had never felt this giddy when he thought about Helen; theirs had started as a friendship that just progressed into a relationship. He’d been happy for a while, content even, but he had never had butterflies in his stomach when he thought about her.
He frowned as he sat in the driver’s seat without starting the engine. Since finding out that the serial killer was the handy man, he’d had a growing sense of unease. Something just out of his reach that was vital to the case. The links were all confirmed; the search team had uncovered a lot of circumstantial, as well as hard evidence in the place Frank called home. Images of torture on the home computer, links in the Internet history of the websites he had visited, and a shed full of weapons and tools. Danny had asked the CSIs to perform an examination using high intensity light sources, and they’d stared in horror at the array of latent blood on all the wooden benches and surfaces. It had obviously been cleaned with a product containing a high percentage of bleach, but goodness knew what torture had occurred in that shed. The DNA results from the samples taken from the benches were still outstanding.
The industrial unit was still being searched but they’d already found remnants of Scott’s coffin. Alex had requested the DNA from Susan’s foetus be examined against the sample recovered from the seafront, but he knew in his gut the baby was Frank’s. He was still struggling with how the death of Albert fitted in, but the link was there somewhere. He just had to find it.
Alex turned the key and p
ulled his car out of the parking space and stopped as the heavy metal gates started opening.
This case could go on forever. There’s so much left to do.
He was so lost in thought; he didn’t spot the dark shadow of a man hiding in the tall bushes near the gate. As Alex’s car disappeared round the bend at the side of the station, Frank nipped into the rear yard.
Frank hid some of his belongings in the boiler room in the station basement, accessible via a virtually forgotten entrance in the rear yard. No one used it except the boiler service men, and they’d only been the month before. He knew that because he’d arranged it. They wouldn’t be back now until March.
He’d altered the camera angles slightly, knowing where the blind spots were. The only other access to the boiler room was a door in the unused cells. It had been several years since they’d been used and he would bet his life no one remembered what that door was for, let alone had a key. It had been there since the days before the refurbishment, when he had only just started at the nick. Back then, the door had been the access point to the boiler room. Part of the refurbishment had taken into account the requests of the various workmen, who felt uncomfortable passing through a melee of offenders and police officers every time something went wrong.
Frank smiled in the dull glow of the machine lights. This was indeed the perfect location – they would be searching all over the city for Cass when he finally took her. Not for one moment would they suspect she was literally in their own back yard.
He double checked his toolbox, making sure he had everything he would need, and left it in the darkest corner of the room while he checked his security measures.
Nothing but the best.
He’d invested in a couple of infrared lasers which would send an alert to his mobile if tripped. These were at the exterior of the boiler room door. A well-hidden CCTV camera installed above the door which had reasonably good views of most of the yard.
There was no one in the yard just now – time to leave.
This time his smile almost reached his eyes. He’d managed to lift the keys to one of the unmarked police cars – sneaking about unnoticed had become second nature to him and this time in the morning the station operated on bare bones. Marking the board to show the car was with fleet management for repairs meant that they wouldn’t be looking for it. So he now had a completely untraceable vehicle not linked to him in any way, and better still, he could listen to the police radios and find out who was doing what.
His access card for the computers would have been disabled, but keys were easily copied and kept, even security keys, provided you knew the right people. It had come as no surprise to find all his own keys still worked, it would have cost a fortune to replace everyone’s keys, and the North East Police were not going to waste money when there was a perfectly good CCTV system in place. The snivelling girl in front office wouldn’t notice that the camera angles were off.
Checking his own camera again, he made his way out of the boiler room, edging along the wall to the alley that led into the back of the nick. He pulled his hat down over his face, fastened the police jacket he had lifted from the locker room and strode boldly to the vehicle he now had possession of.
As cool as you like, he drove up the drive and out of the gate.
Yes, I’m a complete genius.
Sunderland City Police Station – 4 November
Cass sat in the meeting room with Kevin, Jason, and the DI, cradling a cup of coffee.
‘…So I have had to make a choice on what is the fairest way to make sure the jobs available are filled with the best people to do them. Some of the staff have had problems with sickness and lateness among other things. I’ve spoken with the union, as well as HR and it’s been decided the best and fairest way to progress through the job cuts, is to re-interview staff for the positions. The decisions will be based on an amalgamation of performance, attendance and how they perform in the interview.’ DI Hartside shuffled the papers in front of him as he finished speaking.
‘Wait a second, boss. Did you just say you’re re-interviewing staff? You’re going to interview them for the job they already have? How is that fair? You might have members of staff who have been doing the job for years but are crap in an interview situation. That’s just a way to put people under undue stress, surely?’ said Kevin, disbelief evident in his tone.
‘It is how it is, Kevin. As I said, this has been discussed with HR and the Union who have both agreed. This isn’t a pleasant situation for any of us. None of us want to lose people from the department. But to meet the quota set by the government, it has to be done across the board, as cleanly and efficiently as possible.’
‘Who’s going to be conducting the interviews?’ asked Cass.
‘Well, that’s going to be down to the supervisor for the area, and a member of HR,’ said the DI slowly, his face already prepared for the onslaught.
Before Kevin blew a fuse, Jason intervened.
‘That’s not a fair process. We are all biased against all members of our respective teams. I for one, will not be telling my staff that I’m interviewing them for their own position. Sorry, boss, but I won’t do that.’
‘It was agreed that one of the interviewers has to be well versed in forensics. You have to know the correct answers to the questions posed and be able to allocate points based on those answers. In order to do that, it has to be the supervisors. If need be, we’ll assign each of you to do the interviews for different depots, that way you won’t be interviewing your own staff per se.’
‘And the staff who don’t get the jobs, what happens to them? They get redeployed as call takers or front office staff? They take a wage drop and the force lets people who are trained with such skill, in a field that’s so competitive and difficult to find a job in at the best of times, rot away in that role if they choose to stay with the police? That’s an excellent use of trained resources, boss.’
Kevin’s sarcasm wasn’t lost. The DI narrowed his eyes before he said. ‘It’s not my decision. It is in fact out of my hands. We all have to make the best of a bad situation. I’m keeping you apprised at every step so that we can minimise the impact as much as possible. I would appreciate some cooperation during the process.’
Without saying another word, the DI got to his feet, reshuffled his papers again and left.
‘I guess the fact he wants trained forensic staff performing the interviews is a good thing.’ Sighed Jason, pushing his chair back and standing.
‘None of it’s a good thing. We have an excellent set of staff, there’s not many departments who have the camaraderie the CSIs have. There’s not a whole lot of bitchiness, most people get on and are professional if they don’t. And they all work their fingers to the bone. It sucks that the force won’t see what will happen if we lose some of our staff. All it’ll take is a couple of major incidents at the same time and there won’t be the staff to deal with it. I just wish the DI could see that.’ Kevin’s words were heartfelt, and Cass put her hand on his arm.
‘I know, Kev. We’ll just have to keep doing what we are doing and make the most of a bad situation. The counterproposal has gone to the union for assessment so let’s just see what comes of that. All any of us can do is hope for the best for everyone.’
Ryhope Police Station – 4 November
‘Hey, you. How’d your meeting go this morning?’ asked Alex as he walked into Cass’s office and sat down, silently handing her a lunch bag.
She smiled at him, already knowing it would be her favourite chicken salad with coleslaw. It was funny how quickly they’d got to know each other’s likes and dislikes.
As she opened the bag, she told him the short version of the meeting with the DI.
‘So not great then. Sorry, love. You gonna be OK? What’s happening with the CSMs? You said they were thinking of cutting two?’
‘Yeah – dunno what’s happening with that yet. They’ll get round to telling us at some point am sure. I’ll be fine, Alex, don’t
worry. It just sucks having to interview our own staff for jobs that are already theirs. How’s the case coming?’
‘Well we’ve pretty much finished with Frank’s house and warehouse unit. The DNA has come back that Susan’s baby was a paternal match for him, so it looks pretty certain they were having an affair. Given how good Frank always was with cars, I would hazard a guess that it was easy enough for him to have access to her vehicle. We don’t know where the old guy comes into it, but he used to drink in a local park, and having spoken to the park regulars, it appears that Scott and Kourtney were also regulars there. They used to drink, and smoke weed on the bandstand apparently. It’s highly likely they had interaction with or at least knew Albert – though how this ties in with the killer I don’t yet know. The fact that Scott is at the Outreach centre ran by Susan’s husband appears to be a coincidence. Some of the links are tenuous, I’m sure more will come to light when we finally catch-up with Frank and get him in the interview room.’
‘I never would have thought such a person would be living in Ryhope. I mean, I know statistically speaking there’s as much chance of a serial murderer living here as anywhere else, but we in the UK tend to think of serial killers as American don’t we? It’s scary. What are the metal triangles all about? Do we know their significance yet?’
Alex shook his head, and they both looked up as Ben knocked at the door.
‘Cass, this week’s delivery has just arrived. I can arrange to have it taken downstairs, but it’ll have to be later. There’s a few people in the front office.’ Ben paused, looking troubled. ‘Is it true what everyone’s saying about Frank? That he’s a killer?’
‘Looks that way, Ben. Don’t worry though, we have leads. We will catch him,’ answered Alex, shooting a quick glance of concern at Cass. Ben looked terrified.
‘How can someone like that work for the police? How was it not found out? I mean, the police run vetting checks, right? He used to sit and have coffee with me. He’s a killer, and he used to sit and chat like a normal person. How is that possible?’
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