Liar Liar: Another gripping serial killer thriller from the bestselling author (DC Charlotte Stafford Series)

by Sarah Flint

  Fragments of charred dirt and burnt fibres were also retrieved from the foot well of Powell’s car adding to the mounting evidence, but Nick’s pièce de résistance, of which he was justifiably proud, was the outcome of his enquiries into a quantity of cash found in Powell’s flat. Witness statements from some of Cookson’s team who had been out celebrating with him spoke of their skipper having a wallet full of cash, which he was happy to splash around. Nick had checked with his bank to find he had withdrawn three hundred pounds from the cashpoint closest to where he worked near Tower Bridge; but there were no notes left in his wallet at all when his body was found. Nick thought it unlikely he would have spent every penny. Added to that, three twenty-pound notes found in the cash in Powell’s flat were newly printed and in numerical order. They had obviously come from the same batch. Could Powell have taken them from Leonard Cookson’s wallet prior to killing him and if so could there be more? They would certainly be a temptation to a man like Samson Powell, with a liking for weed and alcohol.

  Nick had phoned the Lonely Mole Pub and spoken to the manager. Luckily the week’s takings were yet to be paid into the bank. They were still in the safe. Jumping into a police car immediately, Nick had gone straight to the pub, sifting through every single banknote until he found what he was looking for. Six shiny new twenty-pound notes, crisp and barely used and all with serial numbers within the same range as those at Powell’s address. There could be little other explanation for why they were at Samson Powell’s flat, other than him having stolen them from Cookson’s wallet at the time of his murder. The odds of Powell having withdrawn money from the exact same cashpoint in Tower Bridge as Cookson, either immediately before or after him, were too fantastic to even try to contemplate.

  Armed with that knowledge, all the notes at Powell’s flat were sent off for analysis and the lab were able to confirm there were traces of acetone on them, along with the type of explosives found in fireworks. These facts, without doubt incriminated Samson Powell.

  The final nail in the coffin was the length of electrical cable used to tie Cookson’s body to the chair. This was found to be exactly the same type as was used to secure Philippa McGovern to her bed… and to provide the means for Powell to hang himself. Forensic scientists had even been able to match one end to another, each angle of the cut fitting with the next. The sections used were all from the same length of 2.5 mm electrical cable available from many electrical or DIY stores.

  Along with the roses, the cable was now the main piece of evidence which irrefutably connected Samson Powell with both Leonard Cookson and Philippa McGovern and now they had additional forensic material linking Brian Ashton’s murder to Powell the case was complete.

  Naz was still hard at work, having to wait for the final results coming from Philippa McGovern’s murder scene and post-mortem. Her cause of death was recorded as organ failure as a direct result of dehydration. Dr Crane had sent an explanation in his email, detailing his findings. In it he said that with water usually making up over two-thirds of a human body, it was not difficult to see how vital it was to keep the body hydrated. While some people had been known to survive for up to seven or eight days without water, the length of time could be drastically decreased by outside forces, one of these being heat. On a warm June week, lying between hot bedcovers, with all the windows in the house closed and the central heating turned up full, Philippa McGovern would have lost moisture from her body at an alarming rate. Severe dehydration and death would have therefore occurred far sooner, with waste and toxins building up quickly, unable to be flushed away during digestion. The raised toxin levels would cause seizures, brain damage and eventual death, due to the internal organs shutting down.

  Dr Crane estimated her time of death to be between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Monday 19th June 2017, just two days after the night-time breakin, although it was likely she would have been unconscious for some time before death.

  Charlie shivered subconsciously as Naz read out the email. It was a slow, agonising way to go, with cramps, seizures and pain, before being delivered mercifully into unconsciousness. She could only imagine the fear McGovern must have felt with her murderer leaning over her, close enough to leave a hair, alone in the dark, unable to move, gradually losing all hope with each minute that passed, her means to drink water or summon help frustratingly out of reach.

  This then was the basis of the three reports. The case was to be closed when each file was complete. Samson Powell was without doubt the murderer and both Hunter and DCI O’Connor were pleased that he was now off the streets and unable to kill again. The officers of the Metropolitan Police and Surrey Constabulary could breathe a collective sigh of relief.

  Only Charlie was not convinced. A persistent niggle was turning into a hunch. There were too many unanswered questions and as she delved further into Powell’s background more were coming to light. Her sixth sense was prickling with every new revelation but she had to admit the evidence against Samson was overwhelming. They knew the how’s and where’s, but what she really wanted to understand now was the why’s.

  In order to do this Charlie immediately contacted the various information governance departments for the social services to obtain his case history; the doctor to obtain his medical records and the NHS trusts for his mental health records, mindful of the protocols around data protection. The circumstances of the case would provide sufficient justification for the requests, added to which the Coroner would need to know all the facts to properly return a verdict.

  As the details were returned she flipped the pages grimly. Powell’s full history was starting to emerge and it made uncomfortable reading.

  Samson Louis Powell was born in Peckham to Lionel and Delilah Powell, a West-Indian male and mixed-race female, and had been named Samson as a reference to the story of Samson, the strong man in the Bible and his love for a woman called Delilah. At the age of 4 years, he had been lucky to survive the night-time arson attack that killed both his parents. The police never caught the arsonist, though it was rumoured on the estate that it was a known racist thug who had fallen out with Lionel, his father.

  Samson was then moved from one foster family to the next, each finding his increasingly erratic behaviour hard to manage. He was required to attend hospital regularly as he grew older for skin grafts on his growing limbs and, with each stay as an inpatient, he withdrew further into himself. Nobody could reach him and his behaviour became increasingly volatile, prone to bursts of uncontrollable temper or periods of withdrawal where he refused food or any communication. He was suspended from infant school and expelled twice from junior schools, finding himself eventually in a unit for delinquent children, as it was called in those days. His attitude worsened over time and, with his growing strength, came bouts of violence. He was labelled as ‘emotionally bereft’ and lacking in any form of guilt or moral compass.

  As far as Charlie could see, he basically did what he wanted, when he wanted, and nobody could impose any control or structure on his life. The flames of the fire that damaged his body had also seemingly swept through his mind, searing him with an inability to understand or empathise with anybody, either socially, physically or mentally. He had no remaining family and found it almost impossible to form friendships.

  With foster families no longer willing to risk taking him in, he was transferred from one care home to the next, each group of social workers becoming less effective in dealing with his increasingly antisocial personality traits.

  At the age of eleven he started at a local senior school with the hope that he might see it as a chance to start again, but the damage was too profound by this stage. Within weeks of the new term beginning, he was suspended for fighting with another boy, battering him across the head and body with a hockey stick when the boy dared to tackle him. He was referred to a special school, spent the next few years in and out of education and began his life of crime, dabbling with cannabis and alcohol, before starting to sell the hard drugs that he would use to ensnar
e those he wished to control.

  By sixteen he had been arrested a dozen times, attended Juvenile Court and been sent to a young person’s Borstal. His offences ranged from minor drugs possession, to assaults and criminal damage, including the GBH on his fellow pupil. The social services paperwork included references to school report after school report, where he was almost always described as uninterested, lacking in any motivation or social skills and devoid of responsibility for his poor attendance and non-completion of homework.

  Two reports, though, were highlighted and Charlie read these with interest, noting Samson’s apparent ability to concentrate and follow instructions; skills lacking from the notes of all the other teachers. Both of the yearly accounts were written by the same female teacher at the special school he’d attended. Ms Saffron Bolt had taught Samson integrated science for just under two years, from the age of thirteen to fifteen. She described Samson as being attentive and willing to try, his efforts being rewarded with average results for the subject at the end of each year. This marked a huge improvement on every other subject, where his results were below average, bordering on negligible. Samson clearly enjoyed science or, perhaps, being taught by Ms Bolt. A separate page clipped to the two reports, written by the head teacher, speculated on why this could have happened. It mentioned that Samson had alluded to the teacher that she bore a striking resemblance to his own mother. This had been checked against records and found to be correct. Saffron Bolt was an attractive light-skinned black female, in her mid-twenties, slim and pretty, with her hair held in a ponytail. Samson’s own mother, Delilah, looked remarkably similar, a dog-eared photo of her, singed at the corner being one of the boy’s only possessions not destroyed in the fire.

  Charlie, upon reading this, had checked the possessions found on Powell at the time of his suicide. The photo was listed as being contained in an old leather wallet in the back pocket of his trousers. It was a miracle the wallet hadn’t fallen into the well shaft as his body jerked downwards. She dug it out and gazed at the image of the serene young woman, wearing a beige blouse with large collar and a brown and cream patterned skirt synonymous with the seventies. Had she not died, Charlie wondered whether her son’s life might have taken a completely different path. She would never know; however, she found the whole concept of Samson Powell responding to a teacher with similar looks fascinating. She jotted down the name. Ms Saffron Bolt would be interesting to talk to, if her whereabouts could be established after so long.

  The head teacher had then questioned whether Samson’s attachment to this teacher could be replicated with other teachers but the query appeared to have been answered by his reaction on hearing Ms Bolt was to go on a period of maternity leave. He’d gone on a rampage of destruction in the classroom, overturning desks, stamping on furniture and smashing up the blackboard with the leg of a chair as well as beating up a fellow pupil with the same chair leg. For that he was arrested and spent time in juvenile detention, never setting foot in the school again. His education, or any attempts at education was over.

  His next few years in the care system seemed to Charlie to be like a roller coaster. One month he appeared to settle, before the next brought fresh upheaval with new staff bringing new battles and new residents bringing intimidation and recrimination. Samson lurched from one crisis to the next, one home to another. It was no wonder his life had turned out as it had.

  The only thing that appeared to calm his outbursts a little was the arrival of a girl, Lisa Forrester, to whom he grew close. She arrived at the same care home as he, soon after he’d finished at the special school and remained with him, on and off, until his death. She was almost as damaged as he, by all accounts, but the social services reports again acknowledged that she could sometimes be a good influence on his moods. However, the opposite could also be the case, and so their relationship was stormy. It was one of only a handful of known relationships that Samson Powell had ever managed to maintain and Lisa had been a presence throughout his life.

  Once Samson Powell reached eighteen, the children’s services of the local council effectively washed their hands of their troubled ward and he arrived on the doorstep of the DSS and Housing. They needn’t have worried though; Powell spent as much time in prison as out. Sometimes he was allowed to keep possession of his council property, sometimes he had to hand it back. Sometimes Lisa kept it running, paying the rent while he was gone, sometimes she was forced to sofa-surf until he was released. Their list of hostels, flats and bedsits could have made up a geographia of South London, with addresses in Lambeth, Wandsworth, Merton and Peckham, whichever borough took their fancy.

  His life went into free fall, the money required to fund his alcohol abuse, Lisa and her habits forcing him to steal and rob. Lisa was pimped out to assist the cash flow. He didn’t care what she did and neither did she. She was there to be used… and she was there to be abused. So was he, and the assaults were usually two-way. Lisa demanded his attention, and if she didn’t get it, her quick temper then ensured he attended A & E… just as often as she. The list of convictions and referrals grew as every year passed, with Powell arrested for the vast majority of the allegations made by Lisa, while refusing to substantiate anything against her.

  The printouts of his offending history swelled, filling a folder to itself: GBH, ABH, rape, sexual assault, burglary, robbery, pick-pocketing, theft of cars and from cars, shoplifting and criminal damage. It was all there catalogued, some with charges and convictions, some NFA’d, some cautioned. He’d done time in many of Her Majesty’s Prisons in London: Wandsworth, Brixton, Belmarsh and Wormwood Scrubs, as well as a few in Surrey.

  Prison and punishment did not discourage his criminality, however; they cemented it. He was locked into a vicious cycle of discipline and defiance. As a child his antisocial behaviour had been noted; as an adult, it had been diagnosed as being more synonymous with those of a psychopath or sociopath. In other words, Samson Powell was unable to understand the social norms, with low or no capacity for remorse. What he did, he did without emotion, each assault on Lisa inflicted without mercy, the scalding incident being the culmination of his cruelty. The judge presiding over the case had deemed it preferable to submit him to a term in hospital rather than prison. He needed to be cured, not punished… but there was no cure, only a slow treatment that tried to change the symptoms, without being able to fix the cause. Powell was unfixable, maybe he always had been, and as he graduated to the murder of three police officers, each one was carried out meticulously and without remorse. In his mind, for whatever reason, they deserved to die and he seemed quite happy to be the one to assist them into the next life.

  What Charlie was trying to establish, as she read through the plethora of information on him, was why he believed that each of them deserved to die. What links could there be between Samson Powell and his three victims and how did he choose the methods he used? His history was so extensive he could have come across each one, or heard about them from associates, inmates, or fellow patients, but in her mind it wasn’t good enough just to be able to prove that he had killed all three police officers; she had to be able to prove why. She also had to understand more of what made a psychopath tick. What had started Powell off on his murderous rampage? Could it have been Lisa’s removal from his life to go into detox? Could it just be his nature, his body enacting what his imagination had visualised for so long… but what drove him? What controlled him?

  Or, as it seemed with his teacher, was it possible for someone to control him?

  Chapter 24

  Tuesday 4th July 2017

  ‘You fucking killed him, you bastards. I want to speak to the person responsible for murdering my Samson and I’m not leaving until I do.’

  Charlie didn’t wait for the tannoy. She’d seen the woman staggering towards the glass-fronted facade of Lambeth HQ on her way in and recognised her from her photos on custody imaging. Now as she peered down from their fourth-floor office, she watched as Samson Powell’s partner l
urched away from the revolving doors on to the pavement, turning round and aiming her vitriol at the faceless receptionist. Lisa Forrester was not going to go away. Hunter came out from his office and joined her, the sound waves from the initial shouting having travelled up the lift shafts and spread across the whole building.

  ‘I wondered how long it would take for us to get the blame.’ Hunter sighed heavily.

  Charlie watched the woman, her face screwed up, her eyes blazing, screaming out her demands. She was propped against the same lamp post as Ben had often leant against and Charlie felt a wave of nostalgia roll over her at the memory. She would go to visit Ben after work and drag him out for a run. A muffled scream broke through her thoughts as Lisa Forrester pitched forward towards the entrance again.

  ‘Come on, let’s get this over with,’ Hunter turned towards the door. ‘She’s not going to leave us alone until we at least try to explain what happened.’

  ‘I get the feeling she’s not going to listen to a single word we say,’ Charlie swung round to follow him. ‘But I guess we might be interested in some of the things she has to say.’

  By the time they got to the reception, Lisa Forrester’s screams were magnified. She had taken the middle seat of a set of three, her arms spread out across the length of them and her feet planted firmly in front of her to maintain her balance. Clumps of auburn hair stuck out at all angles in a mass of tangles, an elastic band stretched thin, holding the remnants of a long, straw-like ponytail askew at the side of her head. Grey roots slashed her scalp in crisscross lines and black rings of smudged mascara scarred her cheeks.