Lonely Hearts: Killing with Kindness takes on a whole new meaning (DI Falle)

by Gwyn GB

  Back at the incident room, the place is buzzing with activity and the smell of various police canteen lunches, eaten at desks, hangs in the air. On the board, someone has put up social media messages posted by Neil. Bob goes straight up to look. ‘Home alone with an M&S curry #nightin’. The Twitter post is accompanied by a photo of the plate they’d seen at the flat earlier, complete with food. It was posted last night at 7.46pm. There are two other tweets which both refer to great nights out and have an @madmikey888 tagged in. A Michael Stratton is listed on the right-hand side under ‘Known Acquaintances’.

  ‘Someone in touch with this Michael Stratton?’ Bob asks Tasha, the team’s Action Manager.

  She checks her screen. ‘DS Lewis is on his trail Sir,’ she replies.

  Bob nods.

  ‘Funny thing is Sir,’ she adds, ‘he was prolific on social media, about twenty tweets a day, every day, only he hasn’t posted anything in weeks.’

  Bob raises his eyebrows and looks back at the board. ‘Get someone to find me all they can on both men’s social media accounts would you?’

  Tasha nods and gets to it.

  Claire checks her watch, it’s nearly 2pm and the duty pathologist is doing them a favour, rushing through the post-mortem to help the investigation. She needs to get to the morgue in half an hour to see what he’s found, but she’s enough time to do a little bit of digging first.

  She wants to know more about the dating agency and Rachel Hill. Could someone from the agency have killed Neil and be after Rachel too? SoulMates has a Facebook page with over 1600 likes and it’s full of the usual stuff you’d expect. Blog posts and articles on how to find your ideal partner, how to choose the perfect outfit, what star sign are you most compatible with etc. Not surprisingly there’s nothing that would suggest that it is a hotbed for vicious murderers.

  Then she Googles Rachel and she’s surprised. Apart from her bio on the SoulMates agency website, there is nothing about her at all. No social media accounts, no other record of her having worked anywhere else. She jots that down too. Could she have had another name or is she really one of those rare people nowadays who avoids having an online presence?

  Neither Rachel nor Neil have anything in the police records, they’re a squeaky clean couple. But one of them is dead and the other is being threatened. What’s the connection?

  The duty pathologist has already done the worst work by the time Claire gets there. Although she’s OK with dead bodies and has seen some horrific murders, she still doesn’t like seeing somebody get opened up. Puts her off eating meat for several days. Mark Rodgers is doing the medical examination and he knows that about Claire. He’d been chatting to her one day as he started the opening up process and had witnessed her getting paler and paler. It’s not for everyone. She’s glad it’s him on the job today - for lots of reasons.

  The first thing that hits Claire as she walks into the examination room, is the overpowering aroma of Creed aftershave. She sniffs and wrinkles her nose, not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or not. If she ever smells the aftershave again she’ll be forever reminded of Neil’s body laid out on the metal table, but she has to admit it beats gastric odours and cleaning fluids.

  ‘Best smelling cadaver you’ve ever sent me,’ Mark smiles at her. ‘You can tell it’s good stuff, still pungent even now.’

  Claire grimaces back at him and smiles.

  ‘I’ll get you a bottle for Christmas.’

  Mark is a good looking bloke, a bit older than she’d usually go for, in his mid-forties, but she likes his quiet intelligence and gentle manner. He has jet black hair that’s slightly wavy and twinkling green eyes which have smiled too often and created deep creases around them. He’s the kind of guy you know you can rely on. Mark loves his job and treats all his charges with respect, he’s also damned good at spotting even the smallest detail. She knows he feels it is his duty to make sure he helps bring people to justice and find answers for the bereaved. She’s often wondered what he dreams about at night, is his sleep haunted by the bodies he spends his days with, or can he shut the door in the evening and lock them inside?

  ‘Straightforward,’ he says, nodding at Neil, and heads to his computer screen where a camera is still plugged in. Claire skirts around the examination table and joins him at the screen. He’s scrolling through a gallery of photos. Every single inch of Neil’s body, inside and out, has been visually recorded. Mark stops towards the beginning of the storyline, where the camera is focused on the wound in Neil’s back.

  ‘Simple, one entry wound, but whoever did this knew what they were doing. You see the way the wound isn’t a neat cut?’ Mark zooms in on the photo, pointing to the edges of the stab wound which are jagged. ‘The killer knew how to do the job quickly. Stick the knife in here and slash at the heart, that’s why there was so much blood. Your victim would barely have known what was going on, it would have been quick, almost instantaneous.’

  ‘Right,’ says Claire, ‘Any ideas on murder weapon? Or clues about who we’re looking for?’

  ‘From the scans and x-rays of the wound, I’d say the angle indicates a right-handed man and a little taller than the victim. Perhaps just tipping over six foot. The blade was eight inches, you can see where the guard slammed into the victim’s skin as he rammed it in. I’ll need to do some more tests, but I’d wager it’s something like a hunting knife.’

  ‘You said “he”?’ Claire questions.

  ‘Yes, this took a fair amount of force to drive the knife in so far and fast. Combined with the fact it’s a knife crime and they’re six foot plus, I’d focus on finding a male. I’m not saying a woman couldn’t do it, but it’s a lot less likely.’

  ‘Anything else?’ she asks, hopefully.

  ‘Your victim looks to be a fit, clean-living guy who looked after himself, apart from some damage to his skin from sun bathing. Obviously no toxicology back yet, but there’s nothing to indicate any substance abuse. He had, however, had sex recently and a lot of it.’

  ‘OK thanks Mark, appreciate it.’

  ‘No worries, stop by sometime when we haven’t got a dead body between us and I’ll get you a coffee.’ Mark creases his face at her again and Claire feels herself doing the same back.

  ‘Thanks, I will.’

  As she leaves Claire looks back at him, bent over the remains of Neil Parsons, concentrating on his work. You couldn’t get two more different people, Mark and Jack. She’s barely given the latter a thought today. Perhaps she should call him.

  ‘At least he died happy,’ was Bob’s response when Claire told him about the autopsy findings.

  Claire tries to hide her irritation. Trust a bloke to focus on the one piece of information that contains the word sex.

  ‘Ties in with Margaret’s initial analysis of the blood spatters,’ she actually says. ‘Anything back on the stalker yet?’

  ‘Nothing. Neighbour couldn’t see clearly, just saw a hooded figure lurking at the edges of the garden. I’ve pulled up Google Earth, there are several routes someone could take to get to that point. There’s a lane just the other side of the neighbour’s house and an open communal garden behind. It wouldn’t be difficult.’

  ‘She doesn’t have any kind of a social media presence. There’s nothing on Rachel Hill at all.’

  ‘We’d better go and arrest her now then,’ Bob’s sarcasm isn’t masked. ‘Since when has not having social media accounts been a crime?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s not, but it is a bit odd.’

  ‘Well bloody good for her, maybe she hates all that crap. We’re not allowed social media accounts either - it’s not that unusual.’

  ‘I know, I wasn’t suggesting... I was just wondering if maybe there was something in her past she’s hiding from. Something that’s come back to haunt her now...’ She can see Bob is glazing over. ‘Just thought it was odd that’s all.’

  Bob has started to walk away, ‘Don’t wonder, find hard evidence and facts. Tell everyone I want them assembled wi
th everything they’ve got in ten minutes.’

  He heads out of the incident room.

  Claire feels like a cadet again after that conversation. She doesn’t know why she brought it up, it had just been niggling her. Who doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account nowadays?

  She knows where Bob’s going. He’ll lock himself into one of the toilet cubicles and stay in there for the full ten minutes, if not longer. It’s what he always does when he needs to clear his head.

  When she reaches her desk there’s a latte and a jam doughnut waiting for her. Lew gives her one of his broken tooth grins from across the desk and she smiles back at him, with a little more warmth this time.

  11

  Rachel, 14th October 2016

  As the dusk begins to settle on the garden, Rachel says goodnight to her rabbits. She picks up the female and burrows her face into her soft fur. The smell of fresh sawdust mixed with a tang of ammonia reaches her nose. The rabbit snuggles into her, enjoying the attention and the soft massage from Rachel’s fingers.

  ‘You’re going to be safe Amber, I promise,’ Rachel whispers to her, before kissing her warm ears and placing her back into the large cage with her mate. The male is inquisitive as usual, interested to see what treats she might have brought them this time and as he leans his head out Rachel bends down and kisses his forehead. ‘You’re a greedy guzzler, Reg.’

  A bag of lettuce sits on the side and she can see he smells the succulent leaves in the air.

  ‘Here you go.’ She tips the bag out onto the cage floor, a pile of green tasty joy for the rabbits, who immediately tuck in.

  With them distracted, she closes their cage and takes a small lock out of her pocket. If the stalker manages to get past the shed alarm at least they won’t be able to open the cage door easily. She puts images of fire and other violence out of her mind. She doesn’t even know if the rabbits are in any danger, but the thought of them out here on their own, while she is safely locked in the house, makes her feel uneasy. She has toyed with the idea of bringing them inside. If she empties out the cage she could just about manage to carry it to the house while Reg and Amber are in the run, but a part of her is hoping this will just go away. Maybe the police attention will scare the stalker off and her life can return to normal.

  She sets the shed alarm and returns to the safety of her house. This time she’d locked the door behind her when she went out in the garden. The possibility of someone invading her privacy, entering her home unknown, making her stomach churn. She isn’t going to make it easy for them.

  One of the police officers had gone round every single window with her, checking the house is secure and now she double-bolts the doors behind her. He was a nice guy, the policeman, about the same age as her but already engaged. She could see it in his eyes - the glow of contentment that comes from a full heart. It makes a nice change from the empty loneliness of so many of the dating agency clients. She can still feel his trail of warmth in the house.

  Now the house is silent again and she breathes relief. A return to her natural state. She’s hungry but for a few moments she sits in the armchair in the sitting room, staring absentmindedly at the pair of pottery dancing hares on the hearth. She might even put the fire on later. Fill the small wood burner with fuel and listen to it crackle and pop as the flames consume their sacrifice. What she needs now is for the soft silence to envelop her, its familiarity a comfort blanket, an antidote to the uncertainty of the day.

  Each room has its own acoustics and sound floor. This one, the sitting room, faces onto the road but she can barely hear the world passing by through the double glazing. Sometimes in the day a bird will sit on top of the chimney and its song will find its way down and into her living room - muffled and amplified by distance and the chimney flue. At times she thinks she could open up the wood burner and the bird will fly out, it seems that clear and near.

  Her mind switches, once again, to Neil. All day she’s thought about him, about what might have happened. She can’t believe he’s been murdered - he was so full of life, so desperate to stay young and energised. She knows the police are wondering if there’s a link between his death and her stalker. Could there be? If only she knew who it is that’s watching her.

  The flowers were a shock. Whoever it is knows her name. It’s not just a random weirdo who has seen her, latched on to her and is obsessed with her. The stalker wants to scare her, it’s personal. This latest fact has definitely upped her stress levels, even though she realises that must be exactly what they’d intended - and she isn’t about to give them what they want.

  The two CID officers who came round earlier seemed nice enough. The older man was a classic career copper, but the woman, she has an edge to her. Maybe it’s her age and ambition, or the fact she’s a woman, but Rachel can feel she’s more intuitive and relies on gut feeling, not just straight facts. That gives her more confidence that they’ll find Neil’s killer - whether it’s anything to do with her stalker or not.

  He didn’t deserve to have his life taken like that, he loved living. He was a fireball bouncing off the walls in her house when he visited. Occasionally they’d sit and get serious, talk about the future, his hopes and dreams or the childhood he idealised. Often his chat would revolve around his latest date, or the weekend’s plans. Neil wasn’t lonely because he had himself, that’s what really mattered to him. She found him easy company because he wasn’t interested in her, in quizzing her about her childhood and past life.

  His parents must be devastated, he was their only son, a boy they’d doted on. She can imagine their house filled with photos of every stage of his existence. What a horrible way for it all to end. She can almost hear their hearts being ripped apart. Grief like that can’t ever be mended.

  12

  Rachel, February 1994

  The first night, without her mother, neither of them go to bed. Rachel’s dad refuses to eat or drink, he stays curled up in a ball on the living room floor. She stays with him, afraid that if she lets him out of her sight he too might disappear.

  Rachel tries so hard to keep her eyes open, but they betray her. It becomes too difficult to raise her lashes and they drop like weighted safety curtains at the end of a performance. Every time she closes her eyes she sees her mum, hears the crash of the car and watches her die. Sometimes she is engulfed in a raging inferno of fire, other times crushed to death like a beetle beneath a shoe. Every time she is terrified, in pain, alone with no one to help her.

  What sleep Rachel does get isn’t restful. In the dark recesses of her mind her loss takes on a thousand different demonic guises. Exhausted with wrestling her emotions and imagination she eventually slips into deep sleep, but waking is cruel.

  She opens her eyes to morning light. Dry, scratchy, swollen lids. For a few seconds she thinks it has all been a dream - until her eyes focus and she sees where she is, lying on the sofa with her father curled up foetal-like in front of her - still in his outside boots. Cold reality strips her of any vestige of hope.

  She opens her eyes to a world without her mother.

  Instantly her head begins to pound, her mood like a cloak of lead around her shoulders. Dehydration, lack of sleep and shock taking it in turns to hammer at her brain.

  She looks at her dad. His complexion is so pale it’s almost transparent. A screen drawn back on the window of his human frailty overnight. What would her mother do? How can she help?

  First, she has to satisfy the itch of disbelief which worms around her mind. She gets up quietly, so as not to disturb her father, and slips out to the yard. The damp October night has left a film of dew upon everything, creating a sheen on the old tractor which lies lopsided, one wheel off - and long since lost, just outside their garden gate. It’s a sorry excuse of a vehicle but the only one. The oil patch is there, still exposed.

  Back inside and upstairs, just her footsteps and her breath. Her mum’s dressing gown hangs behind her parents’ bedroom door and she burrows her face into the soft
velour breathing in the scent of her mother. If Rachel closes her eyes and stays wrapped in its comfort, she can pretend like it hasn’t happened. Or step inside her mum’s wardrobe and become enveloped by her clothes - transport herself to her own Narnia where her mother waits, smiling, arms open.

  The thought of her mother embracing her squeezes a hot tear from each eye. She shudders and her mind returns to her dad downstairs. Brushing the tears from her face with her sleeve, she heads back down.

  It’s difficult when you’re 11, when your world has been ripped apart. It’s difficult to suddenly find yourself the main carer.

  ‘Dad, you need to drink a cup of tea. Sit on the chair, I’ll take your boots off.’

  Rachel places the mug of steaming tea on the small table next to his chair. She’s put a spoonful of sugar in to help with the shock, like she’d seen on one of the TV soaps that her mother used to watch.

  The room is warm, the little electric heater has finally taken charge of the temperature but her dad feels cold. His pale, grief mottled face looks at her as though he doesn’t even recognise who she is. He allows himself to be guided up from the floor and into his armchair where he sits awkwardly. A guest in a home that he doesn’t recognise.

  Rachel kneels on the floor, unlacing his boots and easing them from his feet. The mud has long since dried and crumbles off them leaving a sprinkling of brown and black in front of his chair. He places his socked feet down into the mess, oblivious, and she curses herself for not having thought to get his slippers ready first.

  ‘Dad you need to drink your tea.’

  She lifts the mug and places it in his hand, supporting the weight in case he doesn’t respond. Like an automaton, he takes the tea to his lips and sips.

  Buoyed by this success she returns to the kitchen and makes him some toast. The smell of the cooking bread and sweet jam awakens her own hunger and she makes herself a piece. Its taste shocks her mouth with the flavours and her stomach lurches into activity, churning at the prospect of sustenance. She eats half a slice before the guilt makes her take it all into the sitting room.