‘I’d guess she knew her killer,’ Chiswick said. ‘At the very least, she didn’t have time to turn and run. She was shot while looking him or her in the eye.’
Chapter 5: One of Us
By the time Rafferty and Mayberry had finished the initial evidence collection and located the next of kin, it was early on Sunday morning.
The victim lived with her husband in up-and-coming Muswell Hill. Their home was a new-build flat around the corner from the North Finchley allotments, with views of greenery just across from their front door. If not for the presence of the North Circular Road cutting straight past the flat, it would have been picturesque.
Rafferty knocked on the door, and a man in his boxers answered.
‘Mr Brian King?’ Rafferty said. ‘Metropolitan Police. Can we come in?’
Brian loomed above her in the doorway. He looked from Rafferty to Mayberry and back again. From their expressions, he must have realised something was up.
‘Okay. Give me a minute,’ he said gruffly. He shut the door in their faces, leaving them waiting on the doorstep.
‘My God, I thought the name sounded familiar,’ Rafferty said when they were alone.
‘W-who is he?’
‘That’s the Brian King. He’s with the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Don’t you recognise him?’
Mayberry shook his head. He looked quizzical. ‘S-should I?’
Rafferty planted a hand on her right hip and stared down at Mayberry. ‘He was in the newspapers a few weeks back. The misfire in Leicester Square? Some random civvie got shot because we thought they had a gun. SOCA got dragged over the coals by the press because of it.’
Mayberry still looked blank.
Before they could discuss it further, the door opened, and Brian King reappeared fully dressed. He led the way through to a small kitchen, where a pot of coffee was boiling away.
‘What is it, then? Am I needed? You could’ve just called.’
‘Mr King, would you care to sit down?’ Rafferty began.
King’s face turned ashen, and his eyes darted from Rafferty to Mayberry and then back again. ‘Oh, no, you don’t get to do that to me. What’s going on? Is it my Angie?’
Rafferty paused. She hated death notifications just as much as every other police officer. ‘Mr King, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Angela King died last night.’
The wail that emanated from the big man ricocheted around the kitchen, echoing off the bare walls and reverberating down the hallway. It was a sound that Rafferty instantly knew would haunt her forever. Then King slammed a ham-hock-sized fist down on the countertop, causing his coffee mug to leap into the air. It fell to the floor with a crash, flooding the linoleum with black coffee.
Mayberry leapt into action. He nabbed the kitchen roll from the counter and began to mop up the mess. Brian King continued to sob, seemingly unaware.
‘How did it happen?’ King demanded between sobs.
Rafferty watched him intently. ‘She was shot.’
His eyes went wide. ‘Shot? By whom?’
If he was acting, the man deserved an Oscar. ‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Mr King. Did Angie, or do you, have any enemies?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Rafferty saw Mayberry produce a notebook and pen and begin scribbling away.
‘No,’ King spat. ‘Who’d want to hurt my Angie? She’s a schoolteacher, for fuck’s sake.’ He slammed his fist down once more.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rafferty said. ‘We can do this another time if you need to contact family.’
‘No. Let’s do this now. What do you need from me?’ King demanded.
‘What would Angie be doing in Kensington, just off the Old Brompton Road, on a Saturday night?’ Rafferty asked.
‘We used to live there. We rented just off Dove Mews. She often goes back for a night out with the girls or to visit her folks. I don’t know who it was last night, though. She didn’t mention it before I went to work, so I assume it was a last-minute thing.’
‘How were things between you and Angie?’ Rafferty asked.
‘How dare you ask that? My wife is dead, and you want to know about our sex life?’ King thundered.
‘I have to ask, Mr King. I’m just doing my job,’ Rafferty said. You ought to know that better than most, she thought.
‘It was fine.’
‘Then, why didn’t you notice she was missing?’
King hesitated. ‘Because I slept on the sofa.’
‘You weren’t sharing the marital bed? Why was that?’
‘I get called a lot on weekends. I don’t like disturbing her. My gaffer warned that something might be going down last night, so I slept on the sofa, just in case. I didn’t want to say because I knew you’d take it out of context.’
‘We’ll have to check that. Who’s your gaffer?’
‘Xander Thompson.’
Brilliant, Rafferty thought. Xander Thompson was chummy with Morton. He was going to find out about the investigation in no time at this rate, and then Rafferty would be caught between his ire and the chief’s direct orders to keep her assignment from him.
Brian King had begun to cry again. He was in no fit state to continue. Rafferty briefly wished she carried a pocket square like Detective Inspector Ayala often did.
‘Is there anyone we can call for you?’ she asked.
King nodded and pointed towards the wireless phone by the microwave. ‘Me mam. Her number was the last I called, so just hit redial.’
Chapter 6: Evolution
Morton found himself back in the lecture theatre on Monday morning. He had overslept, and arrived just after nine. He walked through the doors expecting to see Ayala had started without him. Instead, the students were milling around, chatting.
‘Seats, please,’ he called out as he swept past the rows towards the front of the lecture theatre. Ayala was nowhere to be seen, so he asked, ‘Anyone seen Detective Inspector Ayala?’
‘Nah, he ain’t been in,’ said the man in the second row. He was the only student to wear a full three-piece suit despite the weather.
Morton ran a gnarled thumb down the class list perched on the lectern. Daniel Hulme-Whitmore. He was a transfer in from SCD9. It was properly called the Serious Crime Directorate for Human Exploitation and Organised Crime Command, but everyone just called it “vice”, much to the chagrin of those in charge of department names.
‘Danny, right? What made you want to leave vice?’
‘The hours, boss,’ Danny said in an East London accent. ‘The missus don’t like it when I’m asleep all day and at work all night. We barely see each other.’
‘Some couples like it that way,’ Morton said with a wry smile. It was a story as old as time. The job or the family. It was a line that was far too easy to cross.
‘Speaking of, did I hear Brian King’s missus is dead?’ Danny asked.
‘You know him?’
‘Of course. He’s on the force rugby team with O’Shaughnessy and me. Did he do it?’
News travelled fast inside the Met. Morton was unsurprised that the death of a policeman’s wife had quickly become force gossip, but now wasn’t the time to comment. He ignored Danny’s enquiry and turned his attention to the rest of the class.
‘Right, that’s five minutes,’ Morton called out. ‘It appears you’ve just got me today, so eyes front.’
No Ayala meant no PowerPoint. He really was on his own. He waited until all attention was focussed on him. The hum of chatter died down almost immediately.
‘We’ve talked about basic murder methodologies. You know that the common murders – shootings, stabbings, poisonings, and defenestration – are usually easy to solve. The harder crimes to solve are those where the criminal adapts their modus operandi. The evolution of a serial killer is fundamental to catching them, because they’re most likely to make mistakes early on.’
He sensed it coming before it happened. The moment Morton stopped talking, Babbage’s hand shot into the ai
r. Oh, come on! Morton thought. The man never missed a chance to interrupt him.
‘No questions, please. I’ll deal with those at the end. Unless you’d like to get up and teach this class, Mr Babbage?’
Babbage recoiled. He down in his seat in the front row and averted his gaze. Behind him, Danny, Sully, and Eric giggled like schoolgirls. It was only the second week, and cliques had already formed among the students.
‘Something funny, Mr Hulme-Whitmore?’
Danny twirled his pen around his fingers absent-mindedly. ‘Yeah. That was the first time Babbling Babbage wanted to speak that I thought I might ask a question too. I guess I’ll just shut up now, though.’
‘What did you want to ask?’
‘Do all of ‘em do that? Follow a pattern from shitty right up to polished? Can’t a smart killer start off strong?’
‘The starting point can vary,’ Morton conceded. ‘Criminal sophistication is on a broad scale. Some start relatively sophisticated and work their way up to almost uncatchable. Some start at the bottom and fumble their way into competence.’
‘Almost, eh? Wouldn’t a smart killer avoid mistakes?’
‘They all make mistakes. They can’t watch instructional videos on YouTube and then just give it a crack. You’re underestimating how difficult, how bloody, how physically demanding a murder is. You can’t just be smart. You have to be willing to get dirty, to lift heavy, and to take risks. Like any activity, it takes practice. Criminals become more sophisticated over time. I caught one man because he used cheap bleach. If you want to get rid of blood, you need oxidising bleach. That’s not a lesson he’ll forget in a hurry.’
The red-headed Irishman whispered something in Danny’s ear, and Danny smirked. ‘But what if they practiced somewhere else? Y’know, fuck off to Bumfuck Nowhere and strangle a few hobos to learn the ropes, and then come back to kill their real victim here in London?’
‘Lovely imagery, Mr Hulme-Whitmore. No doubt you remember the class of criminals you had to deal with during your time with vice. Did any of them strike you as that smart?’
‘Nah, but I wouldn’t have met the smart ones, would I?’
He had a point. Cases with itinerant victims and crimes that were geographically removed from the killer would be more complex. Geographic profiling was a massive win for Morton’s team. Serial killers felt safest near home, so the murders they perpetrated tended to be geographically concentrated. The idea of a killer who had no such compunction, someone so criminally sophisticated that they started by killing far from home in ways they never intended to use again...
A shiver ran down Morton’s spine. The day he came up against such a killer would be the day he seriously considered retirement.
‘Like I told you last week, we catch nine killers for every ten bodies. Show me a better way of doing things, and I’ll listen. Until then, I fail to see what you expect me to do about the faintest possibility of a Moriarty-like serial killer roaming the streets and practicing on the homeless. Thankfully, if the number of beggars who accosted me for change on my walk from the tube this morning is any indication, he doesn’t exist. Now, if you’ll let me get back to the topic at hand, we were talking about being as flexible as the killers we hope to catch. Let me give you an example from my own cases. We had a man dumping bodies in the water. He’d picked a pond in north London.’
Babbage tentatively raised a trembling hand. His expression was that of a man who expected to get slapped down.
‘What now, Mr Babbage?’
‘Why did he dump them in the water? Was it a forensic countermeasure?’
‘The man’s mother had drowned when he was a young boy,’ Morton said. ‘Dr Jennings thought it was a compulsion. He wasn’t choosing to dump the bodies in water for fun or as a forensic countermeasure. He felt he had to do it. After we discovered his primary dump site, he couldn’t do that anymore. We were able to catch him by staking out similar dump sites and waiting for him to show up with his latest victim.’
‘But, sir,’ Babbage said, ‘what if we come across a killer who doesn’t have an Achilles’ heel like that?’
‘Then, God help us all.’
Chapter 7: The Usual Suspects
As incident boards went, Rafferty’s first was pathetic. It was an old cork board that Mayberry had pilfered from God knew where. It was full of holes from old pins and had a slightly musty smell. In the middle of the board, Rafferty had pinned a large picture of the victim, Angela King, and to the right, underneath Suspects, Mayberry had written the name Brian King in a beautiful cursive script.
There were no fancy projectors, no conference table to sit around. It was a far cry from the way Morton ran his cases.
As Rafferty hadn’t been formally assigned rooms, she had pilfered a key to one of the disused offices on the third floor. Officially, they were supposed to be for task forces set up for specific, temporary purposes. Rafferty didn’t see the harm, and this way they wouldn’t accidentally run into Morton. His office was three floors up, and the lecture theatre was in another building. She felt a sense of betrayal running around behind Morton’s back, but that knot of fear and irrational guilt could wait until after she’d caught the killer.
Only she and Mayberry were in attendance. Ayala still hadn’t surfaced since skipping the crime scene callout on Saturday, and Rafferty could only assume he was off working with Morton.
“And that’s it,” she said, then turned to Mayberry. ‘So, where do we begin? Who benefits from Angela King’s death?’
‘N-n-nobody,’ Mayberry stammered.
‘Someone has to. She didn’t get murdered for no reason. Look at the modus operandi. She was shot at point blank range in the chest. Her husband is a firearms officer for SOCA. Doesn’t he seem like the prime suspect?’
Mayberry looked dubious. ‘W-why would h-he need to shoot her at close r-range?’
Rafferty deflated. He wasn’t wrong. It didn’t take an expert marksman to shoot somebody up close.
It was a weird murder. In some ways, it was thoroughly professional. The hit had occurred in a dark, quiet alleyway at a time when there would be few witnesses. There was little to no forensic evidence. All they had so far was the gunshot residue on the victim’s clothing and body.
‘Isn’t it a b-bit im-p-p-personal, too?’
It was a cold-blooded and thoroughly ruthless kill. Rafferty tried to imagine shooting someone she loved, or had once loved, at the very least. To kill a spouse was one thing. To do it at point blank range in a meticulous, calculating way and to leave her bleeding out on the ground in a dark alleyway... well, that was something else entirely. Was Brian King that kind of psychopath?
Rafferty changed the subject. ‘Any luck finding that bullet?’
‘N-no. The d-d-docs are adamant there wasn’t one.’ Mayberry had spent all day Sunday chasing down the missing bullet. He’d been back to the crime scene, and had even had the body x-rayed by one of the dieners in the morgue.
‘And we’re waiting on the full autopsy,’ Rafferty continued. ‘Can you handle that?’
Mayberry nodded.
‘Good. We’ve got two theories, then. Our prime suspect has to be the husband. He could have done it himself. We need to run down where he says he was.’
‘H-he s-says he won’t t-talk without a r-rep present.’
‘Typical. He could also have had somebody else do it. I need you to run down his financials. If it’s a professional hit, he’ll have had to pay for it somehow. See what Angela had by way of life insurance, too. Money makes the world go round.’
***
Brodie’s corner of the office was as messy as ever. The big Scot’s desk was smothered not with reports or chain-of-custody paperwork, but with Cheetos and empty bottles of Pepsi Max. He hurried to hit alt-F4 as Mayberry’s shadow loomed over him. He spun on the spot and grinned.
‘Bloody hell, laddie. You gave me a heart attack,’ Brodie said.
‘S-sorry, B-Brodie.’
Bro
die hit shift-alt-T on his keyboard, and the eBay window he’d quickly hidden sprang back to life. It looked like he had been checking out a custom mechanical keyboard. ‘Nae problem. I was just having a canny bid or two. What can I do you for?’
‘B-B-Brian K-King. I need–’
Before he could even finish speaking, Brodie had set to work. The clack of Cherry keys abounded as Brodie began to sift through the databases at his disposal. By starting with something as simple as Brian King’s full name and address, he soon had records from insurers, banks, credit reporting agencies, and the Met’s own personnel files.
‘Here we go. Brian King, age forty-two. Bloody heck, he’s with Trojan?’ Brodie said, referring to the Met’s Trojan Protective Unit. Brian King was one of just two dozen officers tasked with patrolling high-risk crime hotspots to deter potential criminals.
‘Y-yes. H-he’s one of us.’
‘Should we be calling in the Professional Standards Department? If we’re investigating one of our own...?’ Brodie trailed off with a shrug and held up his hands. ‘OK, it’s none of my business. What do you need to know? Job history? Finances?’
‘E-everything.’
Brodie’s hands danced over the keyboard at lightning speed. ‘Bank accounts look about normal. Ten grand and change in a current account, thirty in stocks. Not bad for a man earning maybe fifty grand including overtime.’
‘Any d-debts?’
‘One mortgage,’ Brodie said. ‘Plenty of equity in the family home, so nothing unusual. I’m not seeing any late payments on his credit record. He seems to be doing just fine.’
Mayberry leant over Brodie’s shoulder to look at the screen. Brian King had two hundred thousand pounds outstanding on a property worth half a million. It was well within his means. ‘What about l-life insurance?’
A few more clicks brought up the right documentation. ‘He’s insured for just under half a mil in the event of an unexpected death. His wife is on the same policy for the same amount. They’re each other’s beneficiaries.’
The DCI Morton Box Set Page 53
