Who's Next?: A completely gripping and unputdownable crime thriller (Detective Lockhart and Green Book 2)

by Chris Merritt

  Smith pocketed her phone and raced out of the study, heart thumping. ‘Mo!’

  An anguished cry came from the upper floor. Smith took the stairs two at a time. On the landing, she followed the sound into the bedroom.

  ‘Jesus, Mo.’

  Khan stood staring at the ground. In front of him was a large picture frame, face down, shards of broken glass spilling out from it onto the wooden floorboards.

  ‘I think it was expensive,’ he groaned. ‘I wasn’t concentrating, and I just turned around and then…’

  ‘You know you’ll have to fess up to the boss about this.’

  ‘Come on, Max. Please.’

  ‘What? Don’t look at me like that. We can’t just leave and pretend it didn’t happen.’

  Khan shook his head and stormed back downstairs, muttering to himself.

  ‘Oi, Mo!’ she called. But he didn’t reply.

  As they entered the MIT office, Smith took Khan by the elbow. ‘You’ve got to tell him about the picture frame, Mo, or I will. There’s insurance for this sort of thing. But you’ve got to be honest about it.’

  Khan hadn’t said a word the whole journey back, seething silently beside her. Smith remembered he’d been shouted at by both Lockhart and Porter for his work in the past week, and she didn’t envy the task he now had.

  ‘You want a brew?’ she asked.

  ‘Nah, I’m good.’ Khan threw a piece of chewing gum into his mouth and walked across to where Lockhart was standing by Lucy Berry’s desk, his shirt sleeves rolled up, studying something on the analyst’s screen.

  Smith went to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. She needed to top up her two main fuel sources: caffeine and sugar. While she waited for the boil, she scoffed a banana and helped herself to a handful of chocolate digestive biscuits from a jumbo-sized team packet on the side. That wouldn’t last long. She was just pouring the water into her mug when she heard raised voices – mainly Lockhart’s – from the open-plan office. This was followed quickly by Khan stomping past her, shouting expletives as he threw the door open and left.

  That went well, then.

  She remembered mistakes she’d made in her early days as a detective. Everyone made them. But this would hurt for Khan. He looked up to Lockhart, regarded him as a role model, partly because of his military background. The guvnor hadn’t shared many stories from his army days. In fact, Smith had the impression he didn’t like to talk about it much. But they all knew he was hard as nails. There was a running joke about how many people he’d killed, only it wasn’t really a joke.

  Smith hadn’t heard the exact words exchanged just now, but being chewed out in front of everyone by Lockhart would’ve seriously dented Khan’s ego. He needed to learn and improve, but it was also a question of how those messages were delivered. A quiet word was usually much better than public humiliation. In the middle of a double murder investigation, though, that was easier said than done. She resolved to give Khan a pep talk later, when things had cooled down.

  They all got stuff wrong. Even with the benefit of twenty years’ experience, she did. Like last autumn on the Throat Ripper case. She had a sudden image of the suspect falling from the balcony, the sound of his scream followed by him hitting the concrete below. A pang of guilt stabbed her, and she wondered if she should perhaps go to visit the guy in the care home where he now lived, confined to a wheelchair and with a permanent brain injury. But what would she say to him? And would he even be able to understand her? She decided to leave that idea in the kitchen for now.

  Carrying her mug through to the office, she walked over to Lockhart. He and Berry were looking at a webpage. Smith registered Martin Johnson’s photograph and deduced it was his profile on the law firm’s website.

  ‘What’s going on with Mo?’ asked Lockhart, hands on hips. ‘He’s screwing everything up at the minute. Pretty soon he’s gonna drop the ball big time. If we weren’t short staffed, I’d tell him to take himself off and not come back until his head’s screwed on properly. Porter’s gonna love that accident with the artwork. I mean, what the hell? Was he searching the house blindfolded?’

  ‘I’ll talk to him, guv. I think there’s some stuff going on.’

  ‘We’ve all got stuff going on, Max.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He was right about that.

  ‘So, apart from smashing the place up,’ Lockhart said, ‘you find anything useful?’

  She took out her phone to show him the documents she’d photographed. ‘Maybe.’

  Twenty-Five

  Lexi stood outside the mansion block and checked the address that Dan had texted her. Yup, this was it. Traffic roared past beside her on the huge Hammersmith flyover – which carried one of London’s biggest and busiest roads – while across the way a tube train broke the surface and rattled noisily along. How did Dan get any sleep here? Maybe he didn’t.

  She pressed the buzzer for his apartment and immediately realised that she hadn’t brought anything over except her laptop, notebook and pen. Should she have gotten some takeout food for them, or at least brought a bottle of something? No, that probably wasn’t appropriate. In any case, she knew Dan was trying to drink less; they’d talked about that a bunch of times in their therapy sessions. And she didn’t need any more alcohol. Today was the first day of her new plan: getting her shit together. It starts with this, she thought, as Dan greeted her through the intercom and buzzed open the main entrance.

  Three floors up, she found his apartment door ajar and cautiously nudged it.

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘Yeah, come in.’

  She stepped through into the narrow hallway. The spot where she knew Dan had held his last conversation with his wife before he went to Afghanistan and she went missing. She guessed there would be a whole lot of painful memories for him in this place.

  ‘Should I take my shoes off?’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  Lexi walked through into the living room. The first thing she saw was Dan, tidying the small table that clearly doubled as desk and dining surface. He wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans. His dark hair was wet, and he looked as if he’d just taken a shower. He smiled at her, but she could see the effort behind it. He was under pressure, seemingly not just on the double murder case. Maybe he’d tell her what was going on, in his own time. Glancing to her right, the next thing she saw was the wall.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she whispered, unable to catch herself.

  ‘Yeah, that’s… well, you know what it is.’

  She crossed to the montage of photographs, handwritten notes and other documents, all arranged around a large map of the UK with various pins stuck in it. It covered an area about six feet high by eight feet wide. The sum total of Dan’s personal investigations into his wife’s disappearance over more than a decade. At the top centre of the collection was an 8 x 12-inch photograph of a pretty young woman. She was mid-twenties, Lexi guessed, and blond, with blue eyes that shone out from the portrait. She had a broad smile and dimples in her cheeks. Jess. Lexi realised she’d never seen a picture of Dan’s wife before, despite having talked about her with him for hours in her clinic.

  Studying all this work, the embodiment of Dan’s undiminished hope for Jess’s return, Lexi felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. This was quickly followed by a powerful feeling of discomfort at intruding on the most intimate part of Dan’s life. But she reminded herself that he’d invited her here and, more than that, they’d already spoken about his emotions, fears and traumas in a way that he probably hadn’t shared with anyone else. Maybe not even his mom. Perhaps not even Jess. She was so absorbed in the wall of information that his voice made her jump a little.

  ‘Do you want a drink or something?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Thanks.’

  ‘Beer? I might have some wine…’

  ‘Water’s good.’

  ‘OK.’ He held up a manila file in each hand. ‘Here’s the stuff. I’ll get your water.’

  Dan put the files down on the table and, a
s he left the room, she stole a final glance at the material on Jess, before sitting down. The apartment was neat and tidy; she wouldn’t have imagined anything else, given Dan’s military background. It was pretty much the same as how her dad has always kept their home. Everything was straight, lined up, clean. She was reminded of that old line that her mom used to tease her dad with: You can take the boy out of the military…

  He came back in and placed a glass of water down in front of her. Then he pulled up a chair alongside hers, so close to her that she could smell the shower gel or whatever he’d just washed with. She flicked her eyes to him, but he was focused on the files.

  ‘Here we go,’ he began, opening them both. ‘Let me take you through what we’ve got.’

  Two hours later, they’d covered all the material. Lexi had asked Dan questions as he explained each piece, taking notes and stopping him occasionally to read a report.

  He leant back in the chair. ‘What do you think?’

  She tilted her head. ‘OK, so, this is just my initial profile sketch. I need a little more time to work on it, obviously. For the fuller picture.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Victims first.’ She flipped a couple pages back in her notebook. ‘Both were white men in their fifties. They were wealthy and wielded a degree of power from their jobs and financial positions. They both lived in south-west London, around three, four miles apart. Not super-close, but pretty nearby. Walking distance, anyway. And they were killed only like a half-mile apart.’

  Lexi paused and Dan nodded that she should continue. ‘Despite these similarities, it appears that the two men weren’t known to one another. We don’t think they were socially connected, and there’s nothing so far that Lucy Berry could find to suggest an online association. Not even a mutual Facebook friend. And we don’t believe that Martin Johnson ever acted as an attorney for Charles Stott, which would be the most logical professional relationship.’

  ‘Correct. Not that we know of, at least. We’re hoping Johnson’s law firm can confirm that tomorrow, as well as giving some details of his clients, which might help us.’

  ‘Right. So why were these two individuals targeted by the killer? The attacks weren’t random. And I agree with you that they weren’t robberies gone wrong. Whatever DCI Porter thinks.’ She flashed a grim smile at him. ‘The level of violence was too extreme, and the locations were unlikely.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So, the two victims were chosen, and the blitz attack MO – using the blunt object once and no more – suggests that the killer set out to murder them. But for what reason?’

  ‘That’s the question. If we can answer that,’ he said, ‘then we might have a chance of working out who he’ll choose next. Because I think there’s gonna be more.’

  ‘Each victim was alone in an isolated place with no CCTV in the immediate vicinity,’ she went on. ‘Which indicates that the killer had planned it, maybe followed the victims or knew something about their schedules?’

  ‘He gets pattern-of-life intel, then picks a vulnerable strike point. Makes sense.’

  ‘And the obvious link between them in terms of a motive is that, as you’ve discovered, both of these guys had some kind of sexual assault association. Stott was notorious for it and had tens of victims, however low-level his actions. With Johnson, though, it’s less clear. He only had a document on the legal aspects of sexual assault claims.’

  ‘Which wasn’t really his area of law. He mostly did injury compensation.’

  ‘True,’ she acknowledged. ‘But there’s potential overlap. Or maybe he was helping out a colleague or a buddy. We have no proof that he sexually assaulted anyone.’

  Dan linked his fingers and planted both hands on the table. ‘We might find that evidence tomorrow, though.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Assumptions that could bias your investigation. You think this is about sexual assault. Like it’s some vigilante who’s doing this. And I agree with you up to a point. That is a possibility, but there’s not enough data yet to be confident in that conclusion.’

  ‘But a triangle is enough data for you to think it’s about witchcraft?’ He arched his eyebrows.

  She sighed. ‘That’s not exactly what I was trying to say before.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘No. This is what I was thinking: the triangle has meaning, but there are different ways of interpreting it. One way is as an occult symbol. The elements fire and water are triangles that point in opposite directions, as the drawings on the victims appear to do. But it could just as easily mean something else.’

  ‘You said the triangle is a female symbol, too.’

  ‘Amongst other stuff, yeah.’

  ‘So, what if the killer’s getting revenge for these guys sexually assaulting women?’

  ‘You’re into the offender profile, now.’

  ‘But could I be right?’

  ‘Well, that is the likely motive. But how would they know about the accusations?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s someone who works in one of those sexual assault referral centres. They deal with victims every day, they know the stats about how few perpetrators are convicted, and one day, they snap. Start dispensing justice themselves.’

  ‘Maybe. But we don’t yet know that Martin Johnson attacked anyone. And it doesn’t seem as if any of the women who accused Charles Stott of assault actually reported it to the police.’

  ‘No. That’s true.’ He nodded slowly.

  They sat in silence for a moment, looking over the documents spread across the table. What else connected these men? Was it something about the triangle, or was she totally off on that?

  Eventually, Dan spoke. ‘You know DS Smith is working on a case about serial sexual assault,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should ask her, see if there’s anything she can tell us that might help. Characteristics of sex offenders or something.’

  ‘Go for it. I’ll stay out, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lexi pressed her lips together, her eyes widening. ‘Well, she’s not exactly the biggest fan of forensic psychology. Or of me, for that matter.’

  ‘Don’t mind her. She just wants to solve cases.’

  ‘Same as I do.’

  ‘There you go, you’ve got a common objective.’ He started to gather the documents on the table. ‘You want to talk to her, then?’

  She held up her palms. ‘Sure, whatever. If it’ll help.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Dan grinned. ‘I’ll set it up.’

  Twenty-Six

  There he is. The smug bastard himself, staring back at me from the TV as the news headline runs beneath his self-satisfied grin:

  London Murder Victim Identified as Lawyer Martin Johnson, 56.

  The man who represents so much of what I hate. Some of that hate was purged as I kicked him to death. But there’s still a hell of a lot left inside me. Thinking back to Friday night, though, I’m particularly pleased with my idea about getting him to help me look for a golf ball. Distraction, misdirection. Then whack! He didn’t even have time to register that he’d been tricked. There was something comical about watching him go straight into survival mode. But that didn’t work for him.

  The portrait-headline combo on screen now was a re-run from the start of the story. The real highlight had been a moment ago, though, when Dan Lockhart had appeared, delivering one of those stupid pieces-to-camera that the police seem to think will bring witnesses forward. He was at the golf course, standing outside, wearing a North Face jacket. We’re hoping it’ll jog people’s memories, that’s what Lockhart had said. I find that pretty funny, because you can’t remember what you haven’t seen.

  I could call their hotline and tell the cops right now that there was no one else there. Just me and Martin on that part of the golf course. Same as it was just me and Charles in the woods on Wimbledon Common. Same as it’s going to be me and the next guy when I crush him like one of those miserab
le little insects under that log in my dad’s garden, the first time I ever ended a life. And the same as it’ll only be me and Lockhart himself when the time comes. The thought of that brings a smile to my face and a jolt of excitement to my belly.

  The rolling news has moved on now and is showing footage of a bus stop. At first, the fact it’s not my stuff annoys me, and I consider flipping the channel – maybe seeing if there’s a decent action or horror movie on John’s Netflix, something with blood, anyway – but then the headline appears:

  Police Seek Serial Sex Attacker in South London

  That’s interesting. I turn the volume up.

  Eight documented attacks by this fella and counting. There’s a woman with her face blurred talking in a disguised voice about what happened to her. She’s describing a small, stocky man. A knife. It’s kind of pathetic how she just let that happen to her. Women needed to be better at defending themselves, that was the simple answer. They can’t expect anyone else to do it for them. The police clearly aren’t capable of doing anything about it. But this guy can’t hide for ever. Pretty soon, like the others, he’ll get what he deserves.

  I’m bored of sitting here, now. My limbs are stiff and aching, the pain worse than usual today, probably because of all the physical effort two nights ago. It’s time to have some fun. I’m going out to a bar. I need to get laid.

  Day Seven

  Twenty-Seven

  Lockhart added a few final updates to the whiteboards and turned to survey his team. They were gradually assembling for the early-afternoon briefing. Gradually being the operative word. For most of them, this was the seventh straight day that they’d be working a twelve-hour-plus shift, and they all looked knackered. He’d have to start rostering rest days for them this week. There was only so long people could keep that effort up; sooner or later, they started to make mistakes. Khan’s accident in Johnson’s house was a good example. But it wasn’t just about making errors. In the absence of significant progress, your motivation started to fall away. Your fire started to go out.