by Rob Ashman
‘Where to?’
‘Drive, I’ll give you directions.’
He pulls away and we head up the road to the T-junction at the end.
‘Make a left, we’re heading for the park.’
‘Okay.’ His eyes are feasting on my legs. The hem of the dress is hitched up providing a glimpse of lace from my stockings.
‘Better watch the road or we’ll not get there,’ I tell him as we speed along.
‘You don’t do this as a regular thing then?’
‘I do it when I feel like doing it. I post cryptic messages on social media and my puppy dogs come running.’
Park View is a sprawling expanse of green with pockets of woodland dotted around, there are visitor attractions and cycle paths. I motion for him to turn left into the car park with a public toilet at the far end.
‘Keep going, to the left of the building.’ The road runs out to be replaced with a dirt track that sweeps in an arc to the back of the toilet block. ‘Keep going straight ahead.’
The track meanders along for a few hundred yards and terminates in a copse of trees. He comes to a stop under the cover of low hanging branches. The sun has dipped below the horizon and the foliage above almost puts us in the dark.
‘What is this place?’
‘It’s where the twitchers come to have fun.’
‘Twitchers?’
‘Bird watchers, there are hides around here and they come to look at birds.’
‘Oh.’ He’s not looking for birds, his eyes are welded to my legs.
‘You ready to play?’ I lean over and kiss him deeply, leaving him breathless.
‘I’m ready.’
Kray had abandoned her post at the Purple Parrot. She was cruising around in her car causing traffic mayhem.
‘I fucking know you’re out here,’ she said to herself over and over. Up and down the sea front she drove with a queue of frustrated motorists tagging along behind.
‘All units, all units. I don’t think he’s here, I don’t think he’s in town.’ Kray had pulled off the front and was dashing between the side streets.
‘Roz this is Jackson, why the change?
‘I don’t know, this doesn’t feel right.’
‘Come on Roz, he has a pattern. We can’t change course on a whim.’
‘He’s not here, this doesn’t feel right.’
She slapped her hands against the steering wheel once again.
I pull away from him sharply, his hand is on my breast.
‘How … what …’ he stutters.
‘Pull the seats forward and get in the back.’
He bolts for the door and is sitting in the back seat by the time I get out of the car. I slide along the seat beside him, he lunges at me.
‘Whoa there puppy, haven’t you forgotten something?’
He scrunches up his face, then reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the money.
‘Put it on the back window ledge.’
He slaps the notes onto the shelf and throws himself at me again. His hands explore my body and his tongue feels hot in my mouth. I reach down to feel his cock bursting through his jeans. I shove him away.
‘Steady on there puppy or you’re gonna pop your cork too soon.’ He’s breathing hard, desperate to please. ‘You heard what I said, you got some work to do first.’
I ease myself back against the door and open my legs. My hand pushes his head down and he slides from the seat into the foot well. His hands caress my thighs, sliding up my dress to expose my stocking tops.
‘You going to please me?’ I say seizing two handfuls of hair.
‘Yes, yes.’ He begins to kiss my inner thighs, panting like a good puppy.
I wrap my legs either side of his head and lock my ankles.
‘If you want to please me you’re going to have to work for it.’
I squeeze my thighs together. He makes a gurgling sound. He tries to prize them open but he can’t. He is so desperate to please.
‘Try harder,’ I taunt him as he struggles. He shuffles around in the footwell, trying to get better leverage. He likes this game.
I reach for my bag and delve inside. He writhes around between my legs.
I let him get close to his prize only to push him back down and clamp him in place. His face is red with exertion and my stockings are laddered from his grasping hands.
‘Work harder puppy, show how much you want to please me.’
My fingers find what I’m looking for. He is too busy trying to reach my crotch to notice. His eyes are closed. I can see his tongue darting out of his mouth. The cold point of the screwdriver touches his temple and he stops.
His eyes flick open to portray a mixture of confusion and pleasure.
I drive the screwdriver into the side of his head. His eyes burst from their sockets and his jaw drops open. His arms spasm against the seats.
I watch the life drain from the face between my legs. He emits a gargled retching sound and tremors run through his body. I slam the heel of my hand into the handle and ram the driver all the way in. The shaking stops. His lifeless eyes stare at me. His mouth gaping open. He tried so hard to please.
46
Kray was drained. She hadn’t slept a wink. Instead she had spent the night staring into the darkness of her bedroom, picturing where the killer could have been. She was angry that an evening spent racing around the streets had yielded nothing. She had despatched the team of officers to every nook and cranny but they had come up blank. She felt like shit and what she didn’t need was to be sat in Jackson’s office to receive a 9am lecture. But she was getting one anyway.
‘I was prepared to cut you some slack, Roz. We deployed more officers because you had a hunch that he was going to kill. But then you turn it on its head mid-operation for no apparent reason, give me a break!’
‘He was out there I know it.’
‘How Roz? How do you know it?’
Kray shook her head, spinning the ring on her finger, feeling as though the word ‘idiot’ was etched on her forehead.
Jackson continued. ‘We pulled officers from other assignments to stake out the previous locations where Gorgon had been sighted, I get that. But then we abandon the plan in favour of scattering them around town with zero co-ordination and fuck all rationale? That, I don’t get. What happens when we need to call for reinforcements again?’
‘I’m sorry. I just had a feeling he had changed his pattern. I know he was out there somewhere, we just weren’t in the right place.’
‘Yes well I’ve got a feeling that we made ourselves look like dicks. This is bound to move up the chain and it’s me who will have to deal with the shit when it starts raining down.’
Yeah that’s it. Never mind about the fact that we were trying to prevent a fourth murder, you think of yourself. Kray kept her mouth shut.
‘The ACC wants a briefing at ten o’clock and I’m struggling to know what to tell her. She’s getting impatient for results and the Chief wants to put out a statement. My problem is I’ve got jack shit other than we had officers chasing around town on a wild goose chase.’
‘I’ll tell her if you would prefer?’ Kray offered knowing what the answer would be.
‘No, it’s my job to keep them updated. I just wish I had something positive to say.’
There was a sharp rap at the door. It was one of the new members of Kray’s team, Jackie Marsden.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ She stood in the doorway. ‘Ma’am you need to come and see this. I might have something.’ Kray didn’t need a second invitation and followed her down the corridor to the incident room, not waiting to be dismissed.
‘What is it?’ Kray asked as Marsden returned to her seat behind her laptop.
‘Do you remember I said yesterday that the only thing we could find connecting the female victims was a Facebook group?’
‘Yes, and please call me Roz.’
‘The group is linked to a website called Boston Magic. It turns out Lucy and Madeli
ne were members and accessed it often, sometimes two or three times a week.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Well, it has nothing to do with conjuring tricks,’ said Marsden. ‘Take a look.’
She spun the laptop around to face Kray.
‘What the hell is this?’
‘Boston Magic is a make-up tutorial site specialising in highlighting, contouring and sculpting.’
Kray looked at Marsden blankly. ‘You realise I don’t understand what you just said, right?’
‘It’s a method of applying make-up that alters your face. The results are startling - it can accentuate your cheekbones, make your face appear narrower, change the shape of your nose, alter your jawline. The techniques can completely change the way a person looks. It also sells products sourced from America at exorbitant prices. I think that’s where they make their money.’
‘One hundred and twenty dollars for a tube of foundation? You’re not kidding. You said they were members?’
‘Yes, fortunately Lucy kept a record of her passwords in a coded form on her phone. I worked through them and managed to hack in. That gave me access to the members only pages and that’s where it gets interesting; I found this tab called he2she.’
‘What to what?’
‘To promote how good their products are, they use guys as models.’
‘Okay but blokes wear make-up these days, that’s not unusual.’
‘This is different. They transform these men into women.’ Jackie brought up a gallery of ‘before and after’ faces.
‘Are you sure? They can’t be the same people.’
‘They are.’ Marsden clicked on one of the thumbnails to bring up a sequence of photographs. ‘This is the man before and this is him made up as a woman.’ The images showed a man in his late twenties with a stubbled chin, bright eyes and a cheeky smile posing for the camera. The second set of pictures were of a stunningly beautiful woman.
‘Bloody hell, I don’t look half as good as that when I go out,’ Kray said running the mouse over the frames. She clicked on one. It took her to a video showing the process the man had gone through to achieve the transition. ‘That is incredible.’
‘The company’s claim is, if we can make a guy look this beautiful think how good it’s going to work on you. But that’s not all …’ Marsden clicked on another tab and scrolled down. ‘It encourages people who subscribe to the site to post pictures of themselves in return for free advice on how best to apply their make-up and which products will suit them the most.’
An array of photographs filled the screen, and Kray ran her eyes down the images.
‘Fucking hell.’ Kray traced her finger along the rows of passport-like faces. Staring out at her, three rows apart, were Madeline Eve and Lucy Frost.
‘Get this up on the TV. I want everyone to see.’ Marsden did as she was told and inserted the HDMI cable into the port. The large flat television on the wall came alive. ‘Listen up everyone, we’ve got a breakthrough,’ Kray announced. ‘Go through that again.’ She gestured to Marsden. The team dropped what they were doing as she reiterated the latest discovery.
Kray stared at the images. The bright smiling faces of two attractive young women beamed at her from across the room. She looked at the mug shots on the wall of Lucy and Madeline, then back to the screen.
‘So that’s the connection,’ Kray muttered. All heads turned her way despite Marsden being in mid flow. ‘We’ve been looking for a link between the two women when it’s been staring us in the face all along. They both have the same facial features. Disregard the hair style, ignore the make-up, forget about the colour of their eyes - they have the same narrow face with high cheekbones. They both have large eyes, set slightly wide apart, a slim nose and thin lips. While they don’t look like identical twins they have the same basic facial features.’
Tavener had been watching his boss and was doing the same, glancing back and forth at the pictures. ‘You’re right Roz, that’s uncanny.’
‘This website links the two women but the main thread linking the female victims is they have the same facial characteristics as the killer. He selects women who look like him.’
‘But that doesn’t account for why he would crack open Wilson’s skull with a lump hammer?’
‘It doesn’t, but let’s take one step at a time. I reckon he finds his female victims by surfing the pictures on this site.’
‘It’s a bit of a coincidence that he selects two women who both live in the same area,’ said Tavener.
Marsden enlarged the images on the TV. ‘Not much of a coincidence at all.’ The picture was grainy due to the poor resolution but beneath each photograph was written – ‘Blackpool, England’.
‘Shit,’ uttered Tavener.
Kray got to her feet and stood next to the television. ‘I want every one of these followed up. Concentrate on women living within a fifty-mile radius—’
The phone rang. Tavener answered it.
‘Roz, sorry to interrupt,’ he said. ‘They have found a body in Park View. Forensics are at the scene, it could be our man again.’
‘Park View? Where is that?’ asked Marsden.
Kray put her hand up to her mouth. ‘It’s in Lytham St Annes, about a mile and a half from my house.’
47
Kray came to a halt twenty yards short of the hive of activity taking place in front of her. She got out of the car and the mid-morning sun pierced her eyes. She fished out her sunglasses. It was a beautiful morning to wish to God you were wrong.
She tugged on a pair of overshoes, a white paper boiler suit and bobbed beneath the yellow tape cordoning off the area. A cluster of people in similar dress busied themselves with cameras and evidence bags. Ahead of her she could see a blue Ford Fiesta parked under overhanging branches. She recognised the balding head of Mitch peering over the roof of the car with two guys working beside him to erect a tall white screen.
Kray waved and walked over.
‘Roz,’ said Mitch in his customary abrupt manner.
‘Mitch, what do we have?’
‘Brian Dukes, forty-one years of age from Blackpool. A bunch of kids found him this morning while riding their bikes.’ He jerked his head in the direction of a PC standing twenty yards away chatting to four lads, their bikes discarded on the floor. ‘They approached the car and saw this.’ Mitch pointed to three ten-pound notes lying on the back window ledge. ‘They thought the car had been abandoned, opened the door to take the cash and found him dead.’
Roz looked inside the vehicle at the contorted figure crumpled into the footwell behind the driver’s seat.
‘Time of death?’
‘Between nine o’clock last night and midnight is my best estimate.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘At first I thought he’d been shot. He has a round hole in his left temple, but I doubt it was made by a bullet, it’s too small. There is no exit wound and no blood spatter on the interior. My guess is it’s a puncture wound and my other guess is, when we conduct the post-mortem, we’re gonna find it goes deep into his brain.’
‘Have you finished?’ said Kray, pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves.
‘Yep we’re just about to move the body.’
‘Give me a minute.’ Kray moved to the front of the car and put her left hand under the passenger seat. Then she leaned between the gap in the seats and examined Dukes’ left hand; his right was tucked beneath him. His eyes stared at her from between the seats and his tongue protruded from his mouth.
‘The blood stains are only as high as the back seat.’
‘I know, looks like he died in the footwell.’
What the fuck were you doing down there? Kray held his dead gaze.
‘Mitch! Do you have a torch?’ she called out. He handed her one, she flicked on the beam and shone it on his face. ‘Did you notice the discolouration on his cheek? It looks red.’
Mitch popped his head into the car. ‘No I didn’t see that.’ He
beckoned to the two men in white boiler suits. ‘Let’s get him out.’
‘Ma’am, are we okay to move the body?’ asked the crime scene supervisor.
‘Wait.’ Kray spotted something reflecting in the torchlight. She leaned over the body, slid her finders down the back of the seat and levered out a mobile phone. She swivelled it in her hand and touched the screen - fifteen missed calls. She motioned to Mitch who held open an evidence bag for her to drop it into.
‘That’s Dukes’ phone.’ She nodded to the men crouched at the back door. ‘You can move him now.’
They expertly manoeuvred the dead man out of the passenger door on the driver’s side and laid him on a plastic sheet. Mitch knelt down beside him to examine the wound on the side of his head.
‘Yes it’s definitely a puncture wound, we’re not looking for a gun.’
‘Let me see.’ Kray tilted his face away from her to examine the entry wound. ‘What do you make of this?’
Kray pointed to the side of his face. Mitch moved the victim’s head from side to side.
‘Don’t know, but there is a slight abrasion on each cheek. What do you think, Roz?’
‘Not sure about the discolouration but there’s one thing I am sure about—’
Tavener appeared from around the screen. ‘Roz, Dukes’ wife reported him missing last night when he failed to return home from work. He was supposed to be back by ten thirty and when he didn’t show she rang 999 and reported him missing around midnight.’
‘Where was he supposed to be?’
‘She said he was on a late shift.’
Kray spun her wedding ring round and round as she stared at the lifeless body on the ground. The scars running across her back began to burn.
‘What do you think?’ asked Mitch.
‘I think Dukes told his wife he was working late and took the opportunity to have casual sex with a stranger instead. Both front seats are pulled forward which would suggest there was going to be some action in the back. The vehicle is parked undercover and there’s thirty quid on the back window. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what happened.’
