by Michael Wood
WHO IS KILLING THE KILLERS?
By Danny Hanson
A third person has been murdered as a serial killer continues his reign of terror in Sheffield.
Katie Reaney, 29, a mum of two, was found hanging in her home in a quiet cul-de-sac in Greenhill. Her husband and children were not there at the time. Police believe this first female victim is the work of the Hangman, who murdered Brian Appleby and Joe Lacey in the past month.
In a chilling twist, the killer has been contacting The Star and informing us of his actions in order to gain maximum publicity for his crimes. In his last call, he revealed Katie Reaney was really Naomi Parish, who, at the age of eleven, was convicted of murdering one-year-old Alistair Macintosh while she was babysitting. Upon release, she changed her name hoping to avoid detection.
According to South Yorkshire Police sources, the killer is very forensically aware and has left no trace of himself at any of the crime scenes.
Detective Chief Inspector Matilda Darke is leading the inquiry, which, so far, hasn’t identified any viable suspects.
Selina Bridger, sister-in-law of Joe Lacey, who lives three doors away from the Laceys, said yesterday: ‘This is unbelievable. Joe paid for his crime years ago. He was a good man who loved his family. He just got on with his life, went to work, came home, and that’s it. The family don’t deserve any of this.’
Debbie Ashmore, a close friend of Katie Reaney said: ‘Katie was a loving and private person. She didn’t confide in me about what she had done as a child, but if she had, it would not have altered the way I thought of her. She was a good friend to me. She must have been genuinely sorry and wanted to live as peaceful a life as possible. I am so incredibly sad.’
Assistant Chief Constable Valerie Masterson said in a statement: ‘What is happening in Sheffield at the moment is, of course, very worrying. However, I have every faith in my officers. I advise the people of Sheffield to go about their business as usual, but to be more vigilant. Not all crimes can be solved overnight, but we will catch this killer. I can assure you of that.’
Despite ACC Masterson’s statement, confidence in the police from the public is at an all-time low. See the results in our online poll on page six.
Danny Hanson read his handiwork once again. He had a copy of the newspaper on his bed and his laptop open on The Star website. His byline had appeared more than ever before in the newspaper since these murders began, but he still felt a tingle when he saw it. This was why he had become a journalist.
He glanced down at his fingers, poised over the keyboard to write an email, and noticed they were shaking. A dark thought came to mind; would this latest front-page story lead to another attack? He closed the laptop and leaned back on his bed. He wasn’t strong enough for this level of intensity. Not yet.
At only twenty-four years old, Danny had originally moved from Bristol to Sheffield to study at Sheffield Hallam University. He’d loved the city straight away. From the eyesore of Park Hill flats overlooking the train station and dominating the Sheffield skyline to the ‘kettle drums’ of the student union, and the locally loathed but strangely bewitching Meadowhall (aptly nicknamed Meadowhell). He had fallen in love with the fish cake you could only get in Sheffield and he liberally poured Henderson’s Relish on everything. Sheffield was his new home. He had no desire to leave.
Fortunately, The Star were looking for new reporters just as he was qualifying. He didn’t even have to interview for the job. That’s how impressed they were with his work.
Danny had spent the first six months as a fully paid reporter, covering the courts and minor stories throughout the steel city. It had been a learning curve, not very interesting, but he was improving his skills and learning from the more experienced journalists. He found the courts fascinating and often relished sitting in on a trial at Sheffield Crown Court. He made detailed notes, not just on the case, but on procedure. Who was who? What role did they play? How were witnesses called? One day, with this bank of information, he would put it to good use, he’d write a book, a great courtroom thriller to rival John Grisham.
Until now, journalism had seemed like an adventure. He popped into people’s lives, interviewed them, used his soft West Country accent and smiling eyes to charm them into revealing everything. Then he’d write it up and forget about them, move on to the next story.
The current spate of murders in the steel city had changed all that. At first, it was a thrill, there was a serial killer in Sheffield. It was unheard of. It was unbelievable. It was brilliant. When the killer first made contact, it was a wet dream come true. Now, it wasn’t as much fun as it was frightening.
Sitting in the attic room, cross-legged on his bed, Danny looked out of the Velux window at the darkened sky. The black nothingness that stretched on forever seemed to be pushing down on him, squeezing him, trapping him. Danny was worried. If the killer was calling him, feeding him information, was he also watching him? He’d lured him to Weston Park. Had he followed him home? Did he know his every move, and if so, was he a potential victim?
Danny’s job wasn’t just to get the best story possible, it was to uncover information nobody else could; that included finding the identity of the killer, even before the police did. It would be a front-page splash to go down in history. However, what price would Danny have to pay to get that story?
His iPhone started to ring. He looked at the display, but the caller had withheld their ID. It was the killer. It had to be. For the first time, Danny didn’t want to know what he had to say. He let the phone continue ringing until the voicemail kicked in. He waited in silence, but there was no notification of a new message. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Jumping off the bed, he went over to the door and locked it. He pushed a heavy cardboard box full of books in front of the door as extra security.
Suddenly, being a journalist wasn’t as much fun as it used to be.
It was unusual for George Appleby to arrive home from university to an empty house, but since his father’s identity had been revealed, he found he was seeing less and less of his housemates. His so-called friends had stopped texting, and he was losing virtual followers on Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis. Anyone would think he was the paedophile, not his father.
He opened the fridge in the shared kitchen and took a bottle of lager from his shelf. He opened it and drank half in a single swig. Just what he needed after a day of lingering glances from fellow students and voices dropping whenever he was near.
He slumped down in the sofa and rested his feet on the coffee table with a heavy thud. There was a note there he hadn’t seen earlier. It was in a sealed envelope with his name written in block capitals on the front. Frowning, he picked it up and opened it. He recognized the handwriting straight away: it was Sophie, one of his housemates. She was often leaving people notes. ‘Please wash up your dishes, don’t leave them in the sink’; ‘Please tidy the bathroom after you’ve had a shower’; ‘Please do not use my toothpaste.’ He wondered what villainous act he had committed this time.
George,
We’ve had a house meeting and we wondered if you would consider moving out. We know you haven’t done anything wrong, but some of us have started receiving threats at university and Cassie’s boyfriend has broken up with her. We’ve supported you at uni, but it’s affecting our lives too. There’s no rush, but if you could consider how we’re feeling in all of this, we’d really appreciate it.
Sophie, Cassie and Anil.
So much for solidarity. So much for a student union where everyone was in this together. George screwed up the note and threw it to the other side of the room. He finished his beer and lobbed the bottle towards the note. Surprisingly, the bottle didn’t break. He needed another drink.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Matilda stared at the hanging figure. Black shoes. Black trousers. White shirt. Dark hair. Hair. She could see his hair. There was no pillowcase covering his head. Why? Forget why. Who? She wanted to know who it was, who the hanging dead ma
n was in her hallway, but the body had its back to her and was blocking her from walking around to see the face.
Matilda stopped breathing. With a hand clamped to her mouth and the other brandishing the torch, she slowly made her way along the tiled floor. As she came to the hanging figure she pointed the torch up to the head. It was blue and bruised. This was not a fresh body. There was a rancid, rotting smell that assaulted her nostrils. She’d had a hint of something when she first came in but put it down to fruit left in the bowl to rot. She could see the tongue protruding from the mouth but nothing else. With the torch directly pointed at his face it was too bright to make out any features, off to one side and it was too dark to see. She needed to be standing right in front of him.
With her back pressed firmly against the wall, Matilda edged herself slowly around the hanging corpse. The legs brushed against her cheek as she turned to one side. She felt the cold material of the trousers. She could smell the contents of the released bowels. She looked down and saw a pool of brown liquid on the floor. She stopped moving. She couldn’t go any further.
Matilda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. This was hers and James’s home. James had built it from the foundations up for them to be together in, to grow old together in. It should be a place of comfort, sanctuary. It was already a house of sadness following James’s early death, now this.
Matilda braced herself.
‘Sir Robert Walpole,’ she whispered. ‘Spencer Compton, Henry Pelham, Thomas Pelham-Holles, William Cavendish.’
Her anxiety levels were through the roof. She could feel her legs shaking as fear coursed through her veins and chilled her to the bone.
‘Thomas Pelham-Holles, John Stuart, George Grenville, Charles Wentworth, William Pitt the Elder.’
Matilda opened her eyes.
She edged further along the hallway; the sound of her body scraping on the wall echoed through the empty house. She pointed the torch up, not directly into the dead man’s face, but to one side.
‘Oh my God,’ Matilda said, her voice shaking. It was all she could say before the torrent of vomit exploded from her mouth.
Fear quickly turned to panic. Matilda pushed past the corpse, heard it banging against the wall, and scrambled with the front door but it wouldn’t open. Her palms were sweating, and she kept losing her grip on the handle. She dug in her jacket pocket for her keys, fumbled with the lock and dragged the door open. It stuck on one of the boxes from Amazon. She yanked hard, but it still wouldn’t open. She kicked the parcel hard to the other side of the hallway and almost fell out of her house into the cold night air. She took deep breaths. She felt dizzy and dropped to the ground.
With shaking fingers, Matilda grabbed for her iPhone. The screen wouldn’t unlock as she couldn’t control her hands. She wrongly entered the passcode twice but got it on the third try. She selected Adele’s number and pressed the call button. It seemed to take an age for the call to be answered.
‘Matilda, changed your mind about the run?’ Adele asked in her usual sing-song voice.
‘Adele, you’ve got to come over quick,’ she gasped.
‘Jesus Matilda, what’s happened?’
‘It’s Ben,’ she gasped. ‘It’s Ben. Hales. Ben Hales.’
‘Oh my God. Matilda, what’s he done?’
‘He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s in my hallway and he’s dead.’
‘What? Shit. Where are you?’
‘I’m outside. Adele, he’s hanging in my fucking hallway. He’s hanging.’
Matilda was barely audible. She was struggling to control her emotions. She looked up and saw an elderly man she vaguely recognized as a neighbour walking his labradoodle on a lead. He glared at her with a confused face. He quickly turned away, obviously not wanting to get involved in someone else’s drama, and crossed over the road.
‘Matilda, stay where you are. I’ll be right over.’
‘Adele … Adele …’ The call had ended.
Matilda looked up into the black sky, opened her mouth and released the loudest and longest scream she could manage, until her body felt drained of energy and she collapsed into a heap on the cold concrete.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Nobody could believe what they were seeing. The message from their eyes didn’t seem to be connecting with their brain. It made no sense at all.
ACC Valerie Masterson, DI Christian Brady, DSs Sian Mills and Aaron Connolly and DCs Rory Fleming, Scott Andrews and Faith Easter all stood in Matilda Darke’s hallway and looked up at the lifeless body of former DI Ben Hales. Their faces were blank in disbelief.
‘Where’s Adele?’ Valerie asked, breaking the silence, but not breaking eye contact with the body.
Sian had to swallow before she answered. Her mouth had dried up. ‘She’s with Matilda in her car.’
‘Get her in here. This needs processing. Now.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sian said quietly. She couldn’t leave the house fast enough. She ran up the drive to where Adele had haphazardly parked when she arrived and pulled open the door.
Adele was sitting in the back with her best friend. There was a red cellular blanket wrapped around Matilda, who was shivering. She looked younger, yet her eyes darted from left to right and she seemed to be in a state of shock.
‘Adele, Valerie wants you to …’ she tailed off.
‘OK.’
‘I’ll stay with Matilda.’
‘Thanks.’
They swapped places. Adele grabbed her bag from the boot and made her way down the drive.
‘How’s the boss?’ Rory asked Adele as soon as she stepped into the house.
‘I don’t know. She hasn’t said a word since I got here.’
‘An ambulance is on its way,’ Valerie said. ‘She’s probably in shock.’
‘I think that’s an understatement,’ Scott said.
‘Adele, I want you to tell me if Ben has been murdered or if he’s done this to himself,’ Valerie said, her voice returning to something like her normal authoritative tone.
‘Sure.’
‘Christian, you’re in charge. Organize a house-to-house, someone must have seen something.’
‘Will do.’
‘Is everyone all right?’
‘No,’ Faith said before turning away and running out of the house.
‘OK. I think we should probably take a step back. We’ve all had a shock. Adele, if you could make a start on the crime scene. I’ll get a forensics team out. Christian, I think it would be best if we started the investigation in the morning.’
‘Sure. Come on,’ he said to the rest of the team, who were all still fixed on their former colleague’s dead body.
Christian ushered them out of the house. They slowly walked up the driveway to their waiting cars. Their footfalls were heavy as they had to drag themselves away. In turn, they all looked into Adele’s car at a distraught Matilda being comforted by Sian. It would take more than Sian’s motherly nature and her bottomless snack drawer to bring Matilda back from whatever state of flux she was currently residing in.
By the time Adele Kean and Lucy Dauman had finished their preliminary investigations, the team had gone home. Only Valerie and Sian remained. Medics had come for Matilda, shone a light in her unresponsive eyes, then patiently transported her to the ambulance, all under the watchful gaze of her nosey neighbours.
‘Ben Hales wasn’t murdered,’ Adele said to them both.
Ben had been cut down and zipped up in a body bag on the cold tiled floor of Matilda’s hallway.
‘How do you know?’ Sian asked.
‘Unlike the previous three victims, there is no sign of a struggle. There are no broken fingernails, no skin samples, no blood under his nails, nothing. There is no pillowcase over the head and no evidence he was drugged. Though, obviously I’ll have to send a blood sample off for analysis to make doubly certain. However, this looks like a case of suicide by hanging.’
‘Y
ou’re sure?’ Valerie asked.
‘Almost one hundred per cent.’
‘But it makes no sense,’ Sian began. ‘Why would he kill himself, and here, in Matilda’s home?’
‘Before I answer that,’ Adele said. ‘I think we’re all going to need a drink.’
It was almost midnight by the time Valerie, Adele and Sian were sitting in the ACC’s office back at the police station. For emergencies such as this, Valerie kept a bottle of whiskey and four glasses in the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet. She blew away the dust on three of the glasses, poured them all a good measure, then left the opened bottle on the table with instructions to help themselves.
Sian took a small sip and shivered. She hated spirits. She was a wine drinker, but after the shock of the evening, it would take a whole case of Prosecco to do what a glass of whiskey could do. She choked down a long gulp and felt herself begin to relax.
Adele drank anything that had a percentage mark on the label. She had never tasted a whiskey this good, however. It was smooth, rich, and made her feel warm inside. The odour tickled her senses. She’d give everything she owned to dive into that bottle.
‘So, Adele, what were you going to tell us?’ Valerie asked, bringing Adele back from her reverie.
Adele filled them in on the conversation she’d had with Matilda earlier in the evening. Matilda thought Ben Hales had killed three people within the last month. Valerie scoffed at the idea straight away, though Sian looked like she was seriously contemplating it.
‘The only snag in the theory,’ Adele concluded, ‘is that Ben Hales has been dead for several days, whereas Katie Reaney has only been dead for one.’
‘How do you know Ben’s been dead for days?’ Sian asked.
‘Rigor mortis had been and gone. He was flaccid and cold. There’s not a chance he could have killed Katie Reaney, which means he didn’t kill the others.’
‘But why take his own life now and in Matilda’s house?’ Valerie asked.
Sian shrugged. ‘He’s always blamed Matilda for his lack of promotion. Remember when the MIT was first introduced? He said the only reason Matilda was given the job was because she was a woman. When she came back from her time off after James died, he completely fell to pieces. Again, from his point of view, it was all Matilda’s fault.’
