A Tapping at My Door: A gripping crime thriller (The DS Nathan Cody series)

by David Jackson

  He spins on his heels, trying to solve this mystery. Wondering where the hell Andrea has gone. Is she giving chase? If she’s in pursuit, surely she would have called it in. She wouldn’t just—

  A noise. To his right. A tap against the metal door of one of the garages. It’s very slight, like someone brushing against it by accident rather than trying to attract attention.

  Kearney whips out his baton. Steps cautiously towards the door. Someone is hiding on the other side of it. Not a cat this time. Definitely not just a cat.

  He’s not sure what to do. This is too weird. Andrea wouldn’t be hiding in there – she just wouldn’t do that. But if she’s not in there, then where the fucking hell is she? And if it’s not Andrea, then who is it?

  He debates calling for backup. Yeah, he could get a vanload of hairy-arsed coppers in riot gear standing alongside him while he opens the garage door. And then he could suffer the teasing and laughter when all he finds there is a pink Fiat Panda with fluffy dice in the window.

  Because that’s all this is, he tells himself. You misheard. Nobody’s in there. So let’s just fucking prove it, shall we?

  He bends at the knees, his eyes fixed on the door. One of his joints cracks in complaint. His breathing becomes a flutter. Because his left hand is carrying a torch, he has to tuck his baton under his arm while he reaches for the door handle.

  He counts to three. Tries to muffle the doubts and fears echoing around his brain.

  He twists the handle. Throws the door up with as much force as he can. Takes a backwards leap as he retrieves his baton and readies himself to strike out with it.

  There is someone here.

  But it is someone who presents no danger to Kearney.

  His partner lies on the concrete floor, gurgling and quivering.

  Kearney knows she is hurt. Knows it is bad. And suddenly he is on automatic pilot, calling on all his experience and training to deal with this. He covers the distance to Whitland in a single bound it seems, and he thinks, but is not sure, that he is calling her name. And when he gets to her he realises to his horror and frustration that there is not much he can do for her. He tells her otherwise, of course, and he wishes it were otherwise, but a voice in his head keeps telling him he is too late. He spent too much time chasing after cats when he should have been at his partner’s side. He lifts her head and cradles it on his lap and tells her it will be all right, that he will look after her, and after every such faintly believed promise he yells frantically into his radio for assistance, praying that they will get here in time, even though that concept has no meaning here because he knows time has run out. And while the hot blood continues to pump out of her neck at an ever-decreasing rate, and her breathing becomes ragged and her body goes into violent spasm, he continues to reassure her, continues to tell her that she should hang on because help will be here soon and they will fix her up. They will fix her up good and proper.

  They arrive quickly and they arrive in force. A call like this takes top priority. Sirens split the night. Lights bring a blue dawn. They descend on the scene with terrifying urgency. And then it is as if they are rendered suddenly ineffectual. Because they see, they recognise, they accept. They do not need the tears of their colleague to confirm the truth so apparent.

  It is a while before anyone notices the dead bird lying next to the body of PC Andrea Whitland.

  25

  The birds seem happy. Delirious, in fact. Their wild fluttering and flapping appears a joyful celebration.

  Of course, it could be just a frightened reaction to his own dancing, singing and clapping.

  He did it.

  He took two of them on. Not one, but two.

  He wasn’t sure he could cope with a pair. Wasn’t even sure he could cope with one on duty. They must be more alert then, surely? Walking around in uniform, they must be constantly attuned to signs of trouble.

  He almost called it off. When he peered through that alley gate and saw two of them get out of the car, he nearly went home. It seemed too much, too dangerous.

  But you didn’t, did you? You held your nerve and you went for it. In for a penny, in for a pound. All that research, all that driving around, all that sneaking about to find the perfect location for an ambush – it would have been a waste to throw it all away.

  It could have gone so wrong. What if the coppers had stuck together? What if they had both come into the garage? What would he have done then? Wait it out under that tarpaulin, hoping they wouldn’t find him? Or leap out at them and hope that the element of surprise would give him enough of an edge to overpower them?

  Stop worrying about it. Doesn’t matter now, does it? It worked. You got one. Stupid bitch. She had no idea. Didn’t even have time to scream. No voice.

  Like the songbird.

  It’ll be singing now, though. In bird heaven. Celebrating. It won’t mind now how brief its life was. It will finally understand that it has fulfilled a purpose. It has proved its worth a thousand times over.

  The police will be going crazy. It will be as though he has gone up to a wasps’ nest and hit it with a big stick. They will be buzzing madly, desperate to locate the source of the attack. They will want to lash out, to sting, to kill.

  But they will do it without logic. They don’t have enough data to reason about this properly. They don’t know what this is all about. They have but a fragment of the whole picture – a square inch of a much larger canvas – and they will be trying to base all of their suppositions and all of their plans on that unrepresentative sliver. They will get nowhere that way.

  It’s amazing how pathetic and incompetent they are.

  Of course, things will become more difficult now. The cops will become a lot more defensive and cautious. They don’t know where or when the next strike of the stick will be.

  But that just makes it all the more interesting.

  All the more fun.

  26

  There is fear in this room. Fear and confusion and a soul-sucking sense of inadequacy. Cody has never seen anything like it before. Not in his own colleagues.

  From Blunt comes the heat of anger. Not at her troops, but at the situation. She takes the loss of another police officer as a personal attack, even though she probably never met PC Whitland. That’s just the way Blunt is. The case is hers. She is charged with finding the killer, and yet the killer has just struck again. Cody can understand why she would find that so hard to swallow. He imagines he would feel the same if he were in charge.

  ‘Three police officers dead,’ she says to them. It doesn’t need saying – they all know this – but she feels the need to hammer it home. ‘And we don’t seem to be any nearer to catching this guy. Am I wrong? Well, am I?’

  She scans the upturned faces. Nobody dares respond. To do so would offer a target to her full wrath.

  ‘Just what the fuck is going on here?’

  Again, Cody knows this is not meant as an insult aimed at the assembled detectives. She is not questioning their competency; she is simply expressing her exasperation that progress on the case is slow. At least, that’s what Cody hopes she is saying.

  She takes a moment. Cody hears her draw deep breaths.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘What you all need to realise is that the eyes and ears of the world are on us now. Everyone is looking to us to solve these murders, today if possible. We’ve been promised resources. Manpower and overtime aren’t a problem. What is a problem is that I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere. If anyone here can convince me I’m wrong, then I’d love to hear it.’

  Cody speaks up. ‘I thought we were getting somewhere. Everything pointed to a connection with the Vernons. But this latest murder . . .’

  ‘There has to be a link,’ says Blunt. ‘All the signs say this is the work of the same killer. The post-mortem hasn’t taken place yet, but Dr Stroud’s view is that the method of killing is very similar. A blow to the head followed by a knife attack. Plus, of course, the bird left at the scene.’
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br />   ‘Only one cut this time, though,’ says Cody. ‘A single slash across the throat. The previous victims had multiple stab wounds. And Whitland’s eyes were left intact.’

  ‘Time pressure. Whitland’s partner was just around the corner. The killer didn’t have time to piss around with the body. He took a big enough risk as it was, and that worries me. This officer was lured to her death while on duty. She had a partner with her and a radio to call for assistance, and still he carried out the murder. He’s getting bolder with each killing, and if he hasn’t finished yet . . .’

  Her words chill the room. The men and women here don’t want to contemplate the thought that more of their number may yet die.

  ‘It suggests, though,’ says Cody, ‘that the mutilation isn’t a vital part of the ritual. He’s more interested in the killing itself. At least now he is.’

  Blunt raises a quizzical eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The first two killings got his message across. He doesn’t need to worry so much about that now. It frees him up to just get on with the murder.’

  ‘His message being?’

  ‘That this is the work of the birds. In the first two cases the symbolism was that the birds had pecked out the eyes and removed Garnett’s nose. I know that didn’t actually happen, but that was what he wanted us to see. Job done. As stupid as he probably thinks we are, he’ll know we understand that much. He doesn’t need to keep pressing that message home. Given a choice between a successful kill and spending time saying the same frigging thing again and again, he goes for the kill and gets the hell out of there. What is important, though, is the bird itself. Even for Whitland’s murder he made sure that a dead bird was prepared and left at the scene. If this guy intends to kill again, I’d bet another bird is involved. The question is why?’

  Blunt nods thoughtfully. ‘All right, let’s discuss the bird. Apparently this one was a goldfinch. It’s a pretty common songbird. Much smaller and more colourful than the raven and the blackbird. Like the others, though, it had a note attached to its leg.’

  Cody didn’t attend the crime scene. This is the first he’s heard about the latest note.

  Blunt picks up a manila folder and opens it. ‘The note says, “The sedge has withered from the lake.”’

  ‘“And no birds sing,”’ Cody continues. ‘Keats. “La Belle Dame sans Merci”.’

  Blunt looks surprised. ‘You are well read, Cody. I had to consult my friend Google.’

  Cody says nothing. He feels a bit like the class swot. He’s half expecting to get a Chinese burn at break-time.

  ‘Okay,’ says Blunt. ‘We go from Edgar Allan Poe to a nursery rhyme to John Keats. All poetry of one form or another, and all involving birds. What else links them?’

  Webley speaks now. ‘That last one. It’s a bit . . . well, sad, don’t you think? You said yourself – this was a goldfinch. A songbird. And now no birds are singing. It’s . . . I dunno, I just think maybe the killer is saying he’s really sad about something.’

  ‘It’s a good point,’ Cody adds. ‘This might be his way of getting his feelings across. There’s something he’s upset about. It makes him sad, but it also makes him angry. It could be said that the second message was about revenge. A load of blackbirds get baked in a pie, so another one attacks the maid.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Webley, enthused by Cody’s support. ‘And in the first message, he’s saying it’s never going to happen again to him. Whatever it was, he’s putting a stop to it.’

  Says Blunt, ‘But why do it with birds? Why not just leave a note on the bodies? If he’s got an issue, why doesn’t he just come right out and say it?’

  ‘Because he’s nuts,’ says Ferguson. ‘I’m serious. I mean, he’s got to be insane to be killing police like this in the first place. The birds are just more confirmation that he’s got a screw loose.’

  Blunt shakes her head. ‘No, there’s more to it than that. For some reason, the birds have a profound meaning for whoever’s doing this. They’re not the easiest creatures to catch. He’s gone to too much trouble for them just to be something to tie notes to.’

  ‘Crazy people can be obsessed about things nobody else gives a damn about. Who knows what’s going on in his mind? For all we know, these birds might be his friends. He might think they’re tiny little assassins, going off to kill the nasty coppers who once gave him a speeding fine. We’ll never really know until we get hold of him, and even then it probably won’t make any sense to us.’

  ‘For all our sakes,’ says Blunt, ‘I hope it’s not as meaningless as that. It’s going to be hard enough catching him if he’s following a rational pattern. If it’s a totally deranged mind behind these killings, there’s little point in us even sitting here and talking about it. We’d have to rely on getting a break with forensics, or on him making a mistake, and right now neither of those looks on the cards.’

  She pauses. ‘You’re right about one thing, though. This is very much an anti-police crusade. Somebody hated these three officers with a vengeance. Let’s hope it’s only three, and these three in particular, rather than just the tip of an iceberg designed to sink the whole ship. Cody, anything promising in that regard?’

  Cody doesn’t want to sound too negative. Like Blunt, he is hoping the cold dish of revenge – if that is indeed what this is about – is now regarded as having been served and consumed. Three dead officers is three too many, and the thought of more helpings to come turns his stomach.

  ‘Too early to say, ma’am,’ is about as optimistic as he can be. ‘So far, I haven’t found anything to link Andrea Whitland with either Terri Latham or Paul Garnett. Far as I can see, they were never stationed together, and they didn’t do their basic training at the same time. I’m talking to people who knew Whitland, to see if they’re aware of a relationship of any kind with either Latham or Garnett. I’m also going through her arrest reports, again looking for a common thread.’

  ‘Good. Keep at it. If you want bodies to help you, just shout. There’s got to be a connection there somewhere. It would make life much simpler for us all if a certain family was tied into this latest homicide somehow.’

  Both eyebrows fly up this time – an invitation to Cody to brighten her darkness with some good news. But he has to disappoint her.

  ‘I’m looking for that. Believe me, the one name I really want to find in her reports is Vernon. So far, nothing.’

  Blunt issues a growling noise. ‘Whoever was responsible for last night’s attack knows that area well, and it just seems a little odd to me that the location isn’t a million miles away from the Vernon house. And the fact that Latham and Garnett were both involved with the Vernon case can’t have been sheer coincidence. They weren’t picked at random. So Andrea Whitland surely can’t be random either.’

  ‘Erm . . .’

  The noise comes from Webley, who seems a little reluctant to air her current thoughts.

  ‘Well?’ says Blunt. ‘Go on.’

  ‘With respect, ma’am, there’s a problem with what you just said. Whitland and Kearney were responding to a call regarding kids causing trouble at the church.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So . . . how did the killer know who would respond? If it was always in his mind to kill Whitland, how on earth could he be sure she would turn up at the scene? And even if he could narrow it down to a certain patrol car, how did he know Kearney wouldn’t get to him first? Would he still have killed Kearney? If so, that would suggest it didn’t matter to him who he killed, as long as it was a copper.’

  Blunt nods, and Cody can see from her expression that she hasn’t allowed herself to be checkmated by Webley. ‘That thought occurred to me too. If you’re right, it could be that all this digging into Whitland’s background is a complete waste of our time. On the other hand, this killer is a devious bastard. Maybe he knows who usually patrols that area. He could have encountered Whitland or Kearney there before. He might have even spoken to them directly at so
me point last night. I don’t know. The point is, we have to consider every eventuality. What you just suggested might be exactly what the killer wants us to think. He makes last night’s murder look random and spur-of-the-moment precisely so that we don’t bother looking at the latest victim too closely.’

  She turns back to Cody. ‘In fact, pull Kearney’s reports too. Maybe he was the intended victim. Maybe they both were. I have no idea. Just find me some answers.’

  Cody scribbles a note to himself to check Kearney out. ‘There’s another possibility, if we’re talking about this guy being devious.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A smokescreen. This latest murder is to divert our attention from the Vernon case. To make it look like any cops will do as the victims.’

  ‘Good point. Which is why I don’t want us to give up on the Vernons or their associates just yet. Keep looking at them, and keep up the search for that Gazza bloke.’

  She pauses for a moment as she scans the faces in the room. ‘There’s one other thing. We don’t know that this killer is finished. Whether it’s connected with the Vernon case or not, it’s possible that this lunatic might have other coppers in his sights. We need to be careful – all of us. We need to watch each other’s backs, because no other bugger will do it for us. I don’t want to be at any of your funerals in the near future. Got it?’

  She gets nods and murmurs of agreement. Cody stays silent. Being a potential target for murder is as disconcerting as it gets.

  27

  Cody recognises the voice immediately. There’s a certain reptilian quality to it.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant Cody.’

  Cody rolls his eyes. He debates putting the phone down, but knows it wouldn’t end anything.

  ‘What is it this time, Dobby?’

  ‘Same as it was last time. I’d like to talk to you. Get your side of things.’

  ‘Yeah, well, my answer’s the same as last time, too. A big fat no.’

  ‘Come on, Cody. Help out a fellow investigator. This is a big, big story now. A three-time cop killer? This could make you famous. I could help you with that.’