Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  The woman at the gate raised a hand in recognition and Riley noted the angle and direction of the CCTV camera above the bay window on the front elevation of the house. It was pointing directly at the gate where the woman stood and the pavement beyond that. Hope flooded Riley but she contained her enthusiasm with a modest, ‘Well, this could be promising.’

  As Rimmer presented his warrant card to the householder, Riley noticed him stiffen into professional mode but he didn’t look directly at the woman, only the CCTV camera.

  ‘Good morning, madam. Detective Constable Robert Rimmer, Merseyside Constabulary.’ He pointed at the CCTV camera. ‘Can we have a look at what you’ve got, please?’

  Riley’s phone rang. She connected, listened and, walking away, said, ‘I’m sorry, Bob, I’ve got to go.’

  42

  9.01 am

  Clay stood with Riley outside 222 Springwood Avenue, a semi-detached house with a small garden of slumbering rose bushes and terracotta pots with dwarf evergreen firs, and watched a marked police car pulling up outside.

  As Hendricks hurried from his car, two more of the back-up vehicles Clay had ordered as she drove from Aigburth to Allerton parked behind the marked police BMW.

  ‘Her website’s nuts,’ said Hendricks as he followed Clay up the path to the front door. ‘Cole filled me in on the content as I headed over here.’

  Clay pressed the bell, leaving her finger on longer than was necessary.

  ‘How can such hate come from somewhere so bland?’

  ‘It always does,’ said Clay, stepping back to look up at a bay window where a woman stood, phone against her ear. She was talking fast, pausing to listen and then pouncing back verbally on the caller, eyeing the gathering of police cars outside her house. Turning her back to the window, she marched out of Clay’s vision.

  ‘You do the talking, Bill, you know more about the website than I do.’ Clay lifted the letter box, saw the same woman running down the stairs and pocketing her phone. She closed the letter box.

  ‘All right! All right!’ a waspish female voice drifted towards the front door. Annabelle Burns opened the door with a scowl, pointing her finger in the air as if pressing a doorbell. ‘I’m not deaf; there’s no need for that.’

  She blocked the open door with her body.

  Annabelle Burns’s attitude and physicality sent rockets flying in Clay’s mind. The woman was nearly six feet tall and had a large frame. Clay looked at her forearms and knew that she must have done a lot of manual work in her life.

  ‘Well, who are you and what do you want?’

  Clay showed Annabelle her warrant card and she scrutinised it intensely, double-checking the picture with Clay’s face.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay, Merseyside Constabulary.’

  ‘Police! What on earth do you want with me?’

  ‘Let’s talk inside, Mrs Burns. Don’t want the neighbours talking, do we?’ said Riley.

  Annabelle opened the door wider and, as Clay and Hendricks entered, she cast a glance at the stairs, muttering something dark beneath her breath.

  ‘Go into my living room!’

  43

  9.06 am

  In the living room of 222 Springwood Avenue, Clay, Hendricks and Riley remained on their feet as Annabelle Burns sank on to a sofa that was wrapped in transparent plastic.

  ‘What do you want?’ she snapped.

  ‘Where were you around about six thirty last night?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘I was on duty, doing some overtime, in the Spire Hospital.’

  ‘The BUPA place by Greenbank Park?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘Do I look stupid enough to work in the NHS?’

  Ballsy, thought Clay.

  Annabelle reached to the side of the sofa, took a Dettol Wipe from the packet and started cleaning the plastic covering around her.

  ‘So if I phone the Spire,’ said Hendricks, ‘someone will confirm that you were there?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Clay, taking out her iPhone. ‘What’s the number, Mrs Burns?’

  As Annabelle reeled off the digits, Clay keyed them in and headed into the hallway to make the call.

  She stopped at the door, eyeballed Annabelle. ‘Who were you on the phone to, just now, up in the front bedroom?’

  Clay made a mental note of the time of the call. 9.01 am.

  ‘No one.’

  Clay detected hesitation in Annabelle’s voice. ‘No one, Mrs Burns?’

  ‘I was on to the council – Bulky Bob. I’m getting a new fridge and I want them to take my old one away. I was arranging a date for them to collect it.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Clay, leaving the room.

  Hendricks held the woman’s unflinching gaze and the silence between them felt toxic. He could hear Clay’s voice from the hall and, in an instant, Annabelle’s prickly exterior melted.

  ‘Ah, I know what this is about. What’s your name?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Hendricks.’

  ‘Thank you for calling, Mr Hendricks. It’s about next door’s dog fouling the pavement outside. Do you want me to go get my evidence?’

  ‘It’s not about next door’s dog, Mrs Burns,’ said Hendricks. ‘Can you stop cleaning and pay attention. Do you have an internet connection and a laptop?’

  ‘Who doesn’t these days?’ The scowl returned to her face. ‘Well, if it’s not about that horrible brute next door, what is it about?’

  ‘Do you run your own website, Mrs Burns?’

  ‘I’m a single working parent. I haven’t got the time or inclination to run a website. Look, is this a hidden camera prank for some cheap TV show?’

  Clay returned to the room and stood in the corner. ‘Your story’s good, Mrs Burns. Mind if I call you Annabelle?’

  She shrugged. ‘If you want.’

  ‘You had a slanging match with one of your colleagues and she had to go home in floods of tears,’ she said. ‘You left the Spire at eleven, after you were given a verbal warning by your manager at seven-twelve.’

  ‘Told you so.’

  ‘I’ll still send someone round to double-check,’ said Clay.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m very suspicious of you, Annabelle.’

  She looked offended to the roots of her being.

  ‘Do you know a couple who live on Mather Avenue, Steven and Frances Jamieson?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘No.’ Flat and immediate. Annabelle gave the arm of the sofa a tiny rub with the Dettol Wipe.

  ‘How would you describe your attitude towards paedophiles?’

  ‘They’re sick in the head and I wouldn’t want to be around them.’

  ‘You said you’re a working parent. Is there anybody else living in the house with you?’

  ‘Yes. My son. Lucien.’

  ‘He’ll be in school now?’ asked Clay.

  ‘No, he’s at home now.’

  ‘It’s half term, Eve,’ said Hendricks

  ‘He’s home-educated. No school understood him and none of them met his needs.’

  ‘Which school did he go to?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Schools. Blue Coat, King David, Liverpool College and Calderstones.’

  ‘Does Lucien have a laptop?’

  ‘He’s sixteen. Of course he’s got a laptop. And yes, he’s here right now, upstairs in his room.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to Lucien,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘I’ll get him for you,’ said Annabelle, rising from the sofa.

  ‘No, I’d like to talk to him in his room.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’ll help me get a sense of who he is. As he’s a minor and you’re his mother, you can be present when I talk to him.’ Hendricks pointed up. ‘Let’s go.’

  Annabelle turned as she followed Hendricks from the room and asked Clay, ‘How can he possibly be in any trouble with you? He never goes out.’

  ‘We want to talk to your son about his website,’ replied Clay as they carried on up the stairs.


  ‘Website? He doesn’t have a website. He’s not allowed to have a website.’

  ‘Well, let’s talk to Lucien about that.’

  *

  At the bottom of the stairs, Riley whispered to Clay, ‘I’ll stay here in case he tries to do a runner.’

  As Clay walked up the stairs, she saw a band of bright light leaking from the gap at the bottom of a closed door.

  ‘Cover your eyes,’ said Annabelle, knocking on her son’s door. ‘He won’t hear a thing, listening to that awful garbage – he’ll have headphones on. He calls it dance music.’

  44

  9.18 am

  Annabelle opened her son’s door and Clay immediately dipped her head, shielding her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked around the brightly lit room and was surprised to see that there wasn’t a bed to sleep on.

  ‘Why’s he lying on a sunbed?’ asked Hendricks quietly.

  The side of a body was visible between the base and the roof of his sunbed.

  ‘Can you go and switch off your son’s sunbed?’

  As Annabelle walked towards the sunbed, Clay and Hendricks followed and exchanged an incredulous glance.

  She turned off the sunbed at the wall and the boy shouted, ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing, Mother?’

  He sounded like a masculine version of Annabelle Burns.

  Clay and Hendricks took the top and bottom end of the roof of the sunbed and raised it, revealing a brown-skinned muscular youth wearing round UV glasses, headphones connected to an iPhone and a baggy pair of black cotton boxer shorts.

  ‘The rest of the house is immaculate but this room...’ Annabelle turned up her nose. ‘I give up.’

  ‘Who are these people, Mother?’ He took off his UV glasses as he sat up and span round on the bed, placing his feet on the floor.

  Clay showed him her warrant card.

  ‘I can’t see. My eyes haven’t adjusted.’

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay and this is my colleague Detective Sergeant William Hendricks and we’re from the Merseyside Constabulary. Make yourself decent. We want to have a word with you, Lucien.’

  Clay detected the onset of panic as the boy glanced across the room at the laptop in the corner.

  Clay turned her back, stepped over a barbell and a pair of dumb-bells and waited as Lucien stepped into olive-green jogging bottoms. She drank in the smell of sweat and too much after shave. Eyeing the clothes on the floor, she looked for a grey tracksuit with a hooded top. There wasn’t one. On the walls were pictures of half-naked women and action-movie heroes. There was a closet in the corner and a wash basket.

  ‘Mind if we have a look in your wardrobe and wash basket?’ asked Clay.

  Clay flicked through the hung-up shirts and tops but couldn’t see a grey tracksuit that matched the one worn by the kid caught on CCTV delivering dahlias to her.

  ‘Boxers and a white T-shirt in the basket,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘Don’t tell me you sleep on your sunbed, Lucien?’ said Clay, forcing down a smile as his mother’s face darkened.

  ‘Of course not! My bed’s in another room. Why do you want to speak to me?’

  Clay locked eyes with Annabelle Burns as Lucien fumbled into his clothes and said, ‘It’s about your website, Lucien.’

  ‘Website? I haven’t got a website!’

  Clay walked towards his laptop but Lucien overtook her, used his body to block her path. She looked at Annabelle.

  ‘I think we’ve now got a clear sense of who he is,’ said Clay, catching Hendricks’s eye.

  ‘Yes, me too. Here or downstairs, Eve?’

  ‘Lucien,’ said his mother, darkly. ‘What have you been up to behind my back?’

  45

  9.33 am

  In Annabelle Burns’s living room, Hendricks sustained a deliberately uncomfortable and shrink-wrapped silence.

  Clay stood at an angle to observe both Lucien Burns and his mother, out of their direct line of sight but still a presence in their range of vision. They both shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, she clutching a Dettol wipe, her son with his hands tucked under his armpits and shoulders raised. Good, she thought.

  ‘Justin Truman been in touch with you, Lucien?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Hendricks turned Lucien’s laptop towards him and showed him the picture of Justin-Truman-in-the-sun.

  ‘He sent you this picture and you posted it on your website, right?’

  ‘If he’d sent it directly to me, I’d have been dancing with happiness. I lifted it from someone else’s website, someone claiming to be in Mexico.’

  ‘So you’re denying you’re in direct contact with Vindici?’

  ‘On my life I’m not. I wish I was, but I’m not.’

  ‘All right, we can come back to that one. Where were you yesterday, five pm until ten pm?’

  ‘Here, on my own, doing online GCSE papers.’

  ‘Did anyone see you between those hours?’

  ‘I was on my own. As in alone.’

  Clay studied Lucien’s face. The sunbed tan, his sculpted eyebrows and pencil-thin moustache gave him the look of an embryonic silent-movie gigolo.

  His head rolled on his shoulders, as if the weight of his brain was suddenly unbearably heavy.

  ‘Lucien, stop acting as if you’ve got learning difficulties,’ said Annabelle.

  ‘Be quiet, Annabelle!’ said Clay.

  ‘How much do you hate paedophiles?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Loads.’

  ‘You must do, to run a website calling for them to be strung up from the nearest lamppost,’ said Hendricks. ‘Running a website that venerates Justin Truman, that’s real commitment.’

  ‘I warned you about being safe on the internet, but you knew better, Lucien!’ Annabelle Burns looked set to kill her son.

  ‘Are you aware that two men have been murdered in south Liverpool on the fourteenth and twenty-fourth of October?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course not. One was an unconvicted paedophile. The other was a time-served paedophile and he just happened to live round the corner from you.’

  His eyes dithered and when he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bulged in his perfectly tanned throat. Clay weighed Lucien up, and then looked at his mother’s skin tone. He was a white kid from the north of England but could easily have passed for a boy from southern Italy.

  ‘So in the light of that, Lucien, let’s go!’

  When Clay opened the front door of 222 Springwood Avenue, she glanced back, saw Lucien’s eyes focus on the gate and then skitter up the road to the Mather Avenue exit.

  With Hendricks, Annabelle and Lucien Burns behind her, Clay stopped dead in the path and said, ‘Lucien, you’re currently thinking, get to the pavement and do a runner.’ She indicated the vehicles parked outside his home. ‘See those three cars? They’re full of coppers. See the tall woman coming towards us with the stern face? That’s Detective Constable Margaret Bruce, a national boxing champion for the Merseyside Police.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ asked Lucien.

  ‘No, I’m giving you a reality check,’ replied Clay. ‘You might be a hero to a load of losers on the internet, which is why I reckon you’ve got such a high opinion of yourself, but if I was you I wouldn’t mess around with any of us. Don’t be a dummy. Walk nicely with DS Hendricks to his car.’

  When Clay reached the pavement, Lucien snapped back, ‘Are you a witch or something?’

  ‘No, but my birth mother was.’

  DC Margaret Bruce stepped towards Clay and Annabelle Burns, showing both of them the screen of her phone. ‘The duty magistrate emailed the search warrant to me,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to search my house?’

  ‘Have you got the keys, Mrs Burns?’

  Bruce held out her hand and Clay was astonished by the size of her palm and fingers. Annabelle Burns didn’t move.

  ‘If you’re refusing to allow us entry, we’ve got a r
am!’

  Annabelle dropped the keys into Bruce’s hand. ‘Would you ever?’

  ‘Head up the search, Maggie, and report back to me. Look out for a grey hooded tracksuit.’

  Lucien Burns scowled as Hendricks placed him in the child-locked back seat of his car. ‘Oh fix your face, Lucien!’ said Hendricks.

  ‘Stay by my car, Annabelle.’

  ‘I want to be with my son...’

  ‘No, you can’t travel with Lucien, you’re coming with me,’ said Clay.

  46

  10.15 am

  He looked at the name on his passport, Arturo Jesús Salvador, and the picture that had been taken a few years earlier when he renewed his passport in Mexico City.

  Arturo looked out of the window of the Ryanair plane he’d boarded at Cork Airport, saw a ferry crossing to England and churning the Irish Sea into countless thousands of litres of white foam.

  The sight of ferry and the water was compelling. It filled him with morbid fascination at the sheer power of the sea. In his mind he reduced the image in size and imagined he was looking at a plastic boat on the surface of dark bathwater, a boat full of dot-sized people, none of who knew the moment when Death would come calling. Or whether, having called, Death would perform one of its occasional about-turns and walk away empty-handed, leaving the fortunate one to suddenly learn the value of life. And forget it just as quickly.

  At his side, the air stewardess said something in English which he didn’t quite hear so deep was he locked in thought.

  When he looked up at the stewardess, he wasn’t disappointed by her looks. She had long dark hair tied back in a ponytail and a pleasant face that belonged with her voice. He smiled at her, holding her gaze.

  She indicated the food and drink. ‘Would you like anything from the trolley?’

  He looked at what was on offer and pointed at a small bottle of red wine. ‘Vino.’ He pointed at bars of Galaxy chocolate and said, ‘Tres tabletas de chocolate.’ He held up three fingers.

  ‘No problem.’ She handed him the wine and a plastic cup and three bars of chocolate and he placed them next to his hand luggage on the empty seat beside him. He took out his passport to find his wallet and handed the stewardess a fifty-pound note.