by Peter James
“It looks like her attacker may have been hiding in here, Roy,” he said.
“What’s happened to the dog?”
“The dog’s fine—seems a rare instance of his bite being worse than his bark!”
Grace thanked him and stood staring at the cupboard, thinking hard. From the information he had so far, Freya Northrop had arrived home alone and entered the house, carrying groceries and accompanied by a dog belonging to friends that she had agreed to look after.
The dog might have saved her life, he contemplated. And might lead them to her attacker.
Was Freya Northrop a bit dim, he wondered? Only a few days ago, on Sunday night, she and her boyfriend had arrived home from a day out to find the place had been broken into. But they hadn’t as yet bothered to change the locks. She arrived here last night to find the lights were off, although she was certain they had left some on, deliberately.
Yet she had still gone inside.
He let himself out of the back door and walked out into the unkempt garden. Tall trees provided a lot of privacy and the nearest neighbor’s wall, which rose above the far end, was windowless.
A quiet, unmade close, off an almost equally quiet residential road. A rear entrance that was not overlooked by anyone. A woman who matched the offender’s target profile exactly.
Putting himself in the offender’s shoes, this would have been a perfect choice. Yet, with the help of the dog, she had managed to fight him off and escape—unlike the other victims. How did the offender feel about this?
Grace’s phone rang, and he answered it instantly. It was Glenn Branson.
“Boss, the interview with Freya Northrop is going to start in about twenty minutes. You said to let you know.”
“Thanks, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Where are you now?”
“At Freya Northrop’s house.”
“The Bates Motel.”
“Bates Motel?”
“Yeah, Psycho?”
“Psycho?”
“Sometimes I despair. Psycho, the movie. Tony Perkins and Janet Leigh. She was slashed to death in the shower.”
“Ah, right,” he said, distractedly, staring at the rear of the house. There were builders’ ladders lying on the ground, and several tins of exterior paint stacked up. The intruder could easily have gained access through an upstairs window.
A Crime Scene Investigator was kneeling, photographing an area of the lawn.
“Found anything?” Grace asked her, after ending the call.
“Yes, sir, there are several footprints—they were covered and protected overnight.” She pointed down at one on the earth just below a ground-floor window. “I’m photographing them before we take impressions.”
“Get them to Haydn Kelly as quickly as possible.”
“He’s already been and taken his own photographs, and casts.”
“Good.” He stepped away and stared up again at the small house. It was pretty, in an idyllic location in the city. Freya Northrop had only recently moved down from London. If her attacker had been the Brighton Brander, as he strongly suspected, how had he found and targeted her?
And why on earth, he again wondered, after their break-in last Sunday night, hadn’t Freya and her boyfriend, Zak Ferguson, had the locks changed, as they had been advised? God, there was only so much the police could do to protect the citizens of this, or any, city. People had to help themselves, too.
He went back into the house, and upstairs to the master bedroom. Then back into the bathroom.
She had been attacked here in the shower. Reminiscent of Psycho, indeed, he realized. But fortunately this time there’d been no dead mother on a swivel chair. Just a very terrified victim who had escaped. No thanks to him or any of his team. But thanks to a dog.
He went back into the bedroom, stared around at the modern, distressed furniture, the neatly made bed with a white satin cover and several white cushions scattered around the base of the silver headboard. On one of the bedside tables was a stack of cookery books and a cube-shaped alarm clock. On the other was a Simon Kernick thriller and a half-empty water tumbler.
He walked over to that side and with his gloved hands pulled open the drawer in the table. Inside was a small book with a photograph on the cover of a woman in a blue shirt kneeling over a naked man. It was titled Sex: A Lover’s Guide.
He shut the drawer with a wry smile. Cleo had given him the same book for his birthday.
Then he stood, deep in thought. Thirty years ago. Now, again. Five women of similar age and appearance—and with Freya Northrop, possibly six targeted. Was the Brander modeling himself on Ted Bundy?
Before his execution, Bundy had confessed to thirty-nine murders, although the FBI believed that his real tally might have been as many as one hundred and six. All of them, bar one, which appeared to have been a mistake, of similar age and appearance.
Bundy’s spree had been triggered by his first girlfriend, who’d had long brown hair with a center parting and had dumped him. According to all he had read on the serial killer, Bundy had begun killing young women of similar appearance in revenge.
Then, suddenly, he had a thought.
He phoned Branson. “Glenn, I’m not going to make the interview, I’ll watch the recording later. Call me if anything interesting comes out of it.”
“Where will you be?”
“At the Jubilee Library.”
“Library?”
“Yes.”
“This is one hell of a time to try to fill in gaps in your education.”
“Very funny.”
81
Friday 19 December
Half an hour later, Roy Grace was seated in front of a microfiche reader in the Reference section of Brighton’s Jubilee Library, a building he had loved ever since it first opened. He had decided to get away for an hour, giving him time to think. He could still be contacted if he was needed urgently.
Up until now they had been looking at the dates between Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson’s disappearances and the present. But he had a strong feeling they might have been looking in the wrong direction, at the wrong time period. He needed to go way further into the past, way beyond the dates of those first two murders.
Back issue after back issue of the Argus newspaper scrolled down the screen in front of him. He had taken as a starting point the date of Katy Westerham’s disappearance, December 1984, and was working his way backward from then. Headlines of monumental events in the city and in the world flashed past his eyes.
A South Korean jetliner that strayed into Soviet airspace was shot down with the loss of 269 people. Sally K. Ride became the first woman astronaut. Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie was found in America. Should Brighton and Hove be given City status? He went back to 1983. Brighton and Hove Albion football club made the Cup Final and drew 2–2 with Manchester United.
He continued all the way back to 1975. Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia, with the nightmare of the killing fields yet to unfold. Jimmy Carter was elected President of the USA. The Queen made an official visit to Brighton. Bjorn Borg won Wimbledon. A Brighton town councillor was jailed for corruption.
It was half past two. He was hungry and thirsty, his vision was becoming blurred and he was desperate for water and for coffee. He was aware that his concentration had waned and he had perhaps scrolled too fast through the past couple of months. Had he missed something? He went back.
Then suddenly he stopped. And stared. Stared at the photograph beneath the headline.
A young girl, with a pretty face and long brown hair.
The date of the paper was 30 December 1976.
The Argus headline said:
HOVE LAGOON DROWNING TRAGEDY
He read on.
An ambulance crew was unable to resuscitate teenager Mandy White, 14, who fell through the ice on Hove Lagoon’s big pond after a night out. She was rushed to the Royal Sussex County Hospital shortly before midnight, but was pronounced dead on arrival
.
The emergency call had been made by her companion for the evening, Edward Denning, 15, who admitted to the police that they had been drinking heavily. According to Denning, Mandy, daughter of an employee of his family, decided to try skating on the ice, despite his warning. He said he tried to restrain her but she shook free of his arms, and moments later fell through the ice. He tried to pull her out, but became overwhelmed by the cold water and decided to go for help instead.
Mandy’s family are said to be devastated. Her mother was too distressed to speak to the Argus yesterday. Her father, Ronald White, said she was the apple of his eye, and a lovely girl who worked hard at school and with her paper round. Close to tears he said, “She’s my daughter—our only daughter—and I want her back so much.”
Detective Inspector Ron Gilbart of Hove Police said it looked, sadly, as if misguided high jinks by a pair of youngsters had gone tragically wrong, but that a full investigation into the events would take place.
The story dominated the entire front page. Roy Grace read it through twice, making a note of the names, then sat thinking. It had happened close to forty years ago. Some years earlier than Katy Westerham and Denise Patterson. He remembered Tony Balazs’s words from yesterday.
The universal profile of serial killers is they are aged between fifteen to forty-five at the time of their first murder and between eighteen to sixty at the time of their last.
Could there be a connection between this incident and his current investigation? The time frame fitted. Could this be where it had begun, he wondered?
He photographed the image on the screen with his iPhone, then took a second photograph as backup.
Detective Inspector Ron Gilbart. Ambitious officers back then would reach that rank in their early thirties to early forties. Was Gilbart still alive now? If he was, he’d be in his seventies or eighties. He knew exactly who to call to ask.
As he hurried out of the library, he phoned Tish and asked her to get him the number of David Rowland, a former Sussex policeman now in his seventies, who coordinated the local Association of Retired Police Officers. Standing on the pavement in the light drizzle, he waited for her to look up the number. She said she’d call him back in a few moments. As he went to call Cleo’s number quickly to see how everything was going, his assistant came back on the line and gave him the number.
He dialed it immediately, but it went straight to voicemail. He left a message asking Rowland to call him back urgently. He strode swiftly up to the Church Street car park, paid what he considered to be the rip-off sum of money demanded by the machine, then began to drive out. Just as the barrier rose, his phone rang.
It was David Rowland. The former copper had a voice that was both elderly, but at the same time imbued with an infectious, almost youthful enthusiasm. “Sorry I missed your call, Roy, I was down in the cells of the Old Police Cells Museum and I’m afraid there’s no mobile signal down there. How can I help you?”
“Detective Inspector Ron Gilbart—do you by chance remember him?” Grace drove through the barrier, then stopped and waved a man wheeling a bicycle past, followed by a young couple with a baby in a pushchair.
Rowland sounded surprised. “Yes, very well indeed. We were both at Hove together for quite a time. Sorry to see that station go, it holds good memories for me. What do you want to know about him?”
“Do you happen to know if he’s still alive?” In his mirror he saw another car, a black Range Rover, pull up at the barrier behind him.
“Yes he is, but he’s not very well, poor bugger. Had a stroke a couple of years ago and he’s pretty much housebound. Got all his marbles, but he struggles with his speech. His wife’s pretty good at helping him out. They’ve got a bungalow in Woodingdean.”
“Have you got his address and number?”
The Range Rover gave him an angry blast on his horn. Ignoring it, Grace tapped the number into his phone. Moments later, a short, bald man banged angrily on his window.
“Get a fucking move on, you tosser!”
Grace pulled out his wallet and flashed it open to show his warrant card to the man as he dialed. The bald man raised both arms in the air in frustration. Ignoring him, Grace listened to the ringing tone, then a moment later a female voice answered. It was Gilbart’s wife and yes, Ron was home.
Current regulations restricted the breaking of speed limits to emergencies only. In his view this was an emergency. He bullied his way out into the traffic, and drove as fast as he could toward Gilbart’s home.
82
Friday 19 December
Logan Somerville was hyperventilating. “Help me, someone! Help me! Help me!” she shouted, her voice becoming increasingly hoarse. She had been shouting since she had woken, some while earlier, in a terrible panic. She’d not heard a sound in hours—or maybe even days. She had totally lost track of time and was ravenously hungry, and desperate for water. Her sugar levels were dropping and with that sensation came the shakes and paranoia.
What if?
So many bad possibilities sparked in her mind.
What if her captor had died?
Or been arrested?
Or he had just decided to let her rot and die?
She began working again on her bonds. On her arm restraints, on her leg restraints. But with no success, other than to feel the pain where her flesh had rubbed.
She was not going to get out of here unless someone came to free her. And she did not want to die here, all alone.
“Police. POLICE! Hello! HELP ME!”
Oh, God, please someone help me.
She saw a faint green glow.
“Hello?” she said, weakly. “Please, I need water, sugar. Please.”
Then she heard his muffled voice. “I nearly had you out of here today! But it went a bit wrong. Don’t worry, I have someone else in mind. As soon as I bring her here, you’ll be free! Free as a bird.”
“Thank you,” she gasped.
“You’re welcome.”
83
Friday 19 December
Ten minutes after leaving the Church Street car park, Roy Grace turned left up a steep hill opposite the Nuffield Hospital, and drove a short distance looking at the house numbers. It was 3:30 p.m. and already it was starting to get dark. Christmas lights sparkled in most of the downstairs windows, and two adjacent houses had garish light displays in their gardens. He pulled up outside No. 82. A small people carrier with a blue Disabled badge was parked on the driveway.
He stepped up to the porch and rang the bell. Moments later he was ushered inside by Gilbart’s wife, Hilary, who was a tiny, sprightly lady nudging eighty, with a twinkling face and neat white hair. “I’m afraid he has trouble hearing as well as speaking, Detective Superintendent,” she forewarned him.
The house felt like a sauna, and there was a faint smell of roasting meat. Much of the tiny hall was taken up by a trophy cabinet filled with silver cups, and a team photograph of rugby players standing in their midst. “Ron’s rugby and golf trophies!” she said proudly. “He played for the police rugby and golf teams for years—right up until his stroke, really.”
A male voice called out, slurred and slightly aggressive. The words were just about decipherable. “Schlooo ish it? Warrer they want? Make shure they show shere identity.”
“It’s the police officer, darling, the one who phoned a little while ago. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. The friend of David Rowland.”
“Urr.”
A few moments later, seated on a sofa in front of a blazing gas fire, feeling himself beginning to perspire, Grace was almost deafened by the television. On the wall behind it hung a framed Sussex Police Commendation. He watched the former Detective Inspector, in his recliner armchair, Zimmer frame beside it, grapple with the remote, struggling to mute the television that was showing a cricket match somewhere overseas. Gilbart was a large man, with massive shoulders and thinning gray hair on his liver-spotted head. He gave Grace an expression that could have been a smile or a lee
r. “Yurnknowd-d-d-david-rowla?”
“Yes, I’ve known David for years,” Grace said. “I was just admiring your trophies out in the hall—I’m President of the Sussex Police Rugby Team.”
“I carplaynymore,” he said, and looked so sad.
Hilary Gilbart came back into the room with a cup of tea for Grace and a piece of shortbread in the saucer, then she sat on the sofa. “I’ll help translate,” she said.
Grace thanked her, then turned to the retired detective. “Ron,” he said, “do the names Mandy White or Edward Denning ring a bell at all? Mandy’s body was found in Hove Lagoon in December 1976, when you were the Duty Inspector.”
Staring straight ahead at the silent television, watching a bowler begin his run, Gilbart said, “Lord Denning. Bloodyyud j-j-judge.”
“I don’t think Detective Superintendent Grace was referring to Lord Denning, my love,” Hilary said. “It was Edward Denning he asked you about.” She turned to Grace. “If you give me a few moments, I will get Ron’s scrapbook—I am sure there’s some information on that case in it.”
Gilbart again stared at the screen. The ball was returned to the bowler by a fielder, and he walked away from the crease, pacing out his next run. After several moments, Grace was beginning to wonder if the old man had fallen asleep, when suddenly he spoke, quite vehemently, his voice raised.
“Lil shit!”
“Little shit?” Grace prompted. “Edward Denning?”
“Lil shit.”
“In what way?”
“Couldvsave—couldvsave—her—gl– gl– gl–”
“Could have saved the girl?” his wife checked, coming back into the room. “Is that what you’re trying to say, my love?”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t he, Ron? Why didn’t he save her?” Grace asked.
Gilbart’s mouth dropped open, and he stared again at the cricket match, his head nodding for some moments. “Becar—becarl—becarl ye lilled her.”
84
