The Thirteenth Coffin

by Nigel McCrery

  Bradbury was already there when he arrived.

  ‘Morning, Emma. Any more updates?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing since I phoned you yesterday to tell you about this bloke.’

  ‘We’d better go in and see what we can find out.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Links. Anything that linked her husband to any of the other people that we now know have been murdered. Anything at all, no matter how small, insignificant, or even how stupid you might think it is. Got it?’

  Bradbury nodded. ‘Got it.’

  They walked down the path together towards the small neat three-bedroom semi-detached house. Before they had a chance to knock, a little and pretty woman opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant Bradbury?’

  ‘Yes, sorry I’m a little late, Mrs Dale.’ She turned to Lapslie. ‘Can I introduce you to my boss: Detective Inspector Lapslie?’

  Lapslie put out his hand and Mrs Kate Dale took it. She was shy and pleasant, and despite everything she had been through, her eyes were still full of life.

  She stood to one side. ‘Come in, please come in.’

  Lapslie and Bradbury walked past Kate Dale and into the sitting room. The room was like the house: neat and clean. There was a strong smell of flowers, so thick that Lapslie could feel it on his tongue. He wasn’t sure if it was Kate Dale’s voice or an air-freshener set on overdrive.

  They both sat down on the settee and waited for Kate Dale to join them. After a few moments Lapslie called out to her, ‘Mrs Dale, are you okay?’

  As he went to stand, she finally entered the room, a tray of tea and biscuits in her hands. She put them down on the small coffee table in front of the two detectives. ‘Sorry, I thought you might like some tea. I know I do.’

  She poured three cups of tea and handed two of them to the detectives. Lapslie noticed that the cups were made of fine china. He smiled. She reminded him of his aunt, when he went for tea on a Sunday with his parents. They sat in a front room that was never used unless guests were coming round, drank from china cups and ate from china plates. The cups and plates were also only ever used for visitors. It was all to do with respect and place in society. Standards were maintained, no matter what. The vicar might pop round for tea at any moment. He had a sudden flash of memory of watching his grandmother cleaning the front doorstep, which she did every Saturday morning. He remembered her ample backside swaying from side to side as she polished.

  He forced himself back to reality. ‘Mrs Dale . . .’

  She cut in. ‘Kate.’

  ‘Kate. I need to know as much as you can remember about your late husband. It is very important.’

  She put her cup back down on its saucer and looked disarmingly into Lapslie’s eyes. ‘Mr Lapslie, is there something you need to tell me? If there is, please do me the respect of getting on with it.’

  Lapslie knew she was right. There was no point playing games with her. He might as well just tell her the stark truth and hope the shock became something positive rather than negative. ‘We believe your husband was murdered,’ he said simply.

  Bradbury looked at Lapslie, shocked at his bluntness, and then at Kate Dale to see what the effect on her had been. She was unmoved.

  ‘I thought he must have been,’ she said quietly.

  Lapslie was intrigued. ‘Why?’

  ‘Two things . . .’

  ‘They are?’

  ‘The first one is very practical: there was nobody better on a ladder than Richard. He would never have fallen off – never. Secondly, and I know you’re going to laugh at me, but I just had a feeling that something was wrong.’

  ‘I’d never laugh at you, Kate. I’m a big believer in feelings, or at least in things that can’t be catalogued and analysed, but I still have to ask the questions.’

  She looked at him for a moment, then stood. ‘I think I might be able to save you doing that.’

  She walked over to a sideboard and pulled out a drawer. Bradbury and Lapslie looked at each other. She pulled a blue A4 file from the drawer and handed it to Lapslie. ‘You’ll find what you’re looking for in here.’

  Lapslie opened it, intrigued but wary. A bold claim, somewhat weird; but Kate Dale said it in such a calm, down-to-earth manner.

  The file contained a collection of newspaper cuttings concerning the death and burial of her husband, fireman Richard Dale. After flicking through the file, Lapslie looked up at her, puzzled. ‘So where would the name be?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. You’ll have to find it, but it is in there.’

  Lapslie was confused. ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘You said you believe in feelings, Chief Inspector?’

  Lapslie nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  ‘Then take my word for it, I have a feeling that what you are looking for is in there.’

  *

  He had a good idea what Lapslie had in mind, but he had to be sure. He wasn’t often wrong but it had happened in the past, with near-disastrous consequences.

  Having established routes and transport links on the internet, he parked his car in the second from nearest railway-station car park, took the bus until he was about a mile from the Teacher’s cottage, and then walked the rest of the way. He had also disguised himself. Nothing heavy: just enough to smear his identity a bit.

  As he turned onto the road he saw that he was right. The dark Transit van parked halfway along the road was carefully anonymous, but it was parked beneath an advertising hoarding, and the beautiful model whose photograph was on the poster was pointing downwards directly at it. Anybody else would have thought she was indicating the words of the advert, but he knew differently. She was communicating with him, and only him.

  Further down the road, three men were slowly and painstakingly setting up a plastic barrier around a broadband routing box. Now that he had been alerted, he could see that they were obviously detectives.

  The security surrounding Turner impressed him. It would be harder to get to him now. Harder, but still necessary. Time was creeping on. Lapslie would already be trying to establish the links between the victims, and as soon as the policeman did that it would all be over. He had to act fast and decisively, before it was too late.

  He carried on walking along the street and past Turner’s cottage. He’d put a stone in one of his shoes to change the way that he walked. As he limped along, near to the cottage, he noticed a car approaching, and his heart began to race as he recognized Lapslie in the passenger seat, and Bradbury driving. Lapslie looked him straight in the face but still failed to recognize him. As the car went past he glanced at the number plate. The last three letters were TTW. Something told him that the letters weren’t a coincidence. They were a message. They meant something.

  TTW.

  Of course. TTW. Take The Wife.

  Now he knew how he was going to get to both Turner and Lapslie, finish his quest and still get away. All he had to do was to kidnap the Teacher’s wife from the hospital. That would bring them both to him.

  He walked on, elated. Who would have thought that it would be Lapslie who would give him such inspiration?

  *

  Lapslie needed to check on the protection team for Tony Turner, make sure all was well. He had not only arranged for the teacher to receive twenty-four-hour protection, but had made sure there was someone on Elizabeth Turner’s private ward at all times. Other officers, including snipers, had been posted at various places, watching all the time for a sniper on the off-chance he decided to follow that method once again. He’d all but given up on it being Mike Stowell, was convinced now that he’d simply been put in the frame, but as belt and braces Barrett and Kempsey remained on Stowell’s tail.

  Bradbury parked the car behind the surveillance van and Lapslie quickly moved from one to the other while Bradbury stayed where she was.

  The inside of the van looked like a control room at NASA. It was manned by four highly trained officers on a rotating
three-shift system. They all looked like they had been shelled from the same pea-pod.

  ‘Everything okay, boys?’

  They turned as one. ‘All fine here, boss.’

  ‘Anything happening?’

  They shook their heads together. Lapslie couldn’t help feeling they would make a great music-hall act. ‘What, nothing at all?’

  One of them broke from the anonymity of the trio to say: ‘We’ve had several people with no tax and insurance . . .’

  Emboldened, another chipped in: ‘And a couple of cars with no MOT.’

  ‘This isn’t a traffic detail, guys. This is a major murder inquiry, and you’re an important part of it.’

  The third man spoke, defensively. ‘We have got a couple of outstanding warrants . . .’

  The first one again. ‘One of those was for shoplifting, theft . . .’

  He stopped speaking when he noticed how dark Lapslie’s face had become.

  ‘Okay. Right. No more traffic, no more warrants, no more anything. Just do your job and feed all the information to the control room. They will decide what to do or whether anything needs to be followed up. If it’s immediate action you need, there are armed officers pretending to be workmen outside, and several armed patrols in and around the locality. If you do want to transfer to traffic, please let me know, and I will arrange it at once. Clear?’

  They all nodded obediently. Satisfied he had made his point, Lapslie jumped back out of the van and drove away.

  *

  He was pleased to see that he had been proved correct. Walking past Turner’s cottage to see what the police were up to had certainly been a risk, but one he was glad now he had taken. He was sure that similar arrangements had been made at the school, and for close but not obvious protection wherever Turner went. If Lapslie and the police thought they had covered all their angles, they were wrong, and had no idea who they were dealing with.

  He had travelled to the hospital by bus, and kept his disguise on. Hospitals these days were rife with CCTV cameras, and it was hard to walk anywhere without being noticed and filmed. He made a mental note of each camera and its position as he passed it by.

  From the moment he walked up the hospital steps and into the main foyer, he knew he was under observation. It was nothing serious, they were hardly likely to pick him out as a possible killer by the way he was dressed and looked, but if anything happened they would play the recordings back and look for anything unusual. From the main entrance hall he turned left, walking along a hospital corridor for over a hundred yards before taking the lift to the first floor. Stepping out of the lift, he crossed the corridor into the fire-escape stairwell and took the steps to the third floor. He wanted to see how many cameras, if any, were situated inside the fire escape, monitoring the stairs. As he suspected, there were none. They were on every ward, all the hospital entrances, in the lifts, in the main stairwells, and yet for some reason the fire escape had been forgotten.

  Finally reaching the third floor, he walked though Ward DC3. He noticed an empty bed with the bedding stripped down, but still retaining its name plate, with the name ‘Mr David Johnson’ neatly written across it. Made a mental note of the name. There was, however, no sign of Elizabeth Turner.

  He walked through the wards and back out onto the corridor at the far side to where the private single rooms were situated. The moment he walked onto the corridor, he knew she was there. Parked outside the third ward down was an armed police officer reading a newspaper.

  A voice from behind interrupted his thoughts. ‘Can I help you at all?’

  He turned quickly, to be confronted with a blue-uniformed nurse, not unlike the one he had murdered a few years before. Attractive, fresh-faced, yet so earnest.

  ‘Yes, I rather think you can.’ He had changed the pitch of his voice to sound weak and rather confused. ‘I am looking for my cousin, David Johnson.’

  A look of concern flashed across the nurse’s face. ‘Oh dear. I’m so sorry. You have just missed him: he was discharged just over an hour ago.’

  ‘I thought he was due to be in much longer than that.’

  She smiled. ‘He was, but he has made a very quick recovery, so the doctors have sent him home.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Well, I suppose that’s very good news.’

  He turned and looked at the police officer, still reading his newspaper and apparently unconcerned about events happening a little further down the corridor. ‘Well, I had better pop around and see him at home, then.’

  The nurse’s smiled broadened. ‘I’m sure he will be glad to have a visitor, there haven’t been too many since he’s been here.’

  ‘Well, that’s not very nice, is it?’ He smiled. ‘Thank you very much, you’ve been a great help.’

  He nodded politely and walked back along the corridor and towards the lift. As he did, his gaze swept across every poster on the walls and every notice attached to the noticeboards. Somewhere there were the words that would tell him what to do next. Somewhere there he would find his instructions.

  *

  The latest news from the incident room was good. Two more of the victims had been identified. One was a mechanic, Michael Cohen, murdered in 2008, and the other was a fisherman, Gordon Campbell, killed in 2009, although there was still a little doubt about that latter one and some of the facts still needed to be confirmed.

  The killer had been killing at least one person a year for seven years or more. Leaving a gap was almost certainly part of his strategy, in order to try and throw the police, or perhaps the media, off his scent. He was very careful, this one. He took his time, took care. He wasn’t your average serial killer. These appeared to be random murders born out of some strange compulsion, but done in a very controlled way.

  In Lapslie’s time he had dealt with a few cases like these. ‘Catch me before I kill again, I dare you.’ There was something inside these people that drove them to kill. Some desire that needed to be satisfied; something so strong that it could only be released by killing and torturing. After they had killed once, it was normally enough to satisfy them for a while, sometimes for years. They felt genuine remorse, for a while, but, like wife-beaters who swear they will never do it again, the desire and the provocation returns. And, as time goes on, the intervals grow less between each killing. Bad for the victims, but good for the police, because it’s then the killers start to cut corners, take chances and inevitably make the mistake that gets them caught.

  Something told Lapslie, however, that this killer wasn’t like that. Lapslie knew there was never going to be any panic, no mistakes, just everything planned to perfection right up until the end. This evil bastard had been killing since 2007, and they had only just discovered him, and only then because of a piece of unusual luck. Then on top there was the frame-up with Stowell to throw them off the trail to consider. All in all it pointed to a meticulous, methodical killer, the like of whom he’d rarely seen before.

  He finally arrived at police HQ and parked. He made his way up to the incident room and into his office, closing the door behind him and putting the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign up. He hoped people would respect it. They didn’t always, and that was why he needed Bradbury there when he was working, but he had no idea where she was right now.

  He sat down and opened the report waiting for him on his desk. It was from Bradbury. Two sides of A4 explaining in some detail how they had come across the murders of the mechanic and the fisherman, who’d discovered them, and how. He sat back and began to read. Before he’d got halfway, however, there was a gentle knock on his door and Bradbury poked her face around.

  ‘Shall I come back after you’ve had time to finish it, boss?’

  Lapslie shook his head and waved her in. ‘No, come in, come in. I’ll only be a second.’

  After a further ten minutes he closed the report and put it onto his desk. He looked across at Bradbury. ‘Good report. I see it was young DC McMurdo who was responsible for identifying the mechanic?’


  Bradbury nodded. ‘Yes, she’s doing well.’

  Lapslie nodded. ‘Keep a close eye on her. She’s going places.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s getting late. Let’s call it a day; start afresh tomorrow.’

  ‘I think I’ll stick around for a while,’ she said, not making eye contact. ‘Catch up on some paperwork.’

  ‘Careful,’ he teased, ‘I wouldn’t want Dom McGinley to think I might be this other man. He has a way of making a point that involves sharp knives and concrete.’ As he saw a shadow cross her face, he became more serious. ‘Sorry. How’s it going on that front? Made any decisions yet?’

  ‘Yes, actually,’ Emma said, the words emerging as reluctantly as pulled teeth, ‘as of last night Dom and I are . . . taking a break. Reassessing our relationship.’

  ‘And was this your suggestion, or McGinley’s?’

  ‘Mine,’ she said, meeting his gaze steadily.

  ‘Ah, I see.’ An uncomfortable afterthought struck him. ‘Does McGinley actually know you’re taking a break? I imagine that would be a difficult conversation to have.’

  ‘And one that has yet to occur,’ Bradbury said. ‘I’m waiting for the right moment.’

  The only ideal time for that might be on McGinley’s deathbed, Lapslie thought, but left it unsaid. ‘So this is a sort of halfway house – until you’re decided what to do?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. A halfway house.’