The Disciple

by Steven Dunne

  ‘One of them has already been to the Wallis house with the wine and glasses,’ continued Grant. ‘He just has to open the wine and go upstairs to light the candle and it’s all ready for DI Brook.’

  ‘And the point of that?’ asked Charlton staring at Brook.

  ‘Take your pick, sir. Maybe they were trying to spook me, maybe they were trying to frame me instead of Jason.’

  ‘Then why not lure you to the Ingham house? And at the right time?’ asked Hudson.

  Brook shook his head and looked at the floor.

  ‘Maybe they wanted you there when they were done,’ said Grant. ‘To humiliate you.’

  Brook glanced up and held her gaze. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So then what?’ said Charlton.

  ‘Then it’s all on,’ said Hudson.

  ‘We think that both killers are present when the boys have their throats cut, just in case someone comes round. Maybe one is ready with a syringe while the other does the cutting. It makes life easier if they both go upstairs as well,’ added Grant. ‘Which would explain the different size footmarks in the house.’

  ‘Once they’ve finished in the bedroom they go back down to the kitchen. One of them writes “SAVED” on the wall, dipping his latex fingers in Stephen Ingham’s blood.’ Brook stopped now, not sure how to go on. They all looked over at him. ‘And this is where it gets a bit hazy. Maybe they get careless. Why, I don’t know.’

  ‘Panic?’

  ‘It hardly seems possible but there it is. Anyway, the scalpel is placed under Jason’s hand, maybe a last-minute idea to frame him, but how people this meticulous think that’s ever going to stand up to examination beats me.

  ‘Even more out of character they find Jason’s mobile phone and, incredibly, one of them takes off a glove and rings 999, leaving us a print and his voice on tape.’ Brook shook his head before continuing. ‘They leave the phone on Jason’s lap, not realising he’s heard the phone call—’

  ‘Jason didn’t mention two killers when we spoke to him,’ interjected Hudson.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t see both of them,’ surmised Brook.

  ‘The amount of drugs and alcohol in his system, I’m surprised he saw anything, guv,’ added Grant.

  ‘I suppose,’ conceded Hudson. ‘What then?’

  ‘That’s it. They vault back over the fence, depositing DNA and fibres on the top. They stuff their protective clothing into their rucksacks and ride away.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘No idea for now,’ answered Brook. ‘A van maybe. Parked a few miles away.’

  ‘None were spotted by Traffic,’ said Noble.

  ‘Maybe they slept in it. Left the next morning,’ said Hudson. ‘But why don’t they kill Jason? It still makes no sense.’ Brook shook his head again.

  ‘Maybe the sight of what they’d done started to affect them,’ offered Noble.

  ‘Both of them – after killing six people in cold blood?’ queried Grant. Noble accepted this dismissal with a shrug.

  ‘And were they so affected that after the 999 call they left the line open so we could run a trace and charge over there?’ added Hudson.

  ‘It’s out of character,’ nodded Noble.

  ‘As is the killer’s memory loss,’ added Brook.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Charlton.

  ‘“They’re all dead.” That’s what the killer said, sir,’ explained Noble.

  ‘What of it?’

  Grant turned to him. ‘Jason Wallis was alive.’

  All heads except Brook’s bowed for a few minutes to consider this anomaly. Finally Hudson broke the silence. ‘I suppose Jason may not have been on the killer’s hit list so they didn’t count him.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain why they didn’t kill him,’ said Charlton. ‘Surely these Reapers, whoever they are, have to consider that he’s likely to be cut from the same cloth as the others.’

  ‘And, more importantly, he’s a living witness,’ added Grant. ‘Sorry, guv, but in their shoes what’s one more body?’

  Brook, Noble, Hudson and Grant walked with Charlton to the media room for the four o’clock briefing. Hudson and Charlton stepped inside to face the assembled media. Charlton had been fully briefed, more fully than he’d really wanted, because he now knew things he would have liked to share with the world in order to show his division, and perhaps himself, in a favourable light. But to his credit he would stick to the script.

  His appeal for witnesses to any unusual events on the Drayfin Estate up to two weeks before the murders unleashed a volley of follow-up questions, which he batted away with all the skill of the political animal.

  The investigation team was now seeking two individuals who had spent the two weeks previous to the murders bringing occasionally bulky items to Mrs North’s house on Drayfin Park Avenue, the road adjacent to Drayfin Park Road, site of the Ingham crime scene. The mountain bikes and the brand new Weber barbecue were the most distinctive items that the public may have seen. And the perpetrators may have either cycled their bikes to this safe house or transported them on a car.

  Brook, watching from the sidelines, felt sure that the bikes would have been ridden to Mrs North’s house in the dead of night. The barbecue, however, would be more difficult and the appeal might just produce witnesses to its arrival.

  A half hour later, Brook and Grant led a short debriefing for the dozen CID officers involved in the inquiry. Although the Forensics leads were strong, most of that evidence would only be of use once a suspect had been identified. Other leads hadn’t panned out. They were no nearer identifying a shoe type or size from the blood-smeared footmarks left at the Ingham house, despite the use of an electrostatic mat.

  Although he hadn’t mentioned it to the other officers, Noble had taken Brook aside before the briefing to tell him that the email he’d received purporting to be from Victor Sorenson could not be traced. Brook had expected nothing less.

  The bottle of wine had not been purchased locally and Brook believed it had to be from the same case as the one brought by Sorenson to Derby two years previously. The link with Sorenson worried him. If they were dealing with a copycat killer, why did so many things point back to Brook’s original Reaper suspect? The wine, the financial resources, the meticulous planning. He thought back to the Wallis investigation when he’d wondered if Sorenson’s cancer had made it necessary for him to bring an assistant to help carry out the murders. Could Sorenson now have handed the baton to a trainee Reaper? The idea was becoming more attractive by the day. Somebody younger, perhaps overseen by a more experienced individual with a background in law enforcement. Someone like Drexler.

  The search for hotels and B&Bs that had housed two men on or around the night of the murder was not proving fruitful and Brook told Rob Morton to cross it off the list. Once the killers had made the call to the Inghams the day before the murder, Brook was sure that he, or they, would have been holed up in Mrs North’s house, waiting for the off. And there was no telling how long they’d been staying there. Perhaps several days.

  All grates, dustbins, manhole covers and even three skips within a five-mile radius of the Ingham house had been searched and nothing of interest found. Every garden on the two-street block had been fingertip-searched and this had also produced nothing. Brook was able to produce a cast of the mountain bike tyre taken from Mrs North’s garden and directed Uniform branch to concentrate on all likely, and then unlikely, cycle routes out of the estate. But given the design of the estate and its proximity to fields, there must have been a hundred different escape routes avoiding the roadblocks on major arteries.

  The meat packaging had shown that the burgers, sausages and kebabs had been bought from a local butcher, Moorcrofts, in nearby Normanton, which didn’t have CCTV or any credit or debit card details for a similar purchase. The clear inference was the meat products must have been bought with cash and in small batches, which made it much harder to pinpoint a time of purchase and pointed to a local killer who could stockpile
the meat at home in a freezer.

  Brook was about to bring things to a close when DS Gadd ran in carrying a laptop.

  ‘Got something, sir.’ She opened her laptop to show a series of indistinct images similar to those PC Duffy had taken with Brook’s mobile phone camera at the crime scene.

  ‘What are we looking at?’

  ‘We’ve uploaded everything from the phones of the three deceased teenagers. These images were shot on Jason’s phone the evening they died. About seven hours before. I’ve compiled them in chronological order.’ She clicked her keyboard to start a slideshow.

  Brook and the other officers watched intently as the pictures showed a young Asian boy on the ground, clearly in distress and surrounded by the Ingham boy, Gretton and Anderson, who were kicking and taunting him while adopting the poses glorified by American gang culture. The shots continued until Ingham bent over the victim and dragged something across his face. The final shots showed the three Drayfin boys laughing as the Asian boy covered his face with bloodstained hands.

  Gadd froze the slide show and dropped a clear plastic bag onto the table. It contained a Stanley knife. ‘This was recovered from Stephen Ingham’s room, sir. There’s human blood on the blade and none of it is a match for any blood found at the crime scene. It looks like he used it to cut this boy’s face.’

  ‘Happy slapping,’ said Noble. ‘What a shame three of them are dead.’

  Grant nodded. ‘It’s a turf thing. Keep out of our territory or get marked. Gangs like to cut the cheek. There’s more blood.’

  ‘So we have another motive,’ observed Brook. ‘The waters are getting muddier. Good work, Jane. Take DC Cooper and check the hospitals. It shouldn’t be too hard to track this lad down. Everyone not manning the phones hits the streets again.’ Groans followed. ‘I know. But you heard the Chief Super’s briefing. We have more questions for Drayfin’s good citizens. Just think of the overtime.’

  Brook pulled his coat tightly around him. November was underway and at this time of night, with a moonless sky, the estate was dark and forbidding. Every door he and Grant had knocked on had opened only after a lifted curtain and a shout through the door.

  ‘Mrs Patel? DI Brook.’ Brook smiled reassuringly at the face squinting through the inch of open door. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Ah, yes, Inspector.’ Mrs Patel pulled the door open and stood before them in a magnificent gold and purple sari. ‘From two years ago. Hello.’ Her smile faded as she stole a glance at the Wallis house over Brook’s shoulder. ‘How could I forget? Is it about that man loitering outside?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  ‘Thank you. This is DS Grant.’ Brook and Grant stepped over the threshold into the spicy warmth of the brightly decorated hall. Mrs Patel stepped back and pulled a door closed to block out the sound of the family meal.

  ‘You’re eating,’ noted Grant. ‘We can come back.’

  ‘Not at all. I eat afterwards anyway. Helping the police is more important.’

  ‘Thank you. We just want to go over what you told my officer about the suspicious man outside your house. My officer said it was around ten o’clock…’

  ‘No, it was exactly ten o’clock, Inspector. The news was just starting.’

  ‘And what did the man do?’ asked Grant.

  ‘Like I told the other officer, he just stood there. He seemed to be staring across the road for some reason. I didn’t know at the time—’

  ‘Towards the Ingham house?’

  ‘Yes. He seemed to be waiting for something. Or someone.’

  ‘How long was he there?’

  ‘About five minutes.’

  ‘You’re sure it was a man?’ asked Grant.

  ‘As sure as I can be. He looked quite big through the shoulders – like my Sanjay – but he wasn’t tall.’

  ‘And how was he dressed?’

  ‘It was very dark, Inspector. He was dressed all in black or at least very dark clothing, with a balaclava.’

  ‘And which way did he go when he left?’

  ‘To the Ingham house.’ Brook and Grant looked at each other. ‘To the gate, I mean, what there is of it.’ Her voice betrayed a sliver of disgust.

  ‘But he didn’t go in?’

  ‘No. Just tried to peer into the yard … then he walked away.’

  ‘He walked. You didn’t see a car or a bicycle?’ Grant prompted.

  Mrs Patel shook her head. ‘He walked.’

  Brook nodded and signalled Grant to the door. ‘Once again, thank you for your vigilance, Mrs Patel. One more thing.’ He pulled a picture from his coat pocket. ‘Do you know this young man?’ He held up the clearest picture of the young Asian boy they had been able to come up with.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Patel put a bejewelled hand to her mouth. ‘No, I’m afraid not. What are they doing to the poor boy?’

  ‘The last bad thing they’ll ever do to anyone, Mrs Patel,’ said Grant.

  Mrs Patel looked at her, a little startled, then she seemed to nod, satisfied. ‘Good.’

  When they were outside, Brook and Grant exchanged a look. ‘Is there anyone on this estate upset about these murders?’

  ‘Scum in fear, The Reaper’s near,’ Brook replied.

  Chapter Sixteen

  McQuarry eased her chair back and rubbed her neck. She closed her eyes for a second and began to drift off with her arms resting on the wheel. She roused herself and looked at the clock on the dash – five before ten – then glanced across the road at Sorenson’s wrought-iron gates and beyond, down the drive towards the lake.

  The main highway was dark and deserted now. In summer, lakeshore tourists would’ve have been moving around the resort to bars, restaurants and casinos, although most of the traffic would’ve been on the east side of South Lake Tahoe, across the state line. Tahoe was never empty; it was also a winter resort with skiing in several locations around the lake, including Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe itself. But if any time of year could be described as downtime for Tahoe it was this shoulder period between summer and full-blown winter.

  On the California side things were a good deal quieter. Residents were wealthier, their houses grander, and the blending of the architecture with the landscape more thoughtful. But travel into South Lake Tahoe and cross into Nevada, across a road in town, Stateline Avenue, and the high-rise gaudiness of the gambling palaces reached up to the sky the second you hit the sidewalk on other side. South Lake Tahoe was the Jekyll and Hyde of American resorts.

  McQuarry looked at the clock on the dash again. It was Drexler’s shift. She leaned over to wake him but hesitated. Drexler had taken the day shift today while McQuarry had slept at the motel – they alternated each day and took the night shift together. He’d been pushing himself hard these last few weeks. The case had clearly gotten to him. The tenth anniversary of the death of his younger sister Kerry hadn’t helped.

  In 1985 Kerry had been found at the bottom of a ravine near their home in a burned-out car. Drexler’s mother had collapsed at the news and had been in an institution ever since; she hadn’t said a word to anyone from that day to this. A double whammy if ever there was one. McQuarry looked over at her partner. She couldn’t imagine how a person might deal with that. She decided to let him sleep a little longer.

  She opened her window to inhale the pine-scented air and began to shake out a cigarette. She paused over the pack, distracted by a light reflecting on the trees, and turned to see a car travelling from Sorenson’s house towards the highway.

  ‘Mike, we’re up.’

  Drexler let out a deep sigh and looked blearily out of the car. The gates across the highway opened noiselessly and a small black convertible emerged. A blond-haired woman was at the wheel but didn’t even glance towards Drexler and McQuarry.

  The car turned left towards the resort, sweeping its lights across the Chevy. Both Drexler and McQuarry instinctively ducked to avoid the headlights, though their car was easily recognisabl
e as the one that had been parked in the same spot for much of the last two weeks. In that time they had seen Sorenson come and go maybe four times. He hardly ever left the place. People came to him though. His groceries were delivered and a nurse visited three times a week. Apart from that, they hadn’t logged a single visitor to his house since they’d been staking it out. Sorenson was a virtual recluse.

  ‘It’s the nurse,’ said Drexler, sitting up. ‘She didn’t even look over at us,’ he added.

  ‘I told her better not to acknowledge us at all.’ On a solo shift a few days before, McQuarry had reported following the nurse and interviewing her when she stopped for gas. After certain assurances from the FBI agent, the nurse had revealed she was treating Sorenson for a minor lung complaint.

  Drexler nodded. ‘She okay with it?’

  ‘She’s fine, Mike. I told her it was a financial investigation and just to carry on treating him. She’s in no danger but obviously she’s not to mention our interest to Sorenson.’

  Drexler lay back down on his reclined seat.

  McQuarry was halfway down her cigarette when Sorenson’s red Toyota drove through the gates towards the highway a few minutes later. This was the first time Sorenson had left his home at night in the two weeks they’d been watching him. McQuarry tossed her butt into the wet undergrowth and reached for the ignition. Sorenson turned left and, after a suitable interval, McQuarry turned the Chevy across the highway to follow.

  She and Drexler were pleased to see that a slight crack in Sorenson’s driver side taillight meant they could drop back without losing their prey. They tracked the Toyota towards South Lake Tahoe on the Emerald Bay Road, which was technically still the same State Highway 89 that ran past the Ashwell gas station forty miles away.

  On they drove towards Tahoe Airport, passing Fallen Leaf Road, which skirted the lake of the same name, not once nosing above thirty miles per hour.

  ‘Think he’s trying not to lose us, Ed?’