Be My Girl

by Tony Hutchinson

  What was the slang for prison officers? He couldn’t remember. They wouldn’t protect him. They’d turn a blind eye. They couldn’t ‘do’ him themselves but they wouldn’t lift a finger to stop anyone else. Even if they wanted to protect him, they couldn’t keep him safe 24 hours a day. Screws. That’s it. That’s what they’re called.

  He’d read books about fellow prisoners spitting in the food of people like him, or throwing scalding hot tea in their face. He could be beaten, stabbed, or slashed. They could get him on the wing or in the showers. He wouldn’t survive. They probably wouldn’t kill him; but mentally they would break him. Or maybe they would kill him. What would one of those ‘lifers’ have to lose?

  His thoughts turned from one institution to another, from prison to the police. How had they got him? He had been so careful. Another 48 hours and he would have had Parker. Making love to a copper, especially the one hunting him, might have given him some kudos in prison and maybe, just maybe, made his life a little more bearable inside.

  On the outside, in the girls’ homes, he had been in control, but in there, in jail, he would be powerless. He would be stalked, he would be a victim, and they wouldn’t care whether he enjoyed it or not. He had always cared about his girls enjoying it.

  The girls had no idea that he was coming, but he knew, in prison, they’d be coming for him, and they’d be coming for him every day. He squeezed his arms around his knees, like the bereaved clinging to a deceased loved one, and started to weep.

  What had he done wrong? All he wanted was a girlfriend, to be normal, whatever that was. It wasn’t his fault that he was invisible to every woman he came across. He was where he was because of women everywhere. Why couldn’t he get a girlfriend? Parker had stopped him. She hadn’t been to bed with him but she might have been ‘the one’.

  He stared at the toilet, and the parallels between him and it were shockingly apparent; the unnaturally low toilet was in the open, in view of anyone who happened to look through the hatch in the cell door. It had no seat, no lid.

  Exposed, low, incomplete; it could have been his epitaph.

  The freezing temperatures combined with patchy fog made driving treacherous, and the airwaves of both police and local radio were full of reports of accidents.

  Sam sat in silence in the passenger seat, her mind doing its best to concentrate on anything but Dave’s revelation. For a moment she remembered her Royal Yachting Association Day Skipper theory exam, and that this type of fog was known as radiation fog, which unless it was burned off by the sun or blown by a strong wind, would be there all day.

  The slight distraction caused by her basic weather knowledge didn’t last long.

  Ed broke the silence. ‘We don’t know if it’s your key, and even if it is, he can’t get to you now.’

  Sam was looking straight ahead out of the windscreen. On the verge of tears, she bit her lip, and spoke, once she had killed the sob trying to break from her throat. ‘I was on his list, Ed. I might have been next. He could have been coming for me tonight.’

  Ed could see the tears flowing down her cheeks from the corner of his left eye, but he didn’t turn his head; the last thing either of them needed this morning was a crash.

  ‘I know it’s tough, Sam. It’s hard to comprehend, but whatever he was, or wasn’t going to do, he can’t do anything now. We can all think of ‘what if’ scenarios, but we’ve got him now.’

  He knew he was floundering, a man wading through the syrup of sensitivity, wrestling with his inability to emotionally reach out to her. He recalled doing his best to reassure his niece, but he had been as successful then as he was now. Emotional intelligence wasn’t his strongest characteristic, and although he tried, his wife had once told him she had stepped in puddles with more depth. He reverted to what he did best, thinking practically, wondering where Sam could sleep tonight. It was too early to suggest anything to her yet, but he was considering asking her to stay at his house. Perhaps Sue would do a better job of reassuring her than he could. Perhaps Sue would be happier if Sam was in their house, rather than him being at Sam’s.

  ‘I could have ended up like Louise,’ Sam said, her voice almost childlike.

  ‘Now come on,’ Ed responded, his tone admonishing like a parent reprimanding a sulky youngster. ‘Neither of us are convinced the rapist and the killer are the same person. I understand what we’ve been told is shocking, especially for you, but let’s not run away with ourselves here. The bottom line is this: even if it is your key, he can’t get to you. Yes, you might have been on his list. Yes, he might have been coming for you tonight. But guess what, we got him first! He’s locked up, and even if he has a plan of the inside of your house, he’s not coming. He’ll not be going anywhere for a long time, maybe never.’

  He let her digest his words.

  ‘Sam, listen to me. We have to go into his house. We have to look at everything he’s got, and I’m sorry, but you need to remember who you are. Everyone in that house will be looking at you to see if there is any reaction. If you ever needed to remind people you have balls of steel, it’s now.’

  His words pulled her back from the abyss of self-pity. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, sat upright in the passenger seat, and recomposed herself.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, turning her head sideways to look at Ed. ‘He can’t do anything to me now. Let’s make sure we nail this bastard. Our motivation should be the victims he terrified. Those poor girls, waking in the dark and he’s there in their bedroom.’

  Her voice trailed off. She sighed, turned her head, and stared straight ahead.

  Ed waited for her to speak.

  ‘You know, at one point I thought he was ‘The Puppeteer’, pulling our strings. Not now. We’re pulling his strings. We’re the puppet masters.’

  ‘Too right! Puppeteers, Musketeers!’ Ed said as they pulled up outside Spence’s house, skin stretching across his protruding knuckles as he squeezed his hands around the steering wheel. ‘Too fucking right!’

  Sam threw open the door, scrambled out on to the pavement, and slammed the door behind her with such force the passenger side of the car was still vibrating as she marched up the driveway.

  Ed closed his door, ran around the bonnet, and walked briskly after her, pointing the vehicle’s remote over his shoulder, locking the car.

  He followed her into the house, took a deep breath and straightened his tie. This could be difficult. He didn’t want Sam breaking down in front of the search team.

  They followed the team co-ordinator, a uniform sergeant, into the kitchen.

  ‘How’s it going, Ian?’ Sam asked.

  Ian Robinson was a highly regarded search co-ordinator.

  ‘Good. Look at what we’ve got so far,’ he said, pointing at various bags on the table. ‘There might be a bit more at the allotment, but there’s plenty here.’

  On top of the filthy, chunky, cream painted table, with its thick pine-turned legs, were evidence bags holding items of property recovered from the house.

  Sam picked up three clear bags and the faces of Kelly Jones, Amber Dalton, and Danielle Banks stared back at her as she shuffled the bags like a pack of cards, examining each driving licence in turn.

  A Swiss Army knife, blades retracted, which had been found in a rucksack in the garage, was now in a toughened plastic cylindrical tube.

  The rucksack itself, which Sam and Ed were told contained an empty carrier bag, was in a brown paper bag, and inside another brown bag was a ski mask recovered from the main bedroom. Anything that might sweat in plastic bags, clothes included, was always put in paper bags, to avoid the potential loss of forensic evidence.

  Sam silently acknowledged the professionalism of the search team.

  A mobile phone, discovered in a tea caddy in the kitchen, was in special packaging designed to act as a signal inhibitor, ensuring that nothing was received by, or lost from, the phone after its recovery.

  The moleskin notebook was in an unsealed clear ba
g. Ian Robinson suspected the two senior detectives would want to look at it as soon as they arrived.

  Sam and Ed stood shoulder to shoulder and put on blue surgical gloves. Ed removed the notebook from the bag.

  Bent over the table, Ed could feel Sam’s breath on his neck as he turned the pages, pausing on each, reading the title, the name of the victim, and the accompanying text, which contained so much personal information about each victim, demonstrating the extraordinary level of pre-planning undertaken by its author.

  The book would be examined in greater detail later, but notwithstanding the evidence it contained, Sam’s inability to stand still, like an impatient commuter waiting for a bus, had nothing to do with euphoria or excitement and everything to do with dread.

  The only thought in her head – ‘am I in it?’

  Ed knew what she was thinking. He hoped she didn’t appear in the book. He hoped the key had nothing to do with her house, nothing more than the bastard’s fantasy, putting her name on a key that would no more open her door, than it would open his camper van. Hoped she didn’t have to endure any more shit. Hoped the telephone call, the flowers, her name on a label attached to a key of no significance, was as far as it went.

  He flinched as she squeezed his forearm, their eyes focussing on the page.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Samantha Parker

  Tall long legs great arse

  Policewoman detective

  36 pegswood close green door like mine

  Audi A5 4.2 quattro sport bright blue never in garage

  Never seen other cars on drive

  Doesn’t go out at night always in after work

  Drinks wine. In big glasses

  Mon teatime

  saw her on tele and in paper she looks just as sexy as in real life

  sexy voice

  got hard looking at her

  tried to think what her bedroom looked like

  I went upstairs and soon come all over my bed thinking of her

  would LOVE to pull her hair while I am inside her from behind

  Ed gritted his teeth, feeling his skin redden as Sam’s fingers applied more pressure on his arm.

  ‘Look, shall we read this later?’ he asked, allowing the hand holding the book to drop to his side.

  ‘No, I’m okay. Let’s read the rest.’

  ‘Are you sure? We can do this at the office.’

  ‘Ed,’ she said, releasing his arm, the tone of her voice conveying a message he’d heard more times than he could remember from the two women he lived with, the tone where his name was no longer a name, but a galactic word for don’t argue. Men are from Mars. He raised the book.

  Tues night

  drove to Sams sat outside and rang her on special mobile

  sat in car with my trousers down. Started pulling as soon as her phone rang she answered and I pulled harder. Her voice so sexy asking me what I was I thinking of us doing

  then she asked me to tell her what I was doing I never answered just pulled faster saw landing light go on and saw her at window

  come all over steering wheel

  ‘He was outside, then,’ Sam said quietly, turning away from Ed. ‘Thought so.’

  Ed put his hands on her shoulders, gently turned her around to face him, his voice calm. ‘He’s locked up now, Sam. The piece of shit can write what he wants. The bastard’s finished. Look, let’s do this later. We’ve got the gist.’

  ‘No. Let’s do it now, read the rest. Let’s get it over with. See what else he’s written.’

  Wed morning

  At Sams watched cleaner leave.

  found key under pot

  Drove to northallerton. The market was on and one of the stalls copied the key. Drove back and put hers back under the plant pot. Bought flowers in northallerton and left them on her step, put cricket ball in them. That way I knew she would know they were off me. Wish I could have seen her face but I will ask her if she liked them when we are in bed.

  Ed put the notebook back in the bag. ‘We’ve got him. We’ve got the bastard. With all that evidence we could get anyone off the street to interview him.’

  Sam shuddered when she thought how easy it had been for Spence to get a copy of her key, remembering that day she had left it under a plant pot for her cleaner. Stupid! She began mentally questioning her habits. How had she been totally unaware of Spence? He had built up an intelligence profile of her the police would have been proud of. He must have watched her. He knew she drank wine; even knew she drank from large glasses. He had got so close to her. How had she been so careless? Why had she never sensed or seen him?

  Christ, she was supposed to have an eye for detail! She could understand the other victims not noticing him, but her, a police officer, trusted with investigating major crime.

  She rationalised he was able to watch her because she, like the majority, thought of home as her safe haven. Most of us look forward to getting home, Sam reasoned, and our safety antennae switches to standby mode when we get there. In that respect she was no different to the other victims, and she would have to accept her own fallibility, her own shortcomings.

  But never again would she allow that to happen. Never.

  Ed suggested two members of the search team go to Sam’s house and try the key in her door, maintaining what officers knew as ‘evidential continuity’. Ian Robinson nodded his head, raising his vibrating telephone to his ear at the same time.

  Ending the call, he told them a CSI was en route to the allotment.

  ‘Looks like there might be burnt clothing in the remnants of a recent fire,’ he said. ‘They’ve also found a teapot buried in the ground containing newspaper cuttings detailing the attacks.’

  ‘Tremendous,’ Ed said. ‘But why hide the press cuttings in the allotment yet keep everything else here?’

  ‘No idea,’ Sam answered. ‘Maybe because he is involved intimately with the stuff here, in a way he’s not with the newspapers.’

  ‘Yeah, that could fit. He writes the notes, that’s a living document, something always being added to it. He steals the licences, looks at their photos. He needs the phone. But the newspapers, they’re other people’s thoughts. An archive.’

  Sam nodded and started to walk out of the kitchen.

  ‘Come on then. We’ve seen what we need to here. Thanks Ian,’ she said.

  Back at the car, they were both lost in their own thoughts. As they opened the doors, Ed spoke, looking at Sam across the roof.

  ‘It’s all coming together nicely.’

  Sam’s face looked drawn, even when the hint of a nervous smile reached her eyes.

  ‘Yeah. He’s where he deserves to be. Thank God we’ve got him, and I don’t mean that because it looks like I was next. We needed to stop him because he wasn’t going to stop until he was caught. He would have just kept raping at will. Now we just need to find out for sure if he’s a killer as well.’

  They slid into their seats.

  ‘I was thinking about that walking down the path,’ Ed said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘If Spence is our killer, where’s the reference to Louise in his notebook?’

  ‘Shit. I never thought of that,’ Sam said, slowly tilting her head until it touched the headrest. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

  ‘I was so busy wanting to know if and what he’d written about me, I wasn’t thinking like a detective. Thank God you were.’ She paused. ‘You know I haven’t had a cigarette for four years but I could do with one now.’

  Ed pursed his lips and nodded.

  ‘I fancy a good drink, but neither of us is going to get what we want. Not today anyway.’

  ‘And we’ll be working all weekend,’ Sam said before she took another deep breath. ‘So who the hell’s killed Louise?’

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ Ed said. ‘It might just take us longer than we thought.’

  Sam jerked forward and fastened her seat belt.

  ‘If Stewart gets his way, we might not h
ave that time. I promise you one thing, though: you and I are going to get absolutely hammered when this is sorted.’

  ‘Now that does sound like a plan,’ Ed grinned. ‘And you’re paying!’

  ‘You’re joking. I’ll need a mortgage to buy all your drink.’

  They both laughed. The tension had been released; the tension that is always there, suppressed and hidden, out of sight and beneath the surface, but flowing through the arteries like an underground stream. When Louise’s killer was in custody, they would blow off steam, a pressure cooker with the valve removed, but until then, that particular valve would remain tightly in place.

  ‘He’ll not take you, or us, off this one,’ Ed said. ‘The rapes are sorted, so it’s natural for us all to jump across to the murder, linked or not. Stewart’s all piss and wind.’

  Sam, Ed, and Dave were all sat in her office. Brian Banks had been able to recall about seven people who were in the bar on the Wednesday night, and Ed was confident the team would eventually identify everyone who was in there.

  ‘Dave, when they’re being spoken to, have them all photographed in the clothes they were wearing in the pub,’ Ed said.

  Dave Johnson’s eyebrows came together, and his tanned forehead concertinaed, his face looking older.

  ‘It’ll allow us to identify them by their clothing if people don’t know their names,’ Ed explained. ‘You know… ‘my view was blocked by a guy in a red sweater’… that type of thing.’

  Dave nodded and his brow sprang back, as he took in the relevance of Ed’s request.

  ‘Good idea,’ Sam said.

  Dave looked at his notes. ‘The search teams are on their way back to the office with the exhibits. As well as the documents and phone, they’ve taken possession of three Adidas tracksuits, two blue and one black,’ he said.

  ‘The burnt clothing at the allotment,’ Ed said. ‘If that’s what it is, Spence might have been replacing the tracksuits he’s worn during the attacks with new ones. They’d be forensically clean if they were seized.’