5
Miller kept her focus on the cars ahead, hands holding the steering wheel at ten-to-two.
“Are you all right? You look pale,” Hayes asked her.
Hayes’ concern annoyed her. Pulling up outside the renovated factory outlet, Miller parked, put the handbrake on and switched off the engine. The real reason she couldn’t sleep the previous night: Walker. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. So stupid, she thought. “I’m fine, I’m just tired.”
There was a tent in front of the building, which Miller had grown accustomed to seeing at crime scenes. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
Inside the tent, Miller said hello to Sheila, the pathologist, while changing into the overalls, gloves, face mask and shoe covers. After putting on safety glasses, she was ready. Miller listened to Hayes and Sheila natter, wishing they would hurry up.
Sheila left the tent first. Miller let Hayes go next.
“We’ll take this one room at a time.” Sheila opened the front doors.
Before Miller stepped inside, she glanced up at the sign: Accord. There was no mention of it being a radio station, no mention of the letters F or M.
Miller walked into a hallway with four rooms connected to it, two either side. Sheila opened the door to the first room on the left, nosed for a couple of seconds then backed out.
There were two recording studios on the premises, complete with glass partitions separating the host from the guests, or whoever else sat the opposing side. Never having seen the inside of a radio station before, Miller found it fascinating that presenters would actually know what all the buttons were for. There were so many of them.
Back outside, in the hallway, there were two more rooms, one on the left and one on the right. Both had brown wooden doors with little signs on that Miller couldn’t read from that distance. They looked like name signs.
The front door behind her opened and noise filled the hallway. Miller turned to find a good-looking guy in his fifties fighting with uniforms to get inside.
“Please, I have to see my husband!” The man dressed in a brown suit wrestled with her colleagues until Hayes stepped forward and spoke.
“Sir, you can’t be in here. This is a crime scene.”
It was heartbreaking listening to him grovel to be let in. The man identified himself as the business owner, Colin Fisher’s husband, Henry Curtis. Miller stood back. She left it up to Hayes to handle the heartbroken husband.
Feeling bad for him, she walked with Sheila to the rear of the building, where the signs on the doors indicated they were dressing rooms, and where the murders took place. “We’ll be through here when you’re ready,” she shouted to Hayes, who struggled to keep the husband away.
The furthest room was what appeared to be the cutting and editing room. A man sat on a swivel chair, slumped over a desk that held a bank of monitors and equipment used to edit audio footage. They were covered with the man’s blood.
Miller stepped up to the man and peered down at the back of his head, where a huge hole showed her where the suspects stood when they shot him. The man had headphones on, so must not have heard the suspect enter. “It appears to be a single gunshot to the back of the head.” She looked to Sheila for confirmation.
After filming the scene with a small camera, the pathologist asked her to help move the victim. When they lifted his head, a portion of his face was a bloody, pulpy mess, where the bullet had exited. “I concur. I can’t see any other entry wounds, can you?”
Miller saw that a monitor in front of the man was broken. “It went straight through him, into that.” She took out a pen and poked about in the remains of the monitor, looking for the projectile. “This must be the producer. Inspector Gillan said his name’s Kurt something.”
Hayes stood beside Miller. “What have we got?”
“Single gunshot to the back of the head by the looks of it. I’m not sure how this guy didn’t see the intruder coming in. It’s not a huge room, and the door’s in his peripheral vision. Personally, I’d see that door open.”
“Maybe he was too engrossed in what he was doing.”
Miller nodded. “Maybe.”
Hayes looked down at the slumped body. “I’ve checked, and the building doesn’t have any cameras outside. How can this place be so high-tech, yet not have any cameras either inside or outside. We’d best pray the neighbours do.”
6
From what Miller speculated, Hayes agreed. It would appear that the suspect had entered without the victim noticing. How, was anyone’s guess. Perhaps Sheila was right: the victim was glued to the monitor. He had headphones on. “We know his name’s Kurt something.”
Miller took the victim’s wallet out of his trousers. “Austin. Kurt Austin. He’s local. Born in 1964. He has an NHS exemption card, and four, no five credit cards. Oh, and a business card for here. He calls himself a producer.”
Hayes took the card from her partner. “Right, we need to find out as much as we can about him anyway. Any of these victims could be the intended target, Colin Fisher, Brandy Reid, or this poor guy.” Hayes checked the corners of the room for cameras.
“Shall we move on to the next one?” Sheila, the pathologist, walked out of the room.
“With three victims, how are we going to find the suspect?” Miller asked.
Hayes was thinking the same. In all her time on the force, she’d never investigated a triple murder before. With three victims, she wondered who the intended victim was herself. If she were a betting person, she would put her money on it being the star, Colin Fisher, but she might be wrong.
Not that she knew anything about Brandy Reid. The co-presenter might have had a past that caught up with her; it could be an ex-boyfriend, or jilted lover for all she knew. It was folly to suspect Fisher. She hadn’t even seen the body yet, and already she believed he was the target. “We’re going to need help whittling down the suspect pool. We can’t handle this case alone.”
Allowing Miller to go ahead, she followed her partner to the second crime scene. The first thing she noticed: the blood, lots of it, over the carpet, bed covers, everywhere. Lying naked, her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling, Brandy Reid showed off her wares.
There were stab marks on her chest and stomach, together with a bullet wound in her chest and forehead. The brown carpet beneath her was red. Hayes made a note of where the shooter could have stood, although, judging by the mess below, it looked like Miss Reid had been sexually molested before they shot her.
“One in the chest and one in the head. It couldn’t be any clearer if you ask me. This was a professional hit, but the knife wounds don’t fit the MO of an assassin.” Miller crouched and studied said blade wounds. “What kind of hitman does this?”
“It puts her in the front-running, though, doesn’t it?” They needed to get lucky on this one, or it would become a drawn-out investigation. Hayes didn’t want that. “We’ll see what trace the SOCOs come up with, but I’ve changed my mind. I think Miss Reid might be the target. Look at those stab marks, how deep they are. Whoever did this knew her intimately.”
The pathologist nodded grimly. “Poor woman. No one deserves that.” She shook her head, turned to the door. “Shall we?”
“After you.” Hayes followed Sheila out of Brandy’s dressing room, across the hall to Colin Fisher’s. When Hayes entered, she couldn’t help but notice Colin’s dead body sprawled on the blood-soaked carpet in front of the door to his en suite shower room.
Hayes studied the body. “A single shot to the chest and another to the forehead. I’m definitely thinking an execution.”
SOCOs walked in and started filming the crime scene. The room was suddenly a hive of activity, with white-clad professionals marking the room, bagging evidence, dusting for prints and recording everything. “Let’s do a walk-through,” Hayes suggested.
Miller, Sheila and Hayes strolled out of the dressing room to the front of the building, to the hallway between the two recording studios. The radio presenter’s husba
nd stood inside the doors, still trying to get past security. “It’s all right. We’ll take it from here, sergeant.”
“Make sure he doesn’t get past.” After whispering to her taller partner, Hayes met Henry Curtis at the front doors. “Is there somewhere we can go and talk privately, Mr Curtis?” Her question was greeted with a nod. She followed him to a small conference room at the front of the building.
There was room for twelve people to sit around the oblong table. Hayes took Henry’s arm and walked him to the chair at the head of the table. “Please, have a seat, Mr Curtis. You’re in shock.”
“When can I see him?” Henry’s eyes were red, puffy.
Hayes sat next to him. She reached out for his hand. “We’ll need you to identify him formally at a later time, Mr Curtis. I’m afraid we can’t allow you through the crime scene; you may contaminate it, which will make it harder to apprehend the person responsible.”
Henry bowed his head and sobbed.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Realising they weren’t going to get anything useful out of him, she stood and nodded to the female uniform in the doorway, who gently took the owner out of the building. “We’ll chat to Fisher’s husband soon,” she said to Miller.
All through the exchange, Miller remained quiet. Hayes squeezed her partner’s shoulder and attracted the pathologist’s attention. In the hallway, she started the walk-through. “Is this where we think they came from?”
“I noticed a fire exit at the rear, but I can’t see the suspect gaining access through there. It’s more than likely the victims left the front doors unlocked, isn’t it? The emergency exit’s a push bar to open sort, notoriously difficult to unlock from the outside.”
“So we have our point of entry sorted.” When she glanced behind her, a SOCO was busy dusting the handle and glass for fingerprints. “Let’s walk in their shoes for a minute. They’re probably going to check the recording studios for activity first, right? Like we did when we arrived. Which means we need all door handles, light switches and surfaces checked for prints. Let’s assume they’re professionals, and judging by their MO, they’re assassins, they’re going to be wearing gloves.”
“They’ll take glove prints as well. We’ve caught a number of suspects using their gloves. And they’ll dust for footprints. So we have every area covered.”
Hayes agreed with Sheila. She started their walk-through. “So, let’s assume they’ve checked all the recording studios, if they have come in through the front doors, they’re going to come to the editing room last. If they came in through the fire exit, the editing suite will be the first room they come to.”
Miller walked in that direction. “They walk over here, find the producer listening with headphones on. And when he doesn’t look over, they stand behind him, boom, one to the back of the head, and he slumps over his desk.”
“Right, then the suspect backs out, and strolls to either his left or right.” Hayes had to decide which victim they killed next, Fisher or Reid? “I don’t know which one they visited first. Brandy had stab and bullet wounds.”
“And she was molested, which adds time,” Sheila pointed out.
“The two guys were taken care of quickly, cleanly, no fuss, but the suspect spent time with Brandy Reid. I don’t know about you two, but I’d put my money on her being our target. What do you think?”
Miller nodded. “It makes sense. Are you thinking jilted boyfriend, or crazed fan? I noticed she was about to snort a line of coke. It’s on her dresser. She might have had an altercation with her dealer. Who knows!”
“And that’s what we’re going to find out.” Hayes didn’t want to focus on only one victim in case they were off the mark. “We’re going to divide the work up evenly. I don’t think we can count on Inspector Gillan or Travis to help us on this, though. Something tells me they’re going to have their hands full with Helsey and backtracking on the skip body case.”
7
Charlotte Edwards busied herself in her kitchen. Her husband, Samuel, loved her baking, especially her signature chocolate cake. With flour down her apron, she slid the risen sponge off the oven tray and carried it over to the counter with her heatproof gloves, leaving it to cool on a metal rack.
Spying the clock above her, she made a note that it was time for her workout. With her two daughters at school, she loved her morning ritual.
Bar baking, she had a routine which consisted of getting the girls ready for school, then she would give the house a once over with the hoover before doing her circuit in their home gymnasium. After a shower she would read the newspaper, followed by a spot of lunch, sometimes out with friends, or she would provide for them. After lunch she would read for an hour or so before picking up her girls. It didn’t get much better than that.
Upstairs, she stripped off and changed into her black jog bottoms and white strappy vest. First: her bike ride to warm up. A good fifteen-minute workout, starting slow, working up to a mad frenzy at the end. If she didn’t finish the cycle ride dripping she had not worked hard enough.
Catching her breath, Charlotte sat on her rowing machine, and when ready, began the familiar motion, back and forth with her arms. Her knees bent and straightened with the motion. The front of the machine whirred and blew air over her.
After fifteen minutes of frantic rowing, sweat dripping down her back and chest, she stood, her knees weak, and picked up her resistance bands, which in her opinion were the epitome of inventiveness because she could workout anywhere in the world with them. She didn’t require a gym subscription to build her core.
As per her weekly schedule, that morning she focused on her upper body and core, using three bands together, as was her level of experience. She didn’t need a full-length mirror in front of her to show the gains. Charlotte could see and feel them herself. Over the course of a year, she had lost two stones and burned off fat to produce a tidy, taut physique.
There was nothing she relished more than meeting her friends for lunches. They were all so complimentary about her looks, and she noticed random men couldn’t walk past her without turning their heads. Of course, she did enjoy wearing short skirts and small tops that showed off her new abs.
Her husband, Samuel, the most gorgeous black man she ever laid eyes on, had a lot to do with her new trimmer figure. It was only fair to make herself the best she could be. He looked after himself by going to the gym four times a week. Together they made a handsome couple, everyone said so.
Their union had produced two gorgeous daughters. Charlotte loved them both so much, everything from their milk chocolate skin, to their inquisitive, naughty natures. Yeah, life was pretty perfect in many ways.
Samuel earned an obscene amount as a stockbroker in the city. The money was so much, she feared the bubble would burst one day. Until then, she would enjoy the high life, enjoy the six-bedroom house in a highly desired postcode just outside the capital, and four cars parked on their gravelly driveway. She would relish the three holidays a year and exclusive romantic getaways he surprised her with periodically.
After her resistance bands workout, she stripped out of her damp training gear and stepped under the shower head, soaking up the lukewarm jets. Twenty minutes later, she dried herself, and as she dressed into her lunch attire, cursed at the time. “Bugger!”
She flew out of the front door, into her red convertible Mini Cooper, and after opening the home’s gates, raced along the A road towards her lunch date. Using her hands-free mobile, Charlotte dialled her best friend’s number. “I’m running, maybe five minutes late, honey. Go grab a table and I’ll see you at the club soon.”
Charlotte struck it lucky with finding Samuel. Unlike her elder brother, Richard, she was not blessed with an intelligence level that made MENSA members jealous. No, she made it through school with grades that allowed her to enter hairdressing college. From there she graduated and started work at a local salon.
After ten years of hard graft, she decided to go solo and style hair from clien
ts’ homes. She loved her old job, but she preferred her new, carefree, lady-of-leisure lifestyle. Yeah, these days she didn’t have the stress of work; she felt so much more in control of her own destiny. Amazing the joys money brought.
Life would be so much easier if she had been born an only child. Ever since she could remember, she had played referee to her brothers. Richard, the eldest and most intelligent of the three of them, wanted everything done his way. Their parents doted on him, which upset Colin, her younger brother. Growing up, Colin was blamed for everything that went wrong. It grated on her nerves, and helped push her sensitive younger brother away.
She wished her family life wasn’t so complicated. More than anything, though, she wished Colin had not found drugs. They changed him from the quiet, sensitive lad he was at school, to the narcissistic liar, and violent thug he became.
Colin and Richard almost came to blows after Colin beat their dad up. The only reason her elder brother didn’t go through with it was because he didn’t know what kind of state his brother was in. Being a heroin addict, Colin could have had any combination of needle-related diseases.
They were the bad days, though, back when Richard and Colin weren’t on speaking terms. It was different now. Two stints of rehab, and meeting Henry had done wonders for Colin’s lifestyle. Free of drugs, her younger brother was a delight to be around.
It took Charlotte years to convince Richard to speak to Colin. Finally, they spoke their first words to each other on Colin and Henry’s wedding day two years earlier. Charlotte cried when she witnessed them hug. They weren’t best of friends after, but at least they were on talking terms.
Pulling in at the customer car park of the Roehampton Club, she found a space near the main building and parked up. Wearing a strappy vest and short skirt that showed off her long legs, Charlotte fiddled with her hair, using the reflection in the driver’s window, before heading towards the country club.
The Hard Way Page 3
