Cold Kill

by David Lawrence

  ‘It was,’ Stella told him. ‘So far as I understand it.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘Listen, he’s just a baby. What can he do?’

  The squad room at Paddington Green was overheated and the DI in charge, Steve Boston, looked half asleep. Boston was carrying a lot too much weight: a roll of chins, a belly into his lap, pouchy cheeks. He rasped when he breathed and seemed to need to speak in short sentences. ‘We matched the clothing,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t difficult.’

  ‘What’s your reading of him?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Thrill-killer.’

  ‘Has he said much?’

  ‘Brief statement. I thought I’d leave him to you. For the time being.’

  ‘Brief statement saying what?’

  ‘Saying pretty much fuck all.’

  ‘Fingerprints and forensics?’

  ‘Taken prints. Emailed as attachments. Someone in your team called Marilyn Hayes. Sound right?’ Stella nodded. ‘Forensics whenever, but there’s no doubt it’s him. No cross.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your victim...’ Boston looked at a report on his desk. ‘A cross was taken, cross on a gold chain.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We didn’t find it.’

  ‘Yet,’ Stella cautioned.

  ‘It wasn’t with the other trophies. We’re still searching the place, sure.’

  ‘Where’s the wife?’

  ‘She’s there, at the house, showing them what’s what.’ Boston gave over to just breathing for a moment, then said, ‘All yours.’

  Martin Cotter smiled at Stella as she walked into the interview room. He smiled at Harriman as he sat in a chair by the door. He smiled to himself when Stella asked him about Valerie Blake and Sophie Simms.

  He said, ‘I don’t know them. I saw their pictures in the paper, but I don’t know them.’

  ‘You killed two women and you attacked three others.’

  Cotter looked at the tape. He leaned forward slightly, talking for the tape. ‘I was somewhere else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The first one you mentioned. The other officers asked about her and about Sophie Simms. When she was killed –’

  ‘Valerie Blake –’

  ‘Yes: Blake. When she was killed, I was in Manchester at a wedding.’ He glanced at the tape again, speaking clearly, his North Country accent modulating because he was keen to be understood. ‘I think you’ll find,’ he said, ‘that I didn’t kill anyone.’

  Harriman laughed and Cotter glanced up sharply, his eyes dark. Stella said, ‘Bloodstained underwear was found in your workroom, Martin. It matches the clothing taken from five victims.’

  Cotter shrugged. ‘Not me,’ he said.

  ‘What’s not you?’

  ‘The clothing.’

  ‘It was there.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘Your wife found it.’

  ‘So she says.’

  Stella thought she could see the shape of Cotter’s defence already. ‘What about Sophie Simms?’ she asked.

  ‘I was in London, but I wasn’t there. I was in a pub.’

  ‘Local pub? Would people have recognized you – friends?’

  ‘No friends. Someone might remember. I was just drinking. They had the telly on. Sports channel.’

  Cotter was tall, even sitting down, and slim-hipped. He had fair hair, thinning but worn long; a Celtic band tattoo circled his right forearm. When his fist clenched and unclenched, the tattoo muscle-jumped.

  ‘Your wife thinks you killed them,’ Harriman said. ‘She came to us. Did you know that? She gave you up, Martin.’

  ‘There’s your problem,’ Cotter said. He was smiling again. ‘She’s fucking mad, didn’t you know? She likes crack.’ He chuckled. ‘She’s cracked. She’s having a crack-up.’

  DI Boston was getting through the day on whisky and water, a one-to-five mix, so a low-octane sort of a day. He set his glass down on a crowded in-tray and said, ‘I’m right, aren’t I? Thrill-killer. That’s how we’ve got him pegged.’

  ‘What did his statement say?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Says I didn’t do it. God knows why, he’s got no chance.’

  ‘He thinks he has. He’s going to say his wife put the bloodstained clothes in his workroom and that she’s nuts – out of her mind on crack.’

  Boston looked startled. ‘You’re kidding me. The underwear belonged to those girls. There’s positive ID.’

  Harriman said, ‘Yeah, sure. But the point he’s going to make is that he’s not the only person in the house.’

  ‘He’ll say the wife did it?’

  Harriman shrugged. ‘It might not go like that. He’ll say he doesn’t know anything about the clothes. So if it’s not him, it must be her.’

  ‘Or,’ Stella said, ‘someone she knows. Someone who’s persuaded her to fit him up. The real killer.’

  Boston closed his eyes and breathed, rasp, rasp, rasp. Maybe he was picturing the courtroom scene, a clever brief, a jury full of frowns. Juries were a notorious wild card. When he opened his eyes again, he asked, ‘How clever does he seem to you?’

  ‘Clever,’ Stella said. ‘There ought to be no way out, but he looked and he’s hit on something. Listen,’ she added, ‘can you hold back on a press statement?’

  ‘For a while, I suppose. Why?’

  ‘It might help us.’

  ‘If he’d admitted to the killings, it would be difficult. The press are all over us on this one. But he’s holding out, so there’s more work to be done. We’ll sit on it for as long as we can.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Stella said.

  Boston took a sip of weak whisky. He had a thought and brightened. ‘DNA,’ he said.

  ‘If she can plant the clothing,’ Harriman observed, ‘she can plant his DNA. Hairs, saliva… semen, obviously.’

  Boston walked them to the door; Stella could hear his thighs chafing and the thready breath in his chest. She said, ‘Know what I think? Revenge gave him inspiration. If he’d had some bad luck, if the clothes had come to light a different way, if someone else had shopped him, maybe he’d’ve caved in. But it was his wife. Maybe he hates her, maybe not; either way it’s betrayal. Also – and here’s the trick – she’s close enough to him to have a motive. He can see that. So he turned the thing round and made her the target.’

  Boston stopped at the squad-room door, breathing like a runner, lit a cigarette and inhaled hard.

  Harriman said, ‘Marriage really is a two-way street.’

  Boston didn’t laugh. He said, ‘Merry fucking Christmas.’

  If it wasn’t crack, it was certainly something.

  Roseanne Cotter sat in the living room of what lawyers like to call the marital home. The house was part of a cramped terrace and the rooms were small enough without Stella, Harriman and three detectives from Paddington Green being there. Roseanne sat on a chair, facing them, as if being interviewed for a job. The job of witness for the prosecution. She was jumpy and sweating; she picked at loose skin on her fingers; she never looked at anyone for more than a second or two. If smoking had been a spectator sport, she would have been up among the medals. And whatever it was that she used, she needed some now. She wasn’t talking. She was too strung out to talk. She coughed through her smoking and cried a little and shook her head as if contradicting their thoughts. The day was drawing in, dusk seeming to gather in the bare branches of roadside trees visible through the narrow window.

  Finally, she said, ‘I want to talk to her.’

  Stella was the only woman in the room. She looked at the others but no one moved, then Harriman said, ‘Could be the only way.’ As if seeking a compromise, he added, ‘Leave the tape running.’

  The men went into the kitchen and made coffee. One of the Paddington Green cops went out to his car and brought back a half bottle of Scotch. Harriman accepted a drink, then went down to Martin Cotter’s workshop and sat among the rows of carefully arranged, gleaming tools and
wondered about the lives of ordinary folk.

  Stella said, ‘Have you got what you need?’ Roseanne nodded. Stella said, ‘Okay.’

  She went to the window and looked out while Roseanne took out her gear and jacked up. A drawer closing was the cue to turn round. Roseanne was smoking a fresh cigarette. She still looked jumpy, but she didn’t look like a woman incapable of speech.

  ‘He says he was in Manchester at a wedding –’ Stella gave the day and date. ‘A girl was killed on that day.’

  ‘Valerie Blake,’ Roseanne said. She drew hard on her cigarette. ‘He’s right. That’s where we were. It was the others, not her.’

  ‘A girl called Sophie Simms,’ Stella said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. The others.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Roseanne got up and left the room. Stella picked up the cassette-recorder and followed her upstairs to the bedroom. There was no chair, so she sat on the bed. Roseanne went to a dressing table, opened the bottom drawer and reached under the sheets and pillowcases for a folder. It was full of news clippings. She spread them out on the bed.

  ‘The others,’ she said. ‘These. These were his. I didn’t know what it was at first, then I worked out the dates. The last three: I was sure of them. It was the way he acted. The third one, I was certain about her. See, I’d found the things he took off them, yeah? – took off the first two. It didn’t take much working out, you know, all the blood and such. And I remembered the way he was when he came in. I’d never seen him like it except once.’

  ‘How was he? How could you tell?’

  ‘Sexed up. Laughing. He’d had some drink too. But he was laughing, yeah? like he couldn’t stop, and he was after me.’ She glanced at the bed and Stella got up quickly, as if something had nudged her.

  ‘You can vouch for the wedding in Manchester?’

  ‘Vouch?’

  ‘You’re certain.’

  ‘Me and all the other guests. It was his niece.’

  ‘Okay.’ Stella hesitated, then said, ‘It’s going to get bad.’

  ‘I had to tell them. What could I do?’ Suddenly, and for the first time, she looked close to tears. ‘What could I do – go on living with him? Go on reading the papers and checking the dates?’

  ‘You did the right thing, but it’s going to get bad.’

  ‘As long as I can get my stuff.’

  ‘Are you registered?’ Roseanne shook her head. ‘Okay. Tell them. They need you. They’ll think of something.’

  ‘Why did he keep those things?’ Roseanne asked.

  ‘Keep what?’

  ‘The underwear, all bloodied up. You’d think he’d get shot of it.’

  ‘Trophies,’ Stella told her; then, when she looked puzzled, said, ‘Hunters put them up on the wall.’

  Stella pictured Kimber’s wall, the chilling little stories pasted up underneath each snapshot. Something Roseanne had said came back to her. ‘What did you mean: you’d never seen him like it except once?’

  ‘Laughing like that, mad, all fired up.’

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘He raped a girl at a party. Well, not raped as such. She was coming on to all the blokes, thought it was funny. She didn’t want him to, though. He had to make her. Everyone watched. He was the same way then.’

  Stella stared at her. ‘How do you know?’

  Roseanne lit another cigarette. She said, ‘I was there.’

  They avoided the Westway and wound up in a long crawl that stretched from Marble Arch to Shepherd’s Bush. Exhaust gases hung in the air, shot through with the hot orange of streetlights.

  ‘He’s not for us,’ Harriman said.

  ‘We’ll wait for the DNA,’ Stella told him, but she knew he was right. A Jag cruised out from a junction, broadsiding the oncoming traffic, its driver looking for a kindly soul to let him into the flow. Stella tapped the accelerator and closed the gap, leaving him stranded. Drivers leaned on their horns and flashed their headlights.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Harriman asked. ‘Thrill-killer. What happens? They wake up one day and think, hey, I know what would be fun?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Where they come from or what to do with them.’

  ‘Hang them,’ Harriman said. ‘Shoot them, inject them, fry them, drop them over a cliff, what’s that thing they use on mad cows?’

  Among coppers, it wasn’t an original thought.

  33

  Leon Bloss lived in a room down by the river on the Isle of Dogs. The room was fifty by forty and had once been a grain loft, then a studio and now a cheap rent because the building was due for demolition. Bloss liked the idea that soon it would cease to exist. He wanted to live his life like a man crossing a river on stepping stones, each stone disappearing as his foot left it.

  The TV was on but without sound, the radio was tuned to an easy-listening station, and he was reading a superhero comic from his collection. As a kid, he’d liked The Punisher and Dreadstar and Wolverine. Now it was The Sandman and The Preacher and Elektra Assassin.

  At one time in his life, he’d earned the nickname ‘Angel’ because he had liked angel dust, liked the pictures it painted for him, liked the free-form flying. That time was over, but the business of disassociation stayed with him: the TV was on for the ads; he liked those little stories with their beginnings, middles and ends; the music was to damp down the silence; and the superheroes made him laugh. The world crowding in and not quite making sense was how he liked it; the split focus of dreams.

  Oh, Bobby, he thought, Bobby, Bobby, you’re perfect for me.

  Who sent you to me, Bobby? Coincidence sent you. Valerie sent you.

  The windows in the grain loft were metal-framed and went almost from floor to ceiling, taking in a great swathe of river. A low-beamed vessel loaded with scrap was chugging upstream, sending out a wide, silver wake. Bloss poured himself a drink. He took it to the window and stood with his forehead pressed against the glass. His laugh and the cries of gulls. There was a sick yellow smear in the sky and the cloud-base was so low it seemed almost to touch the water.

  Bobby. You’re my delight. Angel’s delight.

  34

  Forensics were working faster now; they were cooking with gas. Maybe they were thinking ahead to the Christmas break. Tom Davison called to let Stella know that Martin Cotter’s DNA was a match for the first five attacks.

  ‘I thought it would be,’ she said.

  ‘So there’s another one nailed.’

  ‘It’s not my case,’ Stella told him, ‘and this guy’s tricky. What about the other scenes of crime?’

  ‘Blake and Simms? Nothing. He wasn’t there.’

  ‘How much does it mean?’ Stella asked. ‘DNA at the scene, DNA not at the scene?’

  ‘It’s the Bible,’ Davison said. ‘It’s the word of God. Also, it’s how I make a living.’

  ‘You could be somewhere without leaving a DNA trace.’

  ‘It’s feasible, but very unlikely.’

  ‘How unlikely?’

  ‘Full cling-film body-wrap unlikely.’

  ‘But your DNA could be found in a place where you’d never been.’

  ‘Tell me how.’

  ‘Someone plants it.’

  ‘That’s an interesting notion; we could discuss it over a drink.’

  ‘Let’s discuss it now.’

  ‘And keep the drink social?’ There was a pause before he said, ‘Look, this guy Cotter wasn’t at your scenes of crime and the mystery man whose DNA was at the scenes wasn’t present at the five previous attacks. Separate events, different guys. That’s the testimony I’d give in court. You’re not married, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What do mean – “That’s right”?’

  ‘I asked around. People said you weren’t married.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Oh, sure, of course. Almost everyone is.’

  Marilyn Hayes put some prog
ress stats down on Stella’s desk, then walked across to the drinks dispenser and bought herself a coffee. Something that looked like coffee. On her way, she passed Pete Harriman’s desk and brushed his hair with her fingertips. Harriman smiled without looking up.

  Stella had noticed lately that there was a lightness in Marilyn’s step and a glint in her eye. She wondered about Mr Hayes: whether he’d noticed those giveaway signs. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d noticed but didn’t care. Perhaps he’d noticed and was biding his time, building a head of anger, working out what to do. She imagined him parked outside Harriman’s flat, stranded between tears and fury, watching for silhouettes on the shade. She wondered whether George had ever done that and whether, when he had found out about her affair with Delaney, he had wept or cursed her or wished her dead.

  35

  Patricia is local. She works for an estate agent near Holland Park Avenue and her flat is in Blanveld Road. She gets a bus to the crossroads then takes a shortcut through the churchyard. Shes tall and she wears that long black coat most of the time and her hair doesnt look natural to me but I dont mind. In places its too red or else theres too much black in it. Shes very pretty you might say beutiful and she has great legs the boots really suit her. I follow her most nights but sometimes another. Or her and another. Sometimes she goes to meet a friend sometimes a man calls at her flat but I dont think hes special to her. He stays the night but then sometimes its a different man. Shes playing the field. If I get close I can smell her perfume – its flowers but with a tang. I like her neck. Ive got seven of her up on the wall and Ive written a story about her. About me and her and how things end. She doesnt know how things will end but I know.

  36

  He picked her up as she crossed the road from her workplace in the first flush of dusk, going to meet a client in Queensdale Road: walking distance. They went into a ground-floor flat and spent half an hour. He watched lights coming on as they went from room to room.