Stay Alive

by Simon Kernick

  Leonard Philip Hope had been named first by a former girlfriend who’d had a short but violent relationship with him. She claimed he’d tied her up and beaten her on several occasions and, the last time he’d done it, he’d strangled her unconscious. He was also tattooed on his left forearm. On its own, this information wasn’t particularly useful. Sadly, there were many men who beat their girlfriends, just as there were plenty who were tattooed, but when Hope had been named by a clinical psychologist who’d treated him for post-traumatic stress disorder eight years earlier, and who described him as an incredibly damaged individual with a frightening obsession with the occult and sexual violence, Bolt had taken an immediate interest.

  Hope was a forty-one-year-old former soldier who’d spent five years in the army before being dishonourably discharged for insubordination. He had no previous convictions, but had been given a police caution aged seventeen for indecent exposure after he’d flashed at a group of schoolgirls. He lived alone in the house he’d grown up in, in Ealing, which he’d shared with his widowed mother until her death, and for the last eighteen months he’d been working for a local courier firm as a driver, a job that took him across southeast England. In this respect, he perfectly fitted the psychological profile that Dr Thom Folkestone had suggested for the suspect. Hope had also filled up the company van he used for deliveries with petrol at a garage five miles from the scene of the first murders the day before they’d been carried out, putting him in the area at a crucial time.

  But, of course, none of this made him guilty. Bolt remembered all too well the case of Colin Stagg, the man wrongly accused of the brutal murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common twenty years earlier, who’d been targeted because he seemed to fit the psychological profile, only for the murderer to turn out to be someone else entirely. Bolt wasn’t going to make that mistake. But the more his team looked into Leonard Hope’s background, the more they liked him as a suspect. His school reports suggested a quiet boy of higher-than-average intelligence, but one who was also disruptive. He’d been suspended from secondary school on two occasions – once for an assault on a younger pupil; the second time for a more serious assault on a female teacher that had involved him touching her inappropriately. He’d been fourteen at the time. How Hope had managed to stay on at the school while avoiding criminal charges was beyond Bolt, but somehow he had. More interestingly was an incident that had happened while Hope had been in the army, stationed in Cyprus, in 1999. A young Dutch couple, tourists on the island, had been walking back to their hotel from a nightclub in the early hours of the morning, past a quiet stretch of waste ground, when they’d been attacked from behind by a masked man. The attacker had struck the man on the back of the head with a blunt object, knocking him unconscious, before dragging the girl into some bushes and exposing her to a short but very violent sexual assault. He’d then beaten her unconscious with the same blunt object, and fled.

  Both tourists recovered from their ordeal, and although neither had been able to give much of a description of their attacker, the young woman remembered him uttering the word ‘bitch’ during the assault, in what she described as a British accent. Soldiers at the base were questioned, including Hope, but because no DNA had been recovered from the scene of the crime, and no trace was ever found of the weapon used, no one was arrested. Hope had been off duty and off the base at the time, but he had an alibi. He was visiting a prostitute several miles away and she claimed he’d spent the night with her. Bolt could see why this had eliminated him at the time, but in hindsight, with everything else they’d found out about Hope, he now thought it was all far too convenient. It wouldn’t, Bolt suspected, have been that hard for a reasonably intelligent man to have bought an alibi from the prostitute; maybe he’d even sneaked out without her knowing to carry out the attack and then returned. Either way, Bolt now knew they had more than enough to justify a full-scale surveillance operation.

  That surveillance had been going on for two days now. Like all twenty-four-hour surveillance ops, it was resource-heavy, using three separate teams of ten officers each. So far, Hope hadn’t done anything remotely suspicious, which was no great surprise. His habits were fairly mundane. He went to work, drove round most of the day delivering parcels, then returned alone to his flat at night. The problem was that there tended to be as long as six months between his killings, and since he’d only killed George Rowan and Ivana Hanzha two weeks previously, it was unlikely he’d be stalking new victims for some time to come yet. Their great hope lay in matching Leonard Hope’s DNA to the murder scene at the Rowans’ house, and the killing of the French student, Beatrice Magret, back in 1998. That way they’d have enough to arrest him and press charges. Unfortunately, because he had no actual convictions, Hope’s DNA wasn’t on the national DNA database, so one of the surveillance teams had had to take possession of a disposable coffee cup he’d dropped in a rubbish bin after one of his deliveries, so that SOCO could take a sample from it. But the results of any DNA test wouldn’t be known for at least five days, and meanwhile the pressure for a result remained absolutely intense.

  Bolt tried not to let it get to him, but it wasn’t easy. Including Beatrice Magret, The Disciple had been linked to a total of nine murders, and Bolt was finding it incredibly frustrating having to fend off criticism about the investigation, while at the same time having to wait to find out whether or not Hope was their man.

  ‘He’s got to be,’ said Mo as they turned into the driveway, and pulled up in front of the large mock-Tudor house belonging to Richard Oldham – the witness who’d seen a man outside the house of two of The Disciple’s victims shortly before they were attacked and murdered. ‘He fits the bill perfectly. Not just because he’s everything that quack Folkestone says he is – loner, history of violence, above-average intelligence; but the key’s the Cyprus thing. That’s just too coincidental.’

  Bolt sighed, switching off the engine. ‘I agree, but I still wish we had more on him.’

  ‘We’ll get it eventually. It’s going to be Hope’s DNA at the Rowan house murder scene. Then we can just nick him.’

  ‘That’s going to be another five days. I just want this thing cut and dried. Then we can wind up this investigation, and get involved in something less heart-attack-inducing.’

  Mo looked concerned. ‘You sound weary of the job, boss.’

  Bolt thought about it for a moment. ‘I guess I am. It’s been twenty-seven years now. Can you believe that? Twenty-seven years as a copper dealing with the dregs of society, and the criminals are still committing plenty of crime.’

  ‘But if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be in a job. And, anyway, what else would you do?’

  Bolt groaned. ‘I really don’t know.’ It was true. He didn’t have any outside interests. He had no girlfriend to share his time with. He didn’t even have many friends outside the Force. It struck him then that he’d become almost as much of a loner as Leonard Hope, which wasn’t a particularly encouraging thought.

  ‘It’s this case, boss,’ said Mo. ‘It’s getting us all down.’ He motioned towards the house. ‘Maybe Mr Oldham can help us.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Bolt as they got out of the car, but he wasn’t so sure. It had been five months since Richard Oldham had seen a man in dark clothing and tattoos hanging round in woodland behind the home of John and Kathy Morris, two days before they were brutally murdered, and barely four hundred metres from where they were now, just outside the village of Tilford in the Surrey countryside. At the time, Oldham’s description of the suspect had been basic in the extreme, and the e-fit he’d helped create had, by his own admission, not been a great likeness, so Bolt wasn’t at all sure he’d be much help now, but they’d come out here anyway with surveillance photos of Leonard Hope on the off-chance that Oldham would recognize him. It wasn’t a job that Bolt needed to do as head of the investigation. He could easily have left it to a DS, or even a DC, but it was a rare sunny day, and both he and Mo had been keen to get out of the
incident room and do something.

  They’d called to let Oldham know they were coming and he’d answered the door straight away. He was a small man in his late sixties, with a few white strands of hair on an otherwise bald and suntanned head, dressed in a paisley tank top and neatly pressed trousers, the kind of gear Bolt imagined you’d wear on a golf course.

  Bolt introduced himself and Mo, and Oldham gave them a broad welcoming smile and invited them in.

  ‘You said on the phone that you had some photos for me to look at,’ he said as he led them through a hallway not much smaller than a hotel foyer, and into a traditionally furnished living room with views onto a well-kept back garden. ‘Does that mean you have a suspect in mind?’

  Bolt wasn’t keen to give Oldham any more information than he had to, although there seemed little point in denying the obvious. ‘We’ve got an individual of some interest, yes.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. It hasn’t been the same round here since the murders. They were a lovely couple as well. And now to hear he’s killed again.’ Oldham gave a visible shudder, motioning for them to sit down on one of the two leather sofas facing each other. ‘Can I get you a drink of anything?’

  ‘No, we’re fine, thanks.’ Bolt took an A4-sized envelope from his jacket and, as Oldham sat down, he removed three surveillance photos taken of Hope the previous day. One was a full-frontal shot of his top half as he emerged from his house. He was just over six foot tall and well built, and there was a confidence about the way he held himself, but even Bolt had to admit his face was pretty ordinary, with no obvious standout features. In the photo he was wearing a T-shirt, exposing the tattoo that covered most of his left arm. The second photo was a close-up of the tattoo itself – an intricate design that appeared to show two dark green dragons locked in an embrace, with the tails starting a few inches above the wrist, and the upper part of the bodies disappearing beneath the shirtsleeve. The third one was a close-up of Hope’s face in full profile. Again, nothing stood out on it, other than the fact that he had dark bags under both eyes, and a small mole on his left cheek. The photos had been scanned to Highlands CID the previous day so that Amanda Rowan could look at them but, as she hadn’t seen her attacker’s face, she hadn’t been much help. All she’d managed to give them was that the tattoo looked similar to the one she’d seen on her attacker’s arm.

  So now Oldham was their best chance of moving the case along, and as he inspected each of the photos in turn, taking his time, Bolt realized he was nervous. Bolt didn’t want to wait five days for the results of the DNA test. He wanted to know now that Hope was his man so that he could get the bastard off the street and the pressure on him would finally ease.

  ‘I didn’t really get a look at the tattoo as such,’ said Oldham, ‘although it’s the right colour. But . . .’ He paused, looking again at the close-up of Hope’s face. ‘This definitely looks like the man I saw.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure, Mr Oldham?’ asked Mo.

  ‘Not absolutely, but pretty sure, yes.’

  ‘That’s very helpful,’ said Bolt, taking the photo. Oldham’s ID was good enough for him, even though it wasn’t exactly a definitive yes, and almost certainly wouldn’t stand up in court. Right now, though, that didn’t matter. Bolt just needed enough evidence for a search warrant.

  ‘Does this mean you’ll be able to arrest him?’ asked Oldham.

  ‘We can’t comment on that, sir, but I’d ask you not to say anything to anyone about seeing these photos. We’ll let you know any developments on the case as soon as we can.’

  When they got outside, Bolt grinned at Mo. ‘Right, that’s enough for a warrant.’

  Mo looked less convinced. ‘Are you sure? It wasn’t exactly a concrete ID.’

  ‘It’s good enough for me,’ said Bolt. He’d been around long enough to know that sometimes it was easier to take the initiative than wait for the wheels of justice to turn. ‘With a bit of luck he’ll be in custody by the end of the day.’

  Twenty-three

  FIVE HOURS LATER they were parking thirty yards down from Leonard Hope’s house, on a quiet residential street of interwar terraced houses, many of which looked like they needed updating. After a lot of pushing and a full-scale row, they’d been granted the search warrant Bolt had been so keen to get hold of, and with Hope himself currently three miles west of them making a delivery in Hounslow, and under the watchful eye of one of the ten-man surveillance teams, they were taking the opportunity to look inside his house for clues. It wasn’t going to be a full-scale search, even though they had permission for one; nor was it going to be done publicly. The plan was simply to hunt round for clues, without alerting Hope to what they were doing.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Mo, who’d already said this several times that day.

  Bolt turned to him, surprised by his long-time partner’s reticence. ‘I don’t understand why not. We’ve got plenty of circumstantial evidence, and now we’ve got a positive ID. What more do we need?’

  ‘It wasn’t that positive, and this is a sixty-eight-year-old guy remembering someone he saw months ago. Someone who, even at the time, he could barely describe. But when you were in court this afternoon getting the warrant, you swore to the judge that Oldham was certain that it was Hope.’

  Mo was right. In court, Bolt had exaggerated the strength of Oldham’s ID of the photo, but he was sure it had been the right thing to do. ‘You said yourself you believe Hope’s guilty. I think he is too. So what do you suggest we do?’

  ‘Wait for the DNA results. Then we’ll have our proof one way or the other. In the meantime, we’ve got him locked down with surveillance, so it’s not as if he’s going anywhere. If we go charging in there now, boss, and it later turns out in court that we obtained the search warrant under questionable circumstances, the case might be thrown out.’

  ‘Not this time. No judge is going to dare chuck out the case against Hope on a technicality, not when he’s killed that many people. Come on, Mo. We’re doing the right thing.’

  Mo sighed. It was clear he wasn’t convinced, which surprised Bolt. He wasn’t usually a by-the-book man, but then he had a family to support and mouths to feed. He couldn’t afford a blemish on his record, whereas for Bolt it was a different story. He’d become more fatalistic of late. If he had to risk his own career to put down serious criminals, then so be it.

  Knowing there was no point continuing the discussion, he opened the car door. ‘Let’s get this over with before he gets back.’

  They crossed the road and walked to Hope’s front door in silence. His house was one of the more cared-for of those in the street. The door and windows looked new, and the small front garden was neatly tended, with the grass on either side of the path freshly mowed. It was a warm autumn day, and plenty of houses had their windows open, including the ones on either side of Hope’s, suggesting that – although the street was empty – his neighbours were at home. This meant they were going to have to be very careful. The last thing they needed was for someone to spot them breaking in and either call the police, or alert Hope to what was going on.

  Both Bolt and Mo Khan were experienced housebreakers. During their time in the National Crime Squad, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, and most recently attached to Counter Terrorism Command, they’d had to make more than their fair share of covert entries into the homes of suspects, usually to plant bugs in them. Hope’s front door had three separate locks, all of which were on, but it still only took Bolt about a minute and a half to pick them. As Bolt worked, trying to look as casual as possible, Mo stood slightly behind him, obscuring the view from the street. They were both banking on the fact that because they were dressed in suits and didn’t look like burglars, they wouldn’t attract attention. But they needn’t have worried. As Bolt opened the door and stood back, he gave a quick glance left and right. The street was still empty and no one appeared to be at their window. It was clear they hadn’t been noticed.

  The house wa
s just as neat and tidy inside as out, which, in Bolt’s experience, was a rarity with criminals, who tended to be a slovenly bunch. ‘Blimey, I wish my place was as well-kept as this,’ he said, walking through the hallway into a narrow kitchen with worktops running down one side. A single, half-drunk cup of tea by the sink was the only thing out of place. The surfaces were spotless and a number of pots and pans hung down from hooks on either side of an old gas cooker. Bolt checked the cupboards and saw that they were well stocked with a variety of ingredients and condiments. Leonard Hope was clearly interested in cooking. Bolt shook his head. Even after years as a police officer, he always found it hard to reconcile the fact that sadistic, sociopathic killers like The Disciple – individuals who thought nothing of torturing their fellow human beings to death for pleasure – could have harmless, mundane interests like everyone else. But, of course, it was this apparent ordinariness that often made them so hard to identify.

  While Mo started in the living room, Bolt went through every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen. According to the pathologist who’d carried out the autopsies on all The Disciple’s victims since he’d started his current round of killings, the same weapon had been used in three of the attacks, and it was this that Bolt was most interested in finding. The weapon he was looking for was a knife with a serrated edge and an eight-inch blade. Two of the teeth about an inch down from the tip were slightly bent to the left, which meant it shouldn’t be too difficult to identify it if it was here. Bolt had once done a search of the flat of a young gang member who lived with his mother, after they’d arrested him for stabbing a rival to death, and he’d found the murder weapon, which turned out to be the kid’s mother’s carving knife, in the kitchen knife rack. He’d washed it clean of blood and simply put it back. When asked later why he hadn’t tried to get rid of it, he’d replied that his mum would have killed him. Apparently, she liked that knife and was always on at him for borrowing it. But he had a feeling that Hope would be a lot more careful than that.