by James Raven
Beresford went on to say that teams had been sent to two of the locations marked on Mason’s map. Once again, cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar would be used to search for corpses, and mechanical diggers would be brought in if required.
Beresford then handed over to Temple, who asked an officer named Porter from forensics to provide an update. Porter confirmed that the body in the grave had been identified from dental records as Paul Kellerman, the Bournemouth student. The post-mortem would soon be underway and hopefully that would establish how he’d died. Tests were still being carried out on the grave itself and the ground around it, but after so long the odds on finding any vital clues were slim.
‘So what’s the latest on forensics at Mason’s house?’ Temple asked.
‘DC Whelan, as crime scene manager, has been liaising with Lee Finch,’ Porter answered. ‘I gather he’ll be here shortly with a full report. There’s been a delay because of queries in respect of fingerprints that were lifted from the property.’
‘What kind of queries?’
The officer shrugged. ‘I’ve not been told, sir.’
‘Well, call DC Whelan now and tell him to hurry up,’ Temple said. ‘If they’ve come up with something odd, then I want to know what it is before the end of this meeting.’
Temple then relayed the conversation he’d had the previous night with Hilary Dyer.
‘She told me she had no idea what Mason was up to,’ he said. ‘She didn’t know about the hideaway in the loft or that he was into rough sex. And she hasn’t a clue who his accomplice might be. But she did give me the names of two of Mason’s male friends. There’s Tom Fowler, a guy DC Marsh and I met. He started a ramblers’ group at the local pub and Mason was made honorary chairman. The other guy is Noah Cross, who played golf and drank with Mason. He’s also a member of the ramblers’ group.
‘I’ve got their contact details and I’ll pay them a visit today. While I do that, DS Vaughan will distribute a list of the names from Mason’s mobile phone contacts list. I want every one of them spoken to. Plus, we need to check out all known sex offenders on the patch. Determine whether any of them are persons of interest to us.’
Temple then made it known that he’d asked two detectives to go along with uniform and break the news to Paul Kellerman’s parents that their son’s body had been found. They would also be on standby to make contact with other relatives if and when more bodies turned up.
‘It’s hard to imagine there could be so many more bodies out there,’ Temple said. ‘But we have to assume now that there are. Finding them is another matter and it’s entirely dependent on how accurate Mason’s map is. We can’t be sure that all the crosses mark the exact spots.
‘The evidence suggests that the victims were seized by Mason and his accomplice while they were visiting the forest. This happened on average every couple of months over the past two and a bit years. If the victims had cars, then it seems they were driven elsewhere so it wouldn’t be obvious where they disappeared. That’s why no connection emerged between those fifteen misper cases.
‘The victims – and we’re talking five couples and five individuals – were then taken to a place, probably in the forest, where they were systematically raped and tortured. Some were kept for days and a few for weeks before they were killed and buried in shallow graves. We’re onto them now simply because Mason died suddenly and was arrogant enough to have recorded the graves on a map, which was probably part of some sick desire to immortalize what he’d done.
‘But the graves represent just one aspect of this investigation. Finding them is less important to us right now than finding the Hamiltons and Mason’s accomplice. That’s where we’re going to focus our efforts.’
Temple then asked his officers to share the information they’d come up with yesterday. But to his disappointment there wasn’t much to report. Nobody in East Boldre had seen a man with a rucksack the night before last. And no one had anything but kind words to say about Grant Mason. He’d been popular among drinkers in several local pubs, and had never given people the impression that he was anything other than a modest, quietly-spoken man who had devoted his life to writing about the New Forest.
‘Most serial killers I’ve known come across as timid men who lead quiet lives,’ Temple said. ‘That’s why no one ever suspects them and they get away with it for so long.’
‘We have to dig deep into his background,’ Beresford said. ‘And we need to run down every single one of his friends and acquaintances. To that end we’ll appeal for information at a press conference that’s being arranged for this afternoon. The Chief Constable himself will be fronting it and it will be a good time to reveal that we know Mason had an accomplice.’
‘Are we also going to release information about the map?’ someone asked.
Beresford shook his head. ‘Not at this stage.’
At that moment, DC Whelan arrived looking flushed and out of breath.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘But we had to run some more checks on the fingerprints found at Mason’s house. It was necessary to get the pathologist to send over more samples from Mason himself, just so that we could do some cross-referencing.’
‘So is there a problem?’ Temple asked.
Whelan raised his brow. ‘Well, ninety per cent of the prints lifted from the house matched Mason’s, which of course came as no surprise. But when we ran them through the database, they also showed up as a match with someone else.’
‘How can that be?’ Temple said.
‘The prints on file belong to a man named Trevor Mason, who was jailed eleven years ago for a serious sexual offence in London. No prize for guessing that his middle name was Grant.’
‘Blimey,’ Temple said. ‘Trevor Grant Mason. The crafty sod.’
Having dropped his bombshell, DC Whelan revealed that Trevor Mason spent five years in prison.
‘He was released just under six years ago,’ he said. ‘He then decided to drop his first name and use his middle name instead. That’s about the time he started writing his hiking books. He also made some effort to change his appearance.’ Whelan held up a computer memory stick. ‘I’ve got Mason’s file mugshot on here.’
Temple pursed his lips and let out a low, tuneless whistle.
Trevor Grant Mason.
Jesus.
It had been too bloody easy for the bastard to reinvent himself. No need to even change his name by deed poll. All he’d had to do was stop using his first name and have a makeover. That had enabled him to deceive his friends and his readers alike into believing he was someone he wasn’t.
Whelan stepped up to the front of the room, and plugged the device into the large flat screen smart TV monitor attached to the wall.
A few seconds later, a photo of a man appeared on the screen. He bore only a slight resemblance to the Grant Mason that Temple had known. In the photo he was much thinner and his hair was fair and shoulder length, instead of dark brown and short.
‘So what can you tell us about him?’ Temple asked.
Whelan consulted his notes. ‘He was relatively new to this part of the world. He was born and raised in the Lake District, which was probably where he acquired his love for hiking. When he was fourteen, his father died. The family house burned down and the old man was in it. The boy moved to a new house with his mother but a year later, he was taken into care after attacking her with a hammer. She refused to press charges, but she wouldn’t let him back into her home.’
‘You can hardly blame her,’ Vaughan quipped.
‘He was convicted of his first offence at fifteen after he sexually assaulted a social worker,’ Whelan went on. ‘He spent a year in a young offenders’ institution and then went off the radar after that for a number of years. He surfaced again while working as a tour guide for a hotel chain in Yorkshire. He organized walks across the Dales. But then he was accused of raping one of his clients. It went to court but he was cleared after saying the woman consented to sex. But he g
ot the sack and moved to London.
‘At the age of thirty-four, he was arrested again after a young male prostitute was badly beaten in a sleazy hotel where Mason took him to have sex. The boy was tortured and raped over a period of seven hours. DNA evidence led the Met right to Mason and he served five years of an eight year sentence.’
‘What happened to him after that?’ Temple asked.
‘Well, according to his probation report, his mother died while he was in prison so he inherited her house,’ Whelan said. ‘On his release, he instructed lawyers to sell it and pocketed almost half a million quid. He used that to buy his place in the New Forest where he started writing books while preying on visitors to the area.’
‘And he didn’t mind if his victims were men or women,’ Temple observed.
‘That’s because he was pan-sexual,’ Whelan said. ‘I got the Met to send me the file on him. It includes a short report from a forensic psychologist. Here’s a quote.’ Whelan opened his notebook and read from it. ‘ “Mason acts on impulse and instant gratification. He’s driven by his desires – be they emotional, physical or material. His sexual appetite is insatiable and voracious. Mason is pan-sexual – willing to have sex with any object, man, woman or child. He’s not limited to gender-specific preferences, nor does he achieve long-term feelings of fulfilment. He enjoys inflicting pain and it’s my considered opinion that he would achieve maximum pleasure from taking a life.” ’
It was a stark and accurate assessment of the man and it prompted a lot of excited chatter in the room.
Temple told the team he wanted them to talk to everyone who had known Mason – including officers who worked on his cases and those who got acquainted with him in prison.
Among other things he wanted to know was how Mason had managed to fit in with the normal flow of life, even though he was profoundly abnormal.
‘I’m betting that along the way he met a like-minded soul who shared his passion for perversion,’ Temple said. ‘They decided to join forces and embarked on a two year reign of terror. And I very much doubt that the other guy plans to call a halt just because he no longer has a partner-in-crime.’
23
An hour after the morning briefing, Temple and Marsh were heading back into the forest. They were on their way to talk to Noah Cross’s twin sister, Amanda.
Marsh had called ahead to arrange an interview with Cross himself. As one of Grant Mason’s friends and hiking buddies, he was an obvious suspect. But his sister had said her twin brother was in London for a long stag weekend.
‘We should talk to her anyway,’ Temple had said. ‘After that we’ll go and see Tom Fowler.’
Before leaving the office, Temple had called Hilary to see what she could tell him about Noah Cross. He caught her just as she was leaving to go to her sister’s place.
‘I know very little about Noah,’ she’d said. ‘Other than that, he lives with Amanda and works as a painter and decorator.’
‘He’s not married then?’
‘No. And neither is Amanda. They moved in with each other after they both got divorced.’
Temple was convinced that Mason’s deranged accomplice had to be someone he’d known long before they’d teamed up to embark on their wicked spree. Perhaps they’d struck up a friendship while in prison and had discovered that they shared the same compulsion to rape and murder people.
The annals of crime were packed with sexual predators who had worked in pairs. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Fred and Rose West. Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, the so-called Hillside Stranglers.
When two men joined forces it was often because they found it easier and safer to operate that way. And because they were turned on by the voyeurism. For them, watching another man have his way with a victim added to the thrill.
Temple had read various case studies on sexual sadists who were also serial killers. One notorious pair in the States brought terror to California in 1979. Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris teamed up to fulfil a prison-time fantasy – to kidnap, rape, torture and kill a girl for each teenage year. They hunted roads and beaches in a van and claimed five victims before they were caught.
The cops then discovered that the demented pair had recorded their victims screaming and crying for help on audio tape – in much the same way as Mason and his accomplice had recorded themselves on a camcorder.
One of the most disturbing case files he came across involved a man named Dean Corll who carried out what became known as ‘the Houston Mass Murders.’ He and two accomplices were responsible for kidnapping, torturing, raping and then killing at least twenty-seven people in the seventies. The victims were first abused in a bedroom at his home that had been converted into a fully-equipped torture chamber.
‘Are you all right, guv?’ Marsh said suddenly. ‘Only you’re way over the speed limit.’
Temple felt his heart vault in his chest.
‘I was miles away. Sorry.’
He eased his foot off the accelerator, and the pool car went from sixty to forty.
‘I was thinking about other cases involving serial killers and sexual sadists. It seems to me that when monsters get together they tend to plumb the depths of depravity.’
‘That thought occurred to me when I was viewing the video tapes,’ Marsh said. ‘I found them exceptionally disturbing. In fact, I was physically sick when I got home last night and I just couldn’t sleep.’
Temple knew exactly what she meant. The photos and video clips he’d seen wouldn’t leave him, they were hovering on the edge of his consciousness, calling for attention.
‘I fear it’s something we’re going to have to get used to,’ he said. ‘More and more pervs are recording the attacks they carry out on mobile phones and camcorders. It means they can relive them time and again. Some of them even swap footage with other pervs. There’s a thriving black market on the internet.’
‘I know. A couple of years ago, I arrested a guy who stabbed a young girl to death after having his way with her. He filmed her dying and then sold the footage on as a snuff movie.’
‘I understand that none of the clips on Mason’s computer shows any of the victims being murdered.’
‘That’s right. Why the hell they drew a line at that I’ve no idea. But I’m bloody glad they did. It was distressing enough watching them committing vile acts of rape and torture. Those images keep playing over and over in my mind.’
Temple gave a sardonic grin. ‘One of the perks of being a police officer is that we get to see films that aren’t censored.’
‘Some perk,’ Marsh said. ‘You must be glad that Angel isn’t working on this case. We both know that she’s even more sensitive about that sort of thing than I am.’
Marsh was right. Angel took a hard line on sex fiends. She wanted all convicted rapists and paedophiles castrated. This was partly because she’d been the victim of a nasty sex attack when she was a teenager in London. The event had profoundly affected her, and it was one of the reasons she’d become a police officer.
‘I sent her a text message this morning,’ Marsh said. ‘I wanted her to know that we’re all pleased that she’ll soon be coming back to work and that I’ll be popping over to see her as soon as I get the chance.’
‘Did she respond?’
‘Oh, yeah. In fact, she told me that she had something important to tell me. Any idea what it is, guv?’
Temple was taken aback. He could only assume that Angel planned to tell Marsh that she was pregnant and that would mean that she’d decided to have the baby, despite the fact that they hadn’t had a proper discussion about it.
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea,’ he said, but he was sure he didn’t sound very convincing.
Truth was, he had no control over the situation. Angel was her own woman and at thirty-six, with her body clock ticking, she’d know that this might be her last chance to have a child.
He understood, of course, but that in itself could not hold back the panic that was building up inside him. H
is head filled with negative thoughts whenever he turned his mind to becoming a father. The impact on his life, his work, was going to be tremendous. He didn’t think he could be a good father and a good detective at the same time.
He remembered what it had been like to be tired all the time, the struggle to balance his life between home and work, the sheer, mind-numbing drudgery of caring for an infant.
Turning back the clock did not appeal to him. Not one bit. In fact, he wondered how the hell he would cope. He knew detectives who had started families late in life and he’d seen how hard it was for them. They missed out on promotion, were less willing to work overtime, became risk averse. He didn’t want that to happen to him. He loved his job and he was still ambitious. But his whole approach to work would need to change.
He’d have to make sacrifices and be willing to focus less on his career. It was something that filled him with equal measures of dread and guilt.
24
Amanda Cross lived in a large detached property about two miles from Grant Mason’s place. The house could be seen from the road but to get to it, you had to drive along a short asphalt lane.
There was a grass field in front of the house and behind it, a coppice of beech and ash, the trees tall and tightly spaced.
By now it was almost noon and the sun shone weakly through gossamer clouds, casting long shadows across the forest.
The two-storey, red-brick property was box-shaped with large sash windows and a porch over the front door. The setting was stunning, with beautiful views and no noisy neighbours.
Temple parked on a patch of gravel next to a blue Vauxhall Corsa and they got out. There was a slight chill in the air, but no wind to speak of; perfect conditions for the teams who were searching for graves in two other parts of the forest. Temple would be notified if they found something. There were detectives from his team at both locations, but he was hoping he wouldn’t hear from them.
The front door was opened before they reached it by a tall and somewhat striking woman, wearing a long black skirt and chunky grey-knit sweater. She was slim, mid-forties, with fairly large breasts and shoulder-length hair the colour of burned wheat. Her face was narrow, with sharp features plastered with too much make-up. Her brown eyes were slightly magnified by thick-framed glasses.
