‘We took this from Candy’s this afternoon,’ Chris explained. ‘It was recorded last night.’
Kate watched as Joseph Ryan moved into shot again and walked to the stage at the back of the room, where a young girl wearing nothing but a g-string gyrated around a pole. Suddenly another familiar face appeared on the screen.
Chris turned to Kate. Her face was white. It told Chris everything he needed to know and confirmed exactly what he’d feared.
He told Matthew to press the pause button.
‘The two were together on Wednesday night,’ Chris said. ‘Ryan was having an affair with a girl from his office who confirmed that she had seen him in the pub earlier that evening with a man called Adam.’
‘This,’ he said, pressing a finger to the screen and partially covering Neil Davies’ face, ‘is Adam.’
Kate froze in sync with the man on the screen. She blinked and tried looking away, but when she looked back it was still him, as clear as he had been when she’d sat opposite him just the previous night. Dark hair, dark eyes; an instantly recognisable ease of confidence.
Unmistakeably him.
*
Back in his office Chris explained the day’s events to Kate. He told her how Diane Morris, Michael Morris’ wife, had remembered a friend called Adam who had told Michael that his wife was called Sarah and worked as an English teacher at Park Hill Comprehensive School.
‘Neil’s wife was called Sarah,’ Kate said, bile rising in the back of her throat. She thought of Sophie and the man she had talked about when Kate had asked about her father.
‘I know.’
She told Chris about her visit to Neil’s daughter.
‘What made you go?’ he asked.
She smiled sadly. ‘A hunch,’ she confessed.
‘Perhaps I was wrong about those,’ Chris said. ‘They seem to have paid off this week.’
‘When Sarah Davies died,’ Kate explained, ‘Neil was having an affair with her sister, Claire.’
Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Bit Jeremy Kyle isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it just,’ she agreed. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I had quite an interesting conversation with her on the phone this afternoon.’
She proceeded to tell him the contents of the call, of how Neil Davies had manipulated the relationship with his sister-in-law and, when she had threatened to tell her sister about their affair, attempted to strangle her. Chris listened attentively as the pieces of the jigsaw moved closer together, still not quite slotting into place.
Kate leaned on the desk and put her head in her hands. ‘You think he killed all three?’ Kate asked, light beginning to dawn. ‘That one in Cardiff – what was his name? Jamie something.’
‘Griffiths.’
‘Jamie Griffiths, Joseph Ryan and Michael Morris?’
Chris nodded. ‘A year ago,’ he said, ‘when Jamie Griffith’s wife was first spoken to by police in Cardiff, she mentioned someone called Adam. She didn’t know his surname, she hadn’t met him – Jamie had mentioned him a few times and she’d assumed he was somebody he knew from his football team. He played a bit of semi-professional when he was sober.’
‘Calls were made, friends were contacted – no one else had heard of Adam. Very difficult to trace a person with no surname,’ he noted. ‘It didn’t seem a big deal at the time so it was abandoned, but now…’
‘What’s the link?’ Kate asked studying the pictures of the three men spread out on Chris’ desk. ‘Besides Adam?’
She stopped at the photograph of Joseph Ryan, recalling the violence of the man’s death and the mirroring of the Michael Morris murder. ‘Neil,’ she corrected herself.
‘This is where we were a bit thrown,’ Chris confessed. ‘Jamie Griffiths was murdered in Cardiff, whereas the other two were closer to home. I have a theory, but it’s just that at the moment. Doesn’t really hold much water yet.’
Kate waited as Chris lined up the pictures in front of her.
‘Michael Morris,’ he said, pointing at the picture of the oldest of the three; a middle aged man with a receding hairline and a weak smile. ‘We now know that he was gay.’
Kate looked up from the picture. ‘How did you find out?’
‘His wife.’
Kate raised her eyebrows and looked at him questioningly. ‘Go on.’
‘His wife thinks he may have fallen in love with this man called Adam. He’d started going out, behaving differently. She’d already guessed that he might be homosexual – magazines stashed away, websites, that sort of thing. Joseph Ryan,’ he continued, pointing at the face they had just been watching on the screen next door. ‘Well…we all know what he was up to. A series of affairs apparently – all unknown to his wife.’
‘Nice bloke. So what do you think? He’s targeting men who cheat on their wives? Doesn’t seem to make much sense. Christ, if that was the case, we’d have bodies all over the place. He could have taken his pick.’
Chris pushed the third picture across the table towards her. ‘Jamie Griffiths. I spoke to his mother-in-law a couple of hours ago. Used to knock lumps out of his wife apparently. No wonder she told me and Matthew that whoever had killed him had done them all a favour.’
Kate looked at the photo of the big, shaven headed man. The murder had received a typical, predictable reaction by police, she remembered: they’d all assumed he’d deserved his death in some way. Just the man’s physical appearance had been enough to make them suspicious and assume that he must have given someone ammunition to want him dead.
Had it been wrong of them to make such superficial assumptions, now they knew what type of man he’d been behind closed doors?
Could two wrongs ever make a right?
Kate didn’t believe so.
‘Affairs?’
‘Not that we know of.’
‘Buggers up my theory about adulterers then,’ she said, pushing the photo back to Chris.
Chris sat back and rubbed the top of his head. ‘What about this,’ he said. ‘Adam is targeting men who have what he’s lost. Wife, son, daughter.’
‘Neil,’ Kate corrected him. Even saying his name made her feel sick. She had allowed herself to be reeled in by him; like a bloody trout, she thought, and she wondered how many there’d been before her. Yes, he’d been married, but that clearly hadn’t stopped him from visiting elsewhere. Claire had probably been one of many.
‘And from what I’ve heard,’ she continued, ‘it was his own fault he lost them. Well, the kids at least.’
‘Exactly,’ Chris said, sitting back in the chair opposite her. ‘He couldn’t handle it. He lost control. If we believe what his sister-in-law told you, he didn’t have much control before the kids were taken from him. Or before his wife died, for that matter. It was only a matter of time – it just took something to trigger the chaos. Perhaps Sarah’s death tipped him over the edge.’
Kate leaned an elbow on the desk and placed a hand on her forehead. Her skin was hot and clammy. ‘So he’s doing what? Seeking revenge through jealousy?’ She jabbed a finger at each of the photographs in turn. ‘Was he jealous of these men?’
Hours earlier she had found out that the man she could easily have allowed herself to fall for – someone she had believed to be charming, sensitive and vulnerable -was not only a liar, but an adulterer and a bully.
Now he had become a murderer.
A serial killer, potentially.
‘Possibly. Although from what you’ve learned, jealously doesn’t really seem his style. What do you think? You know him better than I do.’
Kate winced at the insinuation. ‘I don’t know him,’ she snapped, ‘I don’t anything about him. I think we can safely presume that everything he told me was a lie.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Chris admitted. He paused and looked at her. ‘But if he’s going to confide in anybody, we know who it’s going to be, don’t we?’
Kate caught his gaze and saw where all this was leading.
‘No,’ she said adamantly, shaking her head. ‘You must be joking. How can I even look that man in the face again?’
‘You may be our only chance to get him, Kate.’
‘I don’t care. You said yourself - I could put myself in danger.’
Chris put an arm across the table and reached for her hand. ‘Do you think I would let you go into anything that could be dangerous?’ he asked sincerely. ‘Kate?’
She said nothing, just felt his hand hot on hers. Of course she knew he wouldn’t, but that wasn’t about to encourage her to volunteer herself as bait.
‘We can get this planned tonight – do it as soon as possible. By this time tomorrow it’ll all be over.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said reluctantly.
‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘Please, Kate. I promise not to let you down.’
She looked up and met his warm brown eyes. She wanted to believe him, but the risks just seemed too much. If Neil was anything like the man Claire had spoken of just hours ago, even Chris might be unable to protect her. The man’s behaviour was irrational; uncontrollable. He had duped her into trusting him, as easily as the three murdered men seemed also to have fallen for his charm and his lies. He was totally unpredictable.
She breathed deeply, in through her nose and out through her mouth in an attempt to calm herself. There’d been a hundred times in the years since she’d first met Chris when she had wanted him to hold her hand as he just had, but like all her encounters with men, it was wrong time, wrong place.
Kate cleared her throat and tossed her head, flicked away the stray hair that had fallen into her face. She tried to clear her mind of all other thoughts and think lucidly about the facts that had been presented to her. The three men. Adam. A missing son. Neil.
Adam.
She looked up at Chris, loosening her hand in his.
‘Adam,’ she said quietly, the penny dropping like a meteor and wreaking even further confusion.
‘Dean,’ she said, her thoughts jumbled. ‘Dean mentioned an ‘Adam’,’ she mumbled.
‘What is it?’ Chris asked. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I need to speak to Dean Williams,’ she said, rising quickly.
Forty One
Downstairs in the cells, Nathan Williams was banging on the metal door, demanding to speak to a solicitor. Kate slid open the narrow shutter in the door and glared into the small room. Nathan appeared inches from her; his greasy, rodent face sneering at her like a rat in a cage. Kate resisted the urge to poke him in the eye.
‘I want my fucking phone call,’ he spat. Kate took a step back, careful to avoid the flecks of saliva spraying from his mouth. Her face showed only disdain. She slowly checked her shirt for spit then looked back at him, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes.
‘Say please,’ she taunted him quietly.
Nathan kicked the door in frustration. With any luck, thought Kate, he’d break his toes. He was just about to start shouting again when she slammed the shutter closed in his face.
‘Bitch!’ he yelled from behind the door.
Kate made her way to cell five, where Dean Williams was being held. She opened the shutter; Dean was sitting on the hard, bare concrete bench, his bulky knees pulled up to his chest. He couldn’t have looked more pathetic if he’d had his thumb stuck in his mouth.
He sat up quickly when he heard the shutter rattle. ‘Where’s Dawn?’ he asked.
‘With her daughter,’ Kate said flatly. Like you care.
Dean looked at his feet. Too late to feel sorry now, Kate thought. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than a glum face and a few pathetic words to convince a judge that he felt even an ounce of regret for what he’d inflicted on Stacey Reed.
‘This man Adam,’ Kate said. ‘What did he look like?’
Dean breathed heavily through his nose and his mouth turned down, his lower lip hung loose as if to catch stray words. ‘About my height. Five ten, five eleven.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t pay that much attention. Blond hair.’ He raised his arms, unable to recall anything more.
Kate sighed impatiently. Neil’s hair was dark, not blond.
‘Would you recognise him if you saw him?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
Kate went back to the desk and called for a PC. After cuffing Dean, the officer led him upstairs to the room where Matthew still sat in front of the monitor. He ran the tape back and pulled up a chair next to him, indicating for Dean to sit. Kate stood behind them, her own eyes also fixed on the screen. She was still finding it hard to assimilate what she had witnessed, and was apprehensive of what was possibly still to come.
‘Say if you see him,’ Kate instructed. ‘But only if you’re certain.’
The screen came to life. The dancers moved in and out of shot and staff moved up and down the bar. Dean kept watching. His interest was absorbed by one of the dancers in the background when Joseph Ryan came into shot, went to the bar, ordered his drink; turned and leaned with his back against the bar. There was no reaction from Dean.
Adam – Neil – appeared in shot. Kate looked away, not wanting to have to see his face again. Just the thought of him made her feel nauseous and the knot in her stomach had tightened like a vice, twisting her insides. She had heard of people living double lives, but usually in the exaggerated plotlines of crime movies: not in real life. How could one person live two lives and maintain the pretence so convincingly and maintain it for so long?
Almost instantly, Dean sat forward. ‘That’s him,’ he said, gesturing with both handcuffed hands. ‘Dark haired one, b’there. He had blond hair before though.’
He turned to Kate. ‘Who’s the other one?’
‘No idea,’ Kate said lightly. ‘Maybe it’s his friend from ‘The Sun’.’
Forty Two
Chris, Kate and Matthew convened in Chris’ office with much needed strong black coffee. Someone had been to fix the machine on Chris’ floor, although it still needed one good kick to get it going, just for old time’s sake. They sat around his desk. Kate looked ill at ease and Chris already regretted having to ask her to take part in a set up to trap Neil Davies, or Adam, as he seemed to prefer to be known. If there had been another way he’d have taken it, but this was the best and quickest way of ensuring Neil Davies didn’t try to do a runner.
Kate pressed her fingers against her eyelids. ‘Stacey Reed,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘Why was he involved?’
Matthew drummed his skinny fingers impatiently on the desk. He looked agitated, uncomfortable. Chris shot him a look and he stopped.
‘I don’t know,’ Chris said. ‘It might not be the same bloke. Dean might be mistaken.’
Kate looked at him doubtfully. It was too much of a coincidence not to be the same man, and they both knew it. Neil had persuaded her that he was a vulnerable, caring man. He had persuaded, or threatened, Claire Morgan into hiding his son for him and lying to the police. Chances were he had persuaded three dead men to trust him with their secrets and they had paid for that mistake with their lives.
In light of all that it was quite plausible that he had been able to cajole the two idiots in the cells downstairs into kidnapping a child in order to claim money that didn’t actually exist. But why would he do it? What could he have possibly gained from the kidnap of a child he didn’t know and who had nothing to do with him?
‘How close did you get, Kate?’ Chris asked.
She looked at him and held his stare, aware that Matthew was watching her and waiting for her response.
‘Do you have to?’ she asked, lowering her voice and nodding towards Matthew. If they really had to have this conversation – which she knew they would - she’d have preferred not to have an audience; particularly one that consisted of a young, overly-interested PC.
‘No offence,’ she said, turning to Matthew.
‘None taken,’ he replied casually.
‘Three heads are better than one,’ Chris said, a
lthough with Matthew as the third brain he doubted the veracity of his statement. ‘We can’t do this on our own,’ he explained. ‘We need to know as much as possible about this man. We’re going to need a team as back up, just in case.’
‘Just in case of what?’ Kate asked, her nerves already jangling. The words ‘back up’ rarely inspired confidence.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ Chris tried to reassure her. ‘Anyway, you’ll be in a public place. He’s not going to do anything when there are other people around.’
Kate raised her hands. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked, her voice rising. ‘He’s already bludgeoned three people to death. We know what he’s capable of. He’s capable of just about anything, by the looks of it.’
‘He only seems to attack men,’ Matthew offered.
‘And his sister-in-law and daughter,’ Kate added bluntly.
Matthew pulled a face, lost for words. Kate sipped her coffee whilst Chris updated Matthew on what had been revealed at Sophie Davies’ house that afternoon.
‘He’s got a thing for you then has he?’ Matthew asked, sitting back in his chair. He eyed her questioningly. The look annoyed Kate.
She looked at him incredulously. ‘A thing?’
‘Yeah, you know. He likes you.’
Kate sighed impatiently. Matthew seemed incredibly young and immature for his twenty eight years at times. ‘Is there a point to this?’
‘Yes,’ Matthew said calmly. ‘My point is he’s not going to do anything to harm you if he has feelings for you. You’ll be fine.’
Fine, Kate thought: great. She wanted to suggest that perhaps Matthew do it instead, considering his certainty in the lack of danger involved.
Chris nodded, attempting to put Kate’s mind at ease. ‘It’s a fair point. He seems to trust you, Kate.’
She didn’t believe that was necessarily true. If Neil had trusted her, then surely he would have told her where Ben was when he was supposed to be missing. If he trusted her, or had any feelings for her at all, he wouldn’t have lied to her. He would have trusted her with the truth about why his children had been taken away from him. Why had he even sought her out in the first place, when he knew where Ben was all along? And why had he taken Ben to Newport to start with?
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