Looking For A Reason (#4 - D.I. Paolo Storey Crime Series)

by Frances di Plino

  “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right; I’ve jumped to a conclusion that might not be there.”

  He saw the deflated slump of her shoulders and wished he’d kept that thought to himself.

  “But you could be right. All I’m saying is, don’t pin all your hopes on this. Let’s see what Mike can find out before we celebrate.” He smiled. “Good work, though, Andrea. I’d have given up long before, but you kept at it and I hope you’re going to get your reward. Talking of research, what have you found out about Chaz’s prison record?”

  “He’s only been inside the once, sir. That was for GBH, section 18, not 20.”

  “He intended to cause harm? That’s interesting. How long did he get?”

  Andrea checked her notes. “He put in a guilty plea and was handed down ten years, but was out in five. The interesting thing for me was who he shared a cell with for part of his term. Frank Baron.”

  “Yes, very interesting,” Paolo said. “The same Frank Baron we’ve been unable to locate to inform him of his younger brother’s death?”

  She nodded. “One and the same, sir.”

  “Well, as Frank is abroad, destination unknown, we’re not going to find out anything about Chaz from that source. We can only assume that’s how George and Chaz found each other, via Frank. Who did Chaz hurt so badly with intent?”

  “I’ve got the victim’s name, but not the back story. I’m waiting for more information to come through, but from what I have so far, I think Chaz is fortunate he wasn’t up on a murder charge. He very nearly killed the man.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Paolo was busy collating crime figures when he heard a knock on his office door. He looked up to find Andrea, Dave and CC waiting.

  “By the looks on your faces, we’ve got some news at last. Don’t stand there, come in and share it with me.”

  Dave walked over to pull up a third chair, while Andrea and CC moved the ones in front of Paolo’s desk to make room for him.

  “Judging by the fact that all three of you are here, I take it the news is outstanding.”

  Andrea nodded. “CC and Dave haven’t heard it yet, sir. I’ve just received a file from Mike and thought it would save time if I read it out to all of you at the same time.”

  Paolo nodded. “That makes sense. What has our friendly IT man found for us?”

  “You remember that Nemesis in Action site I found but couldn’t access?”

  Paolo nodded.

  “Mike has managed to unencrypt some of the pages.”

  “Why not all of them?” Dave asked.

  Andrea turned to answer him. “It’s a blog and each page has been individually encrypted to stop search engine bots running over them to pick up key words.”

  “But then how did Google pick up George Baron’s name? If the page was encrypted, the bots shouldn’t have been able to get into the site,” said CC, sitting on the other side of Andrea.

  Paolo had the bizarre feeling of watching a tennis match as Andrea turned in the opposite direction to answer CC.

  “Mike seems to think Nemesis either forgot to encrypt the page and did it later, giving the bot time to find the site. Or, and he thinks this is less likely but still possible, it was a complete fluke that the bot ran over the site before Nemesis had time to put the encryption in place. He says the fact that it was the very last entry on all the searches I pulled on George Baron’s name would have been because there were no backlinks or–”

  Seeing in Andrea’s eyes the zeal he’d last spotted in Mike’s, Paolo interrupted her. “So does he think there is much more to find, other than the pages he’s unencrypted so far?”

  Andrea nodded. “He says there are loads more, but thought he should get this information to us as soon as possible. It’s a pity we couldn’t have him here with us permanently, sir.”

  Remembering Mike’s comment to him as he was leaving, Paolo wondered if Mike had been working on Andrea to plead his case for him.

  “Unfortunately, our budget doesn’t run to our own IT department. Not even if it only consists of one man.”

  “I know, sir. Shall I read the last entry on the site?”

  “We’re all ears,” he said.

  Nemesis in Action Blog

  George Baron – Day Two

  I entered the room to find the coward still whimpering and begging to be released. He hadn’t shown any such mercy to Trudy Chappell, so why he thought I’d extend any to him was beyond me.

  I picked up the tazer and ran it over his back. I hadn’t even fired it before he pissed himself with fear. Of them all, this one was the weakest.

  I placed the tazer between his legs and he began thrashing his head from side to side.

  “Don’t,” he begged. “I’ll give you anything. Please, oh dear fucking God, please don’t.”

  Calling on God to help an animal like himself? That really made me mad, so I let him have a burst of pain. He screamed until his throat must have been raw. I toyed with the idea of a second blast, but decided against it. It was better to go for the real pain instead of playing with him.

  As I prepared for another penetration, I heard him gasp, but didn’t think anything of it until I looked up to find him looking back at me. In his thrashing, he’d managed to work the blindfold loose and one eye was exposed.

  “You!” he said.

  I knew then he had to die, but didn’t feel bad about it. Vermin should be eradicated.

  I’ve never tried to strangle a man before and was surprised at how difficult it was. I found in the end that I simply couldn’t do it, but neither could I let him live. I left him wheezing and gasping on the table and went to find a pillow.

  When I returned and lifted his head to put the pillow underneath his face, he smiled and thanked me. The piece of garbage actually smiled at me because he thought I was making him more comfortable.

  “Let me go,” he said. “Let me go home and I promise I won’t give you away. I could use you in one of my clubs.”

  How dare he? How dare he put my vocation on a par with his disgusting clubs? I took both sides of the pillow and pulled them taut behind his head, then pressed down with my body to suffocate him. He reared up and the pillow shifted enough for him to be able to breathe, so I put pulled the edges of the pillow even tighter and smothered him until he was completely still. Even then, I didn’t move until I was certain he was dead.

  I usually put them back where they’d committed their crimes, but I could hardly dump him in the car park of his club and hope to get away with it. Not with all the police activity there. I had to think hard about the right place to leave him and then I remembered about the illegal dump site on the way out of Bradchester.

  Garbage dumped in a fly tipping site. Perfect!

  “Bloody hell,” Paolo breathed. “Is that all we’ve got or is there more?”

  “There’s more, sir. Quite a few pages of it. Obviously, I haven’t had time to read all of the stuff Mike sent me, but I’ve pulled out all the names I could find. The one before George Baron is Jason Corbett. The online diary says his body was dumped at the canal, so I think that might be the coma patient. I haven’t had chance yet to check for certain, but I’d be amazed it if wasn’t him. It says in the diary that he’d given a false name in the club where Nemesis picked him up. But then Nemesis goes on to say lots of rapists do that.”

  “Excellent work, Andrea. I agree with you about the man in hospital. What other names have you come up with?”

  She referred to her notes. “Only another two so far, sir: Colin Jameson and Glen Scott.”

  Paolo wrote down the two names. “Andrea, I want you to stick with the online diary. Read through the pages as and when Mike sends them to you. Make a list of any other names you uncover. Also, find out from Mike if there is any way of tracing who is behind the blog. It would be great if there was a nice big sign in cyber space saying the killer lives here, but I don’t suppose it’s going to be that easy.”

  Andrea shook h
er head. “I’d already asked that question, sir. Mike is doing his best to trace the originator of the blog, but as all the information is encrypted, it’s going to take a while.”

  Paolo nodded to show he’d understood, then looked across at CC. “While Andrea is trawling through the Nemesis blog, I’d like you to take over researching the background of these three men, plus any others Andrea turns up. Look into their lives and history. Find out what they’ve done, or seem to have done to raise the ire of this Nemesis character.”

  Paolo stood up. “Dave, call Dr Brownlow and find out if the two patients he knows about are Colin Jameson and Glen Scott. If the answer is yes, get their addresses. If Dr Brownlow bleats, tell him this is now a murder investigation and that we would have no difficulty in getting the necessary permission to access the files. All we want are the addresses, so if he wants to preserve his patients’ medical confidentiality, he’d be better off cooperating with us.”

  He smiled. At last they had something concrete to go on.

  “When you’ve got the addresses, we’re going to pay them a visit to find out why they’ve never reported the attacks. If they underwent anything as bad as Jason Corbett and George Baron, they must have gone through hell. While you’re finding out where they live, Dave, I’m going upstairs. The Chief has been giving me grief for weeks over this. It’ll be a relief to tell him we finally have a breakthrough.”

  ***

  In the car, on the way to visit the first of the two names uncovered on the Nemesis in Action blog, Paolo asked Dave if Dr Brownlow had put up much resistance to giving out the two addresses.

  “He wasn’t keen, sir, but once I pointed out to him that we would be able to get full access to the files in any event, he decided it was in his patients’ interest to keep us sweet so that he could protect the contents of their medical records.”

  Paolo nodded. “I thought he’d see sense.” He hesitated, but had to ask. “Have the idiots back at the station given up on baiting you?”

  Dave’s shoulders visibly tensed and Paolo felt the car judder slightly as Dave’s grip on the steering wheel tightened.

  “I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind, sir. I’m just going to have to prove my worth and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Don’t think you’ve got anything to prove to me, Dave, because you haven’t. You’re one of my most valued team members.”

  Dave laughed, but there was little humour in it. “Maybe that’s part of the problem, sir. A few of the others think you’re giving me preferential treatment. Anyway, as I said, I don’t want to talk about something that will only get me riled up when there’s bugger all I can do about it.”

  Paolo nodded. “Fair enough. Where are we headed to first?”

  “Tudor Close. It’s part of that new development right on the outskirts of town. Funnily enough, we passed through it the other day going out to the fly tipping site where we found George Baron’s body. Maybe that’s how the killer knew about the site. Could be that Nemesis had been out this way before. Didn’t Andrea say Nemesis dumped the torture victims back where they’d committed whatever crimes they were supposed to have committed?”

  “She did say that. From what she’d read so far, what impression did you get of the victims?”

  Dave shrugged. “Just that Nemesis had decided to play judge and jury to rapists, or at least to people Nemesis believed were rapists.”

  “My thoughts exactly. So, if that’s the case, the next questions is this: how did Nemesis know?”

  Dave turned into Tudor Close and slowed the car before answering. “Know what, sir?”

  “Know who to pick up and torture. How did this Nemesis character know that any of them were rapists? Most of the time, even we don’t know who the rapists are on our patch, because so many rapes go unreported. If we don’t have them on our radar, how can Nemesis be so certain of picking up the right people? Where is the information coming from?”

  Dave pointed to a semi-detached house on the other side of the road. “I can’t answer any of those questions, sir, but that’s the house we need. Number 63 Tudor Close,” he said as he pulled up opposite the property.

  Paolo got out of the car, still mulling over the various ways someone outside the force could get access to information on rapists, or, more to the point, suspected rapists. Were the men guilty, or picked up on a mad person’s whim?

  They crossed the street and walked up the short drive to the house. As Dave rang the bell, Paolo had a look around. Tudor Close was typical of many of the newer housing estates. Semis, with small, but well-kept, gardens in front and probably a larger version behind. It didn’t look like the type of street that saw much in the way of discord, other than the neighbourly type such as his hedge is encroaching on my property. Mind you, Paolo thought, some of those disputes could turn very nasty.

  Before he could follow this stray thought, the door opened to reveal a harassed woman with a toddler clinging to her leg.

  “If it’s religious, I don’t believe, if you’re selling I don’t want any, if it’s anything else, I don’t have time,” she said, preparing to close the door.

  Paolo held up his warrant card. “I’m Detective Inspector Paolo Storey and this is Detective Sergeant Dave Johnson. Is Colin Jameson in?”

  She looked suspicious, but nodded. “He is. What do you want with him?”

  “If we could just have a few words with him in private, we promise not to disturb you for long.”

  She remained blocking the way, but reached down to pick up the toddler who’d started to cry.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Are you Mrs Jameson?”

  She nodded.

  Paolo smiled. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you at the moment why we need to speak to him, but I can promise that he isn’t in any trouble if that would put your mind at rest.”

  She thought for a moment and then stood aside. “He’s in the back room, but please don’t mention you’re police officers. If you get him worked up, I won’t be able to calm him down again. You’d have to take him to the psychiatric ward. I can’t go through all that again.”

  “All what?” Paolo asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Just don’t mention anything to do with the police or get him worked up, please. It upsets little Ben. Doesn’t it, my darling?” she said, nuzzling into the child’s neck.

  Paolo and Dave walked along the short hall to the room that had probably been intended as a dining room by the builders, but was clearly in use as a family room. Opening onto the kitchen area, it was full of children’s educational toys, building blocks, soft animals and the type of larger toy a child of Ben’s age would be able to push around while learning to walk unaided. Against one of the walls was an old, but comfortable looking, sofa. Adjacent to it was a matching armchair. Slouched in the chair, eyes fixed on the flat screen television screwed to the wall, was a man, possibly a few years older than the woman who’d let them in but not come through with them.

  “Colin Jameson?” Paolo said.

  The man briefly took his eyes from the screen and nodded before turning back again.

  “Mr Jameson, would you mind if I turned that off for a few minutes?”

  “Why?”

  “So that I can ask you a few questions.”

  Colin muted the sound, but continued to watch the antics of two people on a confrontational chat show who’d been yelling at each other. A glance at the screen told Paolo the couple were still yelling, but at least he didn’t now have to compete with the noise.

  “Mr Jameson,” Paolo said, moving over to the sofa to sit down, “it’s important I have your full attention. I’m investigating a murder and I think you might be able to help me with my enquiries.”

  Reluctantly, Colin picked up the remote again and flicked the off switch.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My name’s Paolo Storey and this is Dave Johnson,” Paolo said, bearing in mind Mrs Jameson’s request, he did
n’t mention their rank. “I’m sorry if this is going to remind you of a distressing incident in your past, but does the name Nemesis–”

  Colin sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. “Get out!” he yelled, holding his arms tight around his body and rocking from side to side. “Get out! Get out! Out! Get out! Now! Get out!”

  His wife came running into the room, still holding her child. She put him down and reached out for Colin, enclosing him in her arms.

  “What did you do?” she yelled over the sound of her husband screaming for Paolo and Dave to leave. “What did you say? He hasn’t been like this for months.”

  Paolo watched as she soothed the shattered man, admiring the way she talked him down from his emotionally distraught state. As she settled him into the armchair and switched on the television and sound, Colin began a different chant.

  “Don’t tell the police. Nemesis is watching. Nemesis will know. Don’t tell the police. Nemesis is watching. Nemesis will know.”

  Mrs Jameson smoothed the hair from her husband’s brow. “Nobody will tell the police. Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”

  While she was calming him down, the little boy came and took hold of his father’s hand.

  “See, here’s little Ben to keep you company while I show these gentlemen out,” she said, signalling with her head to Paolo and Dave they should move towards the door.

  Colin lifted his son onto his lap and cuddled him. The boy put his arms around his father’s neck and snuggled down to watch television with him. Paolo had difficulty believing this was a rapist, but knew that very often quite ordinary people were guilty of extraordinary crimes.

  They didn’t have to wait long by the front door before Mrs Jameson came out to join them, carefully closing the door to the family room as she did so.

  “I need to know what you said to Colin,” she demanded, but so quietly Paolo had to lean forward to hear her. “If he goes into one of his panic attacks, I need to know what brought it on so that I can deal with it.”