The Creeper

by Tania Carver

  The flat was on the top floor of an old Edwardian house that had been divided up, on Maldon Road. Quite spacious with good period fittings, but with its primary coloured bookshelves, beanbags, throws and sub-Bridget Riley prints on the walls, it had been furnished predominantly in a kind of Ikea version of sixties pop art. But already there were other touches creeping in that suggested the garishness would soon go, to be replaced by a more mature style. Anni had seen this kind of thing before. The first tentative steps taken between student and wage earner. It felt like that had been her, not so long ago.

  This case was a natural fit for Anni. A reactive DC working with the Major Incident Squad, she specialised in rape cases, abused children, had been trained for any situation where a male presence might be a barrier to uncovering the truth. This case was clearly one for her. Plus, it would keep her away from Phil, which, given the way things had been between them lately, wasn’t a bad thing.

  ‘So,’ Anni said, concentrating once more, ‘you woke up…’

  ‘No, before that.’ Suzanne Perry placed her coffee mug down on a nearby shelf but still kept her eyes on it as if it was a talisman giving out a protective aura. ‘While I was asleep… I thought, I felt… someone in the room with me.’

  ‘When you were asleep.’

  ‘I don’t know… I think I was asleep. But then… then… I felt it…’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Him. I felt him. His hands on me, his…’ She shuddered.

  Anni waited.

  ‘And I couldn’t… I couldn’t move…’

  Another shudder. Anni feared she might cry again. It had happened twice already. She pressed on.

  ‘You felt his hands on you.’

  Suzanne nodded.

  ‘Do you remember whereabouts on your body?’

  Suzanne looked to the floor, her cheeks red.

  Anni had to be careful what she said. Traumatic experiences often left a victim open to suggestion. She didn’t want to say anything that could later, in court, be seen as leading Suzanne on. ‘Where did he touch you, Suzanne?’

  Suzanne turned her face even further away, closed her eyes like she was anticipating a punch.

  ‘Suzanne.’ Steel in Anni’s voice once more. Suzanne’s head snapped back round. Now she had her attention again she allowed her voice to drop once more. ‘Suzanne… where did he touch you?’

  Suzanne’s eyes closed once more, her lower lip began to tremble. ‘He… he moved my T-shirt up… I couldn’t stop him, I…’ The tears started again. ‘And… and he…’

  Anni sat back. ‘OK. OK…’ Her voice was soothing once more. ‘Take a moment.’ Anni waited until Suzanne had composed herself. ‘You said he spoke to you. Can you remember any of the words he said?’

  Suzanne shook her head.

  ‘What did he look like? Can you describe him?’

  Another shake of her head. ‘Just… a shape. And those eyes, shining, staring… like, like devils’ eyes… And his hands, touching me. And I, I couldn’t move…’

  Anni didn’t press her any more. She decided to move on. ‘And then you, what? Slept?’

  Suzanne shrugged. ‘Must have done.’

  ‘Then got up, opened the curtains…’

  Suzanne nodded. ‘Yes. And then…’ Her head dropped once more.

  Anni kept looking at her. Scrutinising her. Something was gnawing at her. ‘Were the blinds closed or open?’

  ‘Open. That’s how I saw the photo.’

  ‘You said earlier you like your bedroom dark. Is it possible you could have left them open?’

  Suzanne shook her head. ‘I’m a light sleeper. I need the room dark as possible. Specially in the summer…’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘So you couldn’t have opened the blinds yourself?’

  ‘No. I never open them.’ Her voice emphatic.

  ‘Do you open the window to sleep? When it’s warm?’

  ‘No.’ But her voice wasn’t so emphatic this time.

  Anni saw the opening, jumped in. ‘Could you have left the window open and someone got in? Is it possible?’

  Suzanne looked up at her, those brown eyes looking suddenly lost. ‘I… I… does it matter?’

  Anni shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Suzanne. When something like this happens, we think everything matters.’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t know… I didn’t… I can’t… I don’t know…’ She looked once more at the coffee mug.

  ‘What about the people downstairs?’ Anni had spoken to her neighbours, got nothing from them, ruled them out. But she had to ask. ‘Could they have access?’

  ‘I don’t see how…’

  ‘Can you remember going to bed last night?’

  ‘I…’ Suzanne seemed about to answer in the affirmative but stopped herself. ‘No. I… I woke up this morning feeling really bad, shaky, like I was hungover or something.’ She screwed her face up, thinking back. ‘I can’t… I can’t remember going to bed…’

  ‘Had you been drinking? Were you hungover?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I just had a bath. Then some chocolate. A glass of wine. Red. Just one. With the chocolate. While I sat on the sofa. Red.’

  ‘Small glass?’

  Suzanne nodded. ‘It’s… on the draining board. The wine bottle is there, too. With the, the cork in it. And then this morning I felt terrible.’

  ‘Maybe you’re coming down with something.’

  ‘Maybe. Swine flu. Great. Just what I need.’

  ‘So, the blind. If you can’t remember going to bed, you might have left it up by mistake. The window open.’

  Suzanne frowned. ‘Up? No. The blind’s never up. It might have been open, but it’s never up… and the window… no. No… I didn’t, no…’

  Anni looked at her face, checking for truth.

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘Never…’

  The fear was back in Suzanne’s eyes.

  6

  The Creeper loved being close.

  It was what thrilled him.

  Not that he didn’t enjoy the planning – he did. All the following, the strategising. The courtship. The anticipation. It was all good, but it was all for an end result. Being close.

  That was what really did it for him. Being in a relationship. Half of a couple. In someone else’s life. That was the part he loved most. It topped the lot, made everything else worthwhile.

  And now he had found her. The one.

  He smiled to himself.

  He had been searching for her for so long. Everywhere. The town, the countryside. Here and… and there. Waiting to hear her voice, a sign, any of the things that would let him know that she was the one.

  His star-crossed lover.

  His Rani.

  And he had her.

  And that made him happy.

  There had been false starts. Times when he thought he had her, was sure he had her, only for her to disappear once more, leaving only a husk behind. A husk to be disposed of.

  And he had been stupid, been a fool for love. But this one was real. He knew it. Could feel it.

  And there she was now, so close to him, a few metres away. He could even reach out, touch her… like he had last night.

  But he wouldn’t. Not while that policewoman was there.

  He would just wait, be patient.

  He lay back, stretched out. Listened to the sound of Rani’s voice coming through the boards.

  Waiting for another chance to be alone with his lover.

  7

  Phil looked along the quay, checked to see how well his instructions had been implemented.

  The road was completely sealed off from the roundabout. Nothing and no one could get in or out. Workers in businesses along the quay had been given a few hours of enforced leisure and gawping. Phil didn’t think they’d mind.

  Over the other side of the river and on the bridge, gawkers were gathering. Phil had ordered the erection of a white tent over the body, both to preserve the crime scene and to deter onlookers. As al
ways, he wasn’t sure if doing that didn’t just make them even more curious.

  A full team of CSIs was scrutinising the deck of the boat and working their way out to the quay and the road. Taking impressions left on the ground, scraping surfaces, bagging and cataloguing anything that struck them as potentially interesting. Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, the blue-suited, booted, masked and gloved figures reminded Phil of a haz-mat team stopping the spread of a lethal virus. Which in a sense, he supposed, was what they were.

  As Phil watched, his hand instinctively went to his ribs. Nothing. No pain. It had been absent for months but it still surprised him.

  He had been victim of panic attacks since he was a boy. He knew what had caused them originally – the children’s homes he had grown up in weren’t known for their nurturing atmosphere. In fact, they were at the cutting edge of Darwinism. They were bound to leave some scars, whether physical, mental, emotional or all three. When he had finally settled down with Don and Eileen Brennan, his foster-parents, later his adoptive ones and, ultimately, the only people he dared call Mum and Dad, the panic attacks had ceased. But during his police career they had made return visits. Usually mild, but sometimes crippling. Always at moments of great stress. Like a huge iron fist was wrapping itself round his ribs and squeezing as hard as it could. Squeezing the life out of him.

  He knew some officers who would have milked the situation, seen a doctor, taken paid sick leave with union backing. But Phil wasn’t like that. He had told no one, preferring to cope himself.

  But he hadn’t had one in months. Not since…

  Not since he and Marina had set up home together. Not since he’d became a father.

  But he still felt his body for the attacks. Braced himself for their return. Because it was only a matter of time until something happened, some dark trigger tripped and that iron fist would have him in its grip once more. Only a matter of time.

  But not today. And not now. Or at least not yet.

  Nick Lines, the pathologist, was examining the body in place. He called to Phil.

  ‘I’m about to turn her. Want to see?’

  Phil hurried back up the gangplank, on to the boat.

  Nick Lines was only slightly more animated and lifelike than the corpses he worked with. Stripped of his paper suit, and despite the warmth, he stood dressed in a three-piece suit, pointed shoes, his tie loosened at the neck. He was tall, thin and bald; his glasses, perched on the end of his nose, might have looked fashionable on someone else. He wore the kind of expression that might have got him a part-time job either as a professional mourner or the kind of character actor in horror films who warned teenagers not to stray off the path into the woods. This expression, Phil knew from years of experience, hid a razor-sharp intellect and an even sharper – and dryer – wit.

  Nick, together with a CSI, turned the body over.

  ‘Oh God…’

  ‘Hmm…’ Nick was masking any revulsion he may have felt by appearing to be professionally interested. For all Phil knew, he might have been.

  Phil pointed. ‘Are those… hook marks?’

  Nick peered at the back of the woman’s body. There were two huge wounds underneath her shoulder blades where something large and sharp had been gouged into her flesh.

  ‘Looks that way. By the way the flesh has torn, she must have been hung up to be tortured.’

  ‘Great.’ Phil felt his own stomach pitch. Emotions hurled themselves around inside him. Anger at what had been done. Revulsion. Sorrow. And a hard, burning flame in the pit of his stomach that made him want to catch the person who had done this. He stood up, turned away from the body. ‘So what have we got to go on, Nick?’

  Nick stood also. ‘Not a lot. Female, mid-twenties. Tortured, sexually mutilated, murdered.’

  ‘In that order?’

  Nick glanced at the body. ‘Your guess is as good as mine at the moment. But if I had to stick my neck out I’d say, judging by blood pooling and lividity, the sexual mutilation was carried out after the killing.’

  Mickey Philips and Rose Martin came onboard. Rose had her notebook in hand, open.

  ‘You’d better stand near the side, Mickey,’ said Phil. ‘In case you go again.’

  Mickey Philips was about to argue then got a look at the body. He moved over to the side.

  ‘Cause of death?’ asked Rose, her face rigidly composed.

  Nick shrugged. ‘Take your pick. Knife wounds, chain wounds… she was comprehensively worked over.’ He sighed and, for the first time that day, Phil saw genuine concern break through the man’s brittle mask. ‘And from the looks of it, whatever the weapons were, they’d been… augmented.’

  Phil fell silent, contemplative. He knew what that meant. Hammers. Nails. Razors. Blades. Julie Miller, if it was her, hadn’t died easily.

  Phil swallowed. ‘Time of death?’

  Nick looked round at the sky, back to Phil, a gesture that made him look like he was thinking but was more about regaining his composure. ‘It’s a hot day, Phil. Clearly, she was killed elsewhere and brought here. From what I can make out of the internal blood pooling and lividity in her body she was lying on her back for some time. Best I can do at the moment.’

  Phil turned away, walked down the gangplank. The image of the dead woman seared on his retinas. The hatred someone must have felt to do that…

  Nick called out to him. ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve got anything.’

  ‘Thanks, Nick.’

  Phil called Mickey and Rose to him. Looked at the pair of them. His new team. He hoped they were as good as… Just hoped they were good. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘this is it. I should imagine this case is going to be high priority so I need you to be on top of your game here. Pool information. Support each other. No mavericking, right?’

  They both nodded.

  ‘Right,’ said Phil. ‘Here’s what needs to happen. The Birdies should be here soon. They can-’

  Mickey Philips laughed. ‘The what?’

  ‘Birdies,’ said Phil, impatient at the interruption. ‘DC Adrian Wren and DS Jane Gosling. Hence, the Birdies. Adrian can follow Nick to the mortuary, do chain of evidence. Jane can get started with you, Mickey, on the door-to-door.’

  Mickey Philips looked around. ‘Over there?’

  ‘Start with the businesses here. Someone might have been in early, seen something. Then after that…’ He looked across the river. ‘The flats over there. Coordinate with uniforms. Rose, you handle that. You’ve done it before, see what Julie Miller’s neighbours have to say.’

  Rose nodded. Phil looked saw the eagerness in her eyes. Ready, burning to go. He hoped that energy wasn’t misplaced. He didn’t want her making mistakes. Either of them, for that matter.

  ‘I’ll get Milhouse to set up the incident room back at Southway, get a mobile one put here, couple of uniforms manning it. Bit of presence, you never know.’ He looked between the two of them.

  ‘What about where she was killed, boss?’ said Mickey. ‘Should we be looking for that?’

  ‘Initiative is good,’ said Phil, ‘and I approve, but, as our esteemed leader DCI Fenwick would say, that would be creating a needle/haystack interface.’

  Mickey, surprised at Phil criticising his superior, smiled. Phil also noticed that Rose’s attention sharpened at the mention of Fenwick’s name. He caught the look, filed it away with the other stuff.

  Phil continued. ‘We think we know who she is. Once that’s confirmed, hopefully the where and the why will follow.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anni should be joining us soon, so that’s one more body.’ He looked between the pair of them. ‘Any questions?’

  If they had, they were keeping them to themselves.

  Phil breathed in, out. No pain. His ribs felt fine.

  ‘Good. Right. Let’s-’

  ‘What the hell’s going on with my boat?’

  The three of them turned. A middle-aged man, red-faced and sweating, was running towards them, a uniform in p
ursuit.

  ‘Ah,’ said Phil, smiling. ‘I think this may be the boat’s owner.’ He turned to the other two. ‘I’ll deal with him. You go catch a killer.’

  8

  Anni’s questions had kept Suzanne’s tears at bay. She pressed on.

  ‘Suzanne, your flat. The CSIs are checking everything now. They say the lock on the door hasn’t been forced. Same with the window. Is there any other way someone could have got in?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Anyone else have a key?’

  Something flitted across her face. Dark and swift, an evil fairy-tale sprite. ‘No.’

  Anni leaned forward, surprised by the response. ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Just…’ Suzanne kept her eyes averted from Anni. ‘Zoe. My friend Zoe.’

  The look hadn’t been for her friend Zoe. ‘No one else?’

  Suzanne looked away, shook her head.

  ‘Suzanne, I’m trying to help you here. If there’s someone who could have had a key then please tell me. It could be important.’

  Another sigh from Suzanne. ‘I think Mark might still have one.’

  ‘Who’s Mark?’

  ‘Mark Turner. My old boyfriend. But he’s… It’s not important. We’re not seeing each other any more.’

  ‘Could he have done this?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because… because we’re not… he’s just not that into me any more.’ The American accent was an attempted joke but the bitterness of the words cancelled it out.

  ‘Oh,’ said Anni. ‘Right.’

  Suzanne looked at her once more. ‘These things happen.’ Her voice reedy, unconvincing.

  ‘But he still has a key.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Suzanne frowned, as if the thought had just entered her head. ‘Not because he still wanted to see me. Just…’ She shrugged. ‘… because…’

  ‘Never gave it back.’ Anni took his details. ‘So you got a new boyfriend?’