‘She grabbed my arm,’ Zoe said, ‘and I had to pull myself away. But it was more about what she said.’
‘What? About you losing your looks when you get older? Well, won’t we all, if we live that long?’ Josie inhaled and blew out a cloud of white smoke.
‘But she grabbed me.’
‘So? Why are you telling me this, again?’ Josie asked, in a bored tone. ‘It’s not as though you were grabbed by a fit bloke, is it? That might be worth talking about.’
‘I just thought maybe we should warn the other girls to watch out for her. I mean, she’s bonkers, and the next girl might not get away from her.’
‘From some old woman?’ Josie burst out laughing. ‘Please, Zoe, get a grip. You’ll be frightened by your own shadow next. I suppose you’re scared of spiders.’
She wiggled her fingers at Zoe, holding her cigarette at the edge of her lips and screwing up one eye against the thread of smoke rising from the glowing tip.
‘She was strong,’ Zoe protested, ‘and honestly, Josie, if those two guys hadn’t come along –’
‘What? You might have ended up – oh shock horror – going out for coffee with an old woman?’ She laughed again.
‘She wasn’t that old.’
‘Well, if you’re that bothered, go to the police,’ Josie said, and closed her eyes, muttering something about being a drama queen.
Zoe wondered whether it was worth going to the police to report what had happened. She suspected they would react just as Josie had, and dismiss her as a hysterical teenager, even though she was eighteen and had left home and was living independently. She probably wouldn’t have bothered taking it any further had she not hoped that going to the police would persuade Josie to take her seriously.
The following day Zoe only had one lecture in the morning so, on a whim, she checked out the location of the police station and found it was just a short bus ride from her digs. Instead of going straight home from university, she caught a bus to Fulford Road, and asked the driver to put her off at the right stop. A sign displayed on a brick post announced the location of the police headquarters where a large ugly square building was tucked away from the street along a road that ran through the police compound. She went into the door marked Visitors and hesitated for a second before marching up to the desk. A man in uniform nodded at her. He didn’t smile, but he looked friendly.
‘Yes, Miss?’
‘I’d like to report –’ she hesitated again.
Before entering the building, she had rehearsed what she was going to say, but now she was there, her mind went blank.
‘Yes, Miss?’
‘I want to report an assault,’ she said.
The man nodded. ‘Let me take down a few details, Miss, and then we can see if there’s someone here you can talk to.’
Having made a note of her name and address, and written down her occupation as ‘university student’, he summoned a young female officer who led Zoe into a small interview room. They sat down, and the constable asked her to relate what had happened to her. The policewoman didn’t show by so much as a movement of a muscle whether she thought Zoe was overreacting, as she asked her to describe the woman.
Zoe hesitated, flustered. She could hardly admit that she couldn’t remember what the woman looked like.
‘I think she was taller than me,’ she said. ‘And she had dark eyes.’
‘Can you remember anything else about her?’ the police woman asked, with exaggerated patience.
Her condescension stung Zoe. Embarrassed to admit she couldn’t remember anything else about the woman, Zoe launched into a description of her aunt. It didn’t really matter what she said, because no one was taking her seriously.
‘Is that it then?’ Zoe asked when her interlocutor thanked her politely for coming forward, and stood up.
The policewoman looked faintly surprised, or perhaps slightly amused. ‘What more would you like us to do?’
Zoe shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Shouldn’t I be given a crime number or something?’
‘A crime number?’
‘Yes, you know, a reference number for the crime.’
The other woman shook her head. ‘You haven’t reported a crime,’ she replied quietly. ‘Nothing happened.’
Losing her opportunity to impress Josie, Zoe grew desperate.
‘But it could have,’ she said. ‘She wanted to take me home with her. She said she didn’t live far from there. What if those two men hadn’t come along, or – or what if this woman grabbed hold of someone less sensible than me, or – or a child?’
‘I’ll circulate her details to the local patrols,’ the constable assured her, ‘and we’ll keep an eye out for anyone matching her description.’
Feeling despondent, Zoe allowed the constable to escort her out of the building. As she made her way back to the road and waited for the bus to take her back into town, she reflected on what had just happened. She couldn’t decide whether to tell Josie about her visit to the police station or not. In a way, going to the police sounded quite serious but, if she was honest, nothing had happened, and the police weren’t going to do anything. Josie would just dismiss her as an attention seeker. She had already accused her of being a drama queen. On balance, Zoe decided it might be as well to simply forget the whole thing. It was stupid, and she had wasted enough time on it. The woman who had accosted her in the street was odd. If Zoe saw her again, she would just walk the other way, fast.
That would have been the end of the matter if she hadn’t seen a woman reading a paper on the bus. One of the headlines gave her an idea. The police might have dismissed her account as uninteresting, but there was something else she could do that might impress Josie. And as long as she didn’t give her real name, there was no way her mother would ever find out what had happened to her. Smiling, she took out her phone and googled the contact details for the local paper.
42
After his recent success, he had been staying indoors most of the time, concerned to keep out of sight. To avoid temptation, whenever he left the house now he left his rucksack at home, along with his gloves and cape, and he was also careful not to carry a knife. In many ways it was frustrating, having to wait around like that, but he knew better than to rush blindly into his next kill, ignoring what was going on around him. The police presence on the streets had visibly increased, and he needed to wait until the fuss died down before going out to find another victim. Even on an ostensibly empty street a stray witness could appear at any moment, and now there was the added risk a police car might drive past. He had to be patient. There was no other option if he wanted to avoid detection.
None of this meant he intended to stop. On the contrary, he had every intention of pursuing his plans as vigorously as ever. Without the excitement of the kill his life felt empty, days stretching out in pointless tedium. He was just taking a break until the police turned their attention elsewhere. They couldn’t keep on throwing money at an investigation that was never going to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Eventually they would realise they were never going to find him, at which point they would have to give up and move on. It couldn’t happen soon enough as far as he was concerned. Unlike the movie stereotype of a serial killer, he wasn’t seeking notoriety, and he had no wish to attract attention by taunting the police. He more closely resembled a hunted animal, hiding in the shadows while he stalked his prey. Recently he had blundered into attacking people who were likely to be missed, well-dressed people who looked as though they had jobs, and homes to go to. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. The less anyone knew about his activities the better, because any attention increased the risk he would be tracked down. But there was little danger of that. He had taken steps to ensure he would never be found.
The media weren’t helping, with their hysterical reports of his activities. Some of the articles he read were so far remov
ed from the truth, he wondered whether they were writing about a different crime altogether. It both disturbed and amused him to think there could be another killer on the streets of York. On Sunday morning he read a brief report in the local paper about an attempted assault. Swallowing a growing sense of unease, he read it through several times. ‘University student repels attacker’, he read. ‘A student at the York St John University foiled an attempted abduction on Thursday,’ the article continued. ‘Eighteen-year-old Jane Smith, a student of English, was accosted in the street in broad daylight by a woman claiming to work for the council. “She grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go,” Jane told our reporter. “I was terrified.” The young girl managed to pull herself free and fled. No one was injured but the police are taking this account of an attempted abduction very seriously. Anyone who saw a grey-haired woman in a long brown coat near the university on Thursday should speak to the police.’
Whatever else happened, the girl had been foolish to disclose where she was studying. Now it would be easy to find out where she lived by looking for her at the university, and simply following her home. He was surprised the police had sanctioned her speaking to the press like that. But her indiscretion probably had nothing to do with the police. The girl had most likely gone to the papers herself, looking for attention. As a result of her stupidity, she might now find herself attracting exactly the kind of attention she had been hoping to avoid. He smiled at the irony of the situation. The girl should have kept her mouth shut and stayed out of the limelight. Attention of any kind was best kept to a minimum when you were avoiding people who wished to harm you. Now she really had put herself at risk because, if anyone attacked her now, the police would be looking for a grey-haired woman. He smiled at this unexpected stroke of luck, and his gaze flicked to his rucksack.
43
Finally Geraldine’s persistence was rewarded because the next morning, when she took the same detour on her way to work, the door was opened by a woman whose long dark hair hung nearly to her waist. She was tall and striking, and her heavily made-up dark eyes narrowed in suspicion when she saw Geraldine.
‘Who are you?’
Geraldine introduced herself.
‘What do you want?’
‘Is your name Lindsey Curtis?’
The woman took a step back from the threshold and closed the door slightly.
‘Can we go inside? I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
Geraldine could tell from the way the woman drew back further into the hallway that she didn’t intend to invite her in.
‘What’s this about?’
Carefully Geraldine told her she had been recorded on CCTV leaving a crime scene, and the police wanted to ask her a few questions about what she had seen.
The woman scowled. ‘What are you talking about? What crime scene am I supposed to have been at? What do you mean? Are you saying I’ve been accused of something I didn’t do? I never committed a crime in my life. I’ve never stolen anything from anyone.’
Geraldine interrupted her tirade to explain that she wasn’t under any suspicion, but the police were hoping she might be able to help by describing what she had witnessed. Still scowling, the woman shook her head. Before Geraldine could ask her anything else, she slammed the door. At least Geraldine had confirmed the woman was still alive. Thoughtfully she drove off to work and spent the remainder of the day preparing budget reports for Eileen.
Many of Geraldine’s fellow officers congregated in the pub near the police station for a drink before setting off home after work. That evening she walked up the road with Ariadne, chatting about the case. Arriving at the pub, Geraldine’s mood didn’t improve on seeing Ian and Naomi sitting together, deep in conversation.
‘You’re both looking gloomy,’ Ariadne commented as she and Geraldine joined them.
‘We’re just having a moan about the case,’ Naomi said. ‘It seems to have ground to a halt.’
‘There’s a lot of work going on in the background,’ Geraldine said. ‘These investigations take time, but as long as we put in enough hours, we’ll get a result.’
‘That’s part of the problem,’ Ian replied. ‘We aren’t putting in the hours. If we weren’t understaffed we’d be so much further ahead.’
They discussed the recent budget cuts which were affecting police forces throughout the UK.
‘And it doesn’t help that the staff we do have are plagued by time wasters,’ Geraldine said.
‘Yes, there are always the nutters,’ Ian agreed.
‘And the lonely,’ Ariadne added.
‘A lot of people are lonely,’ Geraldine said, carrying on quickly so her colleagues wouldn’t think she might be talking about herself. ‘Most of them don’t call in and waste police time.’
‘We spend so much time running around chasing false reports, apart from the admin involved in taking statements and creating records,’ Ian complained. ‘It’s an absolute disgrace when we’re already so understaffed. It’s not as if the budget cuts are a secret. It’s been in the news. You’d have to be a moron not to be aware of what’s going on. If there were only a few it would be bad enough, but there are so many people messing us about, wasting our time.’
Naomi agreed with him.
‘But there’s nothing we can do about it,’ he added with a shrug.
‘No, there’s nothing we can do,’ Naomi echoed him.
Ian smiled at Naomi who looked down with a coy expression.
Listening to them, Geraldine could no longer contain her irritation. ‘That’s easy to say, but if we don’t try and educate the public, who will? We can’t just sit back and say there’s nothing we can do. We need to do everything in our power to spread the message that unnecessary calls on police time have a negative effect on an already overstretched force.’
She stood up pushing her stool back so vigorously it toppled over and fell to the floor with a startling clatter. Feeling like a fool, she leaned down and righted it.
‘Let me get you another drink,’ Ian said with a grin.
Ignoring the offer, Geraldine said goodnight and hurriedly took leave of her colleagues. Back at home, she couldn’t sleep so she took out her laptop. After rereading all the forensic reports, she wrote up her conversation with Lindsey. It didn’t amount to much, but she logged it anyway. At least she had established that the woman still lived at that address, and that she wasn’t keen to talk to the police. Almost as an afterthought, she added that the woman’s neighbours had mentioned she only went out at night.
‘I read your report on that woman with the long hair,’ Ian said when he saw Geraldine the following morning. ‘You were writing it at two in the morning. I hope you’re not going to be distracted from your work here. We need you to be wide awake and focused. Remember you’re part of a team, and we don’t have unlimited time and resources. It’s highly unlikely this woman witnessed a murder. She’s had enough opportunity to come forward and talk to us if she does have anything to tell us.’
Geraldine shrugged off the implied criticism. ‘Oh, you know me. I never go to sleep early anyway.’
‘You reported this woman only appears to be seen at night. So what exactly are you suggesting?’ he asked severely. ‘Do you think she’s a vampire?’
He laughed, and Geraldine joined in, relieved.
‘Seriously,’ he went on, ‘she could be working night shifts at the hospital, or be a prostitute, or the neighbour might be mistaken.’
Geraldine nodded. ‘I suppose so.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘I just feel we may be missing something.’
Eileen wasn’t impressed. ‘What were you doing up so late, Geraldine, and what was all that about this woman we’re trying to find going out at night?’
Quickly, Geraldine reiterated who the woman was, and how she might fit into the murder investigation.
‘But she refused to speak to me,’ Geraldine concluded.
Eileen looked irritated. ‘So that’s all been a waste of time.’
‘Geraldine did all that chasing after work,’ Ian said quickly.
Eileen grunted. ‘Very well then.’ She turned away from Geraldine. ‘Now let’s see. The important thing now is to track down the owner of the DNA found on the two victims.’
Eileen had instigated a search to request DNA samples from every blond blue-eyed adult male in York who had ever been questioned in connection with a violent incident without being charged.
‘Unless someone comes up with a better lead, this seems to be the only way forward at the moment,’ she said. ‘We have the DNA, we need to get a conviction. The only thing missing now is a match. Somewhere out there is a killer whose DNA hasn’t been entered on the database. But he must have a history of some kind.’
She sighed, no doubt thinking that the man they were looking for could easily evade them. He might already have left the area, or have been living elsewhere all along, only coming into the city to look for his victims before vanishing again. But if the strategy offered even a slim chance of finding the killer, it had to be relentlessly pursued.
‘We’re going to get him, however long it takes,’ Eileen said.
‘Perhaps he’s descended from the Vikings,’ someone muttered. ‘They had fair hair, didn’t they?’
No one answered. They all knew that looking for a blond man who might or might not be living in York was a massive undertaking with limited chance of success.
44
Nearly a week had passed since Zoe’s encounter with the stranger, but she still hadn’t completely recovered her equanimity, which was shaky at the best of times. She had hoped that reporting the incident to the police would be the end of it, but she remained scared to go out on her own. It was particularly galling as she had always promised herself she wouldn’t grow up to be like her mother who was fearful of everything. Still, she had to get on with her life and travel to and from the university campus to attend lectures. Struggling to control her anxiety, she remained alert and kept to busy roads as far as possible. On the Tuesday after her unnerving encounter, it began to rain shortly after she left college. With very few pedestrians around, she found herself alone on an empty street. She glanced repeatedly to both sides, and over her shoulder, as she hurried on her way. The shower didn’t last long, and she was reassured when a few people appeared on the pavement, and even more relieved when she bumped into Josie.
Rogue Killer Page 20
