Rogue Killer

by Leigh Russell

  Without a word, they hurried quietly back down the path just as the sun was rising.

  ‘Phew!’ the forensic scientist said as they climbed back into the car and pulled away from the kerb. ‘That was tricky.’

  ‘Did you get anything you can use?’

  ‘Who knows? But with the new hi-tech forensics it’s possible to sometimes get a complete DNA sample from smudged or partial fingerprints and even from surfaces where no prints are visible. So you might be lucky. I’ll get these straight back to the lab anyway, and have them tested.’

  ‘You’ll let me know straightaway if you find a match for the sample found on the murder victims?’

  ‘Of course.’ The forensic scientist broke into a smile. ‘So does this mean you think we might have found your murderer?’

  ‘Like you said, we might be lucky.’

  They drove back to the police station in silence after that. The scientist took his swabs straight to the forensic lab, and for the rest of the morning Geraldine was forced to wait impatiently for the results. Aware that she had nothing more than an impression to go on, she hadn’t mentioned her theory to the detective chief inspector. At last the results came back. A trace of DNA matching that found on both murder victims had been identified on the door frame of the house now occupied by long-haired Lindsey. Clutching the results, Geraldine ran to tell Ian and together they went to see Eileen.

  ‘Can’t this wait?’ she asked when they opened the door. ‘I’m due at a meeting and can’t be late.’

  ‘No,’ Ian replied promptly. ‘It can’t wait. We think Geraldine’s found out where the killer lives.’

  Eileen had half risen to her feet. She sat down again abruptly.

  ‘Say that again, slowly.’

  Geraldine gave Eileen the address. ‘It’s where Lindsey Curtis lives, but something didn’t quite add up, which is why I wanted to test her door frame, just in case we found a match.’

  ‘The killer’s DNA was all over it,’ Ian said.

  Eileen frowned. ‘Hers was the only name on the tenancy agreement, if I remember correctly?’

  ‘We’ve established the killer went there, so even though he’s not actually living there she must know him,’ Ian said.

  ‘She’s been living there for three months and it’s unlikely the DNA traces would have survived on an external surface for more than a few weeks,’ Geraldine added.

  ‘Obviously she’s not the killer,’ Ian said, ‘but if she knows him she might be able to help us to trace where he’s hiding out. He could even be in the house with her right now.’

  ‘Let’s bring her in and find out,’ Eileen snapped. ‘And while we’re at it, we’ll search the house. Good work, both of you.’

  ‘This was all Geraldine’s doing,’ Ian said quickly. ‘I can’t claim any responsibility for it.’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s find this killer and then we can spend time arguing about who takes the credit for his arrest.’

  Ian and Geraldine exchanged a quick glance. Obviously Eileen would claim the kudos for the success of the investigation she was leading, but that no longer mattered to Geraldine. Her days of caring about making a name for herself were over. She had no reputation left to protect.

  Geraldine and Ian went to see Lindsey, but once again there was no one there. Worried she might have done a runner, they sent out an alert to all stations, ports and airports, as well as circulating her details to police stations nationwide. The best image they could find on the CCTV footage had been enhanced as far as possible, but it was blurred, making it difficult to broadcast. Her house was put under surveillance and around midday, a message came in that a woman had been seen entering the property. Geraldine and Ian went straight there, taking a search team with them. On the way, they agreed that Ian would wait in the car outside, with the team on alert, while Geraldine went to speak to Lindsey. There was no point in alarming her unduly, and a chance that Geraldine might learn more from her by questioning her gently. With a surge of excitement, Geraldine approached the front door. Even though there was no reason to suppose Lindsey knew where Jamie was hiding out, Geraldine couldn’t help feeling she was moving closer to the killer.

  52

  For a long time, Lindsey didn’t come to the door. Geraldine rang the bell repeatedly, and rapped on the door with her knuckles, and eventually a voice called out, asking who was there. When Geraldine introduced herself, there was a long pause before Lindsey answered.

  ‘I don’t open the door to strangers so you can go away, whoever you are.’

  ‘Lindsey, this is the police. We just want to speak to you for a moment. Please open the door.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Lindsey, something’s happened that you need to be aware of,’ Geraldine replied, being as circumspect as she could.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Lindsey, we’re not going anywhere until you’ve answered a few questions we have. Please, listen to me. We’re here to protect you –’

  ‘I don’t need your protection. I can look after myself. Go away.’

  ‘Lindsey, please can you open the door so we can talk?’

  ‘You can talk to me like this.’

  The door opened on the chain just enough to allow Geraldine to make out a sliver of a figure inside. Peering into the poorly lit hall, she could see one side of a pale face with a dark eye staring back at her.

  ‘What do you want? Go away and leave me alone.’

  Carefully Geraldine explained that the police were looking for Jamie Drury.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘You might know him under a different name, but we know he’s been in this house recently.’

  ‘Well he hasn’t. No one called Jamie has been here. Not while I’ve been living here anyway. There hasn’t been anyone else here.’

  Lindsey tried to shut the door but Geraldine had slipped one foot in the gap to prevent it from closing.

  ‘We think this man we’re looking for can help us with our enquiries into a case concerning a very serious crime. This is really important, Lindsey. Is there anyone in the house apart from you?’

  It was hardly possible to be more vague, but Lindsey didn’t question Geraldine about the nature of the crime she was investigating. And she was adamant there was no one else in the house.

  ‘There may have been someone else in the house before me, but not while I was living here, and I don’t know anyone called Jamie, so you can go away and leave me alone.’

  Lindsey jogged the door in an attempt to close it. Geraldine hesitated. This was not going well.

  ‘Lindsey, I need you to let me in,’ she said. ‘Or if you prefer, you can come along to the police station to answer some questions.’

  ‘Go away,’ Lindsey replied, refusing to be cowed by a threatened visit to the police station. ‘Just go away and leave me alone. You’ve got no right to pester me like this.’

  ‘Is someone in there with you?’

  ‘No, I told you, there’s no one else here.’

  ‘Then will you allow us to come in and take a look around?’

  ‘No, you can’t come in. I told you there’s no one here.’

  It was time to be firm. ‘Lindsey, there’s a team of police officers outside the house, front and back, waiting to come in and conduct a search, with or without your consent. If we need to get a search warrant we will, with the evidence we have –’

  ‘What evidence? What are you talking about? I told you there’s no one here. You’re just trying to intimidate me. It won’t work.’

  The door jiggled again. Geraldine explained about the DNA found on the door frame.

  ‘We believe it belongs to a man we’d like to speak to, a man called Jamie Drury, so I’m sorry, but we do need to come in and look around. This is a murder investigation and if you refuse permission you will be prosecuted fo
r obstructing the police. We’re obtaining a warrant to search the premises.’

  ‘I told you, there’s no one called Jamie here now.’

  ‘But there might be something in the house that will help us to find him. We do need to take a look. Lindsey, I really don’t understand why you’re so determined to stop us coming in. I’ve told you why this is so serious.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  Lindsey shut the door. Even though she knew officers were watching the back door, Geraldine was growing anxious by the time the front door opened a few moments later and Lindsey stood aside to let her in. Geraldine entered, followed by the search team.

  Geraldine turned to Lindsey. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  As Lindsey ducked her head, Geraldine caught a glimpse of eyes nearly as dark as her own. Circled by stark black lines, they looked like holes cut into her long pale face.

  ‘I let you in. Now leave me alone. I don’t know anything about the man you’re looking for.’

  Her tone was so irate Geraldine didn’t feel inclined to insist. Instead she watched Lindsey enter the front room and close the door behind her. She hadn’t been able to prevent Geraldine from entering her house; shutting her out of the front room was a petty triumph. If there were any clues to Jamie’s whereabouts in the house, the highly trained search team would find them. There was nothing Geraldine could do to help, but out of curiosity she had a quick look around the house. She could see no sign of a man’s presence there. Downstairs, apart from the front room where Lindsey was ensconced with the television blaring, there was a kitchenette that looked out on to a narrow strip of overgrown garden, and another room set up with a small square dining table and four chairs, that looked unused. The search team went through all of the rooms, including the front room where Lindsey was sitting. There was only one laptop in the house which was taken straight to the police station for a technology expert to investigate, while a team conducted a meticulous physical search of the property.

  Upstairs, apart from a bathroom crammed with bottles and tubes of ointments and lotions and cosmetics, there was a box room with a small bed that appeared to have been slept in, and a larger bedroom that was apparently used as a dressing room. Clothes were strewn all over the bed: brightly coloured dresses and skirts, sequinned gowns and velvet capes, and frocks decorated with beads and sparkles. Geraldine picked up a flouncy pale pink chiffon dress dotted with tiny pink pearls. Somehow she couldn’t imagine the tall angular-faced woman downstairs wearing something so flimsy and delicate. The search was fruitless. Not only was there no one else hidden in the house or garden, but there was no sign of anyone else having been there.

  Feeling deflated, Geraldine returned to the car where Ian was waiting for her and they drove back to the police station in silence. There was nothing more they could do but scour the country for Jamie. It was likely to be a long drawn-out manhunt. In the meantime, they would put Lindsey under twenty-four hour surveillance.

  53

  Having discovered the killer’s DNA on the door frame of Lindsey’s house, they seemed to be closing in on the man who had killed Grant, Felicity and Zoe. Yet even though Jamie had now become a suspect, despite all their efforts they could find nothing to link him to his victims, and his motive for the murders remained as much of a mystery as his whereabouts. They weren’t even sure he was still alive. His father had reported that he was dead but, without firm evidence, they were proceeding on the assumption that he was still alive and had returned to the UK, if he had even gone abroad in the first place. Certainly they had found no record of him ever having left the country and had only his father’s word for that. He could have been mistaken, or lying to mislead them in an attempt to protect his only surviving child. Speaking briskly, Eileen said they would be able to question him about his motives once they had him in custody but, before that, they had to find him. It was proving more of a challenge than anyone had anticipated. They had all assumed that establishing the killer’s identity would be the difficult part. Now they knew who to look for, the suspect seemed to have vanished without trace.

  Lindsey’s landlord was contacted as a matter of urgency, and details obtained for his previous tenants dating back ten years. None of them was called Jamie Drury. All were traced and local officers were promptly dispatched to question them and obtain DNA samples from the males. None of the samples matched that of the elusive killer, and no one admitted to having known a man called Jamie while they were living there. Yet the fact remained that his DNA had been present on Lindsey’s door frame. While the hunt continued, the surveillance team remained in place watching Lindsey’s house, and there was still no sign of Jamie.

  ‘Needle and haystack,’ Ian muttered.

  This wasn’t the first time they had been in this position, but they usually at least had an idea of who they were looking for, and what he or she might look like. All that happened on the following day was that a couple of Lindsey’s neighbours called to say they had noticed a car parked in their street with someone sitting inside it.

  ‘So much for discreet surveillance,’ Eileen grumbled. ‘And you’ve come up with nothing at all that might help us to find him?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Ian confirmed.

  He looked crestfallen. Having organised the physical search, he had led the team with serious hopes of discovering a lead to the killer’s whereabouts.

  ‘What about the laptop?’ Eileen barked, turning to the officer who had been in charge of that part of the search.

  He too shook his head. ‘It belonged to Lindsey,’ he replied. ‘Most of the searches relate to female fashion. Apart from looking on the internet, there’s no visible presence on social media outlets at all, and she doesn’t appear to have an email account. She didn’t make any online purchases and the laptop’s hardly been used. There are no contacts listed, and basically it doesn’t help us in any way.’

  Such a disappointment was hardly out of the ordinary in a murder enquiry, yet Ian looked devastated. No one else appeared to register quite how wretched he looked, but Geraldine knew him well enough to realise that something was amiss. She tackled him about it after work, hurrying to catch up with him as he walked to the car park at the end of the day.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  He paused and hesitated before turning to face her, his expression rigid. ‘All right? I wouldn’t say everything was all right, no.’

  ‘I mean apart from the fact that we don’t seem to be getting anywhere with the case. I wouldn’t have asked,’ she added quickly, ‘only you seem so down.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Only to someone who knows you as well as I do.’

  Ian’s face contorted for an instant, as though he was struggling to keep his emotions in check.

  ‘Bev called.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She wants me to take her back. She said she’s prepared to give our marriage a second chance.’

  ‘A second chance?’ Geraldine echoed stupidly. ‘What about the man she ran off with? The baby’s father?’

  ‘They split up. I don’t know why. All she said was that it didn’t work out between them.’

  Geraldine felt a fleeting pang of sympathy for Ian’s ex-wife, but her main concern was for him.

  ‘Do you want her back?’

  ‘After the way she behaved?’

  ‘What do you want to happen with her?’

  ‘What do I want?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t want anything from her. She left me. Why would I take her back?’

  Geraldine shrugged. ‘You loved her once, enough to want to ask her to marry you.’

  ‘And in a way I suppose my feelings for her haven’t changed. But even if I do still love her, how can I ever trust her again?’

  His last sentence sounded like a cry for help. Geraldine wished there was something she could say
that would make him feel better. She spent so much of her working life offering words of comfort to the bereaved, complete strangers with whom she shared nothing more than a bond of common humanity. Now, witnessing the sorrow of a friend she loved more than anyone else she knew, she struggled to find the right words.

  ‘Relationships take constant work –’ she began.

  Ian interrupted her. ‘Spare me your platitudes.’

  Geraldine hesitated, trying to think of something to say that would help him.

  ‘It’s hard,’ was all she could come up with.

  It sounded pathetic.

  She tried again. ‘I wish there was something I could do…’

  ‘Well, there isn’t. There’s nothing anyone can do to make this situation any better.’

  ‘Ian,’ she spoke firmly. ‘You know I’ll help you if I can, but you need to decide what you want to do.’

  ‘I know what I want. I want my wife back, but not the woman who cheated on me for God knows how long. Can you turn the clock back? I want the woman I married, the woman who –’

  ‘Ian, she’s asking you to take her back. If you can forgive her, maybe you can go back. She’s offering you that chance. But you need to be sure that’s really what you want.’

  ‘I don’t want her back.’ He spoke very slowly, as though the words were being torn out of him against his will. ‘I thought she was happily settled in a new life with a man who could make her happy, a man who could give her the life she wanted. Yes, it was hard to accept that I wasn’t that man. I could never be who she wanted me to be, not unless I gave up being who I am. But I was resigned to losing her. Only now she’s not happy and I don’t know what to do.’ He turned to look at Geraldine. ‘What do you think? Do you think I should take her back?’