The Christmas Killer

by Alex Pine

  It meant there was nothing to distract her from the nightmare that was engulfing her and everyone else in the village. She kept thinking about Lorna and Charlie, and the message in the card found on Lorna’s body. It confirmed her worst fear that it was the work of a heartless serial killer, and the possibility that she might actually know this person was making her flesh crawl.

  She decided to go for a walk and pop into the store for some groceries. Hopefully, James would let her know soon that he’d spoken to her uncle and had satisfied himself that her suspicions about him were totally unfounded. Then she would try to catch up with Bill.

  She put on her coat, scarf and gloves, and checked herself in the hallway mirror. She didn’t much like what she saw. Her face was pale and gaunt, and the make-up she’d put on failed to conceal the darkness beneath her eyes.

  As soon as she stepped outside, she filled her lungs with draughts of cold air. And she was struck once again by how beautiful the village was when gift-wrapped in snow. It was like an image from a winter holiday brochure. But she doubted that Kirkby Abbey would be a popular destination for tourists for some time to come. It would more than likely become a hotspot for ghouls attracted by its reputation as the location of the infamous Christmas killings.

  Annie’s heart raced along with her breath as she trudged through the village. A light snow was falling and the wind was pulling and pushing the upper branches of the trees. It brought back memories of her childhood when the Arctic weather had been something to look forward to. She remembered her parents taking her onto the fells so that she could sled down them. She used to hold onto her father’s hand when they ventured onto frozen lakes and streams. And there was the time her Uncle Bill turned up at the house with a Christmas tree that was so big it had to be trimmed before it would fit through the front door.

  Back then, everyone in the village seemed so happy and content and safe. It was the perfect environment in which to raise a family and enjoy life to the full. But Annie had come to realise that things were very different now. So much had changed and not for the better. It was such a crying shame.

  Today the streets were quiet, but she saw a few people, including a uniformed police officer and a television news camera crew.

  After about five minutes she started to look back over her shoulder because she had the strangest feeling that she was being watched. This continued as she walked past the church and into the square. But she didn’t spot anyone following her.

  In the store, she bought a jar of decaf coffee, a newspaper and some washing up liquid.

  Peter King drew her into a conversation for a few minutes and asked her if James was close to catching the killer.

  ‘I can only hope he is,’ she told him. ‘But he’s not allowed to share details of the investigation, even with me.’

  ‘Well, it’s all anyone is talking about,’ King said. ‘Some of our customers are even stocking up with provisions so that they don’t have to leave their homes. They’re so scared.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Annie said.

  ‘Do you think there will be any more murders?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I hope not.’

  When she left the store, she decided to walk across the village to the garage to see how far they’d got with repairs on her uncle’s car.

  She was halfway there, walking along a cobbled street between two rows of houses, when she heard someone call out her name. She stopped and turned, and saw a man hurrying towards her.

  When she realised who it was her heart leapt in her chest.

  ‘I saw you crossing the road,’ Daniel said when he got to her. ‘I thought I’d catch up so we can have a chat.’

  Annie’s breath suddenly roared in her ears. ‘Have you been following me?’ she said accusingly.

  He shook his head. ‘I just happened to spot you from a distance. I was on my way to my dad’s place.’

  She didn’t believe him and was tempted to walk away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  ‘Please just spare me a minute of your time, Annie,’ he said. ‘I realise I’m the last person you want to talk to and I understand why. But there’s something I need to know.’

  Annie didn’t flinch from his gaze. It was strange for her to see him again after all this time and it occurred to her that he hadn’t aged as much as he probably should have. Yet, where once she had felt a warm glow when they were this close, now she felt nothing but revulsion and contempt.

  ‘I know what you want to ask me because you’ve already put the question to my husband and my uncle,’ she said. ‘And the answer is no. You did not make me pregnant, thank God. What Janet told your father wasn’t true. It was probably a misunderstanding on her part because I told her once back then that I was worried that you might make me pregnant. But believe me, it never happened. She made a mistake. Now I would ask you not to go around talking about it, and also to stay the fuck away from me.’

  She started to turn her back on him but he reached out and put a hand on her arm to stop her.

  She flinched and jumped back.

  ‘How dare you touch me,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, don’t be a bloody drama queen,’ he said. ‘You can’t say what you just did and expect that to be the end of it.’

  ‘I’ve answered your question. What more do you want?’

  ‘I want to talk about it because I think you’re lying.’

  ‘I don’t care what you think, Daniel. And even if it were true, I wouldn’t be obliged to tell you. We haven’t spoken for almost twenty years and in all that time not a day has passed when I haven’t thought what a lucky escape I had.’

  ‘I didn’t want us to break up, Annie, but I was given no choice. Everyone turned against me when they found out we were seeing each other and I never got a chance to explain myself.’

  ‘And what would you have told me? That I wasn’t the only girl you were shagging at the time, and that one of the others was even younger than me?’

  His face contorted into a grimace, ugly and threatening, and it made Annie suddenly fear for her safety.

  ‘Just tell me the truth,’ he shouted at her. ‘Did you kill our child?’

  Annie was determined not to let him see how shaken she was. With her breath thumping in her ears, she said, ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you, Daniel. If you try to stop me walking away again I’ll call the police and have you arrested for assault.’

  He began to speak, but by then she’d turned away and was striding across the cobbles, hoping he wouldn’t be reckless enough to come after her.

  She carried on walking and did not look back until she reached the end of the street. To her relief Daniel was nowhere to be seen.

  The encounter had shaken her, though, and her thoughts were now swimming in feverish circles. There was a tightness in her chest and her hands were trembling. But at least she had confronted the issue and hopefully that would be the end of it.

  During the rest of the walk she had to force herself not to dwell on what had happened, but his face and his voice kept forcing themselves into her mind, causing an intense pressure to build behind her eyes.

  When she got to the garage, the mechanic recognised her from when she’d dropped in with Bill to arrange for his car to be picked up. She was told it was still being fixed and wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow at the earliest.

  James still hadn’t phoned or sent her a message, but it was only ten-thirty. She decided to drop the groceries off at home before making up her mind what to do next.

  But on the way home she saw Daniel again. This time he was about fifty yards ahead of her in the middle of the village square. And he was engaged in what looked like a fierce argument with Giles Keegan.

  The former policeman was jabbing a finger at Daniel and Annie could just about hear his raised, angry voice but couldn’t make out the words.

  The pair of them were the only ones in the square. Annie stepped up behind a tree so that if they looked her way, they wou
ldn’t see her. But she could see them and for about a minute she watched them shout at each other.

  The altercation ended when Daniel threw his arms up in the air, then turned sharply on his heels and stomped off.

  Keegan treated him to a two-fingered salute and then moved away in the other direction.

  Annie waited until they were both out of sight before she resumed her journey home.

  She was curious to know what they had been arguing about and made a mental note to tell James what she’d seen.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  James had been forced to take Gordon Carver into his confidence. He saw it as the only way to stop the reporter from rushing into print with the scoop that had been handed to him on a plate by the killer.

  The Twelve Days of Christmas card delivered to the guy’s home had understandably got his journalistic juices flowing.

  ‘I don’t want you to fob me off by saying this is a hoax if you know it isn’t,’ he’d said. ‘And if you’re going to ask me to sit on the story then you’ll have to give me a bloody good reason why.’

  It was a familiar situation faced by detectives – a reporter comes into possession of information that, if released, would be detrimental to the investigation. More often than not the hacks – and their publications – will drop or delay a story if they can be persuaded that it’s not in the public interest to run it.

  And that was what Carver agreed to do after James decided to be completely open with him. He told the reporter about the first card that had arrived on his own doorstep along with the dead partridge, and then about the one that was dropped off at the church for Father Silver. Finally, he’d mentioned the card found inside Lorna Manning’s dressing gown pocket.

  James had explained that he was withholding the information to avoid causing panic in the village. But he had felt it necessary to inform the public that the police believed the murders were committed by the same person. Carver had accepted that it was a sensible strategy, and said that, as a resident himself, he could imagine how alarmed people would be if they knew about the cards.

  He’d promised not to pitch the story to the nationals for at least twenty-four hours. His own weekly paper wasn’t due out until Saturday, but there was an online edition, so he would also hold off on alerting his own editor.

  ‘In return I’ll expect you to keep me well ahead of the curve as the story develops,’ he’d said, and James had agreed.

  Carver had left the hall ten minutes ago and James had immediately arranged for the latest Christmas card to be taken to the lab.

  He was now on a conference call with DCI Tanner and DS Stevens and they’d been put in the picture.

  ‘It makes you wonder if going to the press was part of the perp’s grand plan from the outset,’ Tanner said. ‘Or is he just frustrated because we’ve kept a lid on the cards? He probably wants everyone to know about them. I mean, why else would he make use of them?’

  ‘What gets me is how audacious this person is,’ Stevens said. ‘He would have known that we had patrols out last night and that the streets were virtually empty. And yet he still went and posted the card through the reporter’s letter box.’

  ‘According to Carver, it would have happened after eleven because he didn’t go to bed until then and he made sure the front door was locked before going upstairs,’ James said.

  ‘Our man obviously knows the village like the back of his hand,’ Tanner said. ‘Which of course he would, if he lives there.’

  ‘We can’t patrol every street and alleyway,’ James said. ‘Kirkby Abbey is pretty small, but that actually makes it easy for someone familiar with the place to move around in the dark without being seen.’

  ‘It intrigues me that the perp is so obsessed with getting the message out there that his victims deserve what’s happening to them,’ Stevens said. ‘It certainly gives rise to the possibility that he knows about Lorna Manning’s hit-and-run secret.’

  ‘And as we already know, Charlie Jenkins is no angel.’

  They could have discussed the case for much longer, but there were things to do, so James took the initiative and called time on the conversation. He said he wouldn’t be joining the team briefing by video link and suggested the three of them have another catch up later.

  He then rang Annie, but she didn’t answer so he left a voice message.

  ‘Hi, hon. I’ve been wondering about the chat I need to have with your uncle and I think that for his sake it should be as informal as possible. So, can you get him to come to the house later? Maybe for dinner? If there’s a problem then let me know.’

  When he hung up, DC Abbott had a message for him.

  ‘We’ve just taken a call from one of the villagers,’ she said. ‘A Miss Edith Palmer. I think we should go and see her.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘She claims she saw a man on the pavement outside her home in Peabody Street around midnight last night. He apparently ducked into a doorway when our patrol car drove past. It struck her as suspicious.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Did she recognise him?’

  ‘It appears so. His name is Peter King and he runs the village grocery store.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ James said. ‘I spoke to Mr King on Saturday when I visited the store. He’s the one selling those Twelve Days of Christmas cards.’

  ‘Then we need to find out what he’s been up to,’ Abbott said. ‘I’ll get his address.’

  ‘You do that, but I expect he’ll be at the store.’

  In the patrol car on the way to Edith Palmer’s house James told DC Abbott what he knew about Peter King, which wasn’t much.

  ‘He runs the store with his wife, Maeve,’ he said. ‘But she’s confined to a wheelchair following a stroke so isn’t as involved as she used to be.’

  ‘It can’t be easy for him,’ Abbott said. ‘My eldest sister lost the use of both her legs in a car accident. Her husband has really struggled to take care of her.’

  ‘That’s tough. Do you see them often?’

  ‘Not as much as I used to. They live in Norwich and having this job and a boyfriend who works all hours as a paramedic doesn’t leave me with a lot of free time.’

  ‘Have you been together long?’

  ‘Two years. We’ve talked about getting married, but we’re just not ready to start a family yet. What about you, guv? Do you have children?’

  It was the question that James hated being asked.

  ‘We don’t, unfortunately, but it’s not through want of trying. We’d both like a child, or more than one, if possible.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I have a friend who tried for years to conceive with her husband and when she finally did, she had triplets.’

  James couldn’t help but smile. It made him realise how glad he was that DC Abbott had been assigned to the case. She was a breath of fresh air after DS Stevens, who seemed unable to shake off the chip on his shoulder.

  ‘Anyway, from babies back to the job in hand,’ James said. ‘Do we know anything else about this Edith Palmer apart from her name and address?’

  ‘Only that she lives alone and got put through to us after contacting the office in Kendal,’ DC Abbott said. ‘The officer who took the call didn’t ask many questions, but told her we’d be coming to see her.’

  Just as she finished talking the patrol car pulled up outside Edith Palmer’s terraced house in Peabody Street. James noted that facing it across the road was an estate agent with a recessed entrance.

  ‘I wonder if that’s the doorway that Miss Palmer is referring to,’ he said as they climbed out of the car.

  ‘We’re about to find out,’ DC Abbott said.

  The woman was small and plump and somewhere in her late sixties or early seventies. She had grey hair and wrinkled features and greeted them with a warm smile, inviting them into her kitchen, where they both declined her offer of tea.

  ‘I’m afraid we haven’t got time, Miss Palmer,’ James said. ‘Can you pl
ease just tell us what you saw last night?’

  ‘Of course, but I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m someone who spies on people. I just happened to look out of my bedroom window because I couldn’t sleep and wanted to see if it was snowing.’

  ‘And what did you see?’ James asked her.

  ‘Like I told the officer I spoke to on the phone, I watched a police car coming along the street. At the same time, I happened to spot a man across the road walking towards it. As it got closer, he darted into the estate agent opposite and flattened himself against the window. Once the police car drove past he stepped out again and carried on walking. And that’s when I recognised him as Peter King, who owns the general store in the village.’

  ‘And you’re sure it was him?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. I’ve known him for years, but he doesn’t live in this part of the village and what he did struck me as odd, suspicious even. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to tell you so I slept on it and when I watched the news again this morning, I realised that I ought to.’

  ‘I’m glad that you did, Miss Palmer,’ James said. ‘We’ll go and have a word with Mr King. I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation for his behaviour. And in the meantime, can I ask you to keep this to yourself?’

  ‘You have my word, Detective,’ she said. ‘But I do hope you’re right. Peter and his wife are such nice people. I can’t imagine why he found it necessary to hide from the police.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Peter King was alone in his store when the two detectives got there. He was reading a newspaper that was spread out on the counter.

  ‘I’m guessing it’s been a quiet day so far,’ James said when they approached him.

  King looked up and nodded. ‘Indeed it has, Detective Walker. I’ve served only six customers. You would never guess it’s Christmas.’