The Perfect Couple (ARC)

by Jackie Kabler

  few yards away, a satellite dish on its roof.

  ‘Press,’ she said. ‘Bugger. OK, just walk quickly, and keep your head down. And get your

  door keys out now.’

  I did as she said, but as we got closer a shout went up.

  ‘Gemma! Gemma O’Connor? Any news about Danny?’

  ‘How do you feel about him being the third man to go missing, Gemma?’

  We were almost at the house now, and I lowered my head, pushing my way through the

  assembled group, Eva close behind me. They moved aside to let me pass, but the questions

  kept coming, and there was a sudden flash, then another. They were taking photos. As we

  reached our gate I could see somebody at next door’s window, the curtains pushed back, a face

  peering through the glass. Clive? Oh God, what would the neighbours think of all this?

  ‘Gemma, do you think your husband’s dead too?’

  I gasped at that, turning to look at the journalist who’d asked the question, catching a

  glimpse of a slender, pale man with a neat goatee beard, a mobile phone thrust towards me.

  ‘He’s not …’ I said, but Eva was pushing me forwards towards the front door, grabbing

  the keys from my clenched fingers. Moments later we were inside, the door slamming behind

  us.

  ‘SHIT,’ Eva said. ‘Not nice being on this side of it, is it? I might be nicer in future, when

  I’m doorstepping people.’

  I nodded, breathing heavily. We’d both spent many hours in press packs like that one,

  outside so many homes, over the years. It was horrible, horrible, to be on the receiving end.

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  Was this a punishment for my days as a tabloid hack? Some sort of divine retribution? Was it

  …?

  ‘Mrs O’Connor.’

  DC Stevens was walking down the hall towards us.

  ‘We’re just about finished here. Sorry about that outside. We think one of your husband’s

  friends must have talked to the press about him being missing, because it certainly didn’t come

  from us.’

  I took a breath, then another, trying to calm myself.

  ‘It’s OK. They’re only doing their jobs. Not a pleasant experience though.’

  ‘I can imagine. And I’m afraid …’ he paused, looking from me to Eva, then back again,

  ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to brave it again in a minute. DS Clarke wants you

  back at the station. He has a few more questions for you.’

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  16

  ‘Bugger.’

  DCI Helena Dickens picked up the Saturday edition of the Bristol Post, scowled at it and

  dropped it into the wastepaper bin beside her desk.

  WIFE QUESTIONED IN BRISTOL SERIAL KILLER MYSTERY

  The headline was accompanied by a photograph of a distressed-looking Gemma

  O’Connor being led through a crowd of reporters by DC Frankie Stevens. It had been taken

  outside her home the previous afternoon when they’d brought her in for further questioning,

  and while Helena knew there’d been nothing Frankie could have done to stop the press taking

  pictures, the paper’s front page had instantly put her in a bad mood.

  ‘This damn “serial killer” thing is really starting to piss me right off. And the nationals

  have got in on the act now too. Have you seen the front of the Mail?’ she said, turning to Devon,

  who’d just got in and was perching on the edge of a neighbouring desk, stuffing the last of what

  looked like a sausage bap into his mouth.

  He nodded and swallowed.

  ‘Yeah, and it’s bloody annoying,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t seem to matter how many times we

  tell them there’s no evidence the same person’s responsible for both of our murders. They don’t

  listen. Serial killer sells papers, I suppose.’

  He’d been rolling the brown paper bag that had held his breakfast into a small ball as he

  spoke, and he raised his hand, aimed at the bin and threw. The paper ball landed on top of the

  newspaper with a small thud.

  ‘Yes!’ he said, sounding victorious, then looked back at Helena.

  ‘And now they seem determined that Danny O’Connor is victim number three, even

  though the press office has been very clear that there’s no body yet. We’ve managed to keep

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  the bloody scene in Chiswick out of the public domain for now, thank the Lord. And all the

  stuff about his weird behaviour in the run-up to his disappearance.’

  ‘Well, that’s something I suppose,’ Helena said morosely. She sighed heavily. She had

  slept badly, waking in the early hours and worrying about Charlotte and parenthood and what

  to do about it all. At five, she’d once again given up on sleep and gone out for a run, but even

  that hadn’t helped to clear her head, and it had made her sodding backache worse again. Once

  this case was over, she could think about babies and the future properly, but for now … she

  dragged her focus back to Devon.

  ‘Any news from the lab yet on the O’Connor house?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘They promised by ten. It’s a bit early yet. How are you feeling about Gemma now, after

  seeing her again yesterday?’

  Helena thought for a few moments, swinging her chair slowly from side to side.

  ‘I’m not sure. I know we have nothing concrete on her, not yet. It’s all circumstantial, and

  not everything makes sense. But I absolutely think she’s lying to us. She knows way more than

  she says she does. And all this rubbish about him living with her here in Bristol for the past

  few weeks? I reckon if we keep the pressure up, she’ll cave.’

  They’d questioned her together again after Frankie had brought her in, and Helena had

  noted with interest the deterioration in the woman’s appearance. Less than a week ago when

  she’d come in to report her husband missing, she’d looked well groomed, smartly dressed, face

  neatly made-up, even though she’d clearly been distraught. On Thursday, when they’d

  confronted her with the photographs from Chiswick, it had been like looking at a different

  person, her hair greasy and pulled back off her face, eyeliner smudged, clothing creased. On

  this most recent meeting, she’d looked even worse, a pale, exhausted shadow of the Gemma

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  O’Connor they’d first met just days ago. Grief over her missing husband, or guilt because she

  knew exactly what had happened to him? Helena couldn’t decide, but there was just something.

  ‘I agree, I do think there’s something extremely weird about her story,’ Devon was saying.

  ‘But I thought her reaction seemed genuine. When we asked her about the other murders, I

  mean. She looked … dumbfounded.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘You sound a tad sceptical, boss.’ Devon looked amused. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yeah, go on. Thanks.’

  He gave her a thumbs up sign and headed for the door. Helena stopped swinging and tilted

  her head backwards, staring at the grey ceiling tiles and thinking. When she’d asked Devon

  after their last team briefing to check and see if there’d been any similar, unsolved murders in

  London recently, she hadn’t really been expecting him to come up with anything. When he’d

  rushed over to her desk just half an hour later, a tingle had run along her spine before he’d even

  shown her what was on the piece of paper he was excitedly waving.

  ‘Shit! Look at this!’ he’d said. ‘Look at these pictures!’<
br />
  She’d looked, and then looked again. Two photographs, two men. Two men with thick

  dark hair, dark eyes. One clean-shaven, one with a small goatee beard. Two men who looked

  to be in their thirties. Two men with a striking resemblance to Mervin Elliott, Ryan Jones, and

  Danny O’Connor.

  ‘You’re not serious? In London?’

  ‘In London. This one …’ he tapped the left-hand picture, ‘was found in Richmond Park

  pretty much exactly a year ago, in early March. He died from a head injury inflicted with a

  blunt object, and his killer has never been found. He was a user of dating apps, although we

  don’t know if he used EHU. It wasn’t on his phone when he was killed, at any rate, just like

  our Bristol victims, and as the company seems to have lost all its data now we won’t be able to

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  find out if he used it or not unfortunately. This one …’ he tapped the second photograph, ‘was

  murdered in the car park of Hounslow West tube station a few weeks later. April last year.

  Similar injuries. He wasn’t a dating app user though, had a long-term girlfriend. Again, nobody

  ever done for it. There are cameras in that car park but the body was found in a blind spot

  unfortunately. The Met say they didn’t link the two cases at the time, didn’t have any reason

  to, but in the light of our two here and the similarities in appearance and cause of death, they’re

  going to have another look at the files. They’ll let us know if they come up with anything.’

  Helena let out a long, low whistle.

  ‘Wow. Devon, I’m starting to think that EHU app thing is leading us down the wrong

  path. If tens of thousands of people use it, it doesn’t mean much. There must be some other

  way our killer is finding lookalike victims. I mean, look at these two new ones! There has to

  be a connection with our three here, there has to be. And Richmond and Hounslow? Both west

  London. Neither very far from Chiswick in fact. Not far at all from Gemma O’Connor’s former

  home. Well, well, well.’

  ‘Crazy, eh? Do you really think it could be her, though? I just can’t see her being able to

  … well, to kill four, or five or whatever young, fit men, can you? She’s not a big woman. And

  why? What on earth would be the motive?’

  Helena had shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But this is potentially huge, Devon. Christ, if we do

  have a serial killer on our hands, and if it’s a woman, after all …’

  They had stared at each other then, Devon slowly shaking his head. Female serial killers

  weren’t unheard of, but they were much less common than the male variety; if a hundred serial

  killers were put into a room, only around seventeen of them would be women, Helena had told

  Devon, a fact she remembered from some long-ago research she’d read. And they tended to be

  so-called ‘quiet’ killers, generally avoiding mutilating their victims’ bodies, less likely to

  abduct or torture them. Did that pattern fit with these murders? Maybe, she thought. And there

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  were instances of female serial killers choosing male victims – Aileen Wuornos in the US, for

  example, although she’d shot her seven victims, not bashed them over the head or slashed them

  with a knife. But even so …

  By the time Gemma O’Connor had arrived at the station, both Helena and Devon had

  been feeling twitchy. Once they were settled in the interview room, Gemma still refusing any

  legal assistance despite the offer of the services of the duty solicitor, Helena had begun with

  something that had come to light just an hour earlier.

  ‘Mrs O’Connor, you told us that you believed your husband was staying on at your

  Chiswick apartment for a week after you left, to finish up some work for his previous employer,

  Hanfield Solutions?’

  Gemma nodded.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. That’s what he told me he was doing.’

  ‘Well, as we all know now, he didn’t stay on in the apartment after that Friday the first of

  February, as the keys were handed back to the landlord. So today we made a call to Hanfield

  Solutions to see if they could shed any light on this. And they said there was no work to finish

  up. Your husband’s final day in the office was Thursday, the thirty-first of January. Which

  makes sense, being the last day of the month, doesn’t it? They all said their goodbyes to him

  then and wished him well in his new life in Bristol. They didn’t see him again, or indeed hear

  from him. Anything to say about that?’

  Gemma was listening, a frown furrowing her brow.

  ‘But … he told me he needed a week to finish a project. That’s why I moved down here

  first. He joined me the following week, and he said it was all done …’

  She shook her head, her eyes darting from Devon to Helena and back again.

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  ‘So that’s yet another thing. I’m sorry, no, I can’t explain that. Unless he was seeing

  someone else after all, someone he met on that app, and went to stay with … with her. That’s

  the only thing I’ve been able to think of.’

  Helena waited a few moments, but Gemma had stopped talking, eyes still flitting from

  one of them to the other. Helena gave it another few seconds, then started again.

  ‘OK. Now I want to ask you about some specific dates. First, can you remember where

  you were on the evening of the third of March last year?’

  She glanced down at her paperwork, checking she’d got the date of the Richmond Park

  murder correct. She had. She looked back at Gemma, who was frowning again.

  ‘The … the third of March?’

  ‘Yes. It was a Saturday evening.’

  ‘Well …’ Gemma paused, still frowning. ‘Well no, of course I don’t. That was over a

  year ago, and the date doesn’t ring any bells. Why are you asking me?’

  She sounded faintly exasperated.

  ‘I just need you to answer the question, Gemma. Please try to think.’

  ‘Well …’ Gemma gave a small sigh. ‘Well, OK, we got married on the seventeenth, St

  Patrick’s Day. So that would have been two weekends before that, is that right?’

  Helena flipped a page to the calendar she’d printed off earlier, checked the dates and

  nodded.

  ‘That’s right, yes.’

  ‘OK, well in that case, that was the evening Danny had his stag do. His dad had died just

  a few weeks before that and he was still pretty upset, so it wasn’t a wild night out or anything,

  just a few drinks with some of the guys from work and one of his cousins. He was home by

  midnight, and I just stayed in on my own that evening because I had some work to finish up

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  for the Monday. I remember because I was still up when he got in, which was quite unusual

  for me. I’m normally crashed out by ten.’

  Helena was making notes.

  ‘You’re sure about that? That date?’ she said.

  ‘Positive. Danny had his stag two weeks before the wedding, and I had my hen do one

  week before, so the following weekend.’

  ‘Right. And can anyone verify that you were at home alone on the evening of the third?

  Anyone come to the door, maybe a takeaway or something?’

  Gemma was frowning again.

  ‘No, not that I can think of. It was over a year ago, so obviously I don’t remember what I

  ate. I probably cooked something, I wouldn’t normally order a takeaway if it was
just me. Look,

  why are you asking me about that date? How is it relevant to Danny’s disappearance?’

  The exasperated tone was back. Helena ignored the question, instead flipping to the next

  page of her notes to check the date of the Hounslow West tube station car park killing.

  ‘Just another few questions, if you don’t mind. Another date for you – can you remember

  what you were doing on the evening of Wednesday, the fourth of April last year? So that would

  have been a few weeks after you and your husband married.’

  Gemma stared at her for a moment, then sank her face into her hands, letting out a little

  groan. She stayed like that for several moments, fingers clawing at her scalp, and Helena and

  Devon exchanged a brief glance. Then Gemma straightened up again.

  ‘Look, what’s going on? What’s this about? I don’t understand any of it,’ she said.

  ‘You’re supposed to be looking for my husband. Yes, I know you clearly think I had something

  to do with his disappearance, but I didn’t, OK? You need to find him, you need to be out there

  looking for him. How is this helping, asking me about what I was doing a year ago? This is

  ridiculous.’

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  Her voice was becoming louder and louder as she spoke, a flush spreading across her

  cheeks.

  ‘I mean, how am I supposed to know what I was doing on a random Wednesday last

  April? Would you remember what you were doing? This is pointless, all of it, and in the

  meantime Danny is out there somewhere and he could be dead, or injured, and you’re wasting

  time with this … with this bollocks.’

  She banged a fist on the table, and her eyes filled with tears. There was the usual box of

  tissues at the end of the table, and Devon pushed it towards her.

  ‘There’s no need to get upset, Gemma. This is all part of our investigation, I promise you.

  Please try to answer the question. The sooner you can do that, the sooner you can get out of

  here, OK?’

  There was silence for a moment, then Gemma sighed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. She pulled a tissue from the box and wiped her eyes, then looked from

  Devon to Helena and back again.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just get so … so frustrated, you know? I don’t understand any of this, it’s

  like some sort of horrible nightmare and I’m just so scared about … about where Danny is and