by LJ Ross
“Ask Lowerson to check the hospital records for 7th June,” he said, as MacKenzie came to stand next to him. “It could be nothing. On the other hand—”
“It could be something,” she agreed.
“Yeah. Cooper assumed Isobel Harris met her killer via the online dating community. What if she met him on his own turf, at the hospital?”
“I’ll chase up all the CCTV we can get our hands on,” MacKenzie promised him.
Ryan nodded, and they turned towards the Metro station beside the monument and the next stop on their whistle-stop tour of Isobel Harris’s last movements.
“The staff exit is around the side of the building,” he remarked. “There’s a camera on the door and we have her leaving work on Friday 20th June at twenty past eight. She would have walked from there straight to the entrance to the metro, over here. It can’t be more than fifty feet away.”
They stood at the top of the stone steps leading down into the station, below street level. The tunnel glowed yellow and they followed the stream of people down towards the ticket hall. There were machines dotted around, a few stalls, and a small supermarket designed for commuters needing a quick fix.
“CCTV shows that she entered the supermarket at eight twenty-four and came back out again at eight twenty-nine with one bag containing a carton of milk, a packet of sliced ham and a loaf of bread. CSIs found the bag sitting on her kitchen countertop,” Ryan added.
MacKenzie felt a tightening in her chest because she recognised so much of herself in that description. How many times had she stopped by the supermarket next to Police Headquarters on her way home to pick up a carton of milk? Had she ever considered who might be watching her, following her?
“You just don’t think about it,” she murmured. “After work, you’re eager to get home, put the kettle on and kick your shoes off. You don’t even think about the danger. All you think about is home.”
Ryan nodded.
“It’s normal life,” he reminded her. “You have a right to go about your business without living in fear. Isobel Harris had that right, too.”
MacKenzie tore her eyes away from the supermarket entrance, where she’d just seen a young woman walking out with a single bag of shopping.
“She had a Metro pass,” MacKenzie continued, “so she had no need to get a ticket from the machine. Metro scanners logged her entrance at eight thirty-one.”
They showed their warrant cards to the ticket inspectors and passed through the turnstiles. Before they continued their journey, Ryan paused to look at the other entrances leading into Monument station. There was one connected to Fenwick via the lower-ground floor and another one leading up onto Grey Street.
“Why didn’t she use the internal entrance?” he wondered.
“Quicker to just step outside from the beauty hall exit,” MacKenzie replied. “It would take longer if she went down a level and walked around.”
“What about the Grey Street entrance?” Ryan left no stone unturned. “Do we have the camera footage for that entrance?”
MacKenzie frowned.
“Come to think of it, I don’t think we were able to get hold of that footage because the camera covering those stairs had blown.”
Ryan turned.
“What a coincidence,” he said. “When did it break?”
“I can find out. It’d be interesting if it happened to go around the same time Isobel Harris went to A&E.”
“Wouldn’t it just?”
They followed the escalator down to the platform level.
“Isobel took the Metro south towards South Shields. Her stop was Jarrow.”
“Cameras caught her on the way down to the platform,” MacKenzie said, watching passing advertisements on the wall for Cirque du Soleil and local solicitors’ firms. “It’s a fair bet that he followed her down here and the camera would have caught him, too.”
Ryan considered the habits of the creature they hunted.
“Not necessarily on the same day,” he said. “But he may have followed her on other days, learning her routine, finding out where she lived and—most importantly for him—whether she lived alone. He might not have needed to follow her home from work on the day he finally took her if he knew her movements well enough. He could go directly to Jarrow and wait for her there.”
MacKenzie shivered as she imagined the kind of cunning involved.
“He has to have a certain level of freedom,” she said. “What if his own work allows him to come and go at set times? Unless he doesn’t work.”
“That’s something we’ll find out,” Ryan said, watching the faces of those who passed by on the escalator heading up to the ticket hall level.
“Here we go,” MacKenzie murmured, stepping off to follow a line of people towards the southbound platform. “Another camera right there, working fine,” she told him.
They entered the platform and found themselves looking at a draughty tunnel with enormous billboards showing out-of-date Christmas albums and photographs of gap-toothed kids wielding microscopes to advertise local schools. The electronic sign on the wall told them they had another six minutes to wait until the next train bound for South Shields and they walked along to the other end, dodging their fellow passengers who waited at intervals along the platform.
“She got on the train near the front,” Ryan kept up his narrative and looked around the area. “Cameras cover this platform at both ends and I presume they’re still working. What about that one?”
He pointed towards a short corridor leading to a lift that was rarely used.
“I’m not sure,” MacKenzie said thoughtfully. “I’ll find that out when I’m asking about the cameras in the ticket hall.”
“Yeah, because if he took out the camera at the Grey Street entrance and then took the lift down to the platform level, he could shield himself from prying eyes whilst staying close to his victim.”
“Not all the cameras on the trains are working,” she warned him.
“Typical. But we have some?”
“Yeah, they’re still collating the footage, but the train operator has been co-operative so far.”
“Good. Here’s our train.”
They felt the ground rumble beneath their feet as a train rattled through the tunnel towards them, coming to a jerky stop before its doors buzzed open with an alert telling people to, “MIND THE GAP” in an electronic drone.
“After you,” Ryan said, letting MacKenzie go first. He was all for feminist principles and he didn’t happen to believe chivalry was incompatible with any of them. It was a simple matter of putting others before himself.
The Metro wasn’t too crowded, and they found a seat near the front of the train where they could talk quietly without fear of being overheard.
The train doors buzzed shut again.
“Something’s been bothering me, ever since our chat with Amaya Golzari.”
“Could be the fact that she was making moon eyes at you,” MacKenzie teased him. “I feel sorry for the poor kid; she was used to dealing with Cooper and Jessop, then you waltz in and she probably wished she’d worn her Minx Red to work, after all.”
Ryan’s lips twitched.
“Actually, it made me wonder—why didn’t Harris or Cooper show any defensive wounds? Sure, the drugs disabled them pretty quickly but why didn’t they at least try?” He shook his head, trying to imagine what it would take. “I have to wonder whether he managed to put them at their ease, so they never saw it coming.”
“He must be charismatic,” MacKenzie agreed. “But he’d be taking a huge risk to rely on his own personal charms.”
Ryan considered that, then shook his head.
“I don’t think we should underestimate just how arrogant this guy is. I think he really believes he can get away with all this and that he’s committed two perfect murders. A person like that doesn’t underplay his own charisma, he uses it ruthlessly to his advantage.”
They fell silent as the train sped through the dark tunn
els beneath the city, and wondered whether there was another woman out there falling prey to the specious charms of a killer.
* * *
“Nicola.”
She moaned, an animal sound of torment.
“Nicola, I won’t ask again.”
She heard his voice somewhere in the distant corners of her mind and shrank away from it, twitching on the bed as her body remembered.
His face.
His eyes.
Pain. Such pain.
The sedative was wearing off again and the feeling of nausea returned as her body battled with shock. She was sweating, shaking so hard that her teeth chattered. Her lips were dry and cracked, bloodied from his slaps and where the skin had torn around the filthy gag he used while she was awake.
“You’re not going to be with us for much longer, are you, darling?”
He affected an air of sadness even as he wondered how much more he could do while she was still alive.
He checked the time and tutted.
“I was hoping to make some progress today, Nicola, but I really must be getting along. Time waits for no man, does it?”
He ran a gloved finger down her nose, as if she were a child.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be running off anytime soon, but I never like to get complacent. Let’s give you a little top-up to make sure you don’t go anywhere.”
She didn’t even feel the needle this time.
CHAPTER 11
Isobel Harris’s house was a ten-minute walk away from Jarrow Metro station, on the south side of the River Tyne. It was a stone’s throw from St Paul’s Monastery, an ancient ruin that was the former home of Bede, an eighth-century scholar widely accepted as being the father of English history. More recently, the town was a major centre for shipbuilding and, as Ryan and MacKenzie cut through along the high street, the remnants of its proud history were there for all to see.
“Quiet here,” MacKenzie remarked.
The night had grown dark and, although the weather was mild, she felt cold. It was embarrassing to admit she was glad to have somebody walking beside her, and she realised the case must be getting to her. She considered herself a strong, well-trained woman, capable of handling herself and, if a psycho killer made her his target, she liked to think she’d put up a fight.
She hoped it never came to that.
“You alright, Mac?”
She looked up at Ryan’s profile and wondered if he knew how much she appreciated those three little words. At a time when her friend and colleague had been brutally murdered, it was hard to go home to an empty house where she jumped at every little sound. She’d hardly slept the past few nights and it was getting harder to convince herself that she was self-sufficient, that she didn’t feel terribly, crushingly lonely.
Just to know that somebody cared meant all the world and, just for a moment, she found herself wondering if she’d feel differently towards the strong, quiet man walking alongside her if she were ten years younger, or he ten years older. It was an odd thought to have towards her boss, but she harboured no resentment about the fact he was her superior officer, at least on paper. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he made sure to include her in every high-profile investigation and he entrusted her with her own team, rarely needing to micro-manage. She appreciated his management style and she hoped that he appreciated the results she produced because of it.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, and meant it. “It’s hard imagining Isobel Harris walking home alone through these streets in the dark, not having anybody to come home to or any family to look out for her. It seems so unfair.”
“If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that life is seldom fair,” he replied.
She opened her mouth to argue but couldn’t think of a thing to say.
They rounded the corner onto St Paul’s Road and spotted the unmarked police car assigned to watch Harris’s property. It was a well-established fact that killers often returned to the scenes of their crimes to re-live the glory and feed off the power all over again, and they couldn’t risk missing their chance to intercept him.
Ryan stopped at the head of the street and looked at a line of two-up, two-down, red-bricked 1930s houses. Above their heads, the moon shone an eerie white glow across the rooftops, but the street was otherwise cloaked in darkness.
Nothing stirred, not even the wind.
“Street lighting is pretty bad around here,” Ryan said, taking a wide survey. “Easy enough to hide behind one of the cars, or even to park further down the street without being noticed. Nobody’s looking out of their window at this time of night.”
MacKenzie looked at the other houses on the street and nodded.
“The curtains are closed at most of the windows and some of them look vacant,” she said. “It must have been so easy for him.”
It was a joy to feel angry again, she realised. Anger was so much better than fear.
“Shall we look inside?”
It wasn’t really a question, but he asked all the same.
“We have to,” she told him, and led the way towards Harris’s front door.
* * *
When nobody approached to intercept them, Ryan marched across to the unmarked car supposedly on duty and hammered on the driver’s side window. He took some small satisfaction in seeing two police constables rear up in shock, hastily shutting down their smartphones and scrambling out of the car.
“Sorry, are we interrupting you?”
“No, sir. Sorry, I was—I was responding to—”
Ryan held up a hand.
“Did you happen to catch the news while you were surfing your phone?”
“Um—yes. No. I mean, no.”
Ryan smiled thinly.
“There’s only one news story of the day: we have a killer running loose in our city. Does that worry you at all?”
“Of course, sir. It’s awful.”
“Good. Then listen to me when I tell you that the job you do is important. I know it gets boring and the hours are long,” he surprised them by admitting. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what it’s like on the beat. It’s a thankless job, most of the time, but Isobel Harris would thank you if she could.”
They said nothing, but their eyes skittered away, embarrassed.
“She had nobody to care for her in life,” he continued softly. “Don’t you think it’s fitting she has people to care for her in death?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m so glad we agree.”
Ryan left them to think it over and followed MacKenzie up to Isobel’s front door. They covered their hands and feet, broke the police seal and entered the silent house.
* * *
“The notes in the file say the needle came from behind.”
MacKenzie tried the light switch but the electricity had been turned off days ago. The darkness was complete, thick with the lingering scent of violent death and food gone bad.
Ryan stood just behind her and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“Have you got a torch?” he asked.
MacKenzie started to say ‘no’.
“Here, take mine,” he offered. “Or would you rather I do a walk-through while you wait here? It’s pretty close quarters in there.”
She smiled in the darkness and added ‘gentleman’ to his growing list of likeable qualities.
“No, I’m okay.”
“There was no blood spatter in the hallway here,” Ryan began. “There was nothing to suggest she fought him.”
“Must have taken her by surprise.”
“Something struck me as odd,” Ryan said, and brushed past her to peer inside the tiny living room. In the dim light, they could see the outline of a two-seater sofa and a coffee table. There was a bistro table and two chairs in the corner with a television resting on top of a unit beside them. “On the floor there, by the sofa, there was a stain on the carpet. Faulkner says it was fresh and the tests confirmed it was white wine. There was a bottle open i
n the fridge, too.”
Ryan entered the room and MacKenzie saw his shadowy outline moving around the room, getting a feel for the space.
“What if he didn’t need to stalk her?” he said, suddenly.
MacKenzie stepped back from the doorway to allow him to pass, then followed him up the narrow staircase towards the room where Isobel had died.
“What do you mean? You think he just snatched her on the fly?”
Ryan coughed as they reached the landing and his nostrils were assailed by the ripe scent of crusted blood and bodily waste emanating from the largest bedroom.
“No,” he replied. “That isn’t his style. It looks opportunistic, but it isn’t. He wouldn’t risk being discovered so soon. I was thinking somebody could have found out her home address from hospital records, or struck up an acquaintance.”
“That’s an extreme level of control,” she replied, shining the torch light along the landing to guide their way. The little white circle of light shook, bobbing across the wall. “Amaya didn’t mention Isobel having met anybody and she was her closest friend. Surely Isobel would have told her if she’d met somebody new?”
“He’s manipulative,” Ryan said darkly, and reached for the door handle.
* * *
There was a half world, somewhere between life and death, where the senses no longer worked as they should. There was nothing to taste, nothing to touch, to smell or to see.
But you could still hear.
You could hear the small sounds of skin tearing and heavy breathing that might not be your own. You could hear the man whistling, everything from show tunes to classical arias.
And there was his voice, muffled behind the paper mask he always wore.
“Still with us? That’s good.”
