by LJ Ross
“What, dear?” She looked up, then away again. “I got rid of them. Filthy, disgusting pictures. I won’t have them in my house.”
“Magazine pictures or real pictures?” Ryan asked.
When she didn’t speak, he repeated the question a little louder.
“Real ones. Awful ones.”
“Where are the pictures now, Mrs Dobbs?”
“I put them in the bin, dear, with the other rubbish.”
* * *
They spent another half hour talking to Dobbs’ mother and, by the time they bade her farewell, they could be reasonably certain of two things. The first was that Frances Dobbs was in the early stages of dementia or a similar illness, and the second was that she’d found indecent images of women and girls in her son’s room, which she had subsequently destroyed. Neither fact gave them much pleasure.
“We knew there had to be some reason why he jumped,” Ryan said, as they stood on the pavement outside. “He thought we were coming for him because of the pornography.”
“What do you want to do about that?”
“I’ll let Digital Forensics know,” he said, referring to the specialist unit who investigated online sexual abuse. “Those women and girls are being harmed every day the images are still in circulation. They’re out there, somewhere, thanks to Dobbs and whoever else he communicated with. Maybe they can get something from his computer that might help them track down others.”
MacKenzie nodded.
“Interesting that he told his mother he was a surgeon and passed himself off as one on his dating profile, too.”
“Clearly, he felt he’d missed his calling,” Ryan said. “Or perhaps there was someone he identified with at work, someone he looked up to.”
“Cooper was right when she said we’re looking for someone with surgical skill,” MacKenzie said. “She just set her sights on the wrong man.”
Ryan felt his phone rumble and paused to answer it.
“Ryan.”
MacKenzie watched his face adopt a fixed expression she recognised immediately as controlled anger. She could feel it, coming off him in waves.
“Are you sure it’s the same person?” Pause. “Alright, thanks.”
He ended the call and looked down at the phone he held in his hand, considering the new information he’d received.
“That was the office,” he told her. “They’ve been going through the disclosure from LoveLife to see who else Isobel Harris went on dates with. They also looked at the disclosure about Sharon, since she went on a couple of dates through the site a few months ago.”
“And?”
“They came across a name we all recognise,” Ryan said. “Doctor Jeffrey Pinter, Chief Pathologist and the man with access to all the bodies.”
“Jeff?” MacKenzie was shocked. “Why didn’t he mention it?”
“That’s a question I’d very much like to ask him myself.”
CHAPTER 16
Ryan called an urgent briefing at four o’clock. He made a quick detour to the corner shop to buy a packet of paracetamol and a bottle of Lucozade, but ended up leaving with two carrier bags of crisps and chocolate to feed his team. It might not be healthy but, at times like these, lettuce leaves just didn’t cut it.
“What’ve you got in there?”
As they fell upon the multi-coloured wrappers like a pack of hungry wolves, Ryan took the opportunity to have a quiet word with Phillips.
“Frank?”
His sergeant ambled across the room clutching a bag of beefy Hula Hoops.
“Pinter’s name flagged up today,” Ryan said. “He went on a date with Cooper six months ago. It’s not recent, but—”
“He should have told us,” Phillips said.
“Yeah. He knows the drill. There was a clear conflict of interest, over and above just knowing her like he knows any one of us. Going on a date with her rolls over into the personal side of life and, since Isobel Harris used the same dating site, it’s bad whichever way you look at it.”
“Pinter might not know Harris used LoveLife,” Phillips reminded him. “But he still should have mentioned it. Hard not to wonder what else he might be keeping under his hat.”
Ryan nodded, looking at the faces on the board and mentally adding another.
“Let’s keep it quiet for now, at least until we know more. We need to be sure.”
“Aye, we do. He’s one of us, or as good as.”
“Speaking of Pinter, he’s sent the toxicology report through,” Ryan said. “It’s as we thought. High levels of sedative in Sharon’s bloodstream but nil for any other alien chemicals and zero added adrenaline content. She had a bit of alcohol swimming around but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Enough to slow her down a bit.”
“Yeah, enough to do that.”
Phillips thought of where a killer might lay his hands on large quantities of medical-grade drugs and was troubled.
“We went to see Will Cooper today,” he said. “He’s been suspended from the dental hospital for over a month on suspicion of stealing drugs and possibly dealing.”
“Why didn’t we know about it?”
Phillips ran a hand over his chin and let it fall away again. Better to get it all off his chest.
“The university are still investigating but they’re supposed to report it to the police. I couldn’t find any report, but the university say they spoke to his mother and Sharon said she’d take care of it personally.”
“You’re thinking Sharon tried to look into things herself, to keep it quiet?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking that.”
Ryan tried to imagine how he might act if put in the same position, and the answer was simple.
“She should have referred it to the Drugs Squad,” he said.
Phillips gave him a lopsided smile.
“Black and white, eh?”
“Is there any other way? Let’s go back to Will and find out who he’s been selling to and where he gets his supply. I want to know if he’s been buying or selling medical-grade sedative, adrenaline, or any of the paraphernalia.”
Ryan didn’t wait for an answer but headed to the front of the room, having allowed his team sufficient opportunity to tank themselves up on sugar.
“Alright, settle down! It’s been two days since DCI Cooper was murdered,” he said. “During that time, we’ve taken statements, handled hundreds of calls, isolated male DNA at both crime scenes and the same sedative compound has been found in both women’s blood post-mortem. There was one difference between them: we found no excess adrenaline in Sharon’s system. That wasn’t the case for Isobel Harris.”
He looked over at Lowerson and judged it was time to throw him some more responsibility.
“Jack, you’ve been looking into Sharon’s son, Will. What has that thrown up?”
“He hasn’t got any previous,” Lowerson said. “But he’s currently suspended from university, pending an investigation into alleged drug offences. His mother knew about it and he admits they argued the night before she died.”
“So he’s changed his statement?”
“Yeah. We believe his housemate may also be involved but that’s more of a hunch.”
“It’ll probably be right,” Ryan said. “Bring her in for questioning, if you think you’ll get anything out of it.”
Lowerson nodded. “The upshot is, Will Cooper doesn’t have a reliable alibi for the time his mother died. Her neighbour remembers him arriving the previous night but doesn’t recall when Cooper left. His housemate—or girlfriend and suspected business partner—claims he was in the house from eleven p.m. until the next day. She stuck to her story when we followed it up with her, but a cynic would say her evidence is unreliable.”
Ryan’s lips twitched.
“Alright. I want you to keep digging. There’s no smoke without fire, so keep sweating him for information, speak to his supervisor and get hold of the documents relating to his suspension.”
Lowerson took
a hasty note.
“In the meantime, let’s focus on CCTV,” Ryan turned back to the room. “We need to ask ourselves: how did Sharon’s killer know her home address or where to find her? If we assume he’s a stranger, then the logical conclusion would be that he followed her home at some point prior to killing her or just before.”
He looked at Phillips.
“Where are we with the CCTV around Tynemouth?”
Phillips swallowed the last Hula Hoop and licked the tip of his finger before answering.
“I’m still waiting for the footage from the Metro station,” he said. “I’ve chased them up. We’ve got plenty from the cameras on the High Street but it’s dark and patchy. If we give Will Cooper the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s telling the truth when he says he left his mother’s house around ten, that gives us a window of between ten p.m. on Saturday night and eleven a.m. the following morning to find our man.”
“And are there any potentials?”
Phillips blew out a noisy breath.
“Plenty of people stumbling out o’ the pubs,” he said. “But it’s the cars I’m interested in. Seems unlikely he would have walked along the High Street and risk being caught on camera. Much more likely he drove to her place, so I’ve got the team going through the footage now, logging every car in the vicinity within that timeframe. But it’s going to take days, guv, unless we get lucky and something comes through from the Metro station.”
Ryan felt his heart sink but kept a smile pasted on his face. Part of his job was to keep his team motivated, even when he could find little to motivate himself.
“That’s great, Frank. Keep at it and maybe we’ll get lucky. Compare any cars they find with the footage from Isobel Harris’s place in Jarrow.”
“Er, about that,” Phillips began.
Ryan raised an eyebrow, already anticipating what was to come.
“Most of the cameras weren’t working, so we’ve got next to nothing. Just the speed cameras and the Metro, but there’s nothing to see on there.”
Ryan looked away while he gathered his thoughts. It was a major blow and he had hoped they’d have a bit of luck. He wished there was more time, that he had more resources.
Well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
* * *
Everything felt heavy.
Nicola lay with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling as she waited for Death to return. It seemed a long time since he’d last appeared, but she’d lost all sense of time. Was it hours, days, or weeks since she’d led him willingly into her home?
She thought of Lucy Westenra throwing open her bedroom window to Dracula, unwittingly letting in the demon that would kill her. She had made the same mistake and knew that his would be the last face she ever saw. That was her punishment.
Except, it would not be his face. He kept it covered at all times.
For a delirious moment, she imagined tearing away his mask and using his own knife against him, slicing away the layers of his face until his evil was gone from the world. She smiled through her pain.
Pain.
She hadn’t really felt pain until now, she realised. Her body was racked with agony. Every inch of her throbbed and every nerve ending screamed.
Suddenly, she realised what that meant.
The drugs were wearing off.
She was still alive.
* * *
Having left instructions for his team, Ryan made his way back to the Royal Victoria Infirmary with Phillips in search of a second opinion. They had known Jeff Pinter for years and, until recently, had trusted him implicitly. But as Phillips had already observed, cases such as these bred mistrust and, when a person chose to lie by omission, it made matters worse. They owed a duty of care to the women who had died to ensure no stone was left unturned.
All roads seemed to lead back to the hospital.
With hospital parking at a premium, they used the nearby Claremont Road car park. The road itself was a long one, giving easy access to the city centre and Exhibition Park to the east and the university medical and dental schools and the hospital to the south. A long row of smart three and four-storey houses ran the length of the road to the west, split into small businesses and residential flats. As they waited for a gap in traffic at the pedestrian crossing, Phillips turned to look at them.
“Nice road, this. My wife used to volunteer at the cat and dog shelter down at the other end,” he bobbed his head towards the shelter, four doors further down from Nicola Cassidy’s garden flat. “Handy to live around here, if you work at the hospital.”
Ryan was studying the enormous chimney rising over the rooftops directly ahead of them and realised it must be part of the hospital’s furnace. Fire could erase a multitude of sins.
“How many more d’ you reckon there are?” he thought aloud. “How many other women has he killed—the ones who wouldn’t be missed, let alone discovered?”
Phillips shook his head, feeling sick at the thought.
“Everything about his MO speaks of experience, from the lack of trace evidence all the way to bringing his own equipment,” Ryan continued. “You only perfect that kind of technique with practice, so there must have been others aside from Isobel Harris and Sharon Cooper. It stands to reason.”
“Hey, hey, lad,” Phillips put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder in quiet support. “We can only do what we can, when we can. You’re not superhuman and, God knows, neither am I.”
But Ryan thought of a city full of people, every one of them a potential target.
“He won’t wait for us to catch up with him. He’ll kill again and again. He won’t stop until we find him and, by then, who else will we have lost?”
Phillips said nothing but reached for a cigarette, only to change his mind at the last moment as he remembered a certain Irish redhead’s disapproval. He thought of a killer watching her, waiting to strike, and curled his hands into fists.
“Howay,” he said, heavily. “Let’s flush him out.”
There was a gap in traffic, and they crossed the street, cutting along a footpath that would lead them around to the hospital’s main entrance. As they passed beneath the chimney, Ryan looked up at the smoke-stained brickwork with renewed anger.
“He’s close, Frank. So close, I can almost smell him.”
CHAPTER 17
The Management Team of the Royal Victoria Infirmary was comprised of four senior clinicians, one of whom was a close friend of their own DCS Gregson. He and the Medical Director had spent many a pleasant afternoon on the golf course while their wives spent an even more pleasant afternoon without them. Thankfully, since the Director was at a conference in America, there was no need for Ryan and Phillips to go through the usual bureaucratic process of back-slapping and hoop-jumping. Instead, they sought out the Director’s next in command, Head of Emergency Medicine and reputed to be one of the UK’s leading cardiothoracic surgeons, Sebastien Draycott.
They had been inside the Emergency Department many times before and, as they stepped through its automatic doors once again, they could see why it was one of the best performing in the land. There was no sense of chaos they might have associated with a Major Trauma Centre, only calmness and order. Difficult patients were handled swiftly and those who were truly in need were given priority, ushered through to the ward without fuss while those who must wait their turn did so with long, resigned faces.
“Excuse me, we’re looking for Mr Draycott?”
The receptionist inspected his warrant card.
“I’ll alert him,” she said, holding up a finger to the next person in line. “You might have to wait a few minutes, mind. He had a suspected GBH come in not long ago.”
That would explain the squad car they’d seen parked outside, Ryan thought. One of their colleagues must be attending, in case GBH became something worse.
“Thank you, we’ll wait.”
* * *
They stood around for twenty minutes in the large waiting area of A&E until, event
ually, they spotted Sebastien Draycott striding across the floor with a general air of authority. He was an arresting man and considerably younger than they had imagined although, as Ryan knew from his own experience, age was not always commensurate with expertise.
“Chief Inspector Ryan? Sebastien Draycott. You wanted to speak to me?”
He ignored Phillips completely, as befitted his status.
“Yes,” Ryan said. “Is there somewhere private we could talk?”
Draycott marched across the waiting room towards a side door marked, ‘PRIVATE’, with a sliding tab to denote whether the room was occupied or unoccupied. After a brief check to ensure it was free, they entered what was the hospital equivalent of a family room. Ryan recognised the counselling leaflets as being the same ones stacked on an identical table back at Police Headquarters.
“I’m afraid I haven’t much time,” Draycott said, straight off the bat. “I’m sure you appreciate this is a busy department.”
“Yes, of course,” Ryan replied. “We won’t keep you long. I presume you’re aware of the murders of Isobel Harris and DCI Sharon Cooper?”
“Yes.”
He ventured no further comment, so Ryan continued.
“Frankly speaking, Doctor—”
“I’m a surgeon. The correct title is Mister.”
Ryan studied him with growing interest.
“My apologies,” he said. “We’re looking for an expert opinion and your reputation precedes you. As you can imagine, we’re somewhat limited—”
“I should have thought that would be a job for the police pathologist,” Draycott said, cutting him off. “Without wishing to be rude, Chief Inspector, I hardly need to supplement my income providing expert opinions. I only tend to do so in the most unique cases, or those that interest me.”
Ryan happened to believe every person was unique and the implication that the two women he represented were not worthy of this man’s time angered him immediately.
But he merely smiled.
“I understand, Mr Draycott. The thing is, we’re out of our depth,” he said, slipping into the role of harried, slightly dim policeman with difficulty. “This is the biggest case of the year; the most urgent murder hunt going on in the country right now. We need someone with gravitas and experience to give us some specialist advice. The only person we could think of was you.”
