Eyes of the Wicked

by Adam J. Wright

  Dani wasn’t sure if he was joking or if he actually intended to gut the North Yorkshire police department for the sake of his Murder Force.

  Gallow turned to Dani. “So it looks like we’ll be working together after all, Detective Inspector.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Holloway said, “Dismissed, Summers.”

  Dani went to her desk and sat down, deep in thought. Did Holloway despise her so much that he had gladly handed over a murder case to a half-formed team? Perhaps she should ask to be seconded to Derbyshire and help the DCI who was on the way here to investigate the Abigail Newton case.

  The Brambleberry Farm investigation was leaving a bad taste in her mouth. A woman was dead, horrifically murdered, and the Super and Chief Super were using her case as a piece in some sort of political game.

  Battle appeared from the lift and walked across to Holloway’s office. He spotted Dani and gave her a little wave on his way. He went into the office and closed the door.

  When Matt arrived an hour later, Dani was nursing a cold coffee and looking at a map of the North Yorkshire Moor National Park. She’d marked two locations with red circles: Brambleberry Farm and the place where Melissa and Jeff Wood had picked up Abigail Newton.

  She wasn’t certain of her accuracy regarding the latter location because she’d gleaned it from the written statement an officer had taken from Melissa and Jeff in Deirdre Murray’s house and the couple weren’t familiar with the area they’d been driving through when they’d found the girl.

  But her mark on the map was in the correct general area, she was sure of it.

  “Any news, guv?” Matt asked as he sat down at his desk across from hers.

  “Plenty,” she said. “But I’ll let Holloway explain it. Have a look at this. I’ve been thinking about our Jane Doe in the barn. Brambleberry Farm is only ten or so miles from the spot where Abigail Newton was found.”

  He came around the desk and looked at the red circles on the map. “Do you think they’re connected in some way?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that a missing girl is found on exactly the same night that a woman is murdered and placed in a barn ten miles away?”

  He thought about it for a few moments and then nodded. “I suppose it does seem like the two things are connected.”

  “The question is how.” She studied the map. “What if the killer of the woman in the barn was also planning to murder Abigail at the same time but she got away somehow?”

  Matt nodded and leaned closer to the map. “It sounds logical. That might mean that the place where he murdered Jane Doe is somewhere near where Abigail was found. She couldn’t have gone far in bare feet and a nightgown on a night like that so she must have escaped her captor somewhere near here.” He pointed at the red circle where Dani had guessed Melissa and Jeff Wood had found Abigail.

  “What if she escaped while he was busy with Jane Doe?” Matt continued. “Perhaps he was distracted enough that Abigail was able to run away. The killer looks for Abigail but doesn’t find her or realises she’s got into a car, so he resumes his grisly task and then later takes his victim to the barn at Brambleberry Farm.”

  “It makes sense,” Dani said. “We know Abigail was abducted three weeks ago in Derbyshire. Perhaps Jane Doe was taken at the same time, maybe even at the same place. It might help us to identify her if the DNA and fingerprints don’t give us a name.”

  “We have a name,” a voice said.

  Dani looked up to see Battle standing by her desk.

  “The fingerprints came back,” he said. “Her name is Tanya Ward. She worked as a psychiatric nurse at a mental health facility near York.” He consulted his notepad and added, “Her husband reported her missing three days ago when she didn’t return home from a late shift.”

  “So she’s from around here,” Dani said. That blew her theory of Tanya being taken at the same time and place as Abigail out of the water.

  Battle nodded. “We’ve sent uniforms to her house to inform her husband. We’ll need him to make a positive ID as well.”

  “What about a connection with Abigail?” Dani pointed at the circles she’d drawn on the map. “Brambleberry Farm is quite close to where Abigail was wandering on the moors.”

  Battle inspected the map and stroked his chin. “It’s compelling, I’ll admit, but unless we have a solid piece of evidence linking the two of them, we have to treat Abigail and Tanya as victims of separate crimes.”

  “That took place on the same night, in the same area,” Dani said incredulously.

  Battle leaned closer to her and Matt and said in a low voice, “If the crimes are regarded as separate, we’ll have twice as many people working on them than we would have if it was just one single case.”

  Dani had to admit that the man was shrewd. He wasn’t dismissing a connection between Abigail and Tanya but was using the system to get as many people working on solving the case as he could.

  “What’s our next move?” she asked.

  “We need to get some uniforms out to the moor where Abigail was found while it’s still light. It may be snowing but we can’t neglect a proper search of the area. I’ll rustle up some willing participants. We also need to learn more about Tanya Ward.”

  He held up a folder. “This is the missing persons file. Everything we know about her last known movements is in there, but it isn’t a lot and some of it’s a bit vague. Now that it’s a murder inquiry, we need to make sure we’ve got this nailed down tight.”

  “We can work that angle if you like,” Dani told him.

  He nodded and handed her the slim file. “Excellent. Let me know what you find. I’ll be on the moors, taking part in the search. This new job isn’t turning out to be so glamorous after all.”

  “Will do, guv,” she said. She looked at Matt and nodded towards the lift.

  He grabbed his coat and followed her. They rode the lift to the ground floor with a number of other people and it wasn’t until they were alone in the foyer that Matt asked, “Why is the Derbyshire DCI in charge of our murder case?”

  “It isn’t our case anymore, Matt,” she said as she pushed through the door and they stepped out into the snowy car park. “It belongs to the Murder Force now.”

  He screwed his face up and said, “The what?”

  Chapter Eight

  “The Murder Force,” Dani said as she got into the passenger seat of Matt’s Kodiaq. She hadn’t been told not to say anything to anyone about Gallow’s project and everyone would find out soon enough anyway since the formative Murder Force would be working with their department. “It’s a new team being put together by Chief Superintendent Gallow, the guy who’s been in Holloway’s office for most of the day. Apparently, the existence of the Murder Force is supposed to reassure the general public that they’re being looked after by the police by tackling high profile cases.”

  “Strange name,” he said, reversing carefully out of the parking space and exiting the car park. “Where are we going, guv?”

  She opened the file on her lap and scanned the pages. “Tanya worked at a place called Larkmoor House near the village of Sutton-on-the-Forest. We might as well start there.”

  Matt pulled over and typed their destination into the SatNav.

  The snow was coming down thick and fast now, melting on the windscreen and forming rivulets of water that the wipers swept away. Dani didn’t envy Battle or the others who would be searching the moors later.

  When Matt had programmed the SatNav and rejoined the traffic on the road, he said, “So, this new team. Are you joining?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  “I’d jump at the chance.”

  “Would you? Why?”

  “High profile crimes are usually the interesting ones. And for a crime to be high profile in the first place, there’s something about it that grabs the public’s attention. That usually means serial killings or the abduction of children. Who wouldn’t want to be a memb
er of a team dedicated to finding and catching the type of people who commit those crimes?”

  Probably me, Dani thought. She agreed with Matt’s opinion regarding a team dedicated to catching the worst criminals, but it was everything else that came with it. The media attention. Details of the case being leaked to the press. Matt hadn’t been there when Gallow had described his vision for Murder Force. That vision had mainly been about public perception and public relations more than putting criminals away.

  Although she supposed that catching criminals was the only way Murder Force would be perceived positively by the public so perhaps Gallow had assumed that was a given and that was why he hadn’t focused much on that aspect of the team’s work.

  “What about the media spotlight?” she asked Matt. “You’d be willing to endure having reporters following your every move? Writing about the details of your case in the papers and on the Net?”

  “It wouldn’t be a matter of enduring it,” he said. “I’d probably like it.”

  “Really? So you didn’t mind when we were investigating the Snow Killer, and someone leaked to the press about the red ribbons left at the crime scenes and the press started calling him the Red Ribbon Killer?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose that was a bit problematic.”

  “Yes, it was. I was trying to hold that information back in case we got a suspect in the interview room. It was more than a bit problematic, Matt.”

  He went quiet and then he said, “It wasn’t me who leaked it to the press, guv.”

  “I never thought it was. I’m just pointing out that a case is twice as hard when it becomes a media circus.”

  “True,” he conceded. “But you could give them false or misleading information to make a suspect think he’s safe when actually, you’re closing in on him. You can use the media to suit your purposes.”

  She grinned. “You sound like an ideal candidate for Murder Force.”

  “You think so?” He sounded eager.

  “Matt, if you want me to put in a good word with Gallow, I will.” She’d have no problem recommending him for anyone’s team. Matt was a good DS. His work ethic and reasoning skills would be an asset to any investigation he worked on.

  “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  It must be nice to be as decisive as Matt. She was still struggling with the media aspect of the job. The Snow Killer case had left a bad taste in her mouth. As far as reporters went, she was still weighing up the fact that she’d be in the media spotlight against the fact that she’d be chasing down some really bad people and helping victims of the worst types of crime.

  To take her mind off her own indecisiveness, she pored over Tanya Ward’s missing persons file. The photograph in the file showed a dark-haired young woman smiling at the camera. She was standing on a beach in a peach-coloured T-shirt and jeans. The day was sunny, and Tanya looked like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  It was hard for Dani to reconcile the image of the smiling woman in the sun with the body that had been found at Brambleberry Farm. Her mind refused to recognise that the happy woman in the photograph, full of life and seemingly enjoying it, could be the same person Dani had seen hanging from the barn wall, her body marked with hundreds of knife wounds.

  She scanned the woman’s history—or at least as much of it as had been written down by the officers on the missing persons case. There was scant information other than the fact that Tanya was 37 years old, worked at Larkmoor House as a psychiatric nurse, had been married to her husband Chris for 10 years, and was well-liked by her work colleagues.

  It was all standard stuff, and nothing jumped out at Dani that could explain why Tanya had been murdered. There didn’t have to be any reason at all, of course; she’d seen enough motiveless killings to know that. Sometimes, having your life snuffed out by someone else was merely a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  One piece of information that stuck out was the fact that Tanya Ward’s car hadn’t been found yet. She’d left the Larkmoor House hospital on the night she’d disappeared and then just seemed to have vanished into thin air, along with her orange Volkswagen Beetle.

  The killer had left her body at Brambleberry Farm, but the car was still missing.

  Finding that car was important; it could hold a wealth of DNA evidence.

  She found a page that showed the victim’s usual route from the hospital to her home. Tanya lived on the outskirts of York and her eight-mile journey took her mainly through countryside.

  If the killer hadn’t taken the car and hidden it somewhere, it could still be anywhere along those remote stretches of road. A typed report in the file stated that a cursory search for the Beetle had taken place a couple of days ago but it had been hampered by bad weather and the extensive size of the search area.

  In other words, no one knew where to look. The last person to see Tanya alive had been a security guard at Larkmoor named John Morris. He’d seen Tanya get into the now-missing Beetle and drive away from the hospital car park. Another member of staff, a nurse named Sheila Hopkins, had also seen the Beetle leave the car park. Tanya had driven into the night and that was the last anyone had seen of her until she’d turned up at Brambleberry Farm.

  Hopefully, Forensics would get some piece of evidence from the barn or Tanya’s body that pointed to a suspect. Because as things stood, there were no leads at all. Nothing.

  The husband had an airtight alibi; he’d been working a late shift himself, at York Hospital. Like his wife, Chris Ward was a nurse. His shift had finished at 2 a.m. the same time as his Tanya’s. He’d had to navigate the streets of York to get home, she the eight miles of country roads. They should have arrived at their house at virtually the same time, but Tanya had never made it.

  “Who did you meet on your way home?” Dani whispered to the photograph of the smiling woman on the beach.

  The woman in the image offered no answers.

  The interviews that had been carried out when Tanya was thought to be simply missing didn’t offer any answers either. Sometimes when reading the transcripts of interviews, a remark made in the interview might stick out, seem odd, or be worded so carefully that it indicated a lie. There were no such remarks in these interviews. Everyone whose life intersected with Tanya Ward’s seemed completely baffled by her disappearance.

  The police, unable to tease out even a weak lead from the statements they’d taken, were also baffled.

  That made Dani think that Tanya’s killer had been someone unknown to her. But had she met with her death purely by random chance—by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time—or had her killer chosen her beforehand, perhaps stalked her and waited for an opportune moment to strike? Just because he was unknown to Tanya didn’t mean she was unknown to him. He might have followed her, fantasised about her, perhaps even taken something of hers without her knowledge.

  If that was the case, more in-depth interviews might reveal a clue. One of Tanya’s friends or work colleagues might have seen someone suspicious hanging around or perhaps spotted a car that seemed familiar because they’d seen it a number of times before.

  Tanya might even have confided in someone that she thought she was being followed. Dani knew that sometimes these things might never come to light. It might seem a no-brainer to mention to the police that your missing friend had told you that she thought she was being followed but such things were often not revealed in interviews simply because the right question hadn’t been asked.

  Beyond the car windows, the falling snow had become less intense. The wind blew flurries of tiny flakes over the road but for the most part, the heavy fall seemed to be done. At least that would be better for Battle and his search of the moors.

  Dani was sure the snow would have covered any useful evidence by now but as Battle had said, a search couldn’t be neglected. It was the least they could do for Abigail.

  She finished reading the slim stack of sheets that made up the missing persons case file and closed t
he folder.

  Following the SatNav’s instruction, Matt turned onto a long driveway that led to a large Victorian building set among the trees and surrounded by large, snow-covered lawns.

  “This place looks classy for a mental hospital, guv,” he said as he pulled into the car park.

  Dani nodded in agreement. This didn’t look like an NHS facility; it was probably private.

  “Must cost a pretty penny to stay here,” Matt said, parking the Kodiaq next to a dark green Jaguar.

  “Even rich people can have mental issues,” Dani said. “Probably more than the rest of us.”

  “You think?” he asked, raising his eyebrows incredulously.

  “Having all that money,” she said, getting out of the car. “It brings with it a lot of stress.”

  “In that case, I wouldn’t mind a bit more stress,” he said, getting out and locking the doors. “I can think of worse places to end up than here.”

  Dani was only half listening. Her eyes scanned the woods surrounding Larkmoor House. If someone had been stalking Tanya Ward, they would have had plenty of places to hide around here. Especially at night.

  Her phone rang. She retrieved it from her coat pocket and answered. “DI Summers.”

  It was Battle. “I thought you should know that your theory was correct,” he said.

  “Theory?”

  “About the two cases being linked. Abigail and Tanya, I mean.”

  “Did you find something on the moors?”

  “No, we’ve not gone out there yet. I’m still getting everyone together. However, I’ve had a call from Forensics.”

  Dani felt her fingers tighten on the phone. Sometimes, you could do months of leg work and come up with nothing, yet a single strand of hair or flake of skin found by Forensics could blow the case wide open.

  “The bloodstains on the nightgown Abigail Newton was wearing,” Battle said. He paused and then added, “They’re Tanya Ward’s blood.”

  Chapter Nine