Eyes of the Wicked

by Adam J. Wright

  “Okay, thanks, Ray.” She hung up.

  The fact that Abigail’s hair was found on Tanya’s body meant that not only had the girl seen Tanya, she’d been in physical contact with her. Had they been held in the same room? What had they spoken about?

  As she left Whitby and then followed Matt along the roads that cut through the moors, she dialled Battle’s number.

  “DCI Battle,” he said when he answered, his voice gruff.

  “It’s Dani,” she said. “Gallow promised us a psychologist. I was wondering when he was going to get here.”

  “He’s here,” Battle said. “In fact, I can see him right now. Tony Sheridan. He’s helping us search the moors. Do you need him?”

  “I’m on my to Brambleberry Farm. I could probably use his insight.”

  “No problem. I’ll send him over there.”

  “Thanks, guv. Find anything yet?”

  “Just bits and pieces of rubbish. It’s slow going.”

  “I’ll see you later. Oh, I have a message for you. I met the DCI from Derbyshire at the hospital. She asked me to tell you that she wants to be informed of our progress with the Tanya Ward case.”

  “What? Of course we’ll keep her informed; our cases are linked. Who is it?”

  “DCI Cormoran, guv.”

  She heard him sigh on the other end of the line. “Julia Cormoran,” he said. “That’s all we need.”

  .

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Dani arrived at Brambleberry Farm, the road in front of the property was lined with News vans from various television companies. Some of the journalists were talking to camera, with the farmhouse behind them.

  A couple of uniformed officers had been posted on the driveway that led to the farm, to keep out unwanted journalists and the inevitable ghouls who wanted to see where a dead body had been found.

  Dani rolled down her window and showed her warrant card. The officer who checked it said, “There’s a member of your team here already ma’am.” He waved her on.

  The psychologist had made good time if he was already here. Dani had expected that they’d have to wait for him to get off the moors and drive here.

  She followed Matt’s car onto the property and noticed a dark green Aston Martin parked outside the farmhouse. If that was his car, it looked like the psychologist wasn’t short of a bob or two and he liked to show off his wealth.

  Parking next to the prestige car, she climbed out of her Land Rover.

  Matt was already standing by the Aston Martin and casting admiring looks in its direction. “That’s a nice motor,” he said, nodding.

  “I think it might belong to the Murder Force psychologist,” she told him. “He’s supposed to meet us here.”

  “Looks like I’m in the wrong job.” Matt gently touched the Aston Martin’s roof as if placing his hand on a holy relic. “Maybe I should become a shrink.”

  Dani laughed. “You’d be bored to death within a week. Stuck in an office, listening to other people’s problems, just isn’t you, Matt.”

  “What do you mean? I’m a good listener, guv.”

  “You’re better at hunting and catching killers than you’d be at analysing them.”

  “Like the car?” said a voice from the side of the house.

  Dani turned to see a short, muscular man with close-cropped black hair approaching. He wore jeans and a black bomber jacket. As he got closer, he held it hand out to Dani. “DC Tom Ryan, ma’am. You must be DI Summers.”

  “DC Ryan? So you’re not the psychologist?”

  He grinned widely. “No, not me, ma’am. I’m one of the Murder Force detective constables. Chief Superintendent Gallow told me to come up here to Yorkshire and report to DCI Battle. He was busy on the moors, so he told me to come to this address and report to you.”

  “Guv is fine,” she told him. “How much do you know about our case?”

  “Just the basics, guv. I know that Tanya Ward’s body was discovered in a barn at the rear of this property.”

  “That’s right. We’re going to walk the scene with the psychologist when he gets here,” she said. “Hopefully, he can shed some light on why the body was posed in the way it was, what the killer’s motive was, and if it’s likely that he’ll do it again.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “I also want to know how the killer got to the barn and how he got away,” she said. “He couldn’t have walked for miles over the moors carrying a body. That means he must have had a vehicle nearby. If we can work out where it was been parked, perhaps we can figure out which route he took in and out of this area.”

  “And then we can check traffic cameras?” Ryan asked.

  “Possibly, although they’re few and far between out here. Where did you work before Gallow recruited you for Murder Force?”

  “This is my first policing role,” he said.

  That didn’t surprise her. She’d already thought to herself that Ryan looked mature for a constable. She’d put him in his forties. Most DCs had moved up to DS by that age. So it made sense that he’d only just joined the force. Must have had a well-paying job before that, judging by the car. But why had Gallow recruited a brand-new DC into his flagship team? She’d have thought the Chief Super would have only wanted seasoned personnel.

  “What did you do before?” she asked.

  “I was in the military, guv.”

  She nodded. That explained his erect posture, neat appearance, and obvious level of fitness. But there seemed to be something more about him than the outward signs of a military career; he had an air of self-assurance. An inner confidence. She took a stab and said, “Special forces?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “The Regiment.”

  The Regiment. The SAS. So Ryan had been much more than just a common-or-garden soldier. He’d belonged to the elite regiment of the British Army that recruited rugged individualists. The SAS carried out clandestine missions all over the world. So what was Ryan doing here, at a crime scene in Yorkshire?

  The sound of a car behind her caught her attention and she turned to see an old blue Mini trundling towards the house. It stopped and a slight man got out. He was bundled up in an oversized orange padded winter jacket that was so large, it made Dani wonder how he’d managed to fit into such a small car while wearing it. A pale blue beanie sat on his head and he wore boots that also looked too big.

  “That must be the psychologist,” Matt said.

  The man approached them and asked, “DI Summers?”

  “That’s me,” Dani said. “I assume you’re Tony Sheridan?”

  “Yes. Tony Sheridan. Psychologist. Murder Force. DCI Battle sent me to have a look at a barn with you.”

  “It’s this way,” she said, leading the three men around the side of the house.

  This area had been trampled by so many feet that a clear path had been formed from the house to the barn. Dani followed it and stopped at the barn door. Although the scene had been processed, crime scene tape still surrounded the building. She broke it and stepped inside, expecting the same foul stench she’d experienced yesterday. But the interior of the barn smelled of chemicals more than anything else.

  “That’s where we found her,” she said, pointing at the wall that still had marks where the nails had been. The entire area was smudged with aluminium powder where Forensics had dusted for prints.

  Sheridan regarded the wall and nodded. “The door we just came through is the only way in here, correct?”

  “Yes,” Matt said.

  Stepping forward, the psychologist said, half under his breath, “Look what I’ve done.”

  “Sorry?” Dani asked. She wasn’t sure if Sheridan was talking to himself or to her.

  “That’s what he’s saying,” the psychologist said, turning to face them, the wall behind him. He raised his arms into a “Y” shape, mimicking the pose in which they’d discovered Tanya Ward. “The moment you come through that door, you see her there in front of you. You can’t miss her. But is he mo
cking the viewer? Is he telling us that he’s done this and got away with it? Laughing at us? Or is he showing us his sins and asking for repentance?”

  He turned to face the wall again, his gaze travelling up to the place where Tanya had been crucified. “His sins laid bare.”

  Dani looked at Matt. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Had she been sexually assaulted?” Sheridan asked, turning to face Dani again.

  “We don’t know. We haven’t had the pathologist’s report yet.”

  “That will tell us what he thinks about the person he hung here for everyone to see. I don’t mean Tanya Ward herself; he has no feelings for her, probably doesn’t even know her in any real way. He chose her because she represents someone else, someone he does know and has a relationship with.”

  “So he chose Tanya,” Dani ventured. “He didn’t meet her by chance?”

  “Their paths might have initially crossed entirely by chance. But she didn’t end up here by chance. This isn’t opportunistic. He didn’t meet her one minute and then do this the next. He’s playing out a complex fantasy and people like him are very particular regarding the participants in their fantasies. Tanya was chosen because she reminds him of the person he really wants to nail to that wall but can’t.”

  “Why can’t he?” Ryan asked. “If he can do that to Tanya, why can’t he do it to the person he actually hates?”

  “His psychology isn’t that simple. Something is holding him back.” He looked back at the wall. “I don’t think he sexually assaulted Tanya. He slashed her with a knife instead. There’s a rage inside him; a rage that is focused on one person.”

  “Shouldn’t that be two people?” Matt asked. “He took Abigail Newton as well.”

  Sheridan considered that for a moment, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips. “She got away before he could make her part of his fantasy, so we don’t know where she fits into all of this. If she hadn’t escaped, her body would probably have ended up here as well, as part of a tableau. It’s positioning in relation to the crucified body might have given us more insight into what drives this guy.”

  The psychologist seemed almost disappointed that he hadn’t been able to see both bodies arranged in the barn.

  Dani wasn’t sure how any of this was going to help. Sheridan could theorise on tableaux and victims representing other people all day, but it wouldn’t help them catch the killer.

  “Do you have anything we can use?” she asked out of frustration. “Something concrete that will tell us where to look for him?”

  “I can’t give you a name and address,” Sheridan said. “It doesn’t work like that. What I can do is sketch a psychological picture of who our man is, how he functions. That way, we can narrow down the suspect pool. As more killings occur, and he leaves us more clues—or messages, if you will—I’ll be able to paint a much clearer picture.”

  “More killings? You think he’s going to kill again?” Dani felt a sinking feeling in her gut. She’d tried to convince herself that this crime was a one-off, that there wouldn’t be any more bodies. Deep down, she’d known she was lying to herself.

  “Oh, yes,” Sheridan said. “That’s one thing I can tell you for certain.”

  He gestured to the nail holes in the wall. “He won’t stop here.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dani led the men outside. She needed to find something concrete that would lead them to an arrest before the body count increased. SOCO had combed the barn and the immediate area so she knew there was no point looking anywhere within the cordon of police tape. But if she could figure out how the killer had travelled to this area, how he’d transported his victim, it would be something.

  It would be more helpful than Tony Sheridan’s theorising.

  “Right,” she said, surveying the expanse of pristine white moorland behind the barn. “How did he get here? Which direction did he come from? He was carrying a body, remember, so he couldn’t have come far on foot.”

  “Are we sure he didn’t just park up by the house and come that way?” Ryan asked.

  “No, he didn’t. The wife heard hammering coming from the barn but neither she nor her husband heard a vehicle. When they got downstairs, there were no footprints in the snow near the house.” She pointed at the moors. “He came and went this way.”

  “That suggests a knowledge of the area,” Sheridan said. “He could be a local.”

  “He could be,” Dani agreed. “But unless he’s Superman, he didn’t hike over the moors with Tanya Ward’s body on his back.”

  “Perhaps he killed her nearby,” Ryan said. “That way, he wouldn’t have to carry the corpse very far.”

  “I’m no pathologist but Tanya had been dead a while before being put in the barn,” she told him. “We know he didn’t park at the farmhouse so where’s the closest place he could have parked without someone hearing his vehicle?”

  “Depends on the vehicle, guv,” Ryan said. “If he’s got a four-wheel drive, he could have left the road and driven over the moor with the body in the boot.”

  It was a possibility. Due to the mix-up in calling the police, it had been some time before the proper people had arrived here and by then, the snow could have covered any vehicle tracks.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s work on that theory.” She made her way onto the moors, the three men close behind. She stopped and positioned her gloved hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun’s glare. In the distance, she could see the road she’d driven along to get to Brambleberry Farm.

  A low stone wall separated the road from the moorland. “If someone exited the road and proceeded cross country,” she said, “they’d have had to break through the wall. From here, it looks intact.”

  She could get a couple of officers to check the state of the wall later and look for possible access points.

  “Let’s say he came here in a vehicle,” she said. “He had to stop somewhere in this area and unload the body before carrying it to the barn. The snow has covered over the tracks but they’re still there somewhere, underneath the snow. The ground is frozen but a vehicle as heavy as a 4X4 would have left its mark on the terrain.”

  “Do you want me to get a shovel, guv?” Ryan asked.

  “Have you got one in the boot of that fancy car of yours?”

  He shook his head, grinning. “No, but I’m sure the people in the farmhouse will have one.”

  “All right. If you want to do some digging, I won’t stop you.”

  He nodded once and set off back to the house.

  “Come on,” she said to Matt and Sheridan. “Let’s have a look a bit further on.” Leading them away from the barn, she checked the ground at her feet with each step, even though there was nothing there but snow. She didn’t envy Battle and his search team; meticulously searching the ground in these conditions must be mind-numbing.

  “What’s that, guv?” Matt asked, pointing into the distance.

  Dani followed his gaze but all she could see was an endless stretch of whiteness, like a blank piece of paper, punctuated here and there by the odd rock or tuft of grass.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “Just there. The land seems to dip.”

  She saw it as well now; an uneven line on the landscape the length of a football pitch away from where they stood. “Let’s have a look.”

  They made their way through the snow towards the dip and as they got closer, Dani heard running water. A stream.

  It was no more than five feet wide. The water had been frozen at some point, or if not frozen, then covered with a layer of ice.

  But the ice was broken.

  It hadn’t melted. It had been shattered. Shards of it lay in the water and on the frozen muddy banks.

  “He came this way,” Dani said. She knew that was a leap of reason. Someone had come this way but not necessarily the person they were hunting. It could have been a reporter trying to get a picture of the barn. It could have been hikers on a day trip. Hell, i
t could even have been an animal if it was something heavy enough, like a deer.

  But something in her gut told her it was their man.

  He’d been here.

  She followed the stream towards the road. In that direction, the water was still frozen over, gurgling beneath a sheet of ice.

  She moved in the opposite direction, away from the road. More shattered ice.

  “He followed the stream to this point and then he left it, probably on foot, and made his way to the barn,” she said. She tried to keep her voice calm. Here was a real clue, something she could work with.

  “So his vehicle was parked here,” Matt said, crouching next to the broken ice. “A Land Rover maybe?”

  Dani shook her head. “A Land Rover Defender is over six and a half feet wide. An average car is around six. Neither of them would fit into this depression, it’s too narrow. He didn’t use a car; he used something else.”

  “If we follow the stream, we might find some tracks,” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly.” She turned to Sheridan. “You wait here for DC Ryan. Tell him to clear the snow in a line from this point to the barn. Carrying a body would have weighed the killer down so we might get some boot prints, even in the frozen soil.”

  Sheridan nodded.

  “Come on,” Dani said to Matt. “Let’s see how far he came downstream.”

  They moved along the edge of the stream. It took them northwards and deeper into the moorland.

  “This points to a local,” Matt said. “He must have known the stream was here and where it would take him.”

  Dani nodded. It was unlikely the killer stumbled upon the stream and it just happened to lead him to the barn. “We need to canvass for witness, see if anyone has been hanging around in this area. Or driving some sort of vehicle over the moors around here.”

  “Could be a motorbike, guv,” Matt suggested.

  “It could be. Although I’d think that riding a motorbike over an icy stream wouldn’t be the best idea in the world. And how would he carry the body?”

  Matt thought for a moment and then said, “He could have tied it behind him, like a pillion passenger.”