Preacher Boy

by Gwyn GB

  ‘Have you seen this?’ one of her team asked, breaking the spell the corpse had placed on her. She looked to the right, where her colleague was shining his torch onto the walls of the flat. The beam from the torch slowly illuminated what had once been wallpapered walls but which now were covered from floor to ceiling with black writing. Someone had written on every inch with some crazed, but neat graffiti. ‘Looks like passages from the Bible,’ he added.

  ‘Give us a couple of hours to get some initial evidence and lock the place down. Then we’ll get you back in here,’ Tanya called out to the detectives outside. Her mind went to Harrison Lane. Perhaps it was her coping mechanism, but the horror of the flat receded slightly with the knowledge that he would have to be called in here soon to review what they’d found. It was clearly related to how the boy had been discovered. Question was, who was the corpse?

  As Jack stood outside flat sixteen, he thought he wasn’t in any hurry to go back in there. SOCO could take as long as they wanted. DC Oaks had already stepped outside for some air again, and after getting his shoes checked over by forensics—so they could eliminate his footprints from the evidence—he went out to join him. He’d reached the fresh air outside just as DCI Barker arrived.

  ‘What we got?’ she said seriously. One look at both of her men had already told her whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant.

  Jack pulled himself together, took a big breath of fresh air, and pulled out his notebook. ‘Spray-paint workshop colleague of a Cameron Platt told us he was weird, kept quoting Bible stuff at them, and stopped coming to work about two months back after his dad got sick. When they emptied his locker, it seemed he had an obsession with religion and being possessed by the Devil. We get here and the estate manager’s apparently put in a call to say he suspected a dead body in one of his flats due to the smell. Turned out to be the very same address we were given.’

  ‘So this Cameron Platt, you’re thinking he might be our man? Or is he the corpse?’

  ‘I think the body is Platt Senior. Neighbours say he was a big man, but Cameron was shorter and slightly built. The corpse was a big guy. They also reported seeing Cameron a few times over the last couple of months, but no sightings of the father. He was sick, could be natural causes or could be homicide. Too coincidental that the flat is covered in Bible quotes all over the walls and Cameron was apparently a good paint sprayer. There’s a pair of Devil’s horns on the body and a copy of the Bible wedged into the mouth. I think Cameron’s our man, but he isn’t here. No one has seen or heard anyone in that flat for a few weeks.’

  ‘So this might be the trigger that Harrison mentioned, the death of the father,’ Barker said. ‘Okay, let’s throw everything we have at this. We need all known associates, family, friends. He’s got to have gone somewhere and not too far away with those boys. Where the hell is he?’

  21

  Sally Fuller was on a laptop computer at the kitchen table. Her right leg jiggled up and down as her eyes flicked across the screen and her finger scrolled the mouse through her Facebook feed. She searched for news. Mentions. Gossip. Anything.

  Around her, the kitchen was full of dirty mugs and plates. She heard Edward’s voice in the other room. A murmur of one-way conversation. He was on the phone again. She hadn’t tuned into him; his voice was just background hum. Her focus was only on the screen in front of her. Edward had fielded all the calls from concerned friends and relatives because she’d neither the inclination nor time to talk to them. She only cared about one person right now: Alex. Her baby was out there, and she needed to help him.

  Sally flicked between Twitter, news sites, and Facebook, where she’d put an appeal for information. Her mobile sat on the table next to her and now and then she checked that too, even though it hadn’t made a sound. She hunted through Facebook for local mothers and community groups, requesting to join then posting her plaintive message.

  Hi, my name is Sally Fuller, and my seven-year-old boy, Alex, has been taken from us. The police think it’s the same man who recently murdered Darren Phillips. Alex was snatched from Fenton High Road at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

  Please, please, if you know anyone who might have anything to do with this, if you saw or heard anything, I beg you to get in touch with me or the police.

  Our little boy needs us. His little sister misses him. We love him and desperately want him home.

  The Facebook alerts racked up in the hundreds, but it was all the same replies and messages,

  So sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.

  I hope you find him, it’s my worst nightmare.

  Some of them weren’t so kind. No matter how upset and vulnerable you were, it seemed the internet trolls still picked on you.

  Why weren’t you watching him? He’s seven!!

  London gets worse by the day. It’s all them immigrants coming in.

  One of the local community boards turned into a full-scale row, with several women arguing. It had become a racist slanging match. Amazing how a social group designed to bring people together could encourage such vitriol and spite.

  Sally skimmed through all that noise. What would in normal times have had her angry and sad didn’t even register.

  ‘Mummy?’

  It was Sophie. Her mother had brought her back an hour ago because she’d been pining for them all. What Sally didn’t know was that her mother and Edward had discussed it. They hoped it might calm Sally down. Give her the chance to focus on her other child and take her mind off Alex. So far that tactic hadn’t worked.

  ‘Mummy?’

  Sophie walked up to her mother at the table. She looked pale, her skin almost translucent, as though the sadness had sucked the colour from her. Her favourite doll was with her, and she trailed it by the arm behind her.

  ‘Sophie,’ Sally exclaimed as though she’d not seen her until that moment.

  ‘When’s Alex coming home?’ the little girl asked, her chin crinkling into an impending flood of tears.

  Sally couldn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say, and even if she did, her throat was so tight and constricted, battling down her tsunami of tears, that her words couldn’t make it to her mouth.

  ‘Mummy?’ Sophie asked again.

  Sally reached out and touched her daughter’s cheek. She gulped back the tears.

  ‘Soon, honey,’ she replied.

  ‘I miss him,’ Sophie said.

  Sally had no reply.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ It was all she could think of to say.

  Sophie shook her head.

  Another message flashed up on the screen, and Sally’s eyes went to it.

  Sophie stood there for a few more moments watching her mother. Her little shoulders had sagged; she was as lifeless as the doll she carried.

  She stood by the table for a while longer, but Sally was engrossed in whatever it was she’d seen on her laptop. Sophie silently turned and wandered out of the room.

  At some point, Sally looked up and saw she had gone. Guilt flooded through her again, but Sophie was safe. She was here. They had to prioritise Alex.

  In the next room, Edward finished the phone call, and there was the sound of him talking to Sophie before a cartoon voice dominated the background. He’d put the TV on, and Sophie was now curled up on the sofa, watching a pink-haired cartoon girl with a mouse, cat, dog, and a walking hunk of cheese. When a boy joined them, Edward hoped that wouldn’t remind her of Alex, but there was no reaction. She’d zoned out. He figured she was probably exhausted, like they all were.

  He’d just come off the phone with his sister. Having to explain the series of events to her then deal with his own and her emotional response had been draining. His throat was dry; he needed a drink.

  Edward went to the kitchen where he found his wife hunched over her keyboard. He saw the tension in her rigid body, shoulders up by her ears. He was concerned about her. She’d become obsessive, worried the police weren’t doing enough to find their son.

  He walke
d up behind her, but she didn’t even acknowledge his presence. She was looking at Twitter, typing in hashtags and keywords: #kidnapping #crime #murder #missingboy. Edward gently put his hands on Sally’s shoulders and attempted to rub them. She shrugged him off.

  ‘Sweetheart, give that a rest for a bit. They’re looking for him,’ he said to her.

  ‘They haven’t found him yet, though, have they? Like they didn’t find Darren until it was too late. I can’t sit and do nothing.’

  ‘You’ll wear yourself out. We have to stay strong.’

  ‘Strong? What for? We have to find him. That’s all. No matter what.’ She looked at him as though he were a total stranger.

  Edward sighed and waited a few moments longer, not knowing what more to say. She’d transformed into an android-like replica of his wife. His Sally—the funny, loving, vivacious woman—had gone. Now there was a wax facsimile of her, without the colour and warmth of his wife. This Sally was driven by a cold, determined force that made her operate on nerves alone. She hadn’t brushed her hair or attempted to put on any make-up, but most importantly, her eyes didn’t look at him or Sophie. She didn’t seem to even see them.

  He understood. Alex was his son too. But they were at different ends of the spectrum. It was as though all the energy of their fears and loss were channelled into Sally. He felt as though his guts had been ripped out. Perhaps it was the guilt. It had already hollowed him out with its accusations. Why hadn’t he protected his son? How could he have let another man snatch him? He was there. Alex had been yards away from him, and he’d done nothing to save him.

  ‘Sally, take a break. Go sit with Sophie for a bit. She needs you too,’ he tried again.

  She turned and looked at him properly this time, her eyes pools of despair.

  ‘I have to do something. I have to believe he’s out there safe and he’s coming home. If I stop, all I see is him crying. Frightened. Calling out for us. Asking why we don’t come.’

  She didn’t wait for his response; she just turned back to the laptop and carried on her endless scrolling.

  Edward made them both a cup of tea. He put Sally’s on the kitchen table and poured Sophie a glass of milk. In his despair, that was all he could manage.

  22

  Harrison was deep in thought as he parked his bike in the Lewisham Police car park. He was frustrated. There were things he knew he’d forgotten, things that had happened before his mother’s death, but he’d been too young or he’d blanked them out. He had pieces, but it was like trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle so you could work out what the picture should be—only too many pieces were missing.

  What angered him the most, though, was the fact that his last memory of her was of her hanging dead from a tree. It was like some magnetic force in his mind. All the other memories that surfaced regularly were negative ones relating to her death. The times they’d spent having fun, swimming in the sea, walking in the fields, cuddling up on the sofa or in bed. All those memories were gone, barricaded in, or had been shoved out by his overriding obsession to find her killer.

  Harrison’s phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. It was DCI Barker saying they’d had a breakthrough. They’d found where the suspect lived, along with his deceased father. She wanted him in the incident room in fifteen minutes. Harrison hoped it really was a breakthrough, and they were close to catching the killer and getting Alex back to his family.

  He checked to see what other emails he’d had. Tanya had sent the Bible texts they’d found in Darren’s mouth. Harrison was eager to see them, so he stood in the car park for a few minutes, scrolling through the report.

  The images of the actual paper weren’t easy to read. Some of the ink had been smudged, and the writing was tiny and juvenile, but forensics had typed it out for legibility. As Harrison looked at the writing, his heart and mind returned to Louise Phillips and the boy who lay cold in a mortuary body bag.

  It had been a depressing morning. He hated confrontations like he’d just had with the lads in Nunhead. It was soul destroying seeing young men whose mentality in life was violence and using it to take what they wanted. That’s why he found teaching Taekwondo so rewarding. The ethos of martial arts was one of self-control and using your mind, not your fists. Even so, they’d lost one of their lads a year back; he’d been stabbed in a gang fight. Such a waste.

  Harrison needed an antidote for the ugliness of the morning, so he decided to go see Tanya to run through the report. He told himself it was purely a distraction, even though he wasn’t a man who usually did distractions.

  He found her in the lab working. Her hair was pulled back by one of those elastic band things women wear to make ponytails, and she had on a pale-blue lab coat that was surprisingly complimentary to her figure and her flawless skin.

  Harrison wasn’t a man who could creep into a room, not that he was noisy, just that there was a presence about him. Tanya had been concentrating on a specimen under a microscope, but she knew he’d walked in before she’d even looked up.

  Perhaps it was his tall, muscular physique, which took up more space in the room than the average person. Or maybe it was something else, something she couldn’t describe as a scientist. An aura, an atmosphere he carried.

  Apart from his looks, he was different from any other man she’d ever met. There was an intensity about him that in another person would be intimidating, but because it was paired with an understated gentleness, it took on a protective quality.

  She was glad she’d just been to the toilet, ready for the briefing in the incident room, and had spotted a smear of soot that had been on her face from where she’d been examining something from an arson case earlier. When she looked up and greeted him, she could do so with confidence, knowing her make-up was refreshed.

  ‘Dr Jones,’ Harrison greeted her.

  ‘Oh, Tanya, please,’ she replied. There was a little more confidence in her reply than usual, which surprised her. Perhaps she was getting used to his enigmatic presence.

  At that moment, Harrison realised he didn’t really have any reason to come see her. It almost threw him.

  ‘I got your email with the sheets,’ he said.

  ‘Do you want to have a look at them?’ she asked. ‘I think they should be read along with some of the writing on the wall of the flat.’

  He felt grateful she’d given him a way out, but he must have looked quizzical about the flat because she qualified it.

  ‘I’ve just come back from the Platt flat. Not pleasant,’ she explained. ‘Left the rest of the team there, but the walls were covered in Bible graffiti. Almost certainly our man.’

  Tanya walked over to a laptop on a bench, took off her gloves, and typed in her password. Immediately a gallery of photographs came on the screen: images of a small, dingy flat with black writing all over the walls.

  ‘You were right about the trigger,’ she said. ‘The father died, which seems to have coincided with our suspect going off the rails. DS Salter is on his way back. He’s got more information, but you should read some of the writing before we go up to the meeting.’

  Despite having to stand right next to her, Harrison pushed away his thoughts of Tanya and focussed on the images in front of him.

  Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

  It went on and on, over every single wall of the sitting room. Harrison felt the warmth of Tanya’s body next to him and her breath on his cheek. He stepped back and away quickly. He was losing his focus; he had to remain professional.

  ‘Thank you,’ he told her. ‘This confirms what I’d thought, along with the pages that were found with Darren.’

  Tanya looked up at him and nodded. Right now, he could say anything he want
ed; she’d still nod at him. He smelt of fresh air and leather with an undertone of sandalwood, a treat for her nose after the stench she’d endured at the Platt flat.

  ‘We’d better get upstairs,’ he said.

  She wondered if he ever chilled out. She’d certainly love to try to get him to.

  23

  Ryan was in his default position, sitting in his chair surrounded by computer screens and snacks. He was engrossed in something. His fingers moved across the keyboard faster than his body could ever react. His glasses reflected the flickering light of the screens.

  From the corridor came the sound of footsteps, and then the door was flung open. DS Salter rudely disturbed Ryan’s concentration as he burst into the office. He was animated, his eyes alive.

  ‘Where is he?’ Jack asked Ryan.

  Ryan raised his eyebrows at the abruptness of the question.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘Dunno. He didn’t say.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of a murder enquiry. What’s his mobile number?’

  ‘I can give it to you, but he might be on his bike.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Salter made no attempt to hide his exasperation.

  Ryan watched him, could almost see the turmoil boiling in Salter’s head as he tried to work out what to do next. He turned as if to walk out then changed his mind and walked over to Ryan. He found the only tiny bit of clear space on his desk and sat down, perched on the edge.

  Ryan stopped what he was doing and looked pointedly at him, decidedly unhappy that his personal space was being invaded.

  ‘So what’s he like to work for?’