Never stop being afraid to stand up for yourself. Christ knows, there are still some dinosaurs in the Force.
You are the best person I know, Wild. You’re smart. You’re kind. You’re so damn beautiful. Persuading you to marry me has got to be one of the greatest triumphs of my life.
I’m not ready to go. I want to see the lines settle into your face. I want to share in the shining moments of your life, and be there for you when the lights dim.
But I’ve got to step away for now. Never – not even for a moment – imagine that I wanted to leave.
And you deserve to be loved, darling girl. So don’t be afraid to let that happen.
There are people in our lives who brush past us, who bump shoulders and are gone. There are those who take our hands, who hold them and linger a while longer, who touch us and don’t let go.
And there are people like you. The ones who fold their hands around our hearts, and keep us safe.
I never thought it would happen for me until you.
Even though it’s over, I have lived my very best life. Because of you.
Do what you need to do, Wild. Remember to eat, to take care of yourself. If you want to hide away, that’s OK. If you want to work, don’t let them stop you.
And know that whatever you’re doing, however bad it gets, I’m with you. I will always be with you.
I love you.
Adam
And so the tears came, grief laying its claim on Wildeve, wrenching its debt from the well inside. She cried rarely. A handful of times in her thirty-six years. She buried her face in the cushion, the fabric growing damp against her skin.
When she had composed herself, when the tears were drying to salt on her cheeks and she had splashed them away with cold water, when she had dressed in clean clothes and found her keys, the questions she had been trying to ignore elbowed their way to the front.
She and Adam had never kept secrets.
They had lived and breathed the Doll Maker case, discussing it over breakfast, in the car, the bath, in bed, in those gaps between sex and a few snatched hours of sleep.
So what was he doing when he died?
And why hadn’t he told her?
26
Monday, 30 July 2018
Major Incident Room, Rayleigh Police Station – 5 p.m.
Five faces pinned to the wall of the Major Incident Room. Five bodies photographed in situ.
Ordinary men and women. All with lives. All with hopes and secrets. All with families and friends, ex-lovers and enemies. Some with money worries, struggling to get by, some with thriving businesses and pensions, a gilded future ahead. Illnesses. Scars. Histories. Full of the joys and tragedies that make us human.
All dead.
Even though DS Wildeve Stanton had seen hundreds like them before, the contrast between the photographs of the victims before they were killed and the images taken at the crime scene was a repeated kick in the gut.
Grinning. Natural. Hair mussed by the wind. Celebrating a family occasion. A pint down the pub. Tanned and on holiday. Versus the vacant stare of victimhood.
Seventeen years ago, Wildeve had stood in a bedroom in a house with her first dead body. It had belonged to her grandfather, the joker who had produced coins from behind her ear, the friendly bear who slipped her chocolate limes, the war veteran who went to bed early on Bonfire Night because the crack of fireworks terrified him. Except it wasn’t her grandfather. His face, yes, but a mask carved from wax. His body, but an empty sack. Nothing more, nothing less.
Her grandfather had left with his last breath.
And these bodies found amongst the branches and dried leaves and insects carried the same aura of absence. Abandoned husks. But they had all been somebody once, two or three burning brighter than the others, perhaps, but all ablaze with individuality.
One of them had been her husband.
She pressed her finger to the crime scene photograph. Although she had been at his post-mortem, this was the first time she had seen him lying in the woods, reduced to nothing by a faceless killer. Eyes gouged from his face. A violent stripping of life.
Her legs began to shake. Stale, warm air filled her nose. She was shrinking, sucked into her shock. The rumble of voices sounded far away. She shouldn’t have come. She couldn’t bear it.
You’ve got this, Wild. Take your time. The patience in Adam’s voice calmed her.
Wildeve drew in another lungful of recycled air, and waited for the trembling in her legs to subside.
In every murder investigation she had worked on, the killer had left a trace, his or her mark. But the Doll Maker was not like other killers.
No stab wounds. No ligatures or signs of strangulation. No bruising or bullet holes, no shattered and splintered bones. No bite marks. No bleeding out. No suffocation or sexual assault or evidence of torture.
No visible signs of injury at all.
Except the eyes.
She turned her back to the photographs and tuned in.
Detective Chief Inspector Clive ‘Mac’ Mackie, the senior investigating officer in this multiple murder investigation, had gathered his officers for the afternoon briefing. The post-mortem of Victim Five – formally identified by his wife as Detective Inspector Adam Stanton – had, he informed them, taken place that morning.
Mac’s bloodshot eyes met hers, the strain of the last twenty-four hours written in the lines of his face. Lack of sleep and relentless pressure from the public and the media to catch a killer had aged him by fifteen years. He acknowledged her with a nod, and she nodded back, hoping that he wouldn’t offer his condolences in front of the large team scattered across chairs and perched on desks. Thirty years in the police had taught him some compassion, because his next words were these.
‘We all know his name. He was one of our own.’ Mac rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Forty-two years old. Working this investigation. Found at fifteen hundred hours and sixteen minutes on Sunday in a sheltered copse in the south-east corner of Blatches Woods, sixteen acres east from where Victim One – Natalie Tiernan – was discovered, three acres north-west of Victim Two, Esther Farnworth, eleven acres east of our third victim, Will Proudfoot, and an acre south of where the fourth body– Elijah Outhwaite – was dumped. Adam was off the beaten path. A father and son came across him when their dog ran after a squirrel.
‘He had been due to attend a church service with Elijah’s family yesterday morning, but he didn’t turn up. A resident of The Avenue has contacted the helpline and confirmed that she spoke to him at around 9 a.m. We’re trying to establish his movements after that. Where was he? Who was he with? Did anyone see or speak to him? Did he let anything slip to any of you? You know the drill, folks. We all want to find this bastard. Let’s do it for Adam.’
His voice wavered on that final consonant. For a moment, the briefing room was silent except for a quiet sobbing from near the front. Due to the high level of media interest, an Essex Police press officer was taking notes. Mac cleared his throat of emotion. ‘Right, any questions?’
Clipped, no-nonsense, his tone did not invite questions at all. But Wildeve knew that Mac didn’t mean to sound so hard. Four years of working with him and she had learned to read his moods. This afternoon’s was textbook defensiveness.
An officer down on his watch. That would break him if this case didn’t. And she knew he was starting to panic. Because they had nothing of material use. Because the buck stopped with him. Because he wanted justice for the families and could have retired years ago if he wasn’t so committed to the job. Because there were journalists camped out on his doorstep, questioning his abilities, demanding answers from the Home Secretary and those at the top of the government tree. Because the public were becoming too frightened to venture out of their homes at night. Because newspapers and television shows and radio hosts were baying for blood, calling for Mac’s resignation, and he had a wife and kids and bills to pay, just like the rest of them.
Except her.
/> She didn’t have a family anymore. No parents. No siblings. No husband.
‘Right. Good. We’re still waiting on some results from forensics. We’re hopeful he’s slipped up this time and left a workable DNA trace. But again, as in the other cases, there are no signs of a struggle. We’re still working on the theory the victims were killed elsewhere and moved. But stay open-minded, folks. It’s only a theory.’
The heat in the room was sauna-like. Wildeve’s head swam. Mac was speaking, but she was not listening. A couple of fans were running but it was not enough to stop the beads of sweat rolling down the sides of his face.
As if he could hear her thoughts, Mac dragged the back of his hand across his forehead and wiped away its clamminess on his trousers. She tuned back in.
‘And I want you all to stay calm. There is absolutely no evidence that the killer is targeting police officers. But the obvious question to answer is did Adam stumble across something that could lead us to the individual who is behind these multiple killings?’
The knot in Wildeve’s stomach tightened. She was his wife. Why didn’t she know this?
‘As you’ll be aware, we’ve carried out post-mortems on each of the victims. Three have died from cardiac arrest and two from respiratory distress. Traces of vomit in some cases. Clearly, it’s more complicated than that. These were individuals, of course. With varying degrees of health. It would seem –’ he cleared his throat again – ‘that the eyes were removed after death. But Mathilda Hudson, the pathologist, is confident that she has now identified what caused loss of life.
‘What she – and we – have not been able to do – and what we must do as a matter of extreme urgency – is to discover what triggered the cardiac arrests, the respiratory failure. Why did they die in this way? And—’
‘What about gassing, guv?’
A detective constable seconded from the homicide team in neighbouring Brentwood interrupted Mac. He was loud, overconfident, speaking over the DCI. Wildeve did not know him, but she disliked him and the image he’d created in her mind.
Adam. Struggling for breath. Enough time to know he was dying. She blinked, dug her nails into her palms. Found herself back in her past.
A flat. A broken window. A ‘Do Not Enter’ note pinned to the bedroom door. As a younger officer, she had spent time with the Met’s dedicated chemical unit in London. ‘Carbon monoxide suicide,’ the DC had explained when they’d forced their way in. The poor bastard had used a gas canister and was still wearing his mask.
Because his mouth and nose had been covered, there was none of the telltale smell of death. He had looked alive, healthy, almost radiant, the haemoglobin absorbing the carbon monoxide and pinking his skin. Was it possible that Adam had died this way?
‘None that we can determine so far,’ said Mac. ‘Two of the victims had dangerously low oxygen levels in their blood, as you’d expect with respiratory failure. But the pathologist could find no traces of gases that might have killed them.’
‘But it’s true that a post-mortem can’t pick up everything, right?’ A senior female officer – Antonia Storm – spoke with calm authority. ‘I mean, isn’t it impossible to identify some poisons, for example?’
An awkward quiet settled onto the room. Everyone knew that Storm had been working with the Met five years ago when notorious serial killer Brian Howley had ambushed and almost killed her and another officer with a banned pesticide. Old-timer DI Alastair Thornberry had persuaded her to transfer permanently to Essex. A long time ago, but her history still cast a shadow.
Mac nodded. ‘Yep. Hudson has state-of-the-art technology. She always runs a thorough and extremely comprehensive analysis. But none of that will be enough if it’s a substance that’s so rare we don’t have a clue what we’re looking for.’
A young PC that Stanton didn’t recognize raised his hand.
‘Taylor?’
The officer stumbled over his words, as if he couldn’t find the right way to frame them. ‘Is it – could it be – possible they died from fright?’
A titter slithered around the room. The police constable blushed. One or two colleagues flashed a worried glance at Wildeve. Mac held up a hand to silence the detractors.
‘That’s not as daft as it sounds. It’s something we’ve discussed. We haven’t ruled it out, put it that way.’
A spike was drilling its way across Wildeve’s jaw. She gritted her teeth, an instinctive act, even though it worsened the sensation. She forced herself to concentrate on Mac, to focus on him instead of the revolving bursts of pain.
An image of Adam’s pale face appeared on the interactive SMART whiteboard. Acid rose at the back of her throat. She put her hand across her mouth. Reached for the waste-paper basket.
Mac zoomed in. In the place where Adam’s eyes should have been, something glinted in the camera flash. He clicked another button and a video began to play. A gloved Scenes of Crime Officer was filmed removing a piece of evidence from his bloodied sockets.
Mac hit pause. Zoomed in again. Lying on the SOCO’s palm was a miniature glass eye, muddy-brown in colour, distinctive yellow flecks across the iris.
Although news of the eyes had leaked, the details of their colouring had not. Each glass eye matched the original eye colour of its victim. ‘Highly unlikely to be a copycat,’ said Mac. ‘So anyone got any bright ideas?’
The officers assigned to the case – pooled from the four homicide teams across the county because of the large-scale nature of the investigation – had circled this cul-de-sac a thousand times. They had argued amongst themselves about what – or who – it might mean.
Wildeve glanced down at the notes she had scribbled on this part of the investigation before Adam had died, her stream-of-consciousness musings.
Message from killer? Watching (victims or police or both)?? Blind. Visually impaired.
Who? Access? Ophthalmologist. Toymaker/hobbyist. Factory worker. Taxidermist. eBay? Internet – basically anyone?
Type of glass eye/prosthetic? Human, mammal, bird, mannequin, doll, reptile, teddy bear, fish?
Closed-circuit television cameras had been installed at the entrances to the woods a week before Adam’s death. She wanted to ask Mac what had been the point of that fruitless and costly exercise, as teething problems meant they hadn’t been working on Sunday. But if she spoke up, two dozen heads would twist in her direction and she wasn’t ready for such scrutiny.
‘Well?’
No one answered Mac. A couple of chair legs scraped across the floor as one or two officers shifted. Others gazed at their hands or pretended to take notes.
The slap of Mac’s palm against the table made the room jump.
‘He.’ Slap. ‘Was.’ Slap. ‘One.’ Slap. ‘Of.’ Slap. ‘Us.’
Detective Constable Bernie French’s braying voice broke into the silence. Wildeve gritted her teeth again, and this time it wasn’t because of the pain.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, guv, I think we need to go back to the beginning and Natalie Tiernan.’ His chest puffed out at having the floor. ‘The Doll Maker—’
‘Don’t call him that.’ Mac’s terseness cut through French’s self-importance. ‘And that goes for the rest of you too.’
He didn’t bother to explain why. But Wildeve knew. Mac hated these monikers. Thought it glamorized the killings and legitimized the act of murder. But that wasn’t the only reason. He had told her once that it made his officers lazy and narrowed their thinking, that – subconsciously or otherwise – it pointed the investigation towards assumption rather than fact.
French snorted and looked around colleagues new and old for support. ‘I think it’s rather good, actually. Bit more imaginative than the usual bullshit.’
Mac’s smile was over-warm, full-blown. French clocked the DCI’s expression and a self-congratulatory laugh slipped from him. But he had misread the signals.
‘Here’s what will be more imaginative than the usual bullshit if you don’t shut up,’ sa
id Mac, still smiling. ‘Your fucking CV. Because you’ll be trying to cover up why you got sacked.’ Mac leaned towards the detective constable. ‘Here’s a tip. When I say jump, you say, “How high – and shall I make you a brew while I’m up there?” And have some fucking respect. Adam’s wife’s here. Got it?’
French moistened his lips with his slug of a tongue. He stretched out his arms and locked his hands behind his head, all elbows and arrogance. He opened his mouth to argue, but Mac was staring him down, head cocked, still grinning.
French dropped his gaze. ‘Got it.’
Mac raised one eyebrow. ‘Got it, what?’
If looks could kill, her boss would be dead. ‘Got it, guv.’
The rest of the briefing passed without incident, with tasks assigned, leads to investigate and interviews to conduct, but their exchange had left a nasty taste. During major investigations, it was not unusual for different teams to join forces and operate as one, but conflict was common. Different methods of working. Egos. Clashing personalities.
‘Wildeve, have you got a minute?’
She put down the bin. Mac had not allocated her a specific job. She’d been taking a closer look at Victim Two – Esther Farnworth – when Adam was killed, but he’d probably written her off.
He was close enough for her to smell aniseed balls on his breath. When he wasn’t delivering briefings, he sucked them incessantly. The far wall was ablaze with orange fire, and that rise and fall of the sun, the corporate smell of the meeting room, the low buzz of an active investigation, reminded her that the world kept turning. And so did she. Thirty thousand breaths a day, one hundred thousand beats of her heart, an echo of hunger in her hollowed-out stomach. She had always marvelled at the families who kept going in the hours and days after a brutal, senseless death. But now she understood. She was here, at work. Breathing and thinking and talking. Still here. Shock, the brain’s sophisticated system of protection from reality.
The Neighbour Page 8
