Текст книги "The Electrician's Code: An Evans and Blackwell Mystery"

Автор книги: Clarissa Draper

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Fifty-Four

On the way back into London, Theo rang SOCO and the coroner to meet them at Maddock Tipring’s house. The garden was so small that only three men could be out there at a time, and so the detectives let the investigators dig. Meanwhile, Theo counted the flowers that they dug up—thirty-two dirty, fake, faded irises.

“I thought it was an odd season to have these flowers still in bloom,” remarked Dorland, “but I never gave them a second glance. ‘They’re my sister’s favorite flowers,’ that’s all I thought at the time.”

Theo wasn’t really listening. He was concerned. They had been digging for an hour and hadn’t found anything resembling a body. Perhaps the poem was only symbolic. Perhaps he liked thirty-two irises to remind him of his disgusting deeds just as he used his morbid art to remind him.

“We found something, sir,” one of the men digging exclaimed.

Theo pushed past the others in the doorway. The men had hit something metal and were pushing the dark dirt off the cover. It was a tin box about the size of a shoe box. They continued to dig around the edges until finally it came up with a tug. The officers stared down at it as it lay on the ground. No one made any attempts to open it. Theo pulled gloves from his pocket and opened the lid. It wasn’t easy. Who knew how long the box had been buried there. He pulled it apart with two hands and it knocked him back. Some of the contents spilled out onto the grass.

“What is it?” asked Dorland.

Inside the tin were many triangular-shaped objects. Theo reached in and placed one on his gloved palm.

“What are those?” Dorland asked again. “Arrowheads?”

The coroner leaned over Theo and said, “No, they look like patellas to me. Lots and lots of them.”

“What’s a patella?”

“A kneecap.”

Theo gingerly placed the patella back into the tin. “There are so many of them.”

Sophia came over and had a look. “After he killed them, he cut out their kneecaps. But they’re so clean.”

“Most likely he boiled them to remove remnants of muscle and tendons,” the coroner said.

“How easy would it be to remove a kneecap from a body?” she asked him.

“Well, with a good knife . . .”

Theo handed the tin to one of the SOC officers who bagged it up carefully.

“Shall we keep looking? Go deeper?” one of the men holding a shovel asked.

“Yes, a little deeper. I don’t want to miss anything else, but I don’t think the bodies are buried here.” He went back into the house. “I want to get back to the incident room. I’m in a great deal of muck for this but I want to find those bodies. I refuse to let Maddock Tipring laugh at us from his grave.”

Theo was quiet and pensive the whole way back and as soon as he entered, he fired off instructions like it was his last few moments on earth.

“I know we’re trying to find Yoder’s killer, but I feel the Maddock case and the Yoder case are somehow connected. To solve one, we need to solve the other. So, I want everything on Tipring, I want his tax records, his bank records, I want to know what he did for work, where he went to school, where he went to the dentist, who he dated, and what his hobbies were.”

Everyone stared at him, mouths open, not moving.

“And I want it now,” he shouted.

People shuffled off, not sure where to start, not sure what their assigned tasks were. Dorland went over to the board and started a list of tasks, placing officer’s names beside their assignments. Sophia followed Theo back to his office and managed to enter the room before he could slam the door in her face.

“Why are you so angry?” she asked.

“I’m not as angry as I am frustrated.” He sat down at his desk and began typing some notes into a document on his computer. Sophia sat down across from him.

“Let me help. I can get information on Tipring as easily as any of your officers.”

He looked up sharply from his keyboard. She could tell his immediate reaction was a negative one but then he sat back. “Sure. Whatever you can find will be a great help.”

She nodded and quickly set about sending a text message to the one person she knew was the master at information retrieval—Crystal.

“Aren’t you going to go and find information?” he asked her after a few minutes of her staring at him.

“No. If there is information to be had, it will arrive here.” She held up her mobile. Instead, she took out the poem, rewrote a copy, and handed it to Theo. “You might want this.”

He grabbed it from her.

She circled a few words on her poem—buried, knees, irises, hunt. “What did his family say about him? You did talk to his family members, didn’t you?”

“Of course we did. But the family wasn’t really close. His sister didn’t say much about him.”

“Can I read the report?”

He hesitated, but finally handed her the Tipring file. “I don’t know what you’ll find interesting. They didn’t know much about Doc at all.”

Sophia wasn’t listening; she was reading carefully.

“This tells us nothing,” she said finally. “Why didn’t you ask his sister important questions, like what his hobbies were or did he display psychopathic tendencies?”

“And why exactly would we have done that, Ms. Evans? He was the victim. It really didn’t matter to us at the time what the man did in his teens.”

“Well, it sure matters now.”

“I will ring his sister. What would you like me to ask her?”

“Did he hunt? Did he like irises? Are there irises on their property? Has his sister ever seen him with a woman? Did he ever bring a woman to the house?”

“He did hunt,” Theo said. “We didn’t write it down but his sister told us he did. In fact, she showed us photographs of him with a rifle.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there were flowers where he buried the bodies.”

Theo picked up the phone just as Sophia’s mobile vibrated. Crystal had sent her some information.

In the incident room, Sophia picked up Doc’s file and flipped through. She came across the earrings and went through one by one.

“Why do you have pictures of these?” Sophia asked Dorland.

“We found a box of earrings in Doc’s house and these are photos of each set from his solicitor. Doc really felt those earrings were special. We believe they belonged to his mother.”

“His mother?” Sophia asked. “According to his file he didn’t get on with his mother. How many earrings were there?”

“I don’t know exactly. A lot.”

Sophia counted the photos. “Thirty-two pairs of earrings. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Well, actually thirty-one. One pair was missing. We believed it had been stolen.”

She looked at him. “And you didn’t find that odd?”

“Well, we did. However, the earrings were not worth anything and even though there was huge issue with the missing set, none of the witnesses had any information to point us in any direction. It was another dead end.”

“So, there is no way to trace why those particular earrings are missing or to whom they belonged?” she asked.

Dorland raised his arms in disgust. “And just how would you go about doing that? If you’re suggesting the killer took the earrings, and we did assume that at the time, the killer is not going to freely admit it, now are they?”

“Can I see what the missing set of earrings looks like?”

Dorland handed her the photo. The missing earrings were long dangling silver with emerald teardrops. Sophia placed that photo on top of all the others and returned to Theo’s office.

She asked Theo, “You said you found records of missing women that may be connected with Tipring. Do you still have them?”

Theo was still on the phone and he pointed to the corner of his desk. About ten file folders sat precariously. Sophia grabbed them all and sat down at a table outside Theo’s office.

The first victim was Abigail Arnold. Sophia went through her file slowly, hoping to pick up any mention of jewelry or a connection to Tipring. She found none.

The next file belonged to Charlotta Standford. She went missing a year and a half before Abigail, in 1985, and the only description of jewelry the missing girl was wearing was a heart pendant.

Sophia went through the last set of files but only found one mention of earrings, on a missing woman named Janine Fur. It matched a photo in the pile. Dorland came and sat down at the table next to her.

There was no mention of any silver and emerald earrings. How frustrating. When Doc Tipring stole them, he stole them as a keepsake, another reminder of what he had done, not because they were worth anything.

“Now that we have the patellas of each of the missing girls,” said Sophia, “hopefully we can match the DNA from them to the missing girl. We do know what set of earrings belongs to Charlotta Standford. We can make a reasonable assumption.”

“How?”

“Well, Dorie Armes worked for Doc Tipring. I’m sure when she saw the earrings that belonged to her sister, she knew that Doc Tipring was the murderer. She must have been the one who stole the earrings. But, what I find hard to fathom is how she recognized the earrings. I mean, 1985 is a long time ago. I can’t remember earrings I’ve lost that long ago. How could she know those exact earrings belonged to her sister? It’s one thing to be sure, it’s another to murder someone based on a flimsy assumption such as that.”

“We don’t have a choice,” replied Dorland. “We have to ask Dorie about the earrings. Will you come with us?”

“No I need to leave. I’m dealing with an issue at work.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

According to Sophia’s mobile, Liam wasn’t where he was supposed to be. She had asked Crystal to create an application to record all locations related to Stewart and his organization and then track Liam’s whereabouts. If the paths crossed, she would be alerted. Crystal had sent her a text message while she was at the station informing her that Liam was at one of Stewart’s known hangouts and his mobile hadn’t left the location for an hour and forty minutes. But ten minutes before she arrived, the mobile shut off. She sped up so as not to lose him but when she arrived at the location, she couldn’t spot Liam’s car anywhere.

She sent a text to Crystal for more information and Crystal replied almost immediately. One of Stewart’s known mistresses lived at that location—flat four. Crystal must have been alerted by the application as well.

When Sophia knocked, no one answered. There was a part of her that was glad because she had no idea what she was going to say. Why couldn’t she just let go?

As she turned to go, she could hear a noise coming from the flat—a shuffling noise. Could it be Liam? She placed her ear as close to the door without touching it. The noise sounded like a shuffling or perhaps it was a whimper. A dog? Maybe Liam was tied up inside. Her immediate thought was to try the door handle but she just as quickly stopped herself. Liam might be tied up, but that didn’t mean he was alone.

If she went in, what would she face? Was it worth it? She had some weapons and defence training but she would be useless against any of Stewart’s men even if she had a gun—all of Stewart’s men would have weapons.

Sadly, she knew that unless she had eyes in the flat, she couldn’t go in without putting herself in danger. Even if Liam was in there and was in danger, she couldn’t save him.

She backed down the hall and returned to her car. She tried Liam’s number again but it only went to voicemail. Why was he being so stupid? Then she remembered the pen set; unless he looked under the passenger seat and found it, it would still be there. Quickly she sent another text to Crystal. She had to locate which device he had given her and then she had to turn it on.

It seemed like forever and not the four and a half minutes it took Crystal to reply.

According to tech, fifty pens were made but only one had your name engraved into the side. The device was never turned on but they will do so now. I will send you a way to track the device on your mobile.

Sophia received an email and opened the tracking application, but nothing appeared on screen. She was about to text Crystal again when a blip appeared. The yellow dot was moving and she was at least twenty minutes behind. It became incredibly hard to track him while driving and she thought about waiting until he stopped before she continued but what if he went out of range? What if he was in trouble? Why didn’t he just turn on his mobile phone?

After following him for a half hour, she knew where the car was headed. Shit. Now she sped up. He still had a fifteen minute lead on her and really, it didn’t matter whoever had control, Liam or Stewart, if she didn’t catch up to them, it wouldn’t turn out well either way. Hell, she knew it may not turn out well even if she did catch up.

Although the crime scene tape leading out to the mass grave site was still attached to trees and fence posts, no officers were around. Liam had clearly broken through because the tape cutting off the path had been torn in two. She didn’t know how many speeding tickets she had collected on the way up but she was only five minutes behind him.

“Please, no one do anything stupid before I get there,” she muttered as she parked her car behind Liam’s. “Please, don’t let anyone do anything stupid once I arrive.”

She popped the boot and took the only thing resembling a weapon from it—the tire iron. She made her way up the muddy path, slipping twice. Although she couldn’t see anything in the dark and didn’t dare turn on her torch, she knew where the grave sat. She made her way as quietly as she could.

A thin beam of light and voices could be heard as she approached the clearing. Sophia could only see two figures in the dark and she squinted to try and make out who was kneeling on the ground at the edge of the pit and who was standing with a gun behind him. As Sophia took a few steps closer, she could make out Liam’s figure and voice. Liam held the gun.

That’s when she decided to step out into the clearing.

“Liam,” she said. Neither man noticed her so she yelled a bit louder. “Liam!”

This time, both men turned to look at her. Liam did not look happy.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. He didn’t move the gun from Stewart’s head and soon after, turned back to him. “You shouldn’t have come. How did you find me?”

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

“Tell your boyfriend that he’s making a mistake,” Stewart said.

“Shut up,” replied Liam. He kicked the back of Stewart’s leg and Stewart cried out.

“You bastard. You think you’re going to get away with this? My men will hunt you down.”

“Liam, listen to him. You’re not thinking straight. We’ll eventually bring him to justice. You don’t have to ruin your life this way.”

“Ruin my life this way? Stewart ruined my bloody life long ago. The only difference now, I’m not going to let him ruin any more lives. So, Evans, just drive away from here. You don’t need to witness this.”

Sophia approached. “You’re not a cold-blooded killer.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know that once you kill someone, you can’t take it back.”

Sophia actually thought she saw the gun start to go down but she must have been mistaken because after Liam shook his head, the gun was moved closer to Stewart’s head.

“I’m determined to do this, Sophia,” he whispered. “And I really need you to walk away.”

“I’m not going to leave you, Liam.”

“What do you want? If you’re looking for money, I have plenty. What do you want?” asked Stewart, turning his head toward Sophia. He didn’t dare look at Liam.

“Money? I wouldn’t take any of your bloody money,” said Liam. “You don’t even know what you’ve done.” He leaned down and whispered. “Kendra Foxton. You just remember that name because it’s the reason you’ll be lying dead in that pit in a minute.”

“I don’t even know who that is,” he replied. “You’ve kidnapped the wrong man.”

“Shut up, you freak. You know her as Katelin.”

Stewart laughed. “You two are spooks? You’re not going to kill me.”

He started to raise himself off the ground, but Liam kicked him again in the same leg.

“Shit,” he yelled and rubbed his leg. “Yeah, I remember her, she was stupid. That’s why she was killed. If she’s dead, it’s because she was a lousy spook—”

“Shut up,” Liam yelled.

“What the hell are you doing, Stewart?” Sophia asked. “You want him to kill you?”

She put her hand on Liam’s shoulder, she could feel him shaking. “He’s just winding you up and it’s not worth it. Just walk away. Come with me. We’ll go on holiday together. My father has property in Greece. We can go to Greece, we can get away, just the two of us.”

“Get lost, Evans.”

“I’m not moving.”

“I mean it, Evans, walk away. Now.”

“I’m not moving. It doesn’t have to end badly, Liam. Please, Liam, please. You can’t do this, you can’t kill him. I can’t be a party to this. I can’t let you do this.”

“Then walk away.”

Liam was visibly shaking now. He took a step back and breathed in deeply.

“Okay,” said Liam. He lowered the gun by his side.

Stewart’s shoulders relaxed and he sat down on the ground. Neither man was the one she knew only a day before. How did her life ever get so complicated? This could have ended so wrong.

“Let’s go home, Liam. We can leave Stewart here to find his own way.”

“Okay,” came Liam’s whisper.

Sophia turned to go and heard a gun explode behind her. Time slowed around her as she fell to the ground. She smelled the grass and felt the breeze as she rose to her feet.

“What have you done?” Sophia asked.

Stewart lay face down in the mud at her feet.

“You need to go, go right now.” He put the gun away, under his jacket, grabbed her arm and dragged her toward her car. “I’ll clean everything up. Don’t worry about me. Go to your flat and talk to no one, we were together all night. Do you understand? Do you understand?”

He shook her.

“You shot him.”

“Focus. Everything will be all right.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

Just as Theo and Dorland were about to visit Dorie Armes, Walter Peters walked into the station. Theo caught his eye immediately and directed them to a small sitting room where they could talk privately.

“What is it?” Theo asked him.

“I was going through my wife’s belongings, and I found this. I don’t know what to make of it.” He handed Theo a small red notebook. “I don’t know if it’s real or . . . I don’t know. I hope it’s not real.”

Theo sat down and started reading:

I’m writing all this down now because I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t really want to go through with the plan but I think I may be forced to in the end. To protect the others, I’m not writing down any names. I just need everyone to know why I did it.

Sometimes I wonder if I dreamt the whole thing because I’ve had plenty of nightmares before. I keep going over the day we planned it all, wondering if I misunderstood. Perhaps it was all a big joke. But it can’t be, can it? Things like this are never a joke.

I was in the lift at the hospital because Mrs. Cho had given birth the night before and I was on my way to check up on her. Suddenly, there was a jolt and the lights went out. We had just passed the second floor. I heard someone ask if someone had pressed the stop button.

I hadn’t paid any attention to who was on the lift with me, so I didn’t even know how many people stood with me in the dark. However, a minute later, when a dim yellow emergency light came on, I saw that two women and I were the lift’s only occupants. I remember we talked about the reasons why the lift would have stopped. One suggested that there could be a fire in the building and the other a terrorist attack. I know they said it because they were scared. I know I was scared, but I suggested we should avoid all worst case scenario discussion while trapped.

We waited in silence for about ten minutes but it felt like hours. Eventually a man, probably a lift repairman, asked through the sealed door if anyone was in the lift. We all cried yes in unison. He informed us that he didn’t know why the lift had stopped or how long we would be stuck inside, but promised that the lift wouldn’t fall.

I remember remarking that we were in a government hospital and so the lift was bound to be old and in disrepair. We all had a laugh about that.

Slowly we relaxed and all of us took a seat on the floor. We introduced ourselves. For the sake of this narrative I will say there was D, the nurse, E, the hairdresser, and me, the doctor. It was like a joke: A doctor, a nurse, and a hairdresser walked into a bar. In this case, it’s a lift and in the punch line: no one wins. Well, at least I don’t feel I’ve won. I should’ve been stronger. I’m a doctor, for goodness sakes, but the hairdresser, she was the instigator.

How does one even bring up killing someone? We joked about it. I mean, who hasn’t? We’ve all wished someone was dead, haven’t we? Our boss. Our spouse. Our parents. Our neighbors. But we never do it. Thinking about it now, I’m sure I thought she was joking all the time.

It all started when I asked the hairdresser why she came to the hospital. She told us about her doctor’s appointment and how her medication was worse than the disease and the disease is pretty bad. The poor girl was HIV positive.

We just stared at her pitifully. She told us to stop because everyone always felt sorry for her and it didn’t change anything. She told us she wished she never got infected in the first place. I could hear the anger in her voice. She went from the chatty, joking woman to a bitter woman in seconds. And I really couldn’t blame her. I’ve seen one child die from AIDS and it was horrible.

She had only found out three months ago, after she caught an infection. She couldn’t understand how she got it. Of course she panicked. And she told us that she was less concerned about herself and her first thought was for her husband. She knew she had to tell him and that he had to be tested.

We asked her how he took the news.

She told us he said he should have told her sooner. Can you believe that? He knew and didn’t tell her. He also didn’t tell her he was having an affair with a man for eight months. What a bloody bastard! I was angry for the poor woman. And she said they had been having sex more than ever because she wanted a child.

We were silent for a while. I think all of us forgot we were trapped in the lift.

The nurse went next. At first she just complained about everyone in the world. She listed a few horrible people that didn’t even care they’ve ruined our lives. Then she told us her sad story. When she was fifteen, her older sister went missing. Their family searched for years but knew she had to be dead. She was sure her sister would never have left them for so long without contacting them in some way. It tore their family apart. Her step-dad left and her mum went insane and had to be cared for because she couldn’t care for herself anymore. And she only turned sixty this year.

I asked if the police had stopped looking and she said something that shocked me, she thought she had found her sister’s killer. Of course we asked her how.

She explained she found a pair of earrings that had belonged to her, a pair she had made herself so she knew they were hers. Her sister had borrowed them the day she went missing. She told us she thought about those earrings a lot and at one point even convinced herself that if she had never lent the earrings to her sister, maybe her sister wouldn’t have gone missing. We just sat there quietly. Listening. Shocked.

She explained that she eventually became a nurse; partly to care for her mum and perhaps it was because she thought she was meant to catch her sister’s killer.

We asked an obvious question. How did you find him?

She explained she unbelievably started to work for him. The company she worked for asked her to fill in on a temporary assignment when one of the nurses became ill. On the third day of caring for the old man, she came across her earrings. She knew they were hers because when one of the stones fell out, she had to hot-glue it back in and use green string to keep everything together. She could still see the green string. She took them home with her.

So did you confront him? Ask him about your sister?

No.

We couldn’t believe it. The hairdresser was ready to beat the sorry arse right then and there. I guess she was no longer needed on her temporary assignment and was assigned to another older couple. She told us that eventually she did go back and ask about the earrings. He said they belonged to his mother and had the nerve to ask for them back. In fact, he laughed at her. Although he never confessed to anything, the nurse knew he had done it. It was the way he looked at her, and the way he probably looked at all women, like they were his toys. Dirty old bastard.

Again we sat quiet.

Then they turned to me. I had to have a story too. Compared with their stories, my life situation seemed like a bed of roses. Thinking about it now, I should have kept my mouth shut.

I told them my husband was cheating on me and how I had caught him two weeks before. How I couldn’t bring myself to say anything and how he acted so in love with me but cheated on me with another woman.

I became more and more angry the longer I continued my story. I could tell the others were getting angry as well. The longer we stayed in the lift, the worse the situation became for us. We went from trying to stay positive to slowly bringing out the worst in each other. I knew then that we would walk out of the lift changed women. I just didn’t know how changed we would be.

Did you know we actually came up with a name? We called ourselves the Otis Group. Otis, for the man who invented the lift. I guess in the end, it was his fault. He shouldn’t have invented such a shitty lift.

The hairdresser came up with the idea. Thinking about it now, I think she had come up with it long ago but could never find a situation where she could have so much privacy and such willing participants.

Such a simple sentence. “We should kill them, you know.”

We looked at her like she was joking, but I knew immediately that she wasn’t. The nurse didn’t want to because she was afraid of getting caught.

The hairdresser convinced us that if we were smart about it, we wouldn’t get caught. It would be like the movie, and we would have to commit each other’s murders. And then, we would have to alibi each other out. If we keep our mouths shut, they could never prove a thing.

For only about fifteen minutes did we fight her on it. Fifteen. Meanwhile, we considered it. We must have because it didn’t take long for both of us to decide to go along with it. Within minutes we had a plan and a time line. How easy it is to plan a murder. The murder of three people. Three people we knew everything about.

The hairdresser said she would go first, commit the first murder and she chose the serial killer. She said she had nothing to lose.

A few minutes later, before I had time to change my mind, the doors opened. We had been in the lift for over four hours. We didn’t speak to each other much after we exited the lift, but it was like we shared our whole lives.

For some reason I thought that if I returned to my normal life, this would all go away. But then I read the papers the day the serial killer died. I hadn’t realized I had fallen to the floor until one of the nurses asked if I was all right. I picked up the paper and quickly folded it so that they wouldn’t see what I was reading, but for some reason, I always felt they knew. I wasn’t even guilty and I felt they knew. But I was guilty, wasn’t I? If I hadn’t agreed, no one would be hurt. It was my fault.

Later that night I watched The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train on my computer. I even kept my earphones on so as to keep it from my husband. I felt so ashamed. And in the film, it never turned out well. They got caught. I would get caught too. I couldn’t get some of the lines out of my head.

“She was a human being. Let me remind you that even the most unworthy of us has a right to life and the pursuit of happiness.”

“My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer.”

My blood pressure continues to go up. I’ve been getting pains in my chest. I had to get a fellow doctor to prescribe Cilazapril for me. Without proper sleep at night, it’s impossible to eat right and focus on what I have to do at work.

Patients are suffering. Last week I realized I prescribed antibiotics instead of birth control pills and had to ring up the female patient to come in for the correct prescription. I was lucky she hadn’t visited the chemist yet. I could have been completely discredited. When patients tell me their complaints, I can’t be absent. Sometimes the patient will stop talking and ask, “So, what do you think the issue is?” and I can’t even remember the complaint.

I’ve seen the hairdresser standing out on the corner outside my surgery. She doesn’t approach, she just watches. She’s done her part and as far as I know, has gotten away with it. I wonder if she’s been following the nurse around because according to the set out timeline, the nurse is next. We each have a few weeks so as not to raise too much suspicion. I know that the nurse is soon and the woman my husband has been sleeping with will be gone.

I repeat that over and over again. My husband deserves this, look what he’s done to me and my family. He could have given me AIDS just like the hairdresser’s husband did, or any of the other types of sexually transmitted diseases. And I’ve seen them. They are not pretty. I hope he’s using protection with her. The slut.

I keep searching the computer for news confirming that Doc Tipring was capable of murder but I can’t find any. I know he came from the Tipring family. They are a well-known and very rich family. Could a killer come from a background like that? What if he wasn’t? What if the hairdresser killed a perfectly innocent old man? How could I know if E’s husband was really gay? Was he really a cheater? How could I be sure?

I knew E’s husband was my victim so I began to follow him around. He was younger than I imagined and extremely thin. He drove a simple dark blue Peugeot to and from his office. In the week I followed him, I never saw him with a man. I only saw him go home to E. E and her husband never did anything together. She stayed in her bedroom when he arrived home and he watched television until bed. They didn’t even share a bedroom.