Текст книги "Scent of a Killer"

Автор книги: Kevin Lewis

Соавторы: Kevin Lewis
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‘Sir …’

‘What is it, Collins? I need to speak to Carter. Can’t this wait?’

‘Sir, how well do you know Dr Bernard?’

‘What?’

‘Dr Bernard, the psychologist – how well did you know him before you hired him for this case?’

‘Collins! Well enough. He’s done a lot of this kind of work, has done for years. Why? Look, this is no time to be thinking about your private life.’

Collins frowned. ‘He fits the profile.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Dr Bernard fits the profile of the man we’re looking for. The killer. Not only that, he knew O’Neill, and he has a level of skill with computers. He uses the same chatroom site as shygirl351 …’

‘Are you trying to tell me that the man we’re looking for is right under our nose?’

‘I’ve got no proof, I haven’t got anything. I just want to make sure we can eliminate him from the inquiries.’

‘He’s one of the most highly respected psychologists in the world.’

‘I know it sounds crazy.’

‘No. It is crazy. I think the pressure must be getting to you. Why else would you be trying to put him in the frame?’

She thrust two sheets of paper across the desk towards Anderson. ‘Look, I’ve checked the dates. He was in the UK when the other murders occurred. It’s got to be worth following up. Just give me a day on this.’

‘No. You won’t get even a minute. It’s a waste of time. It’s the most ridiculous line of inquiry I have ever heard in my entire life.’

‘But, sir –’

‘Leave it.’

‘But, sir –’

‘Jesus, Collins, do you know where Bernard was the night that O’Neill went missing?’

Collins paused. ‘No, sir.’

‘He was having dinner with me and my wife. So unless you think the three of us were in on it together, I suggest you get out of my sight and get on with some real police work.’

By the time Collins got back to her desk Woods had also returned. She sat down sheepishly. ‘Sorry,’ she said softly. ‘It was a non-starter. Maybe I am losing it after all.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Woods. ‘You’re just up against it. We all are. We all want to see this thing solved, catch the guy. He’s playing us for fools at the moment. It’s enough to drive anyone a bit gaga.’

They sat in silence for a few moments before Stacey spoke again. ‘You think the killer knew O’Neill was a policeman when he took him?’

Woods shrugged. ‘There’s no way of knowing.’

‘It’s important, though, isn’t it? It goes back to what you were saying about the killer spreading his net wider. If he knew and just didn’t care, that’s because he’s moved on beyond paedophiles to members of the wider population.’

‘For all we know,’ said Woods, ‘that might have started with Chadwick. We still have no evidence to link him to any kind of a sex crime.’

Collins held up a single finger in the air. ‘Except for the fact that the killer thought he was meeting up with Bevan. Three weeks after Chadwick, he was still targeting a paedophile, a sex offender. If it was a case of mistaken identity, there doesn’t seem to be any remorse or regret. Quite the opposite. I think we missed something with Chadwick. Not every crime gets reported, not everyone ends up on one of our databases. I think we missed something and now I think it’s too late.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because the killer has clearly moved on. I truly think we’re dealing with a monster here, Tony, I really do. Up until O’Neill we at least had an idea of what sort of person was being targeted. But it’s open season now. Anyone in the world could be next. Our chances of catching this evil bastard just tumbled a good few notches.’

DC Natalie Cooper walked over from the far end of the office and greeted them both. ‘You’ve got a visitor downstairs. She arrived while you were watching the feed and said she wanted to wait.’

‘I’m not expecting anyone. Who is it?’

‘She wouldn’t say. But she told the desk sergeant that it was important and that you’d be keen to speak to her.’

Collins nodded slowly. ‘I’m guessing it will be Miller’s widow. Maybe she’s remembered something new.

‘Do you want me to come down with you?’ asked Woods.

‘I’ll be fine. No sense in intimidating her. If there’s something on her mind, I want her to feel free to tell me all about it.’

Collins opted for the stairs rather than the lift. She descended the flights swiftly, rounding the last and pushing her way through the double doors that led to the foyer. From there she made her way through another set of doors that led to the waiting room adjacent to the main entrance. But instead of Sandra Miller, she found herself face to face with a woman she had not seen for many, many years and had no desire to spend any time with.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Ella Stanley stood up and stepped towards Stacey. Her face was taut with anger.

‘I need to talk to you, right now.’

Stacey shook her head. ‘I’m too busy. I’m in the middle of a murder investigation, for Christ’s sake.’

Ella moved forward until she was toe to toe with Stacey. ‘Either you talk to me right now or everyone in this place is going to hear what I have to say. The choice is yours.’

Stacey looked into Ella’s eyes and knew at once that she was deadly serious.

‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But not here. Let’s go for a walk.’

The moment they were out of earshot of the station Ella Stanley let rip. ‘You’ve got some bloody cheek.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. I said you’ve got some cheek. What the hell do you think you’re doing, playing around with people’s lives? Who do you think you are? God? You think you have the power to give and take way. Why the hell did you tell my Jack he had a daughter, only to then say he can’t see her any more? What was the point of that?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘None of my business? I’m making it my business. You come here with your fancy job and your bighead attitude and think you can push people around. Well, you can’t push me around. You were always a spoilt little brat when you were growing up and time has only made you worse.

‘You might look down your nose at me but I’m telling you, in my eyes you were never good enough for my Jack. I was as happy as Larry when he got shot of you, best thing he ever did if you ask me. You like to pretend it was what you wanted but I know how upset you were. I used to see the way you looked at him, the way you went after him. You were like a fucking Rottweiler, you were. Once you got your teeth into him, you were never going to let him go. He was just your type, wasn’t he? Everything you ever wanted. Thought you had the world at your feet. And then he dumped you and you thought you’d get your own back. Keep your little secret to yourself.

‘You can mess up your own life just as much as you want but Sophie, she’s something different. She’s his daughter. And daughters need their dads. That’s not something you can replace, no matter how special you think you might be. You’ve got no right messing him around like this. Messing her around like this. You’re totally out of order. Just because you spend your whole time acting like a man for your job doesn’t mean you’re any kind of substitute for a real father.’

‘Are you quite finished?’

‘I’m just getting started.’

‘I’ve heard enough of your crap. It’s you who thinks you’re God. You think you can waltz in here and tell me how to live my life, tell me what is best for my daughter? Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t know anything about her. You don’t know anything about me and my life right now.’

Ella longed to tell her that she had met her daughter but knew she had to keep it secret. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m the woman who’s trying to put right all the things you’ve made wrong. I’m the woman who has to come along and clean up the godforsaken mess you’re making of other people’s lives.’

‘Nah, you’re just some busybody who’s sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted. You always were.’

‘Oh grow up, Stacey. You had both your parents around all the time and you’re still fucked up. You wouldn’t go around treating people this badly if you weren’t. What the hell do you think is going to happen to Sophie if you continue to mess her around like this?’

‘She understands the situation. She knows the reasons why.’

‘That’s what she tells you. Jesus Christ, woman, how many times did you ever lie to your mother? You think Sophie is so perfect that she won’t tell you the odd lie if she needs to?’

Stacey thought back to the summer, when Sophie had gone missing for several hours. She had told her she was going to spend the evening with a friend but had ended up at a wild party. Although they had never spoken about it in detail, Stacey was certain that Sophie had taken drugs that evening too.

It was all too much for Stacey to handle. She had just learned that the brutal serial killer they were after had managed to make everyone on the team look like an idiot. On top of that the murderer was now taunting them with the fact that he had taken another body from right under their noses. A serving police officer, no less. Then she’d gone and made herself look like a total idiot by going to her boss and insisting the killer was someone it simply could not be.

All this was going through her head and she wanted nothing more than the chance to sit down and think through it all, to work out a way to go forward. Instead she had Jack Stanley’s idiot of a mother shouting at her. It was more than she could bear. It felt as if her whole life was collapsing around her.

‘You want to talk about being a good mother? You think I have anything to learn from you, you fat bitch? Where were you when little Jack was growing up, going out mugging people and selling drugs and killing and all of that? Is that what you brought him up to do? What on earth qualifies you as an expert when it comes to parenting?’

Ella Stanley hit back immediately. ‘Because I’ve seen the damage that can be done when there is no father around. It might be more obvious for boys but that doesn’t mean it’s any less damaging when it comes to girls. It’s more subtle but it doesn’t mean there is no effect. I just want what is best for your daughter. She’s a little angel and –’

‘Best for my daughter. You don’t even know my daughter.’ Stacey stared at her hard as the realization dawned. ‘Jesus Christ, you’ve met her, haven’t you? You’ve actually bloody met her. When did this happen?’

‘It’s not important –’

‘It’s important if I say it is. I want to know what the hell is going on. Have you met her or not?’

‘No. I haven’t met her. I’ve seen pictures. Jack has told me all about her. He adores her. I want to meet her, is all. I’m her grandmother and she deserves to have the love that I have to give her as well as the love that comes from your parents.’

‘She gets more than enough love already.

‘You can’t get too much love. You’re just being silly now. You don’t know anything about kids, just like you don’t know anything about men. If you didn’t want Sophie to grow up like this, if you didn’t want her to be surrounded by people that love and care for her, if you didn’t want her true father to be a part of her life, then you should never have told him about her. You should have given her up for adoption the day she was born. But you didn’t and that means you have to face the consequences.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I don’t want to do this but you’re giving me no choice. I know that no one back there’ – she flicked her head in the direction of the police station they had just emerged from – ‘I know that none of them know about the situation. And I know that the fact that my Jack hasn’t always been a good little boy is going to reflect very badly on you. So here’s the ultimatum. I don’t want to have to do this but you don’t give me any choice. You haven’t seen the damage you’ve been doing, you don’t see the way it’s tearing my boy apart.

‘Either you let Jack start seeing his daughter again or I’m going to make sure everyone in that building and all of your bosses and supervisors know exactly who Sophie’s father is.’

Stacey said nothing for a few moments, turning over her thoughts in her mind. The two women stood on the side of the street staring at one another intently. When Stacey spoke it was not out of anger. Her voice was calm, controlled and utterly menacing.

‘What you need to understand is this: the only reason that Jack Stanley is still out and about, the only reason you get to see him without a glass partition in the way, the only reason he isn’t eating prison food and panicking about what to do every time he drops the soap in the shower, is because of me.

‘I made one terrible mistake fourteen years ago. I slept with Jack and I got pregnant. And I’ve paid back that mistake a thousand times ever since. If you don’t back off, and I mean right off, I can take it all away. I’ll put Jack behind bars and I’ll make sure he has so many charges against him that he’ll never see daylight again.

‘If that’s want you want, Ella, then just keep on talking. Just keep on doing what you’re doing right now. If you want things to remain the way they are, then what you need to do is shut your big mouth, turn around and make sure I don’t ever have to look at your face again.’

Ella Stanley hesitated for a moment or two. Her lips were moving together as if she were grinding her teeth in frustration. For a moment Stacey expected her to take a step towards her, for things to get really ugly.

But then, suddenly, Ella Stanley turned on her heels and stormed off.

19

Stacey Collins pushed open the door of her house and stepped inside. She cursed under her breath as she stood on a pile of letters and leaflets and almost lost her footing.

It had been one hell of a day at the office and she was glad that Sophie would be spending yet another night at her grandparents’. Although she loved her daughter dearly and knew that they desperately needed to spend more time together, the only way she could deal with the workload and maintain her position in the force was to have regular nights when she was able to work as late as she needed to.

It was now nearly ten in the evening and she had been far from the last one to leave. She would get to the office early the following morning. There was still so much work to be done. She had reread the case files and the autopsy reports and the background profiles of the murder victims so many times that she knew many of the details off by heart. But she was still convinced she must be missing something.

There was something else playing on her mind too. The row with Ella. The woman’s words kept bouncing around inside her head. The image of her twisted, rage-ridden face refused to fade away.

You spend your whole time acting like a man.

Why did it bother her so much that Ella had said that? She had certainly heard worse insults, and besides, it just wasn’t true. She had got as far as she had in the force because she was dedicated and effective. Hadn’t she? She needed a distraction to take her mind off it all.

She reached down and picked up the pile of post, sorting through it slowly as she made her way through the house into the kitchen, where she pulled a half-bottle of white wine out of the fridge and fetched a glass from the shelf. There were two bills, one from her credit card and another from the gas company. There were two leaflets from pizza delivery companies and a mailshot from a replacement window agency. The remaining letters were addressed to ‘the householder’ and received only a cursory glance before taking a trip to the bin. But, as she reached the last of the junk pile, she paused.

Stacey usually had little time for junk mail but something about the thin white envelope caught her eye. The lettering in the top-left-hand corner was thick and black: HELP THE INNOCENT VICTIMS OF CRIME. Underneath the wording was a picture of a man in a wheelchair. Instantly Stacey was reminded of her father. The look on the man’s face was the same. He was trying to cope with the inconvenience and the shame of it all, but at the same time he refused to lose his dignity. The man was a good few years older than her father and was being pushed along the street by a young woman, someone like her. This was the reality of how her own life would be in the years to come if the unthinkable happened – if her mother died first.

It was something she thought about often, the possibilities for the future and what it might hold. For the most part she tried to put it out of her mind but every now and then it all came flooding back to her.

She opened the envelope swiftly and took out the sheets of glossy folded paper inside. It was a mailshot for a charity that helped support the victims of crime. Stacey herself was no stranger to the inadequacies of the criminal compensations scheme. A few hundred pounds for losing an eye, a couple of thousand for losing a leg. She had seen it time and time again with the victims of attacks that she dealt with on a daily basis. Most of all she had seen it with her own father, who had got only a few hundred pounds for having to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

She read quickly through the details of the charity, the work they had done and the people they had supported. ‘We understand that as a professional person, you get deluged with requests for help from charities all the time. Unlike most organizations we do not ask you to commit to a long-term standing order. Instead a small one-time donation is all it will take in order to help the lives of thousands.’

Stacey was sitting down at the table and reading as she was sipping a glass of wine. By the end tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes, not from the charity’s appeal but from her thoughts about her father. By the time she had reached the end she was reaching for her cheque book and writing out a one-time donation of twenty pounds. She placed it in the return envelope and on top of her pile for posting the next day.

She then picked up the phone and dialled a number. After a few rings the line was answered. There was a cough, followed by a slightly shaky voice repeating the last four digits of the phone number – an old-fashioned habit that he had been unable to shake, which Stacey always found charming.

‘Hi, Dad.’

‘Hello, darling,’ John Collins replied. ‘Sophie’s gone to bed already. It’s quite late.’

‘I know. I didn’t call to talk to her. I wanted to speak to you.’

‘Oh? Anything wrong?’

‘Not at all. Just thought it would be nice to have a chat.’

With an early start planned for the following morning, Stacey stayed up just long enough to finish a second glass of wine before turning in for the night.

It was only then that she noticed a flashing light from the corner of her eye. The answering machine. She clicked the play button and a smooth French-Canadian accent drifted up to her ears.

‘Hope you don’t mind my calling you at home. I know you won’t be there till you finish and I really don’t want to bother you while you’re busy. Just wanted to wish you good night and find out how the case is going.’

Stacey smiled. A few hours earlier she had been convinced that Jacques himself had been the killer. It all seemed to fit. Now, in the cold light of day, it seemed absurd that she had ever entertained the notion.

Sleep refused to come to her. Instead Stacey lay awake thinking about what Ella had said. It was so unfair and made her so angry.

Acting like a man.

That stupid woman had no idea how hard it had been bringing up Sophie on her own. Ella had even gone so far as to suggest Stacey should have given her up for adoption, not knowing how painful a topic that was for her.

Giving her up for adoption had appeared like the easy option in the beginning. She had gone as far as filling out the forms and signing up with an agency. It seemed to be the right decision. Stacey still had her whole career ahead of her and had no desire to become a parent and be consumed by the responsibility.

It would have been hard enough at that age with a steady, reliable boyfriend, but with no one else on the scene to share the burden it was just going to prove impossible. Adoption would be far better for the baby. That was what Stacey had told herself time and time again, and that was what she truly believed as she was wheeled into the delivery room.

But the moment she had given her final push and then had that tiny sticky, noisy bundle of life thrust into her arms, she knew she could never be parted from her. She smiled at the memory, and then at the irony of just how much things had changed in the past thirteen years. If the woman from the adoption agency were to turn up during one of their full-on mother–daughter arguments, she would not hesitate for a second.

She lay on her back with her eyes closed, Ella Stanley’s angry face still imprinted on her mind, still bugging the hell out of her. She realized she was also angry about the old woman’s razor-sharp insight into her relationship with the young Jack. He had been the bad guy all the girls wanted and she had gone after him with every ounce of her being. When they finally ended up together, it was as if all her Christmases had come at once. And when it ended, she felt as if there would be no more summer, no more spring, no more anything. Life seemed to lose all meaning. Until she learned of the new life growing inside her.

Ella had been spot on. Jack Stanley had been just her type. And, although she had no desire to rekindle any aspect of their relationship, in many ways he still was. She had spent the years since finding herself attracted only to men who shared his traits. That swaggering arrogance and powerful presence that men like Dr Jacques Bernard had by the bucket-load. A fatal flaw that had seemingly made it impossible for her to find anyone to settle down with.

Acting like a man.

Yes, the police force was a male-dominated world, but Stacey truly believed she had made it to Detective Inspector because of her hard work, dedication and ability to close cases. Acting like a man had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

So why did it bother her so much? Acting like a man. The words rebounded around her brain again and again, coming in a steady rhythm, like the beat of a drum. Then something stirred deep within her, a tingling of a sixth sense honed by years of police work, an increasingly powerful feeling that something was very, very wrong.

She sat up, paused for a few moments, then made her way across the room to her briefcase and pulled out the copies of the chatroom transcripts CEOP had provided to all the officers on the case.

It was the same tingling sensation she felt whenever she got a hunch about a case. Who was guilty, where the money was hidden, where the bodies were buried and so on. That sense that someone had not told all they knew, that they were holding back, that they were lying.

There was no magic or smoke and mirrors about it. Like most sixth senses, it was based on experience, on intuition and on good police work. As unlikely as it seemed, Ella’s words had been the spark that had ignited the flame. And now the flames were growing rapidly. A forest fire raging out of control.

She flicked through the pages of conversation, running her index finger along the columns of text, Ella’s words still echoing in her head, driving her forward. She started with the exchanges between Jason Bevan and DreamGirl, the undercover officer from CEOP.

Bevan, posing as a teenage girl called Sally, had tried to sound the part. Mostly he had succeeded but then he gave himself away. It was nothing overtly obvious – it was simply that as the mother of a thirteen-year-old girl, Stacey could see that some of what was being said simply didn’t ring true.

She had heard Sophie chatting on the phone to her friends, occasionally stumbled across the odd text message and more than once peeked sneakily over her daughter’s shoulder as she composed emails or exchanged instant messages over the internet. Teenage girls just didn’t talk that way, not even when they thought their parents were far away.

The differences were small and subtle, and it was only now that she began to study them intently that they came ever more apparent

She hadn’t spotted it right away – and neither had her fellow officers – because they all knew right from the start that they were dealing with an adult male pretending to be a teenage girl. They read his words with that in the back of their minds and thought nothing more of it.

But shygirl351 was different. When whoever was using that screen name wrote about the trials and tribulations of being a teenage girl, they nailed it every single time. Right down to the last detail. And that could mean only one thing.

But it was so absurd, so ridiculous that Stacey could barely bring herself to think about it. Perhaps Anderson was right. Maybe the case was driving her crazy after all. In truth she felt more tired now than she had for years. She desperately needed a break. But something compelled her to go on.

She sat staring at the lines of text, rereading the conversations again and again. And the more she thought about it, the larger the question loomed in her mind. All the victims had been male – some of them strong, powerful men – and that fact had made them jump to conclusions. But was it possible that they had made a terrible error? Was it possible they had all been deceived?

Could shygirl351 be a woman?

Stacey checked the bedside clock – just after midnight – picked up the phone, dialled a number and then thought better of it, putting the phone down before it could connect. This was stupid. This was insane. There were a million and one reasons why it simply didn’t stack up. She couldn’t possibly be right. Someone, somewhere, must have made a mistake and it was probably her. But then again, could it be true? There was only one way to find out.

She picked up the phone again and dialled. The voice that answered was fuddled by sleep. A part of Stacey could not help but smile. She was glad this was not a video phone so no one could see her cheeks turning red.

‘Jacques, it’s Stacey. I’m really sorry to call so –’

She never finished the sentence. She had still been speaking when she had heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a woman’s voice close to Jacques ask, ‘Who is it?’ She sounded young, student young. Stacey reacted not so much out of shock but out of instinct.

‘Is there someone there?’

Jacques’s voice became flustered; she heard him pace rapidly to another part of the room. ‘No, no. I have the television on.’

‘You’re sleeping with the television on?’

‘I must have fallen asleep with it on. I’ve turned it off now.’

There was now a slight echo in the background as Jacques spoke and she guessed that he had moved into the bathroom. She knew he was lying to her about being alone, and she now knew that everything he had said to her over the preceding week had also been part of a cool, calculating ploy to get her to lower her defences. She knew the type only too well. It wasn’t enough for him to have seduced her, to have got her into bed; he wanted to win over her mind as well as her body. He wanted her to fall for him, to be pining for him. And then he could toss her aside like an old pair of shoes.

But she didn’t have time to dwell on any of that now.

‘Whatever,’ she said sharply. ‘Look, Jacques, I don’t give a fuck who you’re fucking right now, I called because I need your help on the case. I need to know if it could be a woman.’

‘If who could be a woman?’

‘The killer. shygirl351. Could a woman be behind all this?’

It seemed to take forever before he began to speak again.

‘It is possible,’ said Jacques, quickly pulling himself together, glad for the chance to talk about anything other than his immediate situation. ‘Anything is possible. I hadn’t considered it before because all the evidence seemed to point towards a male perpetrator. As you know, the vast, vast majority of serial killers are men. Not only that, but female killers tend to focus on elderly victims or children. They kill with poison or by smothering. More often than not, they have been involved in some kind of intimate relationship with those that they kill.

‘Furthermore, they carry out the killings in places where they feel comfortable, relaxed. Homes or the places where they work. Beverley Allitt, the so-called Angel of Death, was a classic example, killing children at the hospital where she was employed. But Aileen Wuornos has rewritten the rules on female serials because she broke every one of them. She killed men because she liked it, attacked total strangers and used a gun instead of poison. Before she came along I would have said no, but, thinking about it again, yes, it is possible. Wuornos is going to inspire a whole generation of psychotic women to go out and commit multiple murders. It’s already happening in the States; it’s only a matter of time before we see it happening here too. What makes you ask?’

‘It’s the transcripts of conversations between Shygirl and Bevan. You can tell he’s a man pretending to be a girl, but she doesn’t make any of the same errors. I think she’s the real thing.’

Ten more minutes of conversation with Jacques left Stacey more convinced than ever that she was on to something and had several new avenues of inquiry to pursue. Although no useful forensic evidence had been recovered from any of the bodies, Jacques suggested she review the autopsy reports to see if any aspects of the killings supported the existence of a female suspect.

Another tiny smile crept across Stacey’s lips. She could feel that rising ball of excitement that manifested itself whenever she came close to solving a case, and she was certain that she was now on the final straight for this one. She picked the phone up once more and immediately dialled a number from memory, a number she had called dozens of times before over the years.

Not only would this call give her the chance to qualify her theory further, it would also be an opportunity to share what could be a key development with one of the few people she considered to be a friend. After half a dozen rings the call connected and a familiar voice sounded through the earpiece.