Pop Goes the Weasel: DI Helen Grace 2 (Dci Helen Grace 2) Page 12

  Jessica heaved again, but there was nothing left to give, and she remained where she was, beached on the floor.

  Why was the world so cruel? She had expected anger and incomprehension from her family – and boy, had she got that – but everybody else? The police had advised her not to look at emails or Twitter but how can you live your life like that? She wished now that she’d heeded their advice. Within minutes of the story breaking, the trolls had started their work. Emailing her directly, posting on forums, filling the world with their hate. Christopher deserved to be killed. Jessica was a frigid bitch who’d driven her man to his death. Christopher was an AIDS-ridden pervert who would burn in hell. Their daughter had syphilis and would go blind.

  The police had told her that they were there for her, that they would protect her, but who were they kidding? There was no pity left in the world, no goodness. There were just vultures picking over the entrails, feeding on sadness and pain.

  Jessica had always been an optimist, but now she saw how naïve she’d been.

  A loud noise from downstairs. Sally banging on her xylophone. Then the sound of childish laughter, before she resumed playing her tune. It was as if her daughter were in a parallel universe – a place where happiness and innocence still existed. Jessica was tempted to shut the door, cram her fingers in her ears, but she didn’t. That parallel universe was all she had now and maybe it would save her. In the lonely hours of the night, Jessica wanted to die, but she knew now that she had to live. She had to swallow her pain and bring up Sally to trust and enjoy the world.

  Her life was over, but Sally’s was just beginning. And that would have to sustain Jessica for now.

  46

  Christopher Reid lay on the slab, his glassy eyes staring up at the stained ceiling panels. None of the killer’s victims deserved their fate, but Helen couldn’t help feeling that Christopher deserved it less than Matthews. Matthews was a nasty hypocrite who enjoyed dominating women. But Reid was a guy who missed sex. Why hadn’t he talked to his wife? Found a way to rediscover their intimacy instead of resorting to paying for sex? Did he view his wife as prudish or innocent? In Helen’s experience women were just as sexually imaginative as men, if they were given the chance to express themselves. Had a simple failure of communication condemned Christopher to a repellent death?

  ‘So this guy is the same as but different to your first victim,’ Jim Grieves announced as he approached the trolley. ‘He was incapacitated with chloroform, administered with some sort of soaked rag. Forensics might be able to give you more. There’s no evidence of restraints being used in this case, nor anything to suggest he was hooded this time.’

  ‘So he must have been comfortable in her presence.’

  ‘That’s for you to decide,’ Grieves continued, shrugging. ‘All I would say is that the “surgery” was more skilled this time, so perhaps your girl is getting better at this and doesn’t need to use so much force in either the initial attack or the mutilation.’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Well, he was incapacitated in the car, but killed in the ditch. Too much blood for him to have been killed elsewhere. He was killed by a single knife wound to the throat that severed his carotid artery.’

  ‘Just one wound?’

  ‘Yup. She didn’t spend any more time on this guy than she had to. Heart was removed relatively cleanly, even though she probably began the procedure as he was dying.’

  Helen closed her eyes – the awful image planted itself in her brain and refused to budge. She expected Jim to carry on but he said nothing. She opened her eyes again and immediately saw why he had stopped.

  Detective Superintendent Ceri Harwood had joined them.

  Grieves made his excuses and left – he didn’t really do stroppy women. Harwood was simmering and Helen braced herself for the onslaught.

  ‘Have you seen the paper?’ Harwood said, slapping the ‘Tart with Your Heart’ headline down on the table.

  ‘Yes,’ Helen replied simply. ‘I picked it up on the way over.’

  ‘I’ve had to request more support from West Sussex Police – our media liaison team can’t cope with the level of press interest that bloody headline has generated. It’s not just British press either – we’ve had France, Holland, even bloody Brazil on the phone. Who was sitting on Angie? How did Garanita get to her?’

  ‘Family Liaison had a chat with her, but she wasn’t the victim of a crime, and I couldn’t justify uniform babysitting her, not when there’s so much going on –’

  ‘What did you say to Garanita? She quotes you directly.’

  ‘Nothing unusual. I gave her the basic facts and promised our cooperation, as you requested.’

  ‘Did you say we were hunting a serial killer? Did you use those words?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well Garanita bloody did. That’s all anyone wants to talk about now. A prostitute who kills her clients. Revenge on the Ripper. It goes on and bloody on.’

  ‘It’s not ideal. But it is the truth, Ma’am.’

  Harwood shot Helen a look.

  ‘Have you ruled out Sandra McEwan as a suspect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what can we give them?’

  ‘Give who?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, Helen. The press. What can we give the bloody press?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got a partial description we can put out. And I think we need to appeal directly to possible punters to stay off the streets. I’m happy to –’

  ‘And risk driving her underground?’

  ‘It’s about saving lives, we don’t have a choice. Three men are already dead.’

  ‘So we’ve got nothing to give them?’

  Harwood’s anger was all too clear now.

  ‘Well, we’ve got lots of lines of enquiry but I don’t think opening ourselves up to the press in that way is going to help, and with the very greatest of respect,’ Helen continued, talking over Harwood’s attempted interruption, ‘I don’t think our agenda should be dictated by what the press are saying.’

  ‘Grow up, Helen’ was Harwood’s withering response. ‘And don’t you dare say “with the greatest of respect” to me ever again. I can have you taken off this case in a second.’

  ‘Except that wouldn’t play very well in the press, would it?’ Helen retorted. ‘I’m a copper, Ma’am, not a spin doctor. I chase up leads and hunt killers. I catch killers. You can’t do that through protocols, or liaison or bloody politics. You do it through intelligence, risk-taking and sheer bloody hard graft.’

  ‘And this conversation is a waste of your valuable time?’ Harwood replied, daring Helen to agree.

  ‘I’d like to get back to my duties now’ was all Helen said in response.

  Helen left shortly after, biking fast back to Southampton Central. She cursed herself for opening up another front in this war, but she’d had little choice. What would happen next was hard to say. All that was clear was that Harwood was no longer her friend, but her enemy.

  47

  Finally he had a bite. Tony had been driving the streets for hours, slowly climbing inside his new identity as a lonely businessman looking for sex. He’d been up and down Bevois, but the streets were strangely quiet. It was a Tuesday night – a long way from pay day – but still he’d expected to see more business than this.

  He’d tried Empress Road, only to find it deserted. Too much police activity round there recently to encourage a vibrant night trade. So he’d diverted a little further north to Portswood. This was more promising, but the girls who hung their heads through his car window didn’t fit his spec. They were mixed race, Polish, too short, too fat, too old, too transgender. The description of the killer hadn’t been that detailed, but it ruled out most of these girls. As he terminated negotiations and drove off quickly, he received a healthy dose of abuse.

  In frustration, he’d driven south to the docks. He was both angered and relieved by his lack of progress. He wanted to find
this girl, wanted to bring this thing to a close, but still his heart thumped, beating out his fear and anxiety. He assumed he’d be able to handle himself against her, but how could he know that for sure? She was organized, ruthless and violent. What if she got the upper hand?

  Tony shook the thought from his mind. He must remain focused on the job in hand. Driving the side streets near the Western Docks, his eyes slid back and forth searching for signs of business. The girls that worked down here were the busiest, servicing a never-ending stream of punters from the cruise ships and dockyards. Prostitutes loomed into view intermittently, but he could tell even from a distance that none of them fitted the bill.

  But then there she was. She was pacing up and down on the deserted street and when Tony pulled up alongside her, he could see she was agitated, distressed. Instinct made him stroke the accelerator, something telling him to get away from this girl, but then his brain kicked in and he put the car into neutral.

  ‘You up for business?’ he called out, keeping his voice neutral.

  The girl jumped as if startled, as if somehow she hadn’t heard the car approaching. She was dressed in black leggings, which emphasized her long, muscular legs. Her upper half was swathed in a military coat that seemed too big for her and was incongruous in comparison with the rest of her outfit – had she stolen it? Her face was striking though – dark-brown eyes, strong nose and full lips. Recovering her poise, she regarded him – making some mental calculation – then slowly, carefully she approached him.

  ‘What are you after?’ she said.

  ‘Company.’

  ‘What sort of company?’

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Hour or the night?’

  ‘Just an hour, please.’

  Tony cursed himself internally. What kind of punter says ‘please’?

  The girl narrowed her eyes, perhaps trying to work out if he was as green as he looked.

  ‘Fifty pounds.’

  Tony nodded, then without being asked the girl pulled open the driver’s door and climbed inside. Tony put the car in first and pulled away.

  ‘I’m Samantha,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Peter,’ Tony replied.

  ‘That your real name, Peter?’ she countered.

  ‘No.’

  The girl chuckled.

  ‘Married, are you?’ she said.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Thought so.’

  The conversation was over. She told him where to go and the car drove off into the night.

  48

  The incident room was full to bursting when Helen arrived. It was only 6.30 a.m. but she’d demanded an early start and the team hadn’t let her down. As they crowded into the briefing room, Helen was surprised to see Charlie among their number. The two women looked at each other – a swift, silent exchange. Charlie had made her decision. What had it cost her? Helen wondered.

  ‘So one thing is clear,’ Helen began. ‘This is about exposure. The killer wants to shame her victims, wants to hold them up to public ridicule, to express her disgust for them. Cutting out their hearts and sending them to his home, in Alan Matthews’ case, or his workplace, in Christopher Reid’s, was guaranteed to create noise. With the headlines in the latest Evening News we can assume the killer has got what she wanted. The private lives of her victims will now be picked over in massive detail. They’ve already gone to town on Alan Matthews – he’s an elder of his local Baptist church with a predilection for unpleasant sex – and they are doing the same with Christopher Reid – the hidden secrets of the clean-cut family man and so on. So this is all about exposure. This is personal.’

  ‘Do we think she knew them then?’ DC Fortune interjected.

  ‘Possibly, although there is no evidence that they’d actually used her services before. That said, DC Grounds and his team have come up with something interesting. Andrew?’

  ‘We have found a concrete link between the two victims,’ DC Grounds announced. ‘They had both browsed a web forum called Bitchfest.’

  He winced slightly as he said it, then carried on briskly.

  ‘It’s basically a forum in which local men who’ve used prostitutes share their experiences. They talk about where to find particular girls, what their names are, what they charge. They rate breast size, sexual prowess, the tightness of their … vaginas, the list goes on.’

  DC Grounds looked relieved to have got through this first bit. He was a married father of three and not entirely comfortable relaying these details to younger, female colleagues.

  ‘Matthews contributed using the alias “BigMan”. Reid hadn’t contributed but had had conversations with other men in the forum, using the name “BadBoy”. The forum has a long history and we’re still wading through it, but it appears that other men in the forum had recently reviewed a new girl who would let you do “anything” to her.’

  Grounds looked around at the sea of dispirited faces. It was a good lead, but a sad indictment of humanity. Sensing a dip in morale, Helen stepped in.

  ‘We’ve also had some feedback from Scene of Crime. The blood we extracted from Charlie’s clothes’ – heads turned in Charlie’s direction – ‘was that of the third victim. ID in his wallet suggests his name is Gareth Hill. We’re triple-checking that before contacting his family and I’ll confirm as soon as I can. So the blood was no help, but they did recover samples of what we think is the killer’s DNA from the scene. Forensics lifted it late last night.’

  A buzz went round the room.

  ‘It doesn’t match any of our records, but it’s the first concrete evidence we have and could be crucial in securing a conviction. Just as important, it tells us something about our girl. The DNA was found in saliva on the victim’s face. It had settled in a series of thin layers spread one on top of each other. So this wasn’t her spitting on him deliberately or an occasional excretion of saliva as she worked on the body. The patterns suggest that this was her talking to him or more likely shouting at him, given the amount of saliva and the pattern of its spread. Was she denigrating him as she killed him? Letting him know exactly what she felt about him? Possibly. No saliva was found on the first two victims, suggesting what?’

  ‘That the other killings were more rushed? That she had less time to enjoy herself?’ Charlie interjected.

  ‘Yes. Or that she cleaned the other victims up. There is some evidence of an alcohol-based cleanser on their faces – we’re not sure yet whether this was something they used as part of their daily routine or something she used to destroy evidence. If it’s the latter it suggests our killer possesses a degree of cunning as well as a deep, real anger against her victims.’

  A sense of determination seemed to be growing within the team – finally they looked to be getting somewhere. Helen seized on this energy.

  ‘We will follow up on all those lines of enquiry, but I also want us to think laterally. If she hates these men and wants to expose them, then she will presumably want to enjoy her triumph. I’ve asked for extra manpower so we can watch the families of the victims in case she shows up. I want surveillance at the funerals, at their homes, places of work – I’ve asked DC Fortune to run this for now. Also, you will no doubt have noted the absence of DS Bridges. He is doing some undercover work for us on this case which I am coordinating and for now this is on a need-to-know basis. If it becomes relevant to your enquiries, you will be informed. But for now assume he doesn’t exist – DC Brooks will be temporarily filling his shoes.’

  Once more all eyes swung to Charlie, who Helen had suddenly promoted, albeit on a temporary basis. Would people support this decision or resent it? Charlie kept her eyes straight ahead.

  ‘Last thing – we’re going to shake our killer’s cage a little. She’s probably already rattled following her near miss, so I want to turn up the heat. I’m going to let the press know that we have her DNA and that it’s only a matter of time before we ID her. I want to make her angry, I want to make her careless.’

  H
elen paused a moment before concluding:

  ‘It’s time to take the fight to the enemy.’

  49

  Caffè Nero was packed to bursting, which is why Helen had chosen it. It was on the high street in the smart suburb of Shirley. A million miles away from the grubby brothels and ill-lit streets patrolled by Southampton’s sex workers.

  Helen was pleased to see that Tony had arrived and was waiting for her, tucked away in a booth at the back as agreed.

  ‘How are you doing, Tony?’

  He looked drawn, but oddly cheerful.

  ‘I’m ok. I’m actually … ok.’

  ‘Good. So this will be our regular spot to debrief. We’ll arrange our meets by text and meet here only. I should say up front that if at any time you feel it’s not working or that pursuing this avenue of investigation is putting your life at risk, then you call me and walk away immediately. Your safety is my number one priority.’

  ‘I know the drill, boss, and there’s no need to look so serious. It really is ok. I was shitting myself last night, but it turned out fine. In fact I think I might have something.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have much luck to start with, I trawled Bevois, Portswood, Merry Oak without any joy, so I headed south to the docks and picked up a girl there. Samantha. Early twenties but an old hand on the street.’

  He had Helen’s full attention now.

  ‘We went to a hotel she knows. I told her I liked to watch, so I let her do her thing and then afterwards I chatted to her as I drove her home. She was cagey at first but she had obviously heard rumours about a girl killing punters. She doesn’t know anything useful, but there’s another girl who occasionally works the docks who’s been talking. Saying she’s seen the girl. Apparently there’s a warrant out on her for a couple of things, so she’s not going to be coming forward, but if I can get to her, then …’