A Killing Mind, page 14
part #5 of DI Sean Corrigan Series
‘The Richards murder scene. I need to see it.’
‘Won’t be much to see there now.’
‘The alley will be there and the wheelie bins – that’s all I need. I want to see where she died.’
‘Fair enough,’ Sally didn’t argue. ‘Mind if I tag along?’
He looked up from patting his coat pockets, as if she’d suggested something extraordinary. ‘No, thanks. I’d rather see it on my own.’
‘Why?’ she pressed. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one.’
‘I need you here,’ he replied, trying to think of any reason she shouldn’t go with him. ‘I need you to look at whatever lifestyle findings the original MIT in the Richards case found out about her. Compare them to what you’ve found out about Dalton. They should be with the other stuff we collected from them yesterday. If we’re lucky, there could be a common denominator – a name that comes up twice. You know the drill.’
‘Fine,’ Sally reluctantly agreed.
‘Anyone needs me, I’m on my mobile.’ He was halfway out the door when a thought struck him and he turned back to Sally. ‘Keep an eye on Dave,’ he told her quietly. ‘When he eventually turns up. He wasn’t at his best yesterday.’
‘I noticed,’ she replied. ‘Hasn’t been for some time.’
‘Yeah, well, talk to him if you think it’ll help. He won’t talk to me.’
‘I’ll try,’ she assured him as he walked across the main office. ‘I’ll try.’
David Langley drove across Southwest London heading towards an area where he knew he had a good chance of finding what he was looking for. He cruised through the wealthy streets of Putney, hungrily eyeing the slim, immaculately groomed young mothers in their uniform of skinny jeans and Converse sneakers. But he hadn’t come for them and knew he wouldn’t find what he wanted in the well-heeled streets of SW15. He headed out of central Putney and up the hill to the heath, then cut across towards Roehampton – a strange netherworld on the outskirts of West London that backed on to Richmond Park and was home to some of the ugliest tower blocks to be seen anywhere. The low-rise blocks weren’t much better and the entire area was dotted with betting shops, cheap grocer’s and takeaway food shops. The major franchises had so far stayed well away from Roehampton.
He parked in a side street on the opposite side of the road from a sprawling estate, giving himself the widest possible view of the comings and goings. The area was dominated by a large playground, although any young children had been kept away by the bitterly cold weather leaving only a small gathering of threatening-looking teenagers huddled in hoodies, who had clearly taken control of this particular patch. Once upon a time the playground had been covered by CCTV cameras, but it had become a game for the local youths to repeatedly smash them until the council gave up repairing or replacing them and left the old broken cameras hanging lifeless from their perches.
The hooded youth at the centre of the gathering caught his attention. The others seemed to hang on his every word, while the members of the outer circle took on the role of bodyguards, moving in fast to stop anyone who came too close, either turning them away or allowing them forward depending on whether they received a shake or nod of the head from their leader. Once each swift, illicit transaction was completed, the intruder would be hurried from the inner sanctum. Langley was streetwise enough to recognize a drug dealer when he saw one. He would be a worthy victim – his teeth and nails suitable additions to the collection. Another victim no one would miss or mourn. But he would be hard to catch alone and in the right place.
Langley was still weighing his options when a far more enticing prospect wandered into view: a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, slim with long blond hair tied in a bunch on top of her head, wearing a grey and pink tracksuit and pink training shoes. She approached the group of youths, who jostled and laughed at her until the leader gave a nod and she was permitted to enter. Langley checked all angles to make sure he was alone, then reached across to the passenger seat, tossed aside his coat and picked up the high-spec Nikon digital camera with a 100–400mm super telephoto lens attached. Hurriedly removing the cap, he pointed the camera at the group – low magnification at first, but as soon as he’d located his target he zoomed in on her.
He could see her clearly now. The effects of drug abuse from a young age were clearly visible through the lens, but she was still attractive, although the way she dressed and moved suggested she’d never strayed too far from her estate aside from the odd shoplifting spree in the West End or maybe a cheap holiday in Spain. She appeared to be arguing with the leader, or pleading with him – it was hard to tell which. Langley wondered why the transaction was so slow and animated. He expected money and drugs to be exchanged quickly or not at all, but this was something different. Something wasn’t right.
Fascinated, he watched the sad little drama unfold. Something the leader said reduced her to a still silence. The leader waited a few seconds, then repeated whatever he’d said. This time the young woman stood with her hands on her hips, looking left to right and back again – as if she was considering what he’d said. Eventually, she nodded in agreement. The leader got to his feet smiling broadly as his minions began to giggle and nudge one another.
Leaving the safety of the group, with the young woman following close behind, the leader made his way to a nearby shed that housed some of the estate’s many recycling bins – used by the local residents for dumping almost anything over than recyclable items. The pair disappeared from sight behind the shed, but Langley kept the lens focused on their last position. He was in no doubt what he was witnessing – sex for drugs. It only made him want her more – to pin her to the floor and cut through the arteries in her neck – watching as her slick, warm blood spilled from the gaping wound. He’d hold her still as she grasped wildly at the wounds in her neck and throat until finally her hands would slip to her side as she lay twitching and death took her.
He imagined her blood on his hands as he slowly rubbed them together, enjoying the texture of the viscous liquid as it turned his skin crimson. He would lick some of the blood from his hands before cleaning them, just as he had done on the previous two occasions – savouring every second the metallic flavour danced on his tongue …
Suddenly he realized he was becoming sexually aroused. Disappointment at his own weakness went some way to calming him down. He could not afford to make the same mistake with this one as he had with the whore. No matter how alive he felt, he must not touch her like that. If he did, the police and media would defile his legacy by putting it about that he was just another pervert, acting out his sexual fantasies. He knew he was much, much more than that.
After a few minutes the leader and the girl reappeared in the viewfinder of his camera. The leader adjusted his flies while she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Too bad that she valued herself so little in life, but perhaps he could make something of her in death. He pressed the trigger on the camera and held it down, snapping continuous shots of the couple as they walked back towards the group. The leader pointed backwards over his shoulder at the girl and spoke to one of his laughing cohorts, who fished in his jacket pocket for something too tiny for Langley to see. He handed the item to the girl, who snatched it from his palm and walked away quickly.
To his surprise and elation, she began to walk in his direction. If she’d headed back into the estate, he could never have hoped to follow her. In a place like that strangers would be spotted immediately and either identified as police to be watched closely or as potential victims. He saw her scuttle warily behind a row of closed-down shops and waited a few minutes, checking for CCTV cameras, whether council-installed or private. Seeing none, he started the engine and rolled his car slowly to where he’d last seen her. The passage she’d walked through was big enough for a car and led to a small car park at the rear of the shops. Cautiously he drove in, stopping near the only other vehicle, a burnt-out ruin.
If she saw him, he would simply ignore her, spin around and drive away like a man who’d taken a wrong turning. But he needn’t have worried; she wasn’t waiting for him, ready to point an accusing finger. In fact he couldn’t see her at first and was beginning to wonder whether she’d cut through the car park to get somewhere else. It was disappointing, but he knew enough about her now to find her again. Drug addicts were very predictable in their habits. If he needed to find her again he had only to wait for her to come to the playground for her next fix.
He was about to leave when he saw her slumped in a doorway at the back of one of the shops, eyes closed, with a crack-pipe clutched in her limp hand. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to walk up to her now and cut her neck open, but he didn’t have his tools with him. More importantly, it wasn’t how he’d imagined it. He wanted her to know what was happening, like the others had known. He wanted to be able to look into her eyes and see her horror and terror as she struggled to cling to her miserable, pointless life.
Another time, he promised himself.
Sean pulled up close to the alleyway in Holloway where Tanya Richards had taken her last breath. He climbed from his car and looked up and down the street. It was quiet, even at this time in the morning. The only remaining signs of police involvement at the scene were a few scraps of cordon tape hanging from a streetlight and a bollard either side of the entrance to the alley. Sean could hear the rumble of traffic coming from the nearby Holloway Road. He imagined the victim hurrying along the street, head bowed, perhaps smoking a cigarette and playing with her mobile phone – correcting himself when he remembered that it had been found in her jacket pocket. If she’d been using it when she was attacked, they would have found it by the entrance to the alley. ‘No, if he’d been following you, you would have sensed it and had your phone ready to call someone. Maybe even the police? But he couldn’t have waited for you in the alley unless he knew you were going to walk past it. Unless he knew …’
Suddenly his mind ached with the possibility that the killer hadn’t simply trawled the streets of London looking for victims. What if he’d already selected them? Watched them and followed them – learnt everything he needed to know about them so he could plan his ambush more accurately. He’d previously discounted the possibility, but now he was suddenly sure he’d been wrong. His thoughts flashed to the second victim, William Dalton. He hadn’t been followed to the garage the night he died. The killer had been waiting for him.
Sean wandered into the alley, imagining the killer hitting Tanya Richards over the head with something like a hammer or metal bar. In his mind’s eye he watched her fall to the ground, saw the madman grab her by the ankles and drag her deeper into the alley. ‘You’re strong,’ he spoke softly to the faceless killer. ‘To drag a grown woman across this sort of ground you must be strong. But it took you time to get to this point, didn’t it? You searched the streets until you saw her, but you didn’t kill her then – you watched her.’ In his mind the faceless killer sat astride her chest and pulled the evil-looking knife from his pocket, holding it in front of her face. ‘But you didn’t watch her merely to learn what you needed to know; you watched her because it was important to you – why?’ He continued to watch the vivid replay of Tanya Richards’ murder. The dark figure drew the knife long and deep across her throat, opening a hideous wound that gaped, bled and foamed. He saw the shock and disbelief in her eyes, just as the killer had. ‘It was important to you because it made you feel as if you … as if you knew them somehow … and killing someone you know is so much more personal … more intimate than killing a stranger, isn’t it?’ The possibilities roared in his head. ‘Jesus Christ, did you speak to her? Did you try to get to know her? Did you make contact with her and with William Dalton? The chances of catching him quickly seemed to increase tenfold – a hundredfold. He’d broken the first rule of stranger attacks: he was no longer a complete stranger. Sean felt his excitement rising and needed to regain control.
Slow down, he told himself. You don’t know he contacted them. You made an assumption and assumptions are dangerous. Perhaps he didn’t contact them or speak to them …
‘No, you watched them and followed them, didn’t you? So … so this is the game you play,’ he accused the madman ‘You’re clever,’ Sean admitted, ‘but I’ll find you. I always do.’ He took a few moments to consider his adversary – the evidence he’d left and the beginnings of a trail that must ultimately lead to his capture and downfall. ‘But why do I get the feeling you want me to?’
Donnelly pulled up in Mint Street just as Zukov appeared from the stairwell of a block of low-rise flats, clipboard tucked under his armpit while his hands grappled with his vaping device. He was aware of Donnelly’s car stopping next to him, but didn’t acknowledge it. He continued to ignore the fact he had company even after Donnelly was out of the car and standing next to him, fishing in his own pockets for a pack of cigarettes, tapping one free and lighting it with a disposable lighter.
‘All right?’ he asked, exhaling a plume of smoke.
‘Yeah,’ Zukov replied, taking a deep drag on his vaping pipe. ‘You?’
Donnelly eyed the vaping pipe with a look of disgust. ‘Better off sticking to the real things,’ he warned. ‘God knows what’s in them pipes.’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ Zukov answered curtly.
‘Aye,’ Donnelly moved on. ‘Whatever. How’s the house-to-house going?’
‘It’s going,’ Zukov told him. ‘Be finished soon enough, then I can get back to doing something a bit more interesting than knocking on doors and being bored by old ladies.’
‘Too good for door-to-door now, eh?’ Donnelly asked. ‘Just remember: occasionally it throws up something critical.’
‘Yeah, well not so far it hasn’t,’ Zukov moaned. ‘All we’re getting is that people knew he existed, lived in a garage and was a druggie. That’s about it. No one knows anything about the night he was murdered. No miracles happening here today.’
‘Keep at it till you’ve spoken to everyone,’ Donnelly ordered. ‘The last person could be the most important. There was this one case where we kept calling at this flat, but no one was ever home. About a month later, the guy actually answered the door. Turned out he saw the whole murder from his bedroom window. Never bothered to contact us because he assumed we knew.’
‘Really,’ Zukov sounded bored and disinterested. There was a time not long ago when he’d have hung on Donnelly’s every word, but now he smelled blood in the water and a possible vacancy for a soon-to-be detective sergeant. ‘I want to get back in the action,’ he continued. ‘Stay a bit closer to the boss. Learn some stuff. Help him out. Know what I mean?’
‘Aye,’ Donnelly replied. ‘The boss.’
‘If this one goes down like the last one, I want to be right next to him, you know?’ Zukov set his trap. ‘Like you were. That’s where I want to be.’
‘Really?’ Donnelly asked, his voice thick with suspicion and doubt.
‘Fucking absolutely,’ Zukov insisted. ‘I want to be there at the death this time and next time. Just like you.’
‘Aye,’ Donnelly answered, taking a deep drag on his cigarette to try and control his pounding heart. ‘Just like me.’
‘You still suspended from carrying a firearm, by the way?’ Zukov tormented him.
‘I wasn’t suspended,’ Donnelly told him, sounding defensive. ‘I handed my ticket in. Don’t want to be in that position again.’
‘Rather die, would you?’ Zukov twisted the knife. ‘Or let another copper get killed? Or let the boss be killed?’
‘Son,’ Donnelly replied, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I know the boss needs people he can rely on.’
‘You don’t know anything about him,’ Donnelly snapped. ‘You may think you do, but trust me – you don’t.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Zukov asked, sensing Donnelly was holding back something important.
‘Nothing. Forget it. Just get back to the door-to-door. Once you’re done, I can give you something more interesting to do.’
Zukov looked him up and down. ‘Whatever you say. You’re the boss.’
‘That’s right,’ Donnelly agreed. ‘I am.’
He watched as Zukov wandered back into the stairwell, then flicked his cigarette away and jumped into his car. Pushing the back of his head as deep as he could into the headrest, he clung to the steering wheel, his knuckles white and his fingers turning bright pink where he was gripping it so tightly. He squeezed his eyes shut to try and keep the images and thoughts away, but it was futile. Suddenly he was back in the golf club car park with a hooded Jeremy Goldsboro raising his sawn-off shotgun towards Sean before being thrown against the side of his van by the bullets that burst from the barrel of Donnelly’s pistol. He watched as for the thousandth time as The Jackdaw slid down the van’s panel, leaving a thick smear of red. Then he sat slumped on the ground, the air from his last breath hissing through the holes in his chest.
Donnelly snapped his eyes open, but the images wouldn’t go away: Goldsboro lying dead with Sean looking from the body to Donnelly and back again, calm and collected – like he knew it was going to happen. Like he planned everything exactly how it turned out. Like he’d done everything but pull the trigger himself.
‘Corrigan,’ Donnelly muttered, shaking his head. ‘Fucking Corrigan.’
Sean strode along the narrow corridor at New Scotland Yard that led to the office of the SIU. He was pulling his coat off when he felt and heard his phone buzzing in one of his pockets. ‘Shit,’ he cursed and searched the tangle of material until he found it and checked the caller ID. It was Sergeant Roddis from the forensics team.
‘Andy,’ Sean answered with the sense of excitement that he always felt when Roddis called him unexpectedly. ‘You got something?’
‘Yes and no,’ Roddis cryptically replied. ‘The second victim – William Dalton: the lab have examined his clothes and found heavy traces of semen on his upper items – mainly his outer coat. First DNA examination suggests it’s from the same suspect who left semen at the Tanya Richards crime scene.’
