Cold as Ice (30 page)

‘Do we have a DNA sample of Hawk from Pauline Murphy’s body?’

‘Yes we think we do. He left semen on Pauline Murphy’s body but he’s not a match for anyone in our system.’

‘All these women went to colleges within the North London college umbrella,’ said Bowie. ‘But we can’t bring in every male attending and working in the North London
college network.’

‘I’ve worked out the dates for these missing women. They don’t just overlap; he doesn’t just replace, he keeps them together. They all cross over. Right now Danielle
won’t be alone.’ He showed Bowie the last woman on the list of three.

‘Top photo is of Jenny Smith. A single parent with one child. She was attending a computer course at London Metropolitan University while staying in bed and breakfast accommodation. She
left a little girl with friends overnight and failed to come in the morning to collect her. That was two years ago and she hasn’t been seen since.’

‘Eighteen months mean she would have crossed over with Pauline Murphy. Why haven’t we found her remains? He’s been leaving the others where they will be found.’

‘That’s a thing he’s grown into. Maybe that’s why he did it – because we never found her body. He wants attention. He wants recognition. What’s the point in
going to all this attention to detail if no one knows about it?’

‘Yes, you could be right. Or maybe she hasn’t been killed yet.’

‘He gives a piece of jewellery to those he kills, doesn’t he?’ Bowie picked up the chain and turned it over in his hand.

‘Yes, but we don’t know what makes him choose a particular piece of jewellery to give to the women. We just know that it must be when he has decided to kill them. The chain around
Emily Styles’ neck was enmeshed in her hair, caught at the back of her head where the clasp had become entangled with her hair and torn some out by the roots. The hair was torn from living
flesh not dead. So he goes through a ceremony before death: mask of make-up, jewellery. He arranges them for death. I looked back through her file and Jenny Smith always wore her
grandmother’s antique engagement ring. We have a photo of it.’ Robbo scrolled down the images on his laptop and stopped at the photo of the ring and then he opened his hand and placed
the ring on the desk in front of Bowie. He turned it to show Bowie. ‘It’s the same one we found on Emily Styles.’

Robbo went back to his office and laid the two rings and the chain on the desk in front of him. He couldn’t stop staring at it. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what,
though. He sat back in his chair and tried to close his eyes, tried to rest. More than anything Robbo had the image of Danielle Foster in the coffin. He started hyperventilating when he thought
about it. He could see the body of Pauline Murphy in all its horror, inside the box. He saw the mask of make-up and a chain around her neck. The chain was enmeshed in her flesh and Robbo was trying
to pick it out but it was so messy his fingers kept sliding. He looked up at Pauline Murphy’s face but suddenly it wasn’t her face he saw. It was Ebony’s.

‘Robbo?’

He opened his eyes; the smell of apple shampoo surrounded him and he saw Jeanie frowning at him, standing next to him at his desk. The next thing he heard was the almighty clamour of coffee
beans being ground. He shot forward in his chair. Carter sniggered.

‘I told Jeanie not to creep up on you.’

‘Bastard.’

Robbo rubbed his face, picked up a handful of Haribo sweets and fed them into his mouth.

‘I saw your update about the ring,’ Carter said.

‘Yeah, the main thing we learn from that is that he wants to carve his name in history, have them include him in the book of serial killers. He’s making sure we know it’s him.
He’s got a massive ego. He thinks he’s better than anyone else. He may have a string of short-term relationships but he can’t stay with someone long. He’s easily
bored.’ Robbo slid his chair along the length of the desk and then stopped dead as he began furiously tapping on the keyboard. ‘Plus, he has a massively inflated idea of his self-worth;
he’s callous, manipulative. These women he killed meant nothing to him as human beings, they were just vehicles towards his notoriety. He’s also irresponsible, impulsive. But he wanted
us to find the rings.’

Jeanie picked up the chain and looked at the rings on the end. ‘The chain just doesn’t look right,’ she said.

‘He had no choice but to put them on a chain,’ Carter said as he made coffee. ‘They would have fallen off when the fingers were lost to pond life.’

‘Why didn’t he just put plastic bags over the hands like he did with the head?’ asked Jeanie.

Carter shook his head. ‘If her wrist was already opened by a wound, which it was, then it would have been got at quickly by feeders and she may have just lost her whole hand somewhere in
the bottom of the canal, plus these rings were not hers, they probably didn’t fit her hand.’

‘So he had to put them on a chain. Any old chain?’

‘It’s never any old anything with him, is it? He takes months to kill, he’s not going to be rushed into anything, the smallest details matter to him,’ Robbo answered.

‘Then he chose a chain that doesn’t match the rings. It doesn’t look feminine,’ Jeanie said.

‘From another victim?’ asked Carter. ‘Or from him then?’ Carter had stopped making coffee and was focused on Jeanie. ‘Something which was his?’ Robbo was
nodding.

Carter looked at his watch. ‘I have to go and meet Ebony. She’s making her way to my house.’

Jeanie’s eyes stayed on Carter as he got up to put his coat on. He looked her way and waited.

‘The more we find out about Hawk, the more nervous I become about Ebony undercover,’ Jeanie said eventually, looking from Carter to Robbo.

Carter put on his coat and stood for a few seconds in the middle of the office. He gave a small nod of the head.

‘That’s why we need her to succeed more than ever.’ He looked over at Robbo.

Robbo was swinging the chain from the ends of his fingers. He had a smile on his face.

‘Maybe we have a little piece of him here. Maybe this is his first mistake.’

Carter met Ebony outside his house.

‘I would have stayed longer but I think he needs a change,’ she said.

Carter shook his head with mock disapproval. ‘I showed you how to do it.’

‘Yeah, but I know how fussy you are about things. I couldn’t risk getting it wrong.’

Archie woke up and grinned sleepily at his dad.

‘Hello, little man – handsome little devil.’ He turned to Ebony. ‘Hope you got a lot of compliments.’

‘Yeah – I did. They all thought he was the spitting image of me.’

Carter shook his head in disbelief.

He turned his key in the front door and then came back for the buggy. He unstrapped Archie and handed him to Ebony to hold as he folded the buggy and in one move lifted it and took it inside the
house. He stacked it in a purpose-built cupboard behind the front door. She followed him into the house, trying not to look like she was holding Archie at arm’s length even though she was
– he smelt. Archie was wriggling to see his dad. Carter took him from her and went to change him. He brought him back in a new stripy suit and held him on one hip as he called Ebony into the
kitchen.

‘Come and talk to me while I get him some food.’ He put Archie into his high chair whilst he began banging about in the kitchen. ‘Tell me, what did you find out?’

‘Emily Styles was known to the group I’ve enrolled in.’

‘She and Danielle Foster were both at the college – we know that,’ Carter said as he searched for Archie’s bowl in the dishwasher. ‘Robbo said that they crossed
over in a couple of their subjects.’

‘It’s a friendly group,’ said Ebony as she perched on a kitchen stool and played with Archie who was getting impatient for food and banging his hand on the table of the high
chair. ‘They do a fair bit of socializing. I think it will be easy to get inside it. I have a couple of numbers; the women seemed really friendly. I’ll be meeting one of them tomorrow
– she’s going to help me prepare for the course, catch up.’

‘Any men on the course?’

‘There’s one I’ve met so far – another single parent, Christian Goddard. He seems to be everyone’s answer to Brad Pitt, has the pick of the women. He’s a
good-looking, natural dad type. He told me to look him up on Facebook. I think he probably scores with most of the new women. Robbo’s still working on a Facebook profile for me now. I
don’t want to risk getting it wrong.’

‘Yep. No problem. Robbo left some stuff here for you. Plus he wants me to take some photos of you and Archie.’ He stopped stirring Archie’s food for a moment, went into the
lounge and came back with a buggy. ‘You take this buggy – it’s an older version of Archie’s. And we got you a realistic doll.’ Carter unwrapped the doll and held it in
his arms as if he were burping it. ‘It’s one of those realistic feeding, pooping ones that they give to teenagers to put them off having kids.’

‘Actually that’s not bad.’ She smiled. It was a mixed-race doll with black hair. ‘As long as no one wants to talk to it.’

‘You’re just going to have the best behaved but permanently wrapped-up baby there is.’

She looked across at Carter, who had put the doll on the worktop. ‘How’s Tracy coping? What’s happening with the investigation?’

‘We confirmed that it’s Danielle’s voice in the background when Hawk called Tracy. The phone call came from a mile radius of Tracy’s house. We can’t narrow it down
any further. The phone is a pay-as-you-go mobile, bought in Swindon. We’re talking to colleagues down there just in case they’ve had missing women who might fit the bill. We might get
lucky. They might have a suspect for us.’

‘What’s that you’re feeding Archie?’ Ebony screwed up her face. ‘Looks like puke.’

‘Sweet potato, sweetcorn and cod. I freeze it in batches. He loves it.’

‘Yuck.’

‘Ebb – you okay with this UC work?’

‘I think so, Guv.’

‘We’ll be with you every step of the way.’ She nodded. ‘And you have good friends on The Dark Side. You know that don’t you, Ebb? We care for you.’ She looked
puzzled. ‘Not just Tina. I care. You know that?’ She nodded. She wasn’t sure where that came from.

‘Has Tina got a tattoo?’ Ebony was used to Carter’s random thought process.

‘You thinking about the Norse saying, the one on Emily Styles?’ He nodded.

‘Tina’s always threatening to get one but then she remembers there’s pain involved. She’s a big pussy when it comes to pain.’

‘What would she have – a shamrock?’

Ebony laughed. ‘How did you guess? She was talking about a four-leaf clover.’

Carter laughed. ‘Better put it on her bum, might bring her luck – she might get laid.’

‘Oy! Don’t be mean.’ Ebony looked away and was trying not to smile. ‘Besides, Tina is never short of male attention in the canteen.’

‘Yeah, that’s because men are greedy bastards and she’s dishing out the food. Ah, she’s a lovely girl, so she is.’ Carter tried an Irish accent. ‘I know I
couldn’t manage if Tina didn’t help me out looking after Archie sometimes.’

‘She adores Archie,’ said Ebony. ‘She goes on about him when she’s been with him. She’s always disappointed if he doesn’t wake up.’

‘You and Tina are like chalk and cheese. You’re great friends though, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. It’s funny how it just works.’

‘I reckon she mothers you.’

‘Yeah, she tries. She has an inbuilt maternal mechanism she can’t switch off. I don’t mind – most of the time. The rest of the time I pretend I haven’t heard it
when she tells me to remember my hat and scarf as I’m going out the door – it’s a bit annoying.’

He sighed as he finished washing up Archie’s tea things and went across to the high chair to wipe Archie’s face with a wet flannel. Archie was instantly furious.

‘Who’d have thought this time last year that things would have so changed for me, Ebb?’ He ruffled Archie’s hair.

‘Cabrina would have been a fool not to come back to you, Guv. You so missed her. You drove me mad talking about her all the time.’

He chuckled, embarrassed. ‘It took a lot though, didn’t it, Ebb? I put it down to her being pregnant at the time: hormones and shit. Now we have Archie and Cabrina is back and
everything’s changed.’ He swivelled on his heels and looked around the kitchen that had been transformed from a bachelor’s pad to a baby’s nursery. ‘To think I worked
so hard to get all this?’ Carter kissed Archie’s head. ‘Don’t mean it, do I, little man? I wouldn’t change this for the world. Now I just have my poor dad to worry
about. Poor bugger, I can see how scared he is. He starts another round of chemo this week. It’s going to be a difficult Christmas, him watching us eat. But if we don’t go it will be
worse. But . . . if it is to be his last Christmas I intend to make it a good one. What are you doing? Are you going to see your mother?’

‘They don’t allow visitors on Christmas Day. I’ll see her in the week after.’

‘Would you go if you could?’

Ebony looked down at her lap; she had clenched hands without realizing as soon as he began asking about her mother. ‘I would go because I’d feel it was my duty but I wouldn’t
want to.’

‘So you’ll be spending Christmas here?’

‘Yes.’ She breathed out; her hands relaxed; she lifted her head again and smiled across at Carter. ‘With Tina and her brother Dermot who’s coming over. He’s
supposed to be a really wealthy, self-made millionaire car dealer, but for some reason he wants her to buy his ticket over. That doesn’t seem right to me, but . . .’ She shrugged.
‘It’s not my business. I’m really looking forward to it anyway. Does Cabrina mind going to your family for Christmas?’ She looked across at his profile. He shrugged.

‘She’s happy not to have to do anything. Working full-time
and
doing the lion’s share of looking after Archie is really hard on her but what can I do? I can’t
help my hours. I can’t ever be a nine-to-five and week-ends-off type of guy. Now that I’m an inspector there’s more pressure than ever.’

‘She knows what you are. She accepted it when she came back to you.’