DARK CRIMES a gripping detective thriller full of suspense (14 page)

‘I’ll contact family as soon as I get back to the office. We’ll then work our way through the others once we’ve got the family informed,’ said Thompson.

They continued to explore the apartment. It was everything that the other flat had not been. Comfortable, spacious, decorated in pastel shades with matching furniture and fittings. Food in the kitchen cupboards, the fridge and the freezer. Cookbooks. Normal clothes in the wardrobe. Books and CDs on the shelves. Magazines in a rack in the lounge. Yes, thought Sophie. I could be at home here, though maybe it’s just a bit too much like a show-apartment.

‘Do her friends know how much time she spent here?’

‘The ones we’ve spoken to don’t know about this place in any detail. They wondered if she had somewhere else, but didn’t know where it was. Like you, I’d guess at two or three days a week, but we might be totally wrong. We still can’t find any accurate details about her life. She came and went quietly. Her neighbours rarely saw her, apart from an occasional greeting on the stairs or in the lift.’

‘Bob, the fact that the name Andy actually appears in her address book and on her calendar is significant, if he is our man.’

‘Absolutely. He wasn’t just an everyday punter. He was someone closer to her than that. But then again it might be someone entirely different, a cousin or a close friend. We just don’t know. We’re still probing as hard as we can, but it’s a slow business. There’s an address for someone we think might be her mother. It’s in Exeter, but the phone isn’t being answered, and the local police say that there’s no one in the house. The neighbours say that the owners are abroad on holiday. Which I can fully understand, given the weather we were getting last week. It’s bloody frustrating for us, though. The squad back at the station are going through every phone contact in the address book. The ones we’ve been able to speak to so far haven’t been very helpful. Just old friends who send Christmas cards, but don’t stay in contact much more than that.’

Kevin said, ‘Apparently, the team pick up a kind of reserve from many of them. They tell us how they knew Susie. Many of them were school friends. I’d guess that they had suspicions about what she did, and have become distant.’

‘Is there anything else I should know about? What about photos?’ Sophie said.

‘We’re trying to match them up to names. We’ve got a copy of your photo of Donna pinned up on the board, just in case she appears in any of the shots.’

Sophie had one last walk around the flat, looking in each of the rooms, in the vain hope that something would provide a lead. Nothing did. She rejoined McGreedie and Thompson in the hall. They were leaning against the wall, one on either side of the coatrack.

‘Okay, I’ve seen enough,’ she said.

The two Bournemouth detectives moved towards the door. Above the coat hooks hung a framed photo of Susie sitting on a beach. Sophie almost stopped breathing. ‘These moments are few and far between, but they are worth savouring,’ she said.

She lifted the photo down from the wall. ‘I knew I’d seen her face before. She’s the girl in the background of the photo of Donna that we found in her flat on Tuesday. It’s the same scene as this one. They must have been on holiday together.’

CHAPTER 13: The Face on the Screen

Saturday Afternoon, Week 1

Sophie was sitting on a bench in the gardens by the old Victorian pier at Swanage, with Barry Marsh and Lydia Pillay. They’d decided to come out for some fish and chips, and were eating them in the weak November sunshine, looking out across the open sea to the chalk cliffs on the opposite side of the bay. The sunshine glinted on the waves gently rolling towards the sandy beach. A few families were braving the chilly air and bundled-up children were building sandcastles.

‘It’s the only way to eat fish and chips, ma’am. It’s just got to be outside, in the sun, with a sea view. Trust me, I’m an expert.’ Marsh popped another chip into his mouth.

Sophie laughed. ‘I hope your weight doesn’t end up doubling, Barry, if you’re such an expert. Women like a toned man, don’t they, Lydia?’

‘Oh yes. Preferably one who’s got some muscles on him, you know, just like that Diet Coke ad. Jeans, a white vest and well-developed pecs. Dark stubble. The moody, mysterious, Mediterranean look. That’s what I go for.’

‘There you go, Barry. You now know what turns the girls on, so go easy with the fish and chips. But I must say these are really tasty. Just what I remember from going on holiday with my mum as a child. It was always one of the high spots of our annual holiday. Fish and chips on the Friday night before we came home.’

‘But I thought—’ said Marsh.

‘You thought what, Barry?’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘Well, it’s just after what you told me a couple of days ago, about going to Oxford and that. I was just a bit surprised that you came to places like this for your holidays.’

His face was pink with embarrassment.

‘Oh no, this kind of place was a bit expensive for us. It was always a caravan in Weston-super-Mare or Portishead. I grew up in a council flat in Bristol. And it was just me and my mum. She was a single parent. I’ve never met my father. He disappeared before my mother knew she was pregnant. She was sixteen at the time. Things are not always as they seem, Barry, when it comes to people. Are you a bit disappointed now?’

‘No, ma’am, not at all. The opposite. I’m even more impressed than I was. To think that you’ve done all you have, and come from an absolutely ordinary background like that. It’s amazing. I always thought that you were from a posh family.’

‘My mother was a bit of a rebel. She was — is — a very intelligent woman. But when she was a teenager and fell pregnant with me, her parents threw her out. She’s never forgiven them and neither have I. She never spoke to them again. But I kept in touch, partly to try to understand why they did what they did. Though I’ve never managed to, not on an emotional level. It’s kind of understandable when you put it into the context of those times, but whenever I think about the actual act of locking the doors against a pregnant daughter, I lose it. It wasn’t as if she was on drugs or drank too much, or was a criminal. She was an intelligent kid with a bright future who made a mistake.’

‘But it wasn’t a mistake, was it, ma’am?’ Pillay said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It produced you. How could that possibly be a mistake? Your mother must be so proud of you and what you’ve done with your life.’

Sophie reached across and squeezed Pillay’s arm. ‘I’m going to get all choked up in a minute, the way this conversation is going. Bless you, Lydia. But now, can we get back on track? Have we all finished eating? Barry, summarise for us. What do we know, and where do we go from here?’

‘The knife that killed Donna. Why haven’t we found it yet?’

‘We keep looking. What else?’

‘We go on looking for signs of him in past cases. He won’t have got this violent all at once. He’ll have built up to it, so there’ll be a record somewhere. Maybe there was teenage violence, or minor assaults, or cases that didn’t make it to court. Or something.’

‘What do we know about him already?’

‘His name might be Andy. His surname might start with the letter R. Bournemouth CID are following up on a possible mobile phone number. We think he was older than Donna, maybe in his late twenties, even thirties. He’s fairly tall, possibly heavily built. He’s strong, probably a bit confrontational. He reacts aggressively, even in public places.’

Pillay joined in. ‘He’s not stupid, not to have planned and carried this out. It would have taken a lot of thought to have set up something so complicated. One thing is sure. He’s not your average murderer, is he?’

‘Which makes me more certain that he’s got history,’ said Sophie. ‘We need to keep trawling through those records. I take it nothing’s shown up this morning, Lydia?’

‘Well, I’m only part way through. I managed to create a list of the cases where the name Andy or Andrew appears, all with a surname beginning with R. There are about twenty within thirty miles, going back over ten years. But I haven’t started on the ones where there was a strangulation attempt yet. Or leg fractures from kicks.’

‘Well, maybe something will surface this afternoon. Barry, can you temporarily shelve the search for the car if we need more time on the database? Or put someone else onto it? I’ll leave a message if I’m not in tomorrow. I’m going back to visit Berzins this afternoon, and taking a photofit boffin with me. According to HQ she wants to try out some new software.’

* * *

Lydia Pillay continued to work through the criminal records. It was slow, laborious work, but at last she felt she was making some progress. She finally narrowed down the last search option and generated another list, this time of men who’d caused leg injuries to their partners. There were more than fifty, scattered across East Dorset and West Hampshire. She was horrified by how many there were. The list showed that violence seemed to be commonplace within some homes, almost a routine part of daily life. And it didn’t occur in one particular group. It seemed to spread across all social strata. There was a lawyer, and a bank manager, both guilty of striking their wives in outbursts of seemingly pent-up fury. And there was a female shop owner who’d kicked her husband in the face several times with only minor ‘provocation.’ What was the world coming to?

* * *

Meanwhile, Sophie had driven to police headquarters to collect the facial artist who had co-developed new image-producing software. Sophie had expected a nondescript-looking computer geek, but was pleasantly surprised to find a vibrantly-dressed black woman, called Louisa Mugomba. Sophie drove Louisa to the safe house in Wareham. The artist spent an hour with Vilis Berzins, attempting to build an image from his rather vague recollection of the stranger in the pub. Neither he nor Sophie held out much hope, but Louisa managed to put exactly the right suggestions to Berzins about particular features. Once he saw them on the screen he could then ask for minor alterations until they arrived at a likeness.

‘How do we manage to employ someone with your level of skill?’ asked Sophie. ‘I didn’t know we had you until Matt Silver told me.’

‘You don’t. I’m on secondment from Southampton University, just while we develop the software. My team was funded by the Home Office. What you see is a prototype at the moment, but it’s come a long way over the past two years, and we hope to have it ready for release before the summer. Mr Silver helped to draw up the original specification, and that’s how I was asked to help you out on this case. It’s an ideal test. But don’t expect miracles, please. You can see that what I’ve produced still has to rely on a person’s memory, so it can never be better than what he or she recalls. But it’s kind of dynamic, and responds quickly to their inputs. And the fact that it’s three-dimensional is a real leap forward.’

‘It’s very impressive. How quickly can you make prints available?’

‘I can email an image to you this afternoon, once I’m back in my office. You can then print it off. But it is better viewed on screen, with the 3D effect. I’ll create a guest login for you onto our system so that you can view the 3D image from your office.’

‘I’ll look forward to it, and thanks for your help. By the way, please don’t talk about this case with anybody, even the other people in your team. Everything you have seen, heard and talked about this afternoon is extremely confidential. We haven’t gone public on this yet, and I can’t afford for even the merest whisper to leak out. I’ll be brutal if I find you’ve talked, even to a family member, and you’ll find yourself under charge without a job. Sorry to labour the point, but you’ll already have guessed the significance while talking to our guest here. We might have a serial killer on our hands, and we’re all treading on eggshells at the moment because we’re trying to keep it out of the press. Do you understand?’

‘Absolutely.’

Once Louisa had left the room, Sophie turned to Berzins.

‘So that’s him, Vilis? As far as you can remember?’ She looked at the face on the screen. It was a face that would blend in anywhere. But something about it seemed familiar to Sophie.

‘That is the best I can do, Chief Inspector. I only talked to him for a few minutes.’

‘What about his voice? Can you remember how he spoke?’

‘It was a deeper voice than many. He spoke carefully, but I think that was because he knew I wasn’t English, and he wanted me to understand. But I do remember that he didn’t smoke his cigarette. He lit one but he just held it in his fingers. He didn’t once put it to his mouth while I was talking to him. It makes me think that his only purpose in being there was to talk to me, not to smoke.’

‘You may be right. And are you sure that you hadn’t seen him before? He hadn’t visited the hotel, or spoken to Donna as far as you were aware?’

‘No. He was new to me. And Donna never spoke of a man talking to her.’

‘Did Donna ever talk of a holiday she took in Greece with a friend, sometime in the last year or two?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all I have to ask, Vilis. Is there anything you want to talk about?’

He shook his head.

‘In that case, I’ll get back. I’ll see you again in a few days. I hope you won’t have to be here for very much longer. I’ll keep you and your brother informed of our progress.’

Sophie drove Louisa back to Winfrith. She went to see Matt Silver and gave him a quick report.

‘Tired?’ he asked.

‘A bit. The usual reason. I haven’t been sleeping as well as I normally do, what with all the thoughts whirling round in my head.’

‘Don’t think that you’ve got to do it all alone, Sophie. If you need more help, just let me know. This is the first triple murder we’ve had for years. We can afford to give you all the resources you want for this one.’

‘It’s okay at present, Matt. I’ve got Kevin to talk to if I need someone. And I trust my team. Is you-know-who breathing down your neck?’

‘Nothing that I can’t handle. At the moment, that is. But you’ll get to the bottom of it all. I have faith in you. And finding Susie’s second flat was a real breakthrough. Kevin phoned me an hour ago to bring me up to date about the holiday photos. It looks as though you were right and the two of them were on holiday together. It’ll be interesting to find out how they met.’ He paused. ‘By the way, there’s a CCTV camera covering the slipway on the Poole side of the ferry. Apparently it went up a couple of weeks ago. I’ll get the recordings for Monday and Tuesday, shall I?’

‘Make it all week, Matt. I’ll just have to find someone to plough through them. It’ll help trace the car if we’re lucky.’

‘So what are your plans for next week?’

‘I’ll get someone to visit the owners of the flat above Donna’s. Apparently they heard something on Monday evening. Someone else claims they saw a person entering or leaving the building, also on Monday evening. We’ll need to get a statement from them. Kevin will start to contact the entries in Susie Pater’s phone book, so I’ll keep track of that.’

‘You look troubled.’

‘There’s something niggling me about the facial image that the photofit generated. But I don’t know what it is.’

* * *

McGreedie had little new to report other than some communication with Susie’s family. They had tried to contact the number that had been listed in Susie’s address book for Andy, but the mobile had been switched off.

‘Listen, Kevin. Can you leave that number for the moment? I don’t think we should do anything that might warn him off. If he gets suspicious, he’ll ditch the phone, start to cover his tracks and we’ll be facing another blind alley. Wait until Monday. We’ll get some tracking equipment and the phone companies involved, and we’ll try it then. I’ll come across, if that’s okay.’

She returned to Pillay’s desk to see how she was getting on with the search. The young detective had several printouts spread across the desk in front of her, and was looking puzzled.

‘It’s odd, ma’am. This left list shows cases where there’s been a strangulation attempt, although none of them caused death. There’s an Andrew on the list, with the surname Rule. This second list is for cases of leg injuries, mostly from kicks. There’s an Andy on that list, but with the surname Ridgeway. You’d think they were different, but look at the birth dates. Both have the same day and month, but with the year of birth differing by one.’

‘August the twenty-fifth. That’s the date that was marked on Susie’s calendar. Did either of these cases result in a conviction?’