Grind Their Bones (17 page)

‘Thank you, Geeta. I appreciate that.’

I let her know that she hadn’t crossed a line with a small smile of acknowledgment, and she smiled in return, gathering up some paperwork off the printer and walking towards the door. As she went I suddenly realised that I could use her eagerness to save me some time and free me up to at least try to get through to Lee.

‘In fact, Geeta?’

I caught the desperation in my voice and cleared my throat loudly.

‘Ma’am?’

She stopped in the doorway looking back over her shoulder at me.

‘There’s an assignment that I’d asked DS Mead to work on but which he hadn’t yet got round to. It’s not hugely exciting, but I’m hoping that it might yield some important information for the case.’

Chapter 55

The Grey Man sat captive in his silver car and waited for his turn to reach the young police constable and submit to a search of his own vehicle. The detached girls head in the boot began to assume a heavy presence in his mind, and he could picture it rolling around to face in his direction, watching with interest to see how events might unfold. He had not come remotely close to being caught in possession of incriminating evidence for many, many years, and that was in no small part down to the extreme caution that he usually exercised in the aftermath of a killing. His current recklessness born out of a newly acquired level of supreme arrogance was uncharacteristic, and he silently cursed himself for making a mistake, vowing not to do so again once this next part was over with.

He realised with a start that the car in front had moved on again, leaving a sizeable gap between the two vehicles and prompting the driver behind him to hit their horn. The young officer was only five cars ahead of him now, and he looked up at the sudden noise before speaking a few words to the driver of the car that he’d stopped and beginning to make his way over towards the source of the disturbance. The Grey Man felt the tension creeping into his fatigued muscles, and a solitary bead of sweat rolled from underneath his arm down inside his shirt. he found himself holding his breath as the uniformed figure drew level with the silver Jaguar.

The policeman passed straight by and knocked on the window of the car behind that had sounded its horn, and the killer released the air from his lungs in a long steady stream, loosening his tight grip on the thin bladed knife that he kept in the glove compartment for emergencies. His tension had nothing to do with the prospect of having to kill the man when he asked to search the Jaguar’s boot, and everything to do with knowing that he’d have to do so in front of multiple witnesses without anybody suspecting what was happening.

Having weighed up his scant options he’d settled on pulling his car close up to the police vehicle and around on enough of an angle to conceal his actions from the queue behind. That would allow him to drive the blade up into the cop’s heart underneath the breastbone without being seen, although he’d have to open the car door in order to accomplish this feat unimpeded and risk doing so from a sitting position. If he pushed the cop away hard enough with his foot, then there was a good chance that he’d end up in the shallow overgrown trough at the roadside, and that would conceal him for precious seconds before the driver behind saw the dying man and came to his aid. He’d have to rely on a modest slice of luck in respect of nobody remembering the details of the false registration plate or a physical description for him, of course, but nobody would have reason to commit those details to memory until after the event and eye witnesses were notoriously bad at remembering such minutiae.

The officer finished rebuking the woman in the blue Citroen behind him and took a slow stroll back to his position at the roadside, waving in the next in line and making a quick cursory search of the interior as with the others. Me next. The Grey Man watched the car pull away with a cheery wave from the policeman to the occupants, and he rolled slowly up into position, concealing the knife beneath one of his thighs and opening up the driver’s door.

‘That’s what I like to see, saving my legs and pulling up close.’

The younger man smiled, speaking confidently in a thick Birmingham accent, smoothing back his dark hair.

‘Control to Charlie Tango four three, over.’

The crackle of a police radio drew the cop back over to his car before he was in range for the blade.

‘Excuse me for just a moment please sir. Yes, go ahead control.’

He lifted out a handset and spoke into the receiver.

‘Officer in need of assistance on Aldermans Green Industrial Estate, can you travel?’

The young man hesitated and looked back at the outwardly calm older gentleman in his expensive looking car. He didn’t look like a monster.

‘Yes, travelling now. I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.’

He ended the transmission and smiled at the older man again.

‘It seems that you’re getting away with it this time,’ he remarked with a smile. and climbed back into the police car, pulling away with tires spinning and the siren beginning a long mournful wail.

Chapter 56

I arrived back in the CID office late in the afternoon, slightly sweaty from a frustrating day of unsuccessfully attempting to track down Lee. I’d called, texted and even emailed him in a vain attempt to elicit some kind of response, explaining that I understood how hurt and betrayed he must be feeling, and that I wouldn’t try to stop him from leaving for Birmingham if that was what he truly wanted, but that we needed to at least make some time to talk first. Nothing worked though, and it all remained resolutely silent from his end. Visiting his home had been no more successful, it was obvious that nobody was in and his car wasn’t in its usual parking space. I scoured my brain for a better idea of where he might go when he was this upset with me, but got no further than ‘anywhere that I wasn’t likely to find him.’

The office was empty, but that wasn’t at all unusual in the middle of a shift. much of the unglamorous legwork such as knocking on doors and speaking with witnesses was better off conducted in daylight hours, and it was necessary to get outside every once in a while to avoid going stir-crazy. I logged onto a computer and accessed my emails, quickly scanning through briefing reports about the mad, bad and dangerous who had finished serving time at Her Majesties Pleasure and were now back on the streets free to inflict mayhem again.

Further down the list I found one from Geeta, a terse one line introduction to the content accompanied by attachments detailing cases that Doctor Alan Hardwick had asked for the files on since he’d come onboard with the Grey Man case. The list was impressive, with details having been obtained about dates, times and locations of access to each of the files in case that was significant, although I hadn’t specifically asked for it. Lacking in one or two interpersonal skills she might be, but Detective Constable Badal was thorough and she thought about why she was accessing information for an enquiry not just what the request had been.

I printed up a copy of the list and used my greater access rights to look back over some of the cases for any possible patterns. The biggest difficulty would come from identifying which ones he had been reviewing in relation to the Grey Man case, and which ones were unrelated and used for others that he had been working on simultaneously. Doctor Hardwick and his big reputation had been very much in demand by various other surrounding police forces. Another issue was going to be in determining which cases were for frame of reference. It was not especially uncommon for a profiler to review other previous crimes not necessarily linked to the same serial offender in order to check that his assumptions held up to closer scrutiny. I didn’t have the luxury of assuming that any of the files that he’d accessed that weren’t on our known list of connected offences had been reviewed because the Doctor had believed that they were committed by the same man.

I sighed and attempted to shift a stubborn curl away from my line of sight, but it sprang back each time I released my hold on it and I eventually gave up. The majority of the files that he’d accessed were old murder cases, with lurid images and descriptions depicting the handiwork of sexual sadists who were now safely behind bars. It was difficult to be certain whether he’d seen commonalities with the Grey Man series on many of them, but a handful included murders where the victim had been bitten, and one was an unsolved case where it appeared that the killer had drained off some of the dead girls blood into a glass and drank it.

I stopped reading and looked back at Geeta’s list, ignoring the finer detail and trying to get an overview of the pattern of Hardwick’s behaviour. Most of his work had been done from police computers, for which he had certain access rights courtesy of his long successful history in assisting on major enquiries, but there were half a dozen that had been accessed from his home office late at night and that were not existing murders in the Grey Man chain. I opened them up one after the other, quickly scanning the headline detail. All of them were from miles away, mainly in and around Plymouth in fact, and all of them were unsolved murders of young women. I frowned, to my knowledge the Doctor had never worked for a force that far South, although I’d get Geeta to cross check, but it was unlikely that unsolved cases would yield much of use for drawing up a profile since there was no known offender to draw comparisons to. I felt a tingle of something like anticipation, there was no reason to believe that these were significant yet, but they were the first incongruous information that I’d found and that had to count for something.

Chapter 57

When I arrived back at Coventry hospital in the evening at the tail end of visiting hours I found my way into the A Ward, where Emily was recuperating, barred. The stern nurse in grey who had given me directions on my previous visit was manning the desk and would not allow me to pass.

‘I’m sorry, but it’s not going to be possible for you to visit Emily today.’

She spoke firmly and eyed me defensively, as if talking to a difficult child and expecting trouble now that they’d not got their own way.

‘Why, what’s happened? I’m family, her older sister in fact.’ I explained, panicking and fearing the worst, not able to read anything in the nurse’s cool expression.

‘She’s fine, but she’s specifically requested that you not be permitted to visit her again and I have a duty to honour that, particularly while she’s still so fragile.’

She looked at me as if I’d crawled out from under a stone and I wondered briefly what else had been said about my small part in her reasons for being here.

‘But that’s ridiculous! I was here the other day, you spoke to me yourself, and she was absolutely fine with me at that point!’

I was becoming agitated, realising that it would make no difference, but feeling aggrieved and badly treated. Who did this woman think she was judging me without being in possession of the facts?

‘If you are not able to moderate your tone with me then I’m afraid I’ll have to call for security, Miss…?’

She waited for me to fill her in on my name.

‘It’s Acting Detective Superintendent Wade, and calling for security won’t be necessary.’

I watched with satisfaction as one of her eyebrows rose and fell again in recognition of my status as a police officer and at the seniority of my rank, then turned away, mind made up to visit Fred Russell for now instead.

The loud echo of my rapid footsteps as I stormed back down the corridor away from the rude nurse at the desk was like slow motion gunfire. I slowed my pace as I registered that fact and pushed my way through double doors, almost knocking drinks out of the hands of a man trying to come through them from the other side.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there…’

My voice tailed away as I realised that the man was Emily’s husband David, and he gave me a self-satisfied smirk that stuck in my head before pushing past me and continuing back towards her ward. I quickly realised now why I was no longer allowed in to see her and I felt faintly sick as I recalled her asking me not to let him know she was here. I couldn’t begin to fathom how he’d found her unless she’d relented and sent a message out to him herself, but ultimately there was nothing I could do about it besides stew at the moment.

To all intents and purposes he’d not done anything directly wrong towards her to trigger this, at least not that she’d decided to tell me about. I’d already had my chance to make him pay by prosecuting when he’d forced his way into my house, and I’d blown it. Backtracking now would look odd, I wasn’t some vulnerable little girl who didn’t know that the law would protect her, I was a senior detective heading up a major enquiry, and uncomfortable questions would be asked about both my motives and Lee’s actions if I went after him now. Lee would believe that I was trying to make his transfer impossible, and his career could then be in jeopardy.

I accepted the situation for what it was. Another giant bloody mess to join all of the others that had come crashing down around me at the moment, as I moved away towards Fred Russell’s room. But I made a mental note to revisit David further down the line. He was, after all, still on my suspects list too, even if, like Lee, he didn’t match the physical description that we’d been working from.