Never Look Back (3 page)

‘I spoke to Dave. He told me about this morning, sir,’ Jane said, interrupting his thoughts.

He glanced over his shoulder. Her concerned face was beginning to make sense. ‘Dave shouldn’t be telling anyone anything,’ he said.

‘Sorry, sir, Dave just thought . . . he thought someone on the team should know.’

He looked away and studied Jane’s reflection in the glass. She looked up at the ceiling, down at the floor and then at both sides of his office. He hadn’t seen her look this uncomfortable since that May Day bank holiday, four years ago. An ill-advised evening for sure but it had been Jane’s facial expression the next morning, a combination of embarrassment and concern in her eyes, that had made Lockyer run. ‘I don’t want anyone else to hear about this. Is that clear?’

‘Absolutely, sir. Dave’s getting ready for the post. He’ll call when he’s good to go. Should be an hour and—’ The jackhammer resumed and drowned out the rest of Jane’s sentence. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?’

‘Jane. Enough. You sound like Clara, for God’s sake. Close the door on your way out.’ He took a deep breath and turned back to his desk. It still felt odd mentioning Clara.

An hour later, surrounded by white Formica and steel, Lockyer stood in the mortuary suite, looking down at Deborah Stevens’ body. She looked so small, fragile. The skin over her cheeks was taut and colourless. A griping pain rippled across his stomach. He cocked his head to one side and looked into her milky eyes, still open, frozen in terror. There was no sign of the smiling girl from the photograph that was now attached to Debbie’s file, given to him by her family. He leaned closer and whispered her name, ‘Debbie,’ then straightened and backed away from the table as Patrick, Dave’s senior assistant, began laying out all of the instruments needed for the procedure.

‘Did you see the bite mark?’

Lockyer turned to find Dave standing right next to him. ‘What bite mark?’ he asked, looking away, reluctant to look his friend in the eye.

Dave walked around to the other side of the table, pointed to Debbie’s right shoulder and lifted a section of matted hair away from her pale face. ‘Here . . . it’s at the top of the trapezius muscle. I didn’t see it in the prelim exam because it was hidden by the hairline.’ Lockyer took a step forward and looked at the livid, purplish marks scattered over Debbie’s neck. It looked like she had been attacked by a wild dog, not a man. He turned away, the image of the marks already burned into his memory. ‘There isn’t enough of an impression for dental recognition but Patrick has taken some deep tissue swabs and we might have some saliva.’ Lockyer didn’t respond. He couldn’t. All he could see was Debbie’s attacker, crouching over her, sinking his teeth into her like a vampire in the moonlight. ‘OK . . . hard to please this morning, I see,’ Dave said, walking to the end of the mortuary table. ‘Would it make you happier if I said I had a fingerprint?’

He tore his mind away from the images in his head and finally looked at Dave. ‘Fingerprint. How? The body was cleaned, wasn’t it?’ His voice rough, like flint on stone.

‘He did . . . watered-down bleach, like the others. I guess he missed a spot,’ Dave said with a shrug. ‘It’s a partial print, in blood. Right index finger. It’s on the outside of the left thigh.’ Dave held up his right hand to demonstrate the angle against Debbie’s outstretched legs.

‘I need that print,’ Lockyer said.

‘Already done. Patrick lifted it just before you came down. Your team are scanning it now,’ Dave said. ‘Who knows, maybe you’ll have a suspect by the time we’re done here.’

He looked down at Debbie, pushed his anger away and said a silent prayer that Dave was right. He resisted an urge to reach out, to touch her cheek, and without warning Megan’s face pushed its way into his thoughts. His hand went automatically to the chain around his neck, the band of gold cool against his chest. He shook his head. Now wasn’t the time. ‘What about the drug?’ he asked.

‘It’ll take a few days to get the toxicology report back but I think he used some kind of mild barbiturate.’ Dave moved forward and gently lifted one of Debbie’s arms. ‘The defensive wounds here. . . and here, indicate she came to at some point but I doubt she was ever fully conscious,’ he said, indicating several deep scratches on her hand and forearm. ‘And he definitely used a knife to further subdue her,’ he said. ‘This is the puncture wound.’

‘Can you check the others for any drug traces?’ Lockyer asked, looking away from the welts on Debbie’s arms and the small hole just beneath her ribs.

‘Of course,’ Dave said. ‘We already have the blood work back on the first two victims but I haven’t had time to look at it, what with this and the gang killing last week. I’ll rush them through and get back to you. Now . . . if that’s all . . . I think we’re ready to begin.’ Dave’s voice had taken on a much softer tone. Respectful. He reached for a scalpel and paused like a conductor before a concert.

Lockyer watched Dave make the Y incision, constantly speaking into a Dictaphone, detailing every move he made, every cut. ‘The outer chest cavity is clear, no evidence of trauma, oedema present but consistent with hypostasis. Patrick, please open the chest cavity.’ Lockyer looked away. He wasn’t squeamish but there were some things he just didn’t need to see, and the removal of the chest plate was one of them.

‘I am making my incision and opening the pericardial sac . . . heart clean, very little plaque build-up, consistent with the victim’s age.’ Dave’s scalpel moved in a blur. ‘I am taking blood from the inferior vena cava . . . Patrick.’ Patrick stepped forward, placing a syringe into Dave’s gloved hand. As Dave dissected the lungs he muttered, ‘Smoker, not heavy.’

Bile rushed into Lockyer’s mouth. Megan smoked. He could still hear Dave’s voice but it was as if he was talking under water, his words muted. ‘. . . kidneys, clean . . . liver, clean . . . pancreas . . . stomach, very little to see here. She hadn’t eaten in six hours, at least . . .’ He swallowed and forced himself to focus. ‘. . .we’ll move on to the reproductive system now,’ Dave said, his blurred shape taking a step back, sidestepping before approaching the table again. A freezing hand snaked its way up Lockyer’s body, touching his thighs, his stomach and the base of his spine. He hung his head and let out a long breath.

‘Mike?’ He could hear Dave’s voice but it sounded far away. ‘Lockyer!’ Dave’s harsh shout brought him back. He stood straight, blinking rapidly. Dave and his team were all staring at him. ‘Are you all right?’

He cleared his throat. ‘. . . I’m fine,’ he said, covering his face with his hands as he coughed. ‘I’m sorry about that . . .’ He fumbled for something to say, anything to explain his bizarre behaviour. ‘I’m fine. Must be something I ate.’ He waited for what felt like hours as David and Patrick continued to stare at him.

‘Right,’ Dave said, breaking the silence. ‘Let’s continue, shall we?’

He tried to ignore the look of concern on his friend’s face, dropping his eyes to the floor as Dave made the incision to open up Debbie’s reproductive cavity. He felt furious with himself. When he told Jane earlier that he was fine, that he didn’t need to talk about this morning, about Megan, he had meant it. So why was his body going into some kind of meltdown?

‘We’ve got something here,’ Dave said, the grey bags under his eyes illuminated by the mortuary light as he looked up. ‘She’s had a D&C . . . very recently . . . last few days, I’d say, either the result of an incomplete miscarriage or a first trimester abortion.’ Dave’s shrug told Lockyer which his friend thought more likely.

‘Jesus,’ Lockyer said, shaking his head. ‘Are we done?’ he asked, watching as Patrick began positioning Debbie’s head for the brain exam. He could do without seeing them remove a section of her head. He wanted out of this room.

‘You are,’ Dave said. ‘We’ll finish up here and I’ll get my full report to you as soon as I can.’

‘Right. Thanks,’ he said, already turning to leave.

‘Hey, buddy, you might want to get something for that stomach of yours,’ Dave said. ‘You look like shit.’

‘Thank you, David,’ he replied, without bothering to turn around.

Lockyer sat down at his desk as the office door clicked shut. He had been making lists in his head on the way back from the mortuary suite. Things he had to do, things he wanted Jane and his DSs to get started on and things for the DCs to be getting on with, but all he kept seeing was Megan’s face. He needed to make the call. He pressed speed-dial three on his mobile, inhaled, held the breath and waited. It was on the fifth ring that she answered.

‘Hello, Megan speaking.’

‘Hello, Megan speaking. This is your father speaking.’

23 January – Thursday

Sarah turned out the main light and closed her bedroom door, her right eye twitching as the click of the latch echoed around the room. Her body, this flat, her life: nothing felt solid. Everything had been replaced with shadows, paper-thin imitations that threatened to blow apart at any moment, disintegrating into a million pieces. The floorboards creaked as she padded over to the window. Her blind was already down ,so, careful not to touch it, she peered around the edge and looked out at her little strip of garden: roaming weeds, strangled flowers and light clumps of dead grass where her lawn had failed to grow.

She stepped back. He couldn’t see her. She knew that. Her flat was on the first floor and the only thing that overlooked the back of the house was the Bredinghurst School playground. The fence separating her from the school was twenty feet high, covered in ivy. She sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed, her legs suddenly too weak to hold her. How many hours had she wasted trying to convince herself that he wasn’t outside, that he couldn’t see her, that he didn’t exist? She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt. A low thud made her freeze. She held her breath and waited, straining her ears to identify the origin of the sound. Her heart hammered in her chest. As her body began to shake she heard three more thuds and the sound of rushing water. It was her central heating, just water and pipes. She rocked back and forth, dizzy as the adrenalin that had surged through her body just seconds ago abandoned her.

She turned and looked over at her alarm clock. It was almost midnight. He hadn’t called tonight, not yet. For what felt like the hundredth time Sarah thought about calling Toni, but what would that achieve? She already knew what Toni would say. ‘Call the police. I’ll come over. You shouldn’t be by yourself.’ No. She wouldn’t do that. If he called, he called. There was nothing Toni could do about it and there was nothing the police would do about it. Sarah was on her own. Her socks crackled against the sheet as she climbed into bed. She covered her bedside lamp with a pashmina. It made the room just dark enough. She picked up her notebook from the nightstand and opened it, unable to focus on the scribbled dates and times that swam on the pages. Tonight’s entry was barely legible. It looked more like a scream on a page than actual words. Her arm brushed against the video camera where it nestled next to her. She shouldn’t watch it again. It would only make things worse.

The calls had started six months ago, although the ache in her bones made it feel much longer. At first she had answered her phone without fear: ‘Hello . . . hellooooo.’ Why wouldn’t she? Two months had gone by, dozens of the phantom calls and still the penny hadn’t dropped. Even as fear started to take hold, she had convinced herself that it was a wrong number, a cold call from Abu Dhabi about Internet providers, or a friend on holiday, drunk and oblivious to the time difference. But then it changed. It was a Tuesday night in October. She had flopped into bed after a heavy vino session with Toni. When her phone rang she had answered it. She was too tired, too drunk to talk, so she just listened. That was when he had said her name: ‘Sarah.’ A man’s voice. Not loud, not questioning. Just her name carried on an outward breath and then nothing. Nothing but his breathing. That was the night she had realized it wasn’t a wrong number and it never had been. The presence she had sensed, the weird incidents she’d shrugged off, for months, had been him. She had called Peckham Police Station the next day and had recounted her story to four different officers before being put through to a sergeant who was either very old, very jaded or both. She told him everything: the phone calls, the phantom knocks on her door, the stuff with her car and, most importantly, the presence she had felt but not believed until that one call had brought everything into focus. What had the sergeant done? Nothing. He had patronized her, saying, ‘My advice at this stage, Miss Grainger, would be to alter your routine. Small changes often result in an end to this kind of nuisance.’ He had used words like ‘nuisance’, ‘harassment’ and ‘harmless’ as if he were reading them from a cheat sheet. He never said ‘stalker’. Sarah had, she kept on saying it, but he had swerved and returned to his safe words. ‘Ninety per cent of these nuisance cases turn out to be nothing. An old boyfriend, perhaps, or someone who would like to be a boyfriend. You are doing the right thing, Miss Grainger. As long as you show him no further encouragement, he will get bored.’

She sat up and threw her duvet off, unable to stand the weight pressing down on her. How had she encouraged him, exactly? By answering her phone? Was that seen as a come-on these days? She shook her head and stared at the bedroom door. The sergeant had even told her not to change her number. How would they prove anything if there wasn’t a clear log of all the calls she had received? ‘Keep a journal of further events, if there are any, but do call us at any time if you are concerned. I assure you, Miss Grainger, we take these cases very seriously.’

‘What a load of crap,’ she said to the empty room. The police didn’t care. Whenever she called to speak to them, to tell them things were getting worse, to tell them she couldn’t take any more, the answer was always the same. ‘Officer Rayner will call you right back, Miss Grainger,’ but he never did.

Her eyes were again drawn to the video camera lying next to her. She picked it up as if it was coated in acid and opened the screen, her hands already beginning to shake. As she pressed play, she shrank back into her pillows. She watched as her street flickered to life on the display in front of her. Parked cars lined the pavements. Lights shone out from her neighbours’ houses. The picture zoomed in. A dark car. A dark figure sitting, motionless. She wasn’t even sure what kind of car it was. Maybe a Honda, like her brother’s? She couldn’t see the registration. The man inside didn’t move; his shape could almost be a mannequin. The screen went black. That was it.