Ready or Not (29 page)

Forty

In the next room, they joined PC Matthew Curtis who sat at a desk watching a TV screen. Kate had come into contact with Matthew quite a few times; he had been working with Chris for almost a year now. Enthusiastic, Kate recalled; also, squeamish.
She thought of a few days earlier, when she’d watched him idly battling with the coffee machine in the corridor outside her office. There was something about him that didn’t seem to gel; he was there in person, but his mind always seemed to be somewhere else, distracted; a daydreamer.

             
Matthew caught her eye when she entered the room, but quickly looked away. He didn’t look at her again, keeping his head low and his attention fixed on the television screen in front of him. For the second time since they’d first met she wondered whether he was avoiding her, or whether he was simply socially inadequate in some way. Hardly the best characteristic for a police officer, Kate thought.

             
Kate looked at the TV and the CCTV footage that played out on the screen. She was unsure at first what she was supposed to be looking at. A string of dancers moved in and out of shot, intermingling with men who were happily parting with their money in return for a brief snatch of something that remained always out of their reach.

             
‘Little bit disconcerting,’ Kate joked, ‘watching strippers with you pair.’

             
Matthew smiled nervously and gave her a coy, sideways glance before turning his attention back to the screen. Kate was certain he had blushed slightly.

             
Kate leaned across the desk and put a finger on the screen. ‘Is that not…?’

             
‘Joseph Ryan,’ Chris confirmed.

             
‘The body in the park?’

             
‘The very same.’

             
Kate continued to watch, unsure why Chris had brought her into the room to see this. She had had enough for one day and wasn’t sure how much more hassle she needed. She shuddered at the thought of the Joseph Ryan murder. It had been brutal and seemingly motiveless. There were a few hairs found on Ryan’s scarf, but no DNA match had turned up and they had nothing else: no eyewitnesses, no forensics of any use; bugger all.

             
Kate knew he’d been unfaithful to his wife, on a continual basis judging by the brief snippets of information Chris had given her, but so far they had been unable to find evidence of any jealous boyfriends or husbands; anyone who may have had a motive for wanting Ryan dead.

             
The tape continued to roll. Joseph Ryan went back to the bar, bought another drink and disappeared from view again. 

             
‘We took this from Candy’s this afternoon,’ Chris explained. ‘It was recorded last night.’

             
Kate watched as Joseph Ryan moved into shot again and walked to the stage at the back of the room, where a young girl wearing nothing but a g-string gyrated around a pole. Suddenly another familiar face appeared on the screen.

             
Chris turned to Kate. Her face was white. It told Chris everything he needed to know and confirmed exactly what he’d feared.

             
He told Matthew to press the pause button.

             
‘The two were together on Wednesday night,’ Chris said. ‘Ryan was having an affair with a girl from his office who confirmed that she had seen him in the pub earlier that evening with a man called Adam.’

             
‘This,’ he said, pressing a finger to the screen and partially covering Neil Davies’ face, ‘is Adam.’

             
Kate froze in sync with the man on the screen. She blinked and tried looking away, but when she looked back it was still him, as clear as he had been when she’d sat opposite him just the previous night. Dark hair, dark eyes; an instantly recognisable ease of confidence.

             
Unmistakeably him.

*

Back in his office Chris explained the day’s events to Kate. He told her how Diane Morris, Michael Morris’ wife, had remembered a friend called Adam who had told Michael that his wife was called Sarah and worked as an English teacher at Park Hill Comprehensive School.

             
‘Neil’s wife was called Sarah,’ Kate said, bile rising in the back of her throat. She thought of Sophie and the man she had talked about when Kate had asked about her father.

             
‘I know.’

             
She told Chris about her visit to Neil’s daughter.

             
‘What made you go?’ he asked.

             
She smiled sadly. ‘A hunch,’ she confessed.

             
‘Perhaps I was wrong about those,’ Chris said. ‘They seem to have paid off this week.’

             
‘When Sarah Davies died,’ Kate explained, ‘Neil was having an affair with her sister, Claire.’

             
Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Bit Jeremy Kyle isn’t it?’

             
‘Isn’t it just,’ she agreed. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I had quite an interesting conversation with her on the phone this afternoon.’

             
She proceeded to tell him the contents of the call, of how Neil Davies had manipulated the relationship with his sister-in-law and, when she had threatened to tell her sister about their affair, attempted to strangle her. Chris listened attentively as the pieces of the jigsaw moved closer together, still not quite slotting into place.

             
Kate leaned on the desk and put her head in her hands. ‘You think he killed all three?’ Kate asked, light beginning to dawn. ‘That one in Cardiff – what was his name? Jamie something.’

             
‘Griffiths.’

             
‘Jamie Griffiths, Joseph Ryan and Michael Morris?’

             
Chris nodded. ‘A year ago,’ he said, ‘when Jamie Griffith’s wife was first spoken to by police in Cardiff, she mentioned someone called Adam. She didn’t know his surname, she hadn’t met him – Jamie had mentioned him a few times and she’d assumed he was somebody he knew from his football team. He played a bit of semi-professional when he was sober.’

             
‘Calls were made, friends were contacted – no one else had heard of Adam. Very difficult to trace a person with no surname,’ he noted. ‘It didn’t seem a big deal at the time so it was abandoned, but now…’

             
‘What’s the link?’ Kate asked studying the pictures of the three men spread out on Chris’ desk. ‘Besides Adam?’

             
She stopped at the photograph of Joseph Ryan, recalling the violence of the man’s death and the mirroring of the Michael Morris murder. ‘Neil,’ she corrected herself.

             
‘This is where we were a bit thrown,’ Chris confessed. ‘Jamie Griffiths was murdered in Cardiff, whereas the other two were closer to home. I have a theory, but it’s just that at the moment. Doesn’t really hold much water yet.’

             
Kate waited as Chris lined up the pictures in front of her.

             
‘Michael Morris,’ he said, pointing at the picture of the oldest of the three; a middle aged man with a receding hairline and a weak smile. ‘We now know that he was gay.’

             
Kate looked up from the picture. ‘How did you find out?’

             
‘His wife.’

             
Kate raised her eyebrows and looked at him questioningly. ‘Go on.’

             
‘His wife thinks he may have fallen in love with this man called Adam. He’d started going out, behaving differently. She’d already guessed that he might be homosexual – magazines stashed away, websites, that sort of thing. Joseph Ryan,’ he continued, pointing at the face they had just been watching on the screen next door. ‘Well…we all know what he was up to. A series of affairs apparently – all unknown to his wife.’

             
‘Nice bloke. So what do you think? He’s targeting men who cheat on their wives? Doesn’t seem to make much sense. Christ, if that was the case, we’d have bodies all over the place. He could have taken his pick.’

             
Chris pushed the third picture across the table towards her. ‘Jamie Griffiths. I spoke to his mother-in-law a couple of hours ago. Used to knock lumps out of his wife apparently. No wonder she told me and Matthew that whoever had killed him had done them all a favour.’

             
Kate looked at the photo of the big, shaven headed man. The murder had received a typical, predictable reaction by police, she remembered: they’d all assumed he’d deserved his death in some way. Just the man’s physical appearance had been enough to make them suspicious and assume that he must have given someone ammunition to want him dead.

             
Had it been wrong of them to make such superficial assumptions, now they knew what type of man he’d been behind closed doors?

             
Could two wrongs ever make a right?

             
Kate didn’t believe so.

             
‘Affairs?’

             
‘Not that we know of.’

             
‘Buggers up my theory about adulterers then,’ she said, pushing the photo back to Chris.

             
Chris sat back and rubbed the top of his head. ‘What about this,’ he said. ‘Adam is targeting men who have what he’s lost. Wife, son, daughter.’

             
‘Neil,’ Kate corrected him. Even saying his name made her feel sick. She had allowed herself to be reeled in by him; like a bloody trout, she thought, and she wondered how many there’d been before her. Yes, he’d been married, but that clearly hadn’t stopped him from visiting elsewhere. Claire had probably been one of many.

             
‘And from what I’ve heard,’ she continued, ‘it was his own fault he lost them. Well, the kids at least.’

             
‘Exactly,’ Chris said, sitting back in the chair opposite her. ‘He couldn’t handle it. He lost control. If we believe what his sister-in-law told you, he didn’t have much control before the kids were taken from him. Or before his wife died, for that matter. It was only a matter of time – it just took something to trigger the chaos. Perhaps Sarah’s death tipped him over the edge.’

             
Kate leaned an elbow on the desk and placed a hand on her forehead. Her skin was hot and clammy. ‘So he’s doing what? Seeking revenge through jealousy?’ She jabbed a finger at each of the photographs in turn. ‘Was he jealous of these men?’

             
Hours earlier she had found out that the man she could easily have allowed herself to fall for – someone she had believed to be charming, sensitive and vulnerable -was not only a liar, but an adulterer and a bully.

             
Now he had become a murderer.

             
A serial killer, potentially.

             
‘Possibly. Although from what you’ve learned, jealously doesn’t really seem his style. What do you think? You know him better than I do.’

             
Kate winced at the insinuation. ‘I don’t know him,’ she snapped, ‘I don’t anything about him. I think we can safely presume that everything he told me was a lie.’

             
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Chris admitted. He paused and looked at her. ‘But if he’s going to confide in anybody, we know who it’s going to be, don’t we?’

             
Kate caught his gaze and saw where all this was leading.

             
‘No,’ she said adamantly, shaking her head. ‘You must be joking. How can I even look that man in the face again?’

             
‘You may be our only chance to get him, Kate.’

             
‘I don’t care. You said yourself - I could put myself in danger.’

             
Chris put an arm across the table and reached for her hand. ‘Do you think I would let you go into anything that could be dangerous?’ he asked sincerely. ‘Kate?’             

             
She said nothing, just felt his hand hot on hers. Of course she knew he wouldn’t, but that wasn’t about to encourage her to volunteer herself as bait.

             
‘We can get this planned tonight – do it as soon as possible. By this time tomorrow it’ll all be over.’

             
‘I don’t know,’ she said reluctantly.