The Wharf Butcher (13 page)

‘He’s acquired a taste for it,’ said Carlisle, ‘and that bothers me.’

Mason scowled, raising his finger and stabbing the air at him. ‘Then he must be stopped, and quickly.’

‘I know, bu
t
how
,
i
s
the problem.’

‘Surely he’s left something behind for us, a small scrap of evidence perhaps?’

Carlisle fell silent, thinking. ‘I’ll admit they normally become complacent and forget the detail. Their irrationality always surfaces one way or another, and hey presto . . .’

‘Yeah, but this bastard’s cunning with it.’ Mason shrugged.

Carlisle recognized the hurt, the deflated ego. Somehow Jack Mason looked older, much older. His eyes were withdrawn, bloodshot, as if the lights had suddenly been switched off. Removing his spectacles, the profiler breathed heavily on the lenses before giving them a quick wipe. The fact the killer still had a mission to accomplish, worried him. Serial killers started slowly, built up their confidence, until reaching a point where the killings become more frequent. All the tell-tale signs were there, the little idiosyncrasies that this one seemed to use. He stood for a while. Hands in pockets, shoulders slightly slouched towards the ground. The early morning chill had lost none of its edge, but he still felt the warm rays of the sun as it played on his cheeks. Beyond the steep ramp, the wharf was now a hive of activity. Fanned out in extended line, a group of uniformed police officers were carrying out a fingertip search. Close to the water line, he watched as a small team of forensic experts gathered up anything and everything of interest. Sometimes they would get lucky, he thought, come up trumps with a small scrap of evidence.

Suddenly he felt the knot in the pit of his stomach tighten.

‘His victims are all connected, Jack,’ Carlisle said. ‘It’s as if they belong to the same shopping list. One at a time, calculated, cold premeditated slaughter. It’s the trait of the Missionary killer . . . they see it as a gradual process of elimination.’

‘The son of a bitch,’ Mason responded excitedly. ‘You make it all sound so bloody simple. Don’t tell me he’s working through some sort of human inventory.’

‘He probably is, and he won’t stop until he’s totally eliminated everyone on it.’

The silence between them felt strange, uncomfortable, as though Mason was deliberately ignoring the heated signals now passing between them. Was this Jack Mason’s way of dealing with it, he wondered.

Replacing his spectacles, Carlisle’s attention was suddenly drawn towards the end of the jetty, where the appearance of the coroner’s body bag party was making heavy work of a steep wooden ramp. Dressed in white coveralls and wearing green rubber gloves, the four-man team was struggling to keep in time as they conveyed a large wooden casket towards the end of the jetty. Carried by the handles, waist height, they progressed as one. On reaching their destination they turned smartly inwards, at the foot of the corpse. Their leader, a grave faced standard-bearer, removed a crumpled document from an inside pocket and thrust it under Mason’s nose. His voice, sombre, was tinged with authority.

‘The victim’s body has been cleared with the Home Office pathologist, Chief Inspector.’

Mason shook his head, as though resigned to the finality. It was an undignified, needless ending, and a pitiful waste of life, thought Carlisle. Once they knew the woman’s identity, it would be a simple case of legwork. Until then, it was a painful process of elimination.

Turning on heel, together they made their way back along the wooden jetty.

‘It sounds daft, I know,’ said Mason. ‘But I do feel much closer to him now.’

Carlisle nodded. ‘You’re getting to know him, Jack.’

‘Is that what it is?’ Mason replied, turning sharply to face him.

On their reaching the little Bistro Bar, beyond the police cordon tape, Carlisle caught sight of the local TV crews. Cameras poised at the ready, they surged forward in anticipation of yet another headline breaking story.

He stood for a while, and took one last lingering look at St Peter’s Wharf and the haunting activity surrounding it. Normally a peaceful community, this was the last place he would have anticipated to find a serial killer hanging around in. Within easy walking distance of Newcastle’s city centre, it certainly offered a different kind of lifestyle to the everyday bustle of the city. Not today, Carlisle shrugged. Today it was different.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Home Office pathologist, Dr Jillian King, put the cause of the woman’s death as
–
asphyxia by manual strangulatio
n
. Although horrifically mutilated, she had suffered little at the hands of her attacker. Damage to the thyroid cartilage and a broken hyoid bone supported the findings of a quick death. The report also confirmed the early stages of sclerosis of the liver, a condition that had little bearing on the murder, but one which enabled the investigating team to reach a swift conclusion. Jack Mason’s ground troops had moved swiftly, uncovering a notorious alehouse barely a stone’s throw from the River Tyne. The victim, a local alcoholic called Annie Jenkins, was the former personal assistant to Sir Jeremy Wingate-Stiles. How convenient was that?

Of course, Jenkins’ insatiable drinking habits had been well documented. Sadly, her decline and loss of social respectability within the community had ended in tragic consequences. And, needless to say, the case had taken on another twist. Considered a weak link in Gilesgate’s organisation, Jenkins still had access to some highly sensitive documents. The question was now: did she know her killer?

The morning chill had quickly given way to warmth, as David Carlisle drove into the carpark at police headquarters in Ponteland. He was met by a hostile group of reporters – Annie Jenkins’ brutal murder had unquestionably caused a major stir amongst the media ranks. Fear, it seemed, had spread like wildfire, and people were demanding answers. Now calling the kille
r
The Wharf Butcher
,
the press were having a field day.

Clearing security, Carlisle shared the elevator with DS Wallace. Struggling with a pile of case files, he reached over and pressed the lift button. As the doors slid open, Carlisle instinctively took off towards the operations room.

‘The venue’s been changed,’ Wallace said.

‘Changed, changed to where?’

‘It’s now being held in the Conference Suite.’

‘That’s an odd place to hold a team briefing.’

‘I know,’ said Wallace, the cop inside him surfacing, ‘but the senior brass are now involved.’

Following in Wallace’s footsteps, he strode at pace along a narrow central corridor passing numerous laboratories and anterooms along the way. The place reeked of forensics, a mixture of antiseptic and volatile cleaning fluids, which immediately attacked Carlisle’s sense of smell.

‘I see Sir Jeremy’s made all the morning tabloids,’ Wallace grumbled. ‘The guy’s a bloody menace, if you ask me. He’s never out of the headlines nowadays.’

‘What’s he up to now?’

‘Not a lot, but he certainly knows how to drip feed the media with all the right kind of information. In return, he gets primetime coverage,’ Wallace said, pointing the way ahead. ‘I never liked the guy from the moment I first clapped eyes on him.’

‘It’s called politics, George,’ Carlisle grinned.

‘Whatever?’

Wallace’s statement made sense. The idea that a mainstream politician was able to poke his nose into police affairs didn’t sit well with a lot of top senior brass. A notorious public critic, Sir Jeremy had spent his entire political career exploiting other people’s weaknesses. Renowned for his associations with the more unscrupulous paparazzi, Sir Jeremy’s dubious methods of scoring political points was frustrating to say the least. Grave news and obnoxious politicians sold papers, regardless of how many people’s lives it destroyed. Having outlasted three prime ministers, five by-elections and countless courtroom writs, it spoke volumes about Sir Jeremy’s integrity. How he’d managed to remain in public office beggared belief. But he had.

Moments later they entered a large circular building known as THE CARLTON SUITE. It was brightly lit, with laminate flooring and cream walls, and three large north-facing windows overlooking rolling open countryside. Freshly decorated, the room smelt of emulsion paint, Carlisle thought.

‘What took so you long, George?’ Mason asked.

‘I got here as fast as I could, boss. The press isn’t helping any either.’

‘Where’s the rest of the team?’

‘They’re on their way over, boss.’

Glancing up from behind a large glass fronted lectern, Mason made no reply. Three rows of chairs neatly set out in front of him, gave the impression he was about to head up a tribunal hearing. It was that kind of briefing, calculated and far from informal. As the room began to fill, the odd strangers amongst them were obviously the senior back room staff; the variety seldom seen in broad daylight. The late arrival of the Assistant Chief Constable brought with it a sombre reticence, broken only by the whirr of the closing window blinds as the room was plunged into semi-darkness.

First, Mason took them through the forensic evidence, followed by key eyewitness accounts leading up to Annie Jenkins’ murder. According to the events timeline, around nine-thirty on the night in question, she was last seen sprawled out across the back seat of a stolen Ford Mondeo, being driven at speed from the Phoenix public house in Gateshead. The vehicle’s driver was described as a tall, thin set, white male Caucasian. Dressed all in black, his age was given as twenty-five to thirty.

‘Vic. What’s the latest feedback on the pub’s CCTV?’ Mason asked.

‘There wasn’t any,’ Miller shrugged.

‘What do mean, there wasn’t any?’

‘On the night in question, the pub’s CCTV system was switched off.’

‘That’s a fat lot of good. What did the landlord have to say?’

Miller braced himself. ‘Earlier that evening the punters had been watching a European football match. Milan verses Arsenal. It was a great game, but a crap result if you were an Arsenal fan. They got hammered four-nil. Anyway, after the match the landlord simply forgot to switch the system back on again.’

‘More likely the tight bastard didn’t have a Sky Sports Box Office licence,’ jested PC Dobson.

A few titters of laughter broke out, but it was short lived.

‘That means we lost our best chance of getting a positive ID on the driver,’ said Mason, still holding the young constable’s glances.

‘Sorry, boss. I was merely raising a point.’

‘And a bad one at that,’ said Mason, turning to face the rest of the team. ‘OK. What other CCTV coverage have we managed to secure, Kev?’

DS Morrison clenched his jaw. Having attended just about every type of road traffic accident there was to see, nothing surprised him anymore. The Sergeant’s only pet hate was attending fatal road traffic accidents where young children were involved. With six grandkids of his own, he detested the emotional stress involved.

‘There were fifteen live cameras operating in the area that night. All but four have been accounted for. The rest were none operational.’

‘Do we have a fix on the type of vehicle used?’

‘Yes,’ said DS Morrison. ‘It was a Mk3 Mondeo.’

Mason shuffled awkwardly. ‘A Mondeo . . .’

‘I know, and there seems to be a general pattern building here.’

‘Remind me of the car used in the Riley murders?’ asked Mason.

As he spoke, Morrison kept referring to his notes. ‘There was no CCTV coverage available on that murder enquiry, boss. However, tyre treads left at the crime scene matched those of a Mondeo found abandoned on Shields Road in Chillingham.’

‘In other words . . . the same vehicle,’ said Mason.

‘Yes, but I think we may have another small problem here.’

‘Problem?’ said Mason.

The sergeant raised an eyebrow. ‘Our suspect seems to have found a method of disarming this type of vehicle’s security system. He’s clever with electronics, by the look of things.’

‘Good work, Kev. Let’s run an Automatic Number Plate Recognition on every Mk3 Mondeo in the area. I believe the A1M motorway is still covered by a number of fixed cameras, is it not?’

The Sergeant nodded.

‘Let’s start by covering both directions between Gateshead and Cramlington.’

‘That’s one hell of a stretch of road,’ the Sergeant added.

‘I don’t care. I want round-the-clock surveillance on this one.’

‘It’s just an observation,’ said George Wallace. ‘In the event of any vehicle pursuit, unmarked patrol cars tend to give us better results . . . you may wish to consider it.’

‘Good point, George. Let’s go with that and see what results it brings in.’

The tension was building.

Turning to the Coroner’s report, Mason outlined the deep lacerations to Jenkins’ upper torso, as being drawn from left to right – the hallmark of a left-handed attacker. Described as six foot two, slightly built, and exceptionally strong, the killer was thought to be local. Things were coming along nicely, thought Carlisle. They had a few solid leads, forensic on the footwear, and a clear description of their suspect’s physical characteristics. Now that Ernest Stanton’s murder was back in the frame, Mason was concentrating on the kill zones. Not a bad idea, he though, as he scribbled down some ideas and put them to the back of mind.

They spent the next fifteen minutes running back over the possibilities. Times, locations, the latest forensic developments; nothing was left to chance.

‘Vic,’ said Mason. ‘Where are we with these new investigations of yours?’

The DS checked his files, and made a point of standing. ‘We’ve had an interesting breakthrough involving a Baltimore clipper calle
d
Cleveland
.
Commissioned by Gilesgate to carry out its coastal survey operations, it’s currently registered with the Port of Tyne Authorities. The point I’m making is this,’ said Miller, holding up a well-thumbed document. ‘We are now able to monitor her comings and goings, besides keeping a regular check on her passenger lists.’

Mason gave him a quizzical look. ‘OK. So what’s the connection?’

‘Well,’ Miller said, scratching the side of his face, ‘that’s an interesting question. As it turns out, the majority of Gilesgate’s board are using her as a regular meeting place.’

A loud cheer rang out around the room.

‘Nice one,’ Mason said approvingly. ‘Anything involving Gilesgate has to be of major interest to us. There’s a link here somewhere. If not, then why is the killer targeting only Gilesgate board members?’

The noise levels heightened.

‘Does anyone have anything to add?’ Mason said.

‘Yes, boss,’ Luke James answered, holding up an arm. ‘We’ve had a stroke of luck with our low-key surveillance operations.’

Mason gave James a long-suffering look. ‘Nothing to do with this corner shop lead, has it?’

‘No boss, it’s better than that,’ said James. ‘Lunchtime yesterday, Henry Fraser checked into the Copthorne Hotel on Newcastle Quayside where he met with Trevor Radcliffe––’

Mason cut in. ‘For those not aware, Trevor Radcliffe is a senior board member and has major financial interests in Gilesgate. He’s clever with numbers, apparently.’

‘Cheers, Jack,’ said James, frantically unloosening his tie. ‘As I was saying, late yesterday afternoon they were joined by Thomas Schlesinger. He was the other half of Anderson & Schlesinger law practice.’

‘Hold on,’ said Mason. ‘I thought Schlesinger sold out on his half of the business after he had a major stroke?’

‘He did, boss.’

‘Any idea what he was doing there yesterday afternoon?’

James shook his head. ‘No. That’s the puzzling bit.’

‘Isn’t he still mates with Sir Jeremy?’ asked Mason.

‘And Henry Fraser,’ said Miller. ‘If you ask me, the three of them are up to no good. It could be coincidence, of course, but I’m not convinced.’

Carlisle had an inkling of where this was all heading.

‘Do you think the killer may have spooked these people?’ said Mason.

‘There could be an element of that, I suppose.’ James rolled his eyes as he glanced around at the others. ‘Mind, this Henry Fraser runs half of Newcastle and is well known to the police.’

Mason didn’t respond immediately. He just stood there and thought about it.

Luke James continued. ‘Like I say, Fraser’s a muscle man. That’s why he hired John Matthew to go after this Wharf Butcher in the first place. Now that Matthew is out of the equation, it wouldn’t surprise me if Fraser wasn’t planning something very similar.’

‘That sounds plausible,’ said Mason, through tight lips. ‘Let’s keep this operation low key, and see what develops. The last thing we want to do is to ruffle Fraser’s feathers.’

James remained standing, and it was making Mason uncomfortable. They discussed it some more, before the Sergeant finally sat down.

‘Right then,’ said Mason. ‘It seems avarice is the common denominator in all of this. Derek Riley’s murder was a straightforward case of opportunist investment gone wrong, whereas Charles Anderson’s death was one of pure greed. What does that tell us? We know that every board member has invested heavily into Gilesgate, and there’s an awful lot of money slushing about in the system. In which case we must ask ourselves the question, is our killer one of them?’

‘It’s possible, but where does that leave Ernest Stanton’s murder in the grand scheme of things?’ Wallace commented.