Next morning Terry found himself back in front of Churchill’s desk. The animosity was still there, smouldering under the ashes of a night’s sleep.
‘No hard feelings, I hope, Terence? A few harsh words are natural in a job like this. I’ve always encouraged blokes on my team to speak their minds, you know.’
‘Sir.’
‘Listen, Terence, I didn’t get much sleep last night, I was thinking. It was one of your mistakes which set me off, matter of fact. But then nobody’s perfect. It sometimes takes fresh eyes to come in and see what was there all the time.’
It was years since Terry had hated a senior officer so much. ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ he said woodenly. Except that you’re younger than me, and took my job.
‘No, I know.’ Churchill studied him with deep satisfaction. ‘But look at the evidence, old son. We’ve got six assaults on women — Clayton, Whitaker, Gilbert, Steersby, Hurst and now Sarah Newby. Your original idea was that they were all committed by the same lad — Gary Harker. But that won’t work. The DNA proves he didn’t attack Karen Whitaker. He couldn’t have attacked Helen Steersby because he was in custody at the time, and Jasmine Hurst was murdered by Simon Newby. So the only assault we know he committed was the one on Sarah Newby, because we saw it with our own eyes.’
‘And Sharon Gilbert, sir.’
Churchill nodded sagely. ‘I agree Sharon claims he raped her and there’s evidence to support her claim, but not all of it does, even now.’ He smiled enigmatically at Terry. ‘Unlike you I examined that hood, when I took it down to forensics. What do you think I found?’
Terry refused to answer. Churchill delighted in his hostility.
‘Fair hairs, Terence. With a tinge of red. Quite short ones …’ He held his finger and thumb a millimetre apart. ‘… inside the hood, so they must have been left by the wearer. See what I mean now, about looking carefully at the evidence? Your friend Harker has brown hair. Whereas Simon Newby’s hair is — go on, tell me?’
‘Fair, sir,’ said Terry bitterly. ‘But …’
‘And very short, too, as I recall. What my father used to call a crewcut, right?’
‘But he couldn’t have done it! All the evidence points to Harker ….’
‘Not this evidence, Terence …’
‘Sharon identified him, for God’s sake! Her son did too!’
‘He was masked, Terence! Wearing a hood!’
‘But …’ Terry stuttered, trying to put up reasons for something he thought was obvious. ‘… but Simon didn’t even know her!’
‘Didn’t he? All the rapist’s stuff was found in his shed.’
‘Yes, but the watch! The rapist took Gary’s watch.’
Churchill nodded. ‘I agree, that’s a key point. But even so, where was this watch found? In Simon’s shed, where Gary had gone to look for it. What does that tell you? Maybe he’d asked Simon to get it back for him, and Simon interpreted his instructions a little enthusiastically …’
‘That’s absurd, sir, it has to be …’
‘Is it? It’s only a possibility, true, but look what happens next. Gary has an argument with Simon’s mother, and assaults her — a serious assault that she won’t bring up in court. Why? Fear of what Gary might say about her son? About herself, perhaps? About what they both knew?’
Terry’s baffled silence seemed to gratify him.
‘You’ve always believed these attacks were the work of one man, haven’t you, Terence? The Hooded Killer, as the Evening Press called him. Well, maybe your idea was right, but you got the wrong villain, that’s all? What if our serial rapist isn’t Gary at all, but Simon Newby?’
Terry shook his head. ‘I just don’t see it, sir.’
‘Well, look more closely. I’ve sent Simon’s hair for DNA analysis, and asked forensics to compare it with the fair hairs in the hood, right? I’ve also asked them to compare the Whitaker hair with both of those. If all three match, then presto! We’ve got him for three of your five assaults — Sharon Gilbert, Karen Whitaker, and Jasmine Hurst!’
‘And if they don’t?’
Churchill shrugged. ‘If they don’t, we still prosecute Simon for Jasmine’s murder, and look again at the rest. But I think they will match, Terence old son. For two reasons. One, Whitaker’s attacker had fair hair too. Fair hair with a faint tinge of red, no less — under my pretty forensic scientist’s microscope they look exactly the same. And two, the photofit that Helen Steersby gave us. Remember that?’
Terry nodded glumly. He could see what was coming.
‘It didn’t look like Gary, did it? Of course not, he was locked up at the time. But it did look like Simon, remember? Especially about the nose. If Steersby picks him out at an ID parade, there’s another one crossed off our list. Which only leaves Maria Clayton.’
Churchill considered Terry thoughtfully. ‘Did Simon have any connection with her?’
‘None that I know of, no.’
‘But you’ve had no reason to look, have you? Well now you have. I want you to go through that file again. Check it carefully, piece by piece, for anything, anything at all, that links to Simon Newby. If there is something, then your original idea about a single attacker will begin to make sense again, won’t it?’
He smiled expansively. ‘You were just focussing on the wrong man, old son. Gary instead of Simon. So this last one, the murder of Jasmine Hurst, may not be the crime of passion it first appeared, but the work of a guy who’s been practising for some time.’
The door opened and a small boy peered out. Harry Easby smiled.
‘Hello, Wayne. Is your mother working now?’
‘No. She’s on’t loo.’
‘Oh, right.’ Harry hesitated, digesting this unusually frank admission. ‘Well, er …’
‘Who is it, Wayne?’A woman’s voice called down the stairs, followed by the sound of a toilet flushing and feet descending.
‘A feller, mum. He’s …’
Sharon Gilbert’s smile of welcome faded as she recognized Harry. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Don’t be like that, now. I’ve brought your ring back. Can I have a word?’
‘If you must.’ In the living room, she sat down and Wayne climbed onto her lap, from where he glared at Harry suspiciously.
‘Where’s the little lass?’
‘Asleep, upstairs.’ She frowned at him. ‘How did it go then? Did you get him?’
‘Gary? We made him sweat.’ Harry passed her the gold ring with the letter S engraved on it. She looked insulted. ‘Won’t you be needing it for evidence?’
‘We had it dusted for prints but there weren’t any, I’m afraid.’
‘So what have you charged him with?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid, love. He …’
‘Nothing! But he raped me — I told you!’
‘We know that, Sharon …’
‘And this ring and that watch prove it. The trial was all wrong.’
‘I know that, but the law says we can’t charge him with the same crime twice …’
‘So he’s got away with it again, the bastard.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
For a moment he thought she was going to cry. Wayne thought so too; he put his arms up and hugged her. She hugged him back, fiercely. Then they heard Katie grizzling upstairs. She put Wayne down.‘There’s a bottle of orange in the kitchen. Take it up to her, will you, Wayne.’
As he left the room Harry smiled. ‘He’s a little prince, that lad. How old is he, now?’
‘Seven. He always looks out for his sister. And me.’
Harry nodded, remembering her trial. ‘He does that, right enough.’
Sharon opened her handbag for a cigarette. Her hair hid her face as she lit it. When she looked up Harry noticed again how attractive she was. She was also, he realised, very angry.
‘So Gary’s walking round, free as a bird. What am I supposed to do if he comes here? He might, you know!’
‘Phone the station. Ask for me if you like.’
‘Oh aye.’ She gave him a brief, pitying glance. ‘Gary eats lads like you for breakfast.’
‘He didn’t look so tough earlier. Like I said, he was sweating.’
She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘What are you, my personal bodyguard?’
That hadn’t been his idea, but Harry suddenly saw possibilities in it. After all, officers were encouraged to use their initiative. ‘Well, if you feel you need protection …’
‘You’d offer it?’ She laughed, a mixture of anger and contempt. ‘And that’s it, is it? That’s all I get for being raped, screwed by the police and the bloody lawyers — you! What are you going to do, then, sunshine? Come round here on your night off?’
‘I could do,’ said Harry softly.
There was a silence. She sat down on the arm of a chair, crossing her legs slowly and flicking ash into the fireplace. A cool, knowing look came into her eyes. ‘Oh yes. Fancied what I told you last time, did you?’
‘I could be useful to you,’ Harry said.
She laughed again. ‘I can get plenty of fellers who are useful like that.’
‘I’m sure you can. I meant, other sorts of protection.’ He nodded towards the sound of the children’s voices upstairs. ‘From the social services, for instance. Someone gives a bad word to them, they’ll be round here like a shot. Place of safety orders, child protection, foster homes — you don’t want that.’
‘You rotten bastard! Get out of here — now!’
Harry stood. ‘I don’t want that either, Sharon. I think they’re fantastic kids. You’re not so bad yourself.’ He put his hand on her arm. She shook it roughly away.
‘Piss off!’
‘You don’t mean that, Sharon. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that about the kids. It was just an example, that’s all. I could be useful to you, you could be useful to me …’
He touched her hair, very gently; ran a finger along the line of her jaw. There was still anger in her face, but also — resignation.
‘Just how could I be useful to you, you young bastard?’
He tilted her chin up towards him, savouring the thrill of power. ‘I think you know that well enough, darling. Don’t you?’
The work of a guy who’s been practising for some time. Churchill’s words echoed in Terry’s brain. He was shaking, not just with anger at his humiliation, but also at the awful possibility that Churchill might be right. Terry didn’t think he could bear that. If this wretched man could waltz in from outside, take a brief look at these cases and instantly see a truth which had eluded Terry for months — well, what did that say?
And his argument was quite persuasive. The evidence of the hairs and the DNA might implicate Simon in the Whitaker case and even, astonishingly, in Sharon Gilbert’s rape. Helen Steersby might pick him out in an identity parade too. Which would leave only the murder of Maria Clayton for Churchill to collect a full house. A glorious triumph for a newly appointed Detective Chief Inspector.
And yet, and yet. The boy was the wrong type, Terry thought. Every serial killer he knew of had begun with minor crimes — burglary, petty theft, minor violence — building up gradually to something more evil. Gary Harker had a long profile like this on the police computer. Simon Newby had none. He was a criminal innocent.
Unless we’ve missed something. Go through it carefully, piece by piece …
He felt an unexpected reluctance to touch the file on Maria Clayton. At first he couldn’t understand why; then it came to him. It brought the image of his wife, Mary, into his mind.
Mary, raising her face to kiss him as he left for work. That was the last time he’d seen her alive. Later that day two hooligan joyriders had mangled his wife and her hatchback into a screeching heap between their stolen Jaguar and a garden wall.
This was the first major crime he had worked on after Mary’s death. He’d forgotten how hard it had been to face. Several colleagues had suggested that he didn’t need to take on a murder enquiry so soon, but he’d been determined. He wanted to get revenge on Maria’s killer just as he hoped the courts would take revenge on the boys who had killed his wife.
But of course neither had happened. The boys got two years’ youth custody, and were out in less than a year. And Terry had failed to find Maria’s killer.
A few months later, he had been passed over for promotion, in favour of the outsider, Churchill. A man eight years younger than himself. A man with all the energy and ambition which he had lost. A man determined to humiliate him on the path to success.
He sighed, and opened the Clayton file. It doesn’t matter who catches the villains, he told himself, what matters is that they are caught. But he didn’t believe it.
He’s wrong, and you can prove it, a different voice inside him said. It was the voice of another, younger Terry; the man he had been before Mary died. The man who sometimes worked all night and weekends too, the man who, with only a couple of months’ practice, had run inside the first fifty in the Great North Run.
Begin at the beginning, the voice told him. Check everything. The answer’s in there somewhere. And if it isn’t, you’ve got to go out and find it.
As he read, it came back to him.
Maria Clayton had been found dead on Strensall Common in September last year. She had been bound, strangled, and raped. Her small dog, a Yorkshire terrier, was found with its throat cut a few yards away. She had been an up-market prostitute who lived in a pleasant detached house in Strensall. She was in her mid thirties, with a daughter at boarding school, which in itself proved how successful she was. Her business had been discreet and well organized. Her maid, Ann Slingsby, a widow in her fifites, had rung the police to report her missing.
One obvious group of suspects were Maria’s clients, who were recorded, with notes of their preferences, in Mrs Slingsby’s appointments book. Terry smiled wryly at the embarrassment he had caused to businessmen, social workers, airline pilots, even a headmaster and a sprightly old age pensioner, the customers of the service Maria advertised as ‘sexual therapy’. Many had appeared to be happily married; some, he feared, no longer were.
None, though, were as young as Simon Newby; all, unlike him, had good jobs which enabled them to afford her fees. Many had been with friends or family at the time of her death; none appeared to have any reason to wish to kill her.
So there we are, thought Terry. A woman leading a quiet life with no apparent enemies. There was no motive, nothing to explain why Maria had been murdered, rather than any other woman who had been walking alone at that time in that place. Which, of course, made the crime more frightening to the public and the press. And harder for the police to solve.
His team had interviewed everyone they could find who had been on Strensall Common that evening. Several people had seen Maria walking her dog, but she had been alone and seemed perfectly happy. No one had heard any screams or barks. One man had seen what might have been a masked figure running near where the body was found. But the figure had been 100 yards away, it might have been a black man rather than someone wearing a mask, it might even have been a woman.
With a sigh, Terry spread the photographs on his desk. They were horrific, as bad as those of Jasmine Hurst, as bad as those of any murder he had seen.
Maria had been bound, half-strangled, and raped before she was killed. The only puzzling thing was that there was no semen. Given her profession, Terry had expected to find some, but Ann Slingsby had told him that all her clients used condoms and indeed there were traces of lubricant in her vagina.
In addition to the bruising caused by strangulation, there was a small cut in her throat, to the left of the windpipe, possibly caused by someone seizing her from behind and threatening her with a knife. Jasmine’s throat had been cut, much deeper, in almost exactly the same place. But this woman had been strangled, and only her dog’s throat had been cut. Some black cotton fibres had been found in its mouth. Probably it had barked, and fought to protect its mistress. A brave animal, this tiny Yorkshire terrier, to attack a man twenty times its own size. But unfortunately, it had not drawn blood.
The other evidence was a footprint from a size 9 Nike trainer a yard from the body. Similar prints were found on a path fifty yards away, the pressure from toe and heel indicating that the wearer had been running.
And that was it. A man with a knife, wearing Nike running shoes and black cotton trousers. Probably a black top as well, and maybe a black hood. Did any of this point to Simon Newby? The shoes? Well, Simon had size 9 Nike trainers. So did Gary, and millions of other men. The hood? Well, it’s not certain there was a hood, so unless forensics find some trace of Maria on that balaclava from Simon’s shed, that’s out too. The tracksuit trousers from the shed, were they torn, bitten by a dog? That would make a difference. He made a note to ask forensics. Otherwise, there was nothing.
Reading all this, Terry remembered what Ann Slingsby had told him about the builders who extended the kitchen two months before Maria died. The five workmen had been amused to discover that Maria was a prostitute but most had been fine about it, accepting that she was a decent lady who was out of their class. One, however, had been awkward and boastful. Maria had told Ann she’d had sex with him, and regretted it. He was a yob, who didn’t know how to behave. His name was Gary Harker.
Terry had traced the other builders; all four remembered Gary’s boasts of having sex with Maria, and had seen her shut the door on him smartly when he asked for another session. Gary had been humiliated and angry, and they had avoided teasing him about it because that sort of joke could turn dangerous, with him.
Gary told Terry that she’d been too expensive. He agreed that he had asked for sex free next time but said it was a joke, claiming that she wasn’t worth the fifty pounds she charged. He admitted that he occasionally went running on Strensall Common, and had no convincing alibi for the night of Maria’s death. But when Terry searched his flat he found a blue Lycra tracksuit, not a black cotton one. His size nine Nike trainers were new, and there was no balaclava hood. So he had been released.
And then, three weeks later, Karen Whitaker had been attacked.
By a man with a knife, wearing a black tracksuit, black balaclava hood, and wearing size 9 Nike trainers, who had stolen her camera. Not only had Gary Harker had been one of a group of workmen employed to repair the student accommodation where Karen Whitaker lived, but he had also found nude photographs of her in her room and shown them to his workmates. Two of the photographs in her room had his fingerprints on them.
It was enough for Terry. Letters were appearing in the Evening Press accusing the police of failing to protect women. He arrested Gary and charged him with both crimes.
Then, four weeks later, the DNA report on the hair from the tape used to bind Whitaker came back. Terry groaned as he remembered that day. The charges in the Whitaker case were dropped. Three weeks later, the CPS refused to proceed against Gary in the Clayton case either.
Gary was released and, Terry thought, immediately proceeded to rape Sharon Gilbert. As soon as he was acquitted of that, he assaulted his own barrister. And despite the compelling evidence against Simon Newby, Terry still suspected that Gary might have murdered Jasmine Hurst too. True, there were differences in method: Maria had been strangled, Jasmine’s throat had been cut. But everything about Gary’s character fitted this murder, just like Maria’s.
Gary had known both women were sexually promiscuous, after all. He could easily have thought, in his primitive way, that this meant they should be available to him. And then there was the footprint they’d found beside Jasmine’s body — size 9 Nike trainer.
Terry shook his head sadly. It isn’t enough, given the weight of evidence against Simon. Maybe Churchill’s right, I am obsessed. But then he hasn’t been on Gary’s trail as long as I have, he didn’t react like I did to the attack on Sarah Newby …
He shuddered. Gary was going to get away with that, too. The thug seemed to lead a charmed life. Well, perhaps it’ll take a detective who’s obsessed to put him away.
Terry looked at his watch, and saw it was nearly six o’clock. Trude would have cooked for the children, and they would be asking her if he had rung, pestering to know if this was one of the nights they would see their dad. Well, they would. Today at least nothing need interfere with that precious time in the evening, when he could play with his girls, hear about their day, and read them a bedtime story. Perhaps that made him a less diligent detective than Churchill, who had nothing else to think about. But at least it gave him a life.
Afterwards, he thought, when they’re in bed, perhaps I’ll take another look at that shed, find something Churchill’s missed. Or read about these cases some more.
He stood up, stretched, and slipped a file into his briefcase to take home That’s my bedtime story, he thought. Perhaps I am getting obsessive again. Perhaps I have to. Whether it’s good for me, or not.