Read the book: «COLD KILL»

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

The evening was bright and warm, the sun dipping behind…

Chapter Two

It was a few days later when Jack Garrett got…

Chapter Three

It was just after nine-thirty as Laura McGanity looked around…

Chapter Four

Jack put his camera away as he watched the activity…

Chapter Five

Laura leaned against her car and peeled off her forensic…

Chapter Six

Jack was smiling by the time he reached the court,…

Chapter Seven

Laura chewed her lip as Carson approached the home of…

Chapter Eight

Laura tapped her pen against her hand as she sat…

Chapter Nine

Laura was in Carson’s slipstream as he rushed into the…

Chapter Ten

Jack strode into the offices of the Blackley Telegraph, a…

Chapter Eleven

Jack had to park some distance from the police station…

Chapter Twelve

Carson waited until they were clear of the journalists before…

Chapter Thirteen

Jack was sitting in his car, writing the story on…

Chapter Fourteen

Jack checked the clock. Just gone nine. Bobby was playing…

Chapter Fifteen

He rewound the footage again, as he had done for…

Chapter Sixteen

Jack’s movements felt sluggish as he read the words on…

Chapter Seventeen

Light streamed through the open curtain, making Jack groan. He…

Chapter Eighteen

Jack threw his car keys onto the table. Bobby was…

Chapter Nineteen

Carson was first into the mortuary, pushing the door open…

Chapter Twenty

Jack went to the Blackley Telegraph office first. Dolby was…

Chapter Twenty-One

Laura checked her notes, just to make sure that she…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jack was outside the court when he managed to speak…

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jack had texted Laura to let her know that he’d…

Chapter Twenty-Four

Laura sat at the back of the Incident Room as…

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Incident Room was still busy from the lecture Carson…

Chapter Twenty-Six

Laura glanced out of the car window and felt a…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jack was at the table, hunched over his laptop, writing…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Laura was looking down as she started the jog up…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Nothing was clear anymore. He drove quickly in the van,…

Chapter Thirty

Jack had finished the article for Dolby and was drinking…

Chapter Thirty-One

Jack looked out of the window. He was standing a…

Chapter Thirty-Two

The morning arrived as a stream of sunlight through the…

Chapter Thirty-Three

Jack had been distracted by the emails, because the first…

Chapter Thirty-Four

Rupert glanced towards the building that had been his practice…

Chapter Thirty-Five

Jack trotted across the road to the court building. He…

Chapter Thirty-Six

Rupert checked his watch, nearly eleven-thirty, and looked up at…

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Some kids looked at Jack’s car as he drove onto…

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The noise in his head was like a drum-roll as…

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Laura checked her watch as Joe drove along the Cleveleys…

Chapter Forty

As Jack arrived home, he saw that there was someone…

Chapter Forty-One

Adam Carter glanced around the house when he went inside,…

Chapter Forty-Two

Joe was on the phone to Carson, updating him, when…

Chapter Forty-Three

As the sound of Adam’s car disappeared into the hills,…

Chapter Forty-Four

The streets of Whitcroft seemed quiet as Jack drove onto…

Chapter Forty-Five

Jack continued to drive around the estate, looking for something…

Chapter Forty-Six

Jack drove around the estate, feeling better about his article.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Jack held up the wine bottle to the light. Probably…

Chapter Forty-Eight

The morning had been a long time coming.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Jack woke up filled with determination, the emails fresh in…

Chapter Fifty

Laura leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes.

Chapter Fifty-One

Jack paced up and down outside the entrance to the…

Chapter Fifty-Two

Jack was still outside the police station, sitting in his…

Chapter Fifty-Three

Emma’s gate didn’t offer much security, Jack thought. Old wood,…

Chapter Fifty-Four

As Laura and Joe approached David Hoyle’s home, Laura shook…

Chapter Fifty-Five

Jack was spotted as soon as he approached Mike Corley’s…

Chapter Fifty-Six

When they arrived at the police station, Laura didn’t head…

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Jack ran into the Blackley Telegraph office, setting off the…

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Laura dropped Ida and her daughter at the rest home…

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Laura lifted her head off the floor and tried to…

Chapter Sixty

Jack was outside the bar that had once been called…

Chapter Sixty-One

Jack went for a drive.

Chapter Sixty-Two

Emma was sitting on her doorstep when Jack got there,…

Chapter Sixty-Three

Carson drove quickly away from the station.

Chapter Sixty-Four

‘Don Roberts has got him,’ Jack said, as he drove…

Chapter Sixty-Five

It was dark, almost pitch black, as Jack approached the…

Chapter Sixty-Six

Carson banged on Don’s door.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Strong hands gripped Jack’s shoulders and pushed him against the…

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Carson waited outside Don’s house, looking down the road. Laura…

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Carson had called up more marked cars and they were…

Chapter Seventy

Jack waited for the swing, for the drop, his nails…

Chapter Seventy-One

Laura ran for the front door. Carson and a uniformed…

Chapter Seventy-Two

The next few days seemed to pass in a blur…

Read on for In Conversation with Neil White

Dead Silent

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The evening was bright and warm, the sun dipping behind the trees that lined the small copse between the houses, so that the light was filtered, the strips of brightness catching the loop and dance of midges that flitted between the leaves.

He looked at his watch. Nearly time. He knew her routine. Saturday night. A walk to the bus stop on the main road and then into town. She always passed the copse on her route, her head down, rushing to start her evening.

He paced, just out of view, his breaths fast, his chest tight with excitement. Thoughts of her came to him like whispers, so quiet that he could hardly hear them, but with each night they got stronger, so that the whispers became louder, like white noise, a rush, pressing him on.

He fought the urges sometimes, when his drive was low, but those moments were rare, and it was the images of her that drove him. Her hair, blonde and over her shoulders, gleaming against her pale skin. Her small upturned nose. Teeth bright and straight. He smiled to himself when he thought of her skin. Soft skin. Taut. Now that it was time, the noises pulled back, as if they were watching from the wings, breaths held in anticipation.

He knew this one would be different. It would be the strongest buzz of all. No buried body. No burnt out car. No trips to the lake, bound up in chains. This was going to be the best, because he knew it had always been leading to this.

He could almost hear her. The flick of her hair in the breeze, the rustle of her clothes as she walked. Then he realised that the tap-taps he could hear were not the fast drums of his heartbeat or the hum of his pulse. They were the click of her heels, fast steps that seemed to echo along the quiet suburban street. His breaths became deeper through his nose, his chest rising and falling, and he felt himself grow hard. He checked his gloves. No rips. No tears. Nowhere for any trace evidence to escape. He thought about his movements one last time. He had thought of little else all week.

It was time.

He started walking as the clicks got louder, so that he would be on the same side of the street as her when she appeared. As she came into view, she gave him a nervous look, but then she noticed the polo shirt, the police crest on his breast, and the black-and-white ribbon around his cap, a black soft-top.

He smiled, a quick flash of his teeth, and stepped on to the road, so that she stayed on the pavement, the copse to her side. ‘Evening,’ he said, as she got closer. His words almost caught in his throat as her perfume drifted towards him. The scent of flowers, light on the breeze. He had to stop himself from reaching out to run a finger along her neck. Don’t go too soon.

She flickered a smile at him but then looked down again. He followed her gaze. Short black skirt. Legs shaved smooth, tapered into silver heels. He had to swallow, his heartbeat fast, his mouth dry.

His hands were on his belt, fingering for the release of his cuffs. He had practised the move until it was perfect. Speed was key. He had to cut down on the noise.

She was alongside him now. He looked quickly along the street. There was no one around. There were houses, but why would anyone be looking out? If he was quick, they wouldn’t suspect anything.

He ran at her, his shoulder ramming into hers, knocking her off balance. His hand clamped around her mouth and he kept his legs moving, pushing her along the path that ran between the trees, her feet pedalling in the air. He pulled his cuffs free and clicked one loop onto her left wrist, loving the click as it went tight around the bone. She was starting to fight now, her head thrashing against his glove. He couldn’t release his hand, she would scream, and so all he could do was keep his legs pumping, lifting her along, waiting until the path disappeared into the shadows, where the trees grew thicker.

One of her shoes came off. He would have to get it afterwards.

He was in the trees now. There was a small stream that ran at the bottom of a slope, and he knew that he was well hidden down here. He was close to the path, but he would be quick, he knew that.

The thump of his boots on the path changed into the soft sweep of his feet as he made his way further through the undergrowth. When he got far enough away from the path, he threw her onto the floor, his gloved hand still over her mouth.

She started to fight, flailing with the cuff, the loose metal nearly catching him in the face. He pushed her face down and gripped the cuff, yanking both her arms behind her back. A quick throw of the metal and he heard the clicks again as it locked.

He pushed her onto her back, her arms cuffed beneath her, and his free hand began to scrabble around for dirt and leaves. She had her teeth clenched, but he pulled down on her jaw and pushed some in, before reaching down for more, jamming it in as far as it would go, her eyes getting wider, her chest bucking as she coughed and choked.

His hand did the same between her legs, pushing in dirt, stones, pieces of shrubbery.

Then he started to pull at his belt, his other hand still over her mouth. He groaned as he gripped himself.

He moved his other hand from her mouth to her neck and began to press. As tears rolled down her cheeks, as her legs kicked, as he pressed down harder, his moans became louder.

Chapter Two

It was a few days later when Jack Garrett got the call.

He was on the Whitcroft estate, for an assignment for the local paper’s newest editor, Dolby Wilkins, who had been brought in to cut costs and increase circulation. Dolby was all shiny good looks and old money confidence, always in jeans and a casual linen jacket, and his mantra was that two types of stories sold newspapers: sex and prejudice. The local paper left the sex to the red top nationals, so all Dolby had left was prejudice. So he went for the social divide, the quick fix, shock stories over good copy. Immigrants breaking laws, or people on benefits making a decent life for themselves. The first thing he did was to have his business cards printed. That told Jack all he needed to know.

Jack had been staring through his windscreen, uncomfortable with the assignment. He knew that repackaging poverty as idleness got the tills ticking, but Dolby was new to Blackley and he didn’t understand the place. He hadn’t seen how a tough old cotton town had been stripped of its industry, with nothing to replace it, just traces of its past lying around the town, dismembered, like body parts; huge brick mill buildings, some converted into retail units that held craft fairs on summer weekends, while others had been left to crumble, stripped of their lead, the wire and cables ripped out of the walls, cashed in for cigarette money, the light spilling in through partial roof collapses. The stories were more about no prospects in hard times, but sympathy for the unlucky didn’t sell as many papers.

Jack understood that the Blackley Telegraph was a business, but he was a freelance journalist, not a businessman, the court stories his thing, with the occasional crime angle as a feature. But the paper bought his stories, shedding staff writers and using freelancers to take up the slack, some of them just kids fresh out of college or unpublished writers looking to build a CV. So Jack had agreed to write the story of the estate, bashed out on an old laptop in his cottage in Turners Fold, a small forgotten place nestled in the Lancashire hills, a few miles from Blackley.

The Whitcroft estate was on the edge of Blackley, the first blight on the drive in. Built on seven hills that were once green and rolling, Blackley seemed like the ugly big brother to Turners Fold. Traces of former wealth could still be seen in the Victorian town centre though, where three-storey fume-blackened shop buildings were filled by small town jewellers and century-old outfitters that competed with the glass and steel frames of the high street. The wide stone steps and Roman portico of the town hall overlooked the main shopping street and boasted of grander times, when men in long waistcoats and extravagant sideburns twirled gold watches from their pockets.

The Whitcroft estate had been built in the good times, an escape from the grid-like strips of terraced housing that existed elsewhere in the town. Here, it was all cul-de-sacs and crescents, sweeps of privet, indoor toilets, but it had divided the town, had become the escape route for the whites after the Asian influx in the sixties. Mosques and minarets were sprinkled amongst the warehouses and wharf buildings now, the call to prayer the new church bells, and so the Whitcroft estate had become white-flight for those who couldn’t afford the countryside.

Jack pondered all of this as he sat in his car, a 1973 Triumph Stag in Calypso Red. Young mothers walked their prams on a road that circled the estate. The morning sun gave the place a glow and highlighted the deep green of the hedges, the gleam of the brickwork, and brought out the vivid violets and pinks and reds of the flower baskets. He could hear laughs and screams from the local school, which he could see through some blue railings on the curve of the road.

But that was just gloss.

The entrance to the estate was marked by two rows of shops that faced each other across gum-peppered paving stones, making a funnel for the cold winds that blew in from the moors that the estate overlooked. A Chinese takeaway and a grocer occupied three units, along with a bookmaker’s and a post office. On the otherside, a launderette and a chemist. There were grilles on the windows and the doors looked old and dirty.

Behind the shops were blocks of housing, four houses to each small row, with pebble-dashed first floors and England stickers in the windows. Some had paint on the walls or wooden boards over the windows. They formed cul-de-sacs that were connected by privet-lined ginnels, so that the quick routes were the most dangerous. Crisp packets and old beer cans lodged themselves in the hedges.

There were small signs of affluence though. The streets were busy with workmen in overalls and young office girls heading out to work, calling in for newspapers or cigarettes at the grocer’s. There were porch extensions, gleaming double-glazing, new garden walls. The estate wasn’t just for lost causes. A private security van patrolled every thirty minutes, with bald men in black jackets who stared at Jack as they went past. Maybe Dolby wasn’t going to get the article he wanted.

Jack climbed out of his car and wandered towards the shop, looking for some local views. Outside the shop, a young mother stood over her pram with a cigarette in her hand, cheap gold flashing on each finger, her hair pulled back tightly.

Jack gave the door of the shop a push. It let out a tinkle as he went in, and he pretended to browse through the magazines until the shop became empty. He went to the counter.

The man behind it barely looked up. Middle-aged and with a cigarette-stained moustache, he was flicking through a newspaper and only stopped reading when Jack coughed.

‘Jack Garrett,’ he said, and tried a smile. ‘I’m a reporter, writing about the estate.’ He pointed towards the windows. ‘What’s it like for you, with the grilles and the bars?’

He stared at Jack, weighing up whether to answer or not. ‘The council ruined this place,’ he said, eventually.

‘How so?’

‘Because they turned it into a dumping ground,’ he said. ‘Have everyone in one place, so they said.’

‘Have you been here long?’

‘More than twenty years,’ he said. ‘I inherited it from my father, back when this was a decent place to live.’

‘What went wrong?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like people want to work anymore. The young girls get a house when they get pregnant, but the father never moves in. Or, at least, that’s what they tell everyone, but I see them leaving in the morning.’

‘I see people heading out to work,’ Jack said. ‘It doesn’t seem that destitute.’

‘There are still some people left that make me proud to live here, but it’s getting harder every day.’

‘Why is that?’

‘The kids,’ he said. ‘They hang around here all evening, circling customers on their bikes, asking people to buy their booze and fags for them, because I know most are too young. If I try and get rid of them, I get abuse. All my customers want is to come in and buy some milk or something, maybe some cans for later, but the kids put them off.’

‘Have you spoken to their parents?’ Jack said.

The shopkeeper gave a wry smile. ‘Drunk most of the time.’

Jack returned the smile and guessed his predicament. ‘You sell them the booze,’ he said.

‘They’d only go somewhere else for it. And they do mostly, stocking up on the three-for-two offers. They come here when they run out, or when they want to start early and don’t want to drive to the supermarket.’

‘Do the police come round much?’ Jack said.

The shopkeeper scoffed. ‘Hardly ever, and when they do, the kids treat it like a game, looking for a chase. They shout abuse and then starburst whenever the van doors open. Sometimes one of them trips and the police catch them, but nothing ever happens.’

‘Is that why the estate has private security?’ Jack said.

‘It makes people feel safer.’

‘Who pays for it?’

‘Whoever wants it.’

‘What about drugs?’ Jack said. ‘Could the police be doing more about that around here?’

‘No, not drugs around here,’ he said. ‘Maybe some weed, but it’s booze mainly. Always has been. I’m not saying that no one round here does drugs, but the kids that cycle around causing trouble aren’t on drugs. They’re pissed.’

‘You don’t paint a glowing picture,’ Jack said.

He nodded to the voice recorder in Jack’s hand. ‘And I bet you won’t either, by the time it makes the paper.’

When Jack started to protest, the shopkeeper jabbed his finger at the paper. ‘I read them as well as sell them, and I’ve seen the way the Telegraph has gone.’ Then he returned to whatever had occupied his attention before.

Jack turned away, frustrated, and left the shop. He watched the cars heading in and out of the estate. They were mainly old Vauxhalls and Fords, most driven by young men who didn’t look like they could afford the insurance. His phone buzzed in his pocket. When he checked the screen and saw that it was Dolby, he thought about not answering, but he knew he needed to keep on Dolby’s good side.

He pressed the button. ‘Dolby, what can I do for you?’

‘There’s been another murder,’ he said, his voice a little breathless. ‘A young woman.’

Jack paused as he tried to work out what he meant, but then his mind flashed back to the young woman found in a pipe by the reservoir on the edge of town a few weeks earlier, a gruesome find for a father and son on an angling trip.

‘Whereabouts?’

Dolby told him, and Jack realised that he was only half a mile away.

‘Do you want me to cover it?’ Jack said.

‘I’m not calling to spread the gossip,’ Dolby said, some irritation in his voice.

‘On my way,’ Jack said, and jabbed at the off button.

He gave the shopkeeper a smile, but there was no response.

Chapter Three

It was just after nine-thirty as Laura McGanity looked around at the scene in front of her and tried to shake away the nerves. Someone had died, and now it was for her to show that she deserved her sergeant stripes. Nine months in uniform, working in the community, but now she was back where she wanted to be, on the murder squad. And even though this was a tragedy, she felt a familiar excitement as she took in the blue-and-white police tape stretched tight around the trees and the huddle of police in boiler suits holding sticks, ready for the slow crawl through the undergrowth, looking for scraps of evidence – a footprint, a dropped piece of paper, maybe a snag of cloth on the thorns and branches. This was it, the start of the investigation, the human drama yet to unfold.

She had pulled on her paper coveralls, put paper bootees over her shoes, and now her breaths were hot against her cheeks behind the face mask. But Laura knew the excitement wouldn’t last long, because in a moment she would face the lifeless body lying in a small copse of trees behind the new brick of a housing development, just visible as a flash of pink in the green. Then the tragedy would hit her, but for now it was all about concentration, so that she didn’t miss something crucial.

Joe Kinsella came up behind her, poised and still, his face hidden, the hood pulled over his hair. His eyes, soft brown, showed a smile, and then he said in a muffled voice, ‘C’mon, detective sergeant. Let’s see what there is.’

Laura smiled back, invisible behind the mask. The title still felt new, but as Joe set off she realised that the back-patting would have to be put on hold for the moment.

The ground sloped down to a small ribbon of dirty brown water that ran into underground pipes that carried it under the houses. Sycamore and horse chestnut trees filled the scene with shadows. Ivy trailed across the floor like tripwire, but Joe strode quickly through it, crunching it underfoot, in contrast to the soft rustles of Laura’s suit as she trotted to catch up. Laura was grateful that it was dry, or else she imagined she would have found herself skidding towards the small patch of pink by the edge of the stream.

The body had been found by teenagers, looking for somewhere to do whatever they did in the woods, and since then the area had swarmed with police and crime scene investigators, the ghoulish and idly curious hovering on the street. There was a detective posing as a journalist, mingling with those craning their necks to get a view, snapping pictures of the onlookers, in the hope that the killer might be among them, having come back to marvel at his work. That had been Joe’s idea.

As Laura reached the body, she saw that her inspector, Karl Carson, was there. Karl was large and bombastic, shiny bald, no eyebrows, his blue eyes glaring from the forensic hood.

‘Looks like we’ve got another one, McGanity,’ he said, his eyes watching her, waiting for her response.

Laura sighed. That word, another. It made everything harder, because it meant that the murder wasn’t just a family falling out, or maybe a violent boyfriend faking it as a stranger attack.

Laura watched as Joe got closer to the body and kneeled down. She knew that he wasn’t looking for forensic evidence, but for those little signs, hidden clues that reveal motivation. That was Joe’s expertise: not the what, but the why. Laura was still new to the team, but she had worked with him before, and so he had eased her into the murder squad. It was good to be back doing the serious stuff. She had moved north a few years earlier, away from her detective role in the London Met, and had done the rounds of routine case mop-ups and a short spell in uniform to help grease the push for promotion, but this was where she felt most at home.

Laura kneeled down alongside Joe, and as she looked at the body, she saw that Karl Carson was right, that it confirmed everyone’s worst fear, that the murder three weeks earlier wasn’t a one-off. There were two now.

The victim was a young woman, Laura guessed, in her early twenties, more there than the skinny hips and ribs of a teenager but with none of the sag of the later years. There was a tattoo on her left wrist. A pink butterfly. The body had been hidden under bark ripped from a nearby tree, and when it had been disturbed, the kids who found her had been swamped by bluebottles. Laura gritted her teeth at the smell – a mix of vomit and off-meat, and even outdoors, with her nose shielded by a mask, the stench still made it through. As she looked at the floor, she could see the shifting blanket of woodlice and maggots spilling onto the ivy leaves, their work of turning the corpse into just mush and bones interrupted. The body’s stomach was distended by the gases brewing inside, and Laura knew that she didn’t want to be around when it was rolled onto plastic sheeting to be taken from the scene, because whatever was inside the stomach was going to come tumbling out of the mouth.

Laura peered closer to try and see the face, so that she could see more of the person and less of the corpse, but it was dirty and disfigured, and so they wouldn’t get a better idea until the post-mortem clean-up later. Laura tried to be scientific and dispassionate, but she knew that the sight of a healthy young woman who had been mutilated was something that would come back to her in quieter moments.

Laura took a deep breath, more heat through the mask, and tried to take in what she could.

The woman was naked, the clothes taken away, no sign of them torn up and thrown to one side. Just like with the other one. There were bruises on her body, grazes and scrapes that might have come from a struggle, along with small cuts on her stomach and legs, but it wasn’t those that drew her eye. It was her mouth. It was stretched, with soil and leaves jammed in so that it looked like the dead woman had choked on the ground, her cheeks puffed out. There were bruises around the neck, so Laura guessed that it was another strangulation case. Laura looked down at the woman’s hips, and she didn’t need to look too closely in order to see the dirt trails and scratches where soil and leaves had been jammed between her thighs.

It was the tears that made her angry though. The woman’s face was dirty, but there were streaks where her tears had run through the dirt as she choked on the leaves and looked up at the man who ended her life.

‘Is it another one of our own?’ Laura said.

Carson just shrugged that he didn’t know.

The first victim had been the daughter of a Blackley police officer. Gangland revenge had been ruled out, because her father was just uniform, seeing out his career patrolling in a van and doling out advice to young officers who would soon overtake him. Tales of the woman’s private life had made everyone think that it was a jealous ex-lover, or a frightened husband worried about his affair leaking out.

‘What do you think?’ Carson said.

Laura saw that his eyes were fixed on her, and she knew that it was a test. Carson was checking whether Joe had been right to ask for her to be on the team.

She took a deep breath and had another look along the body.

‘She was alive when all of that was jammed in there,’ Laura said, and pointed to the woman’s genitals.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Those scratches and scrapes along the woman’s legs have drawn blood,’ she said, and pointed towards trails of ragged skin that had since dried brown. ‘They will have been caused when he jammed the leaves and dirt up there, inside her, and so it must have happened when she was still alive. The dead don’t bleed.’

Carson gave a nod. ‘Why is that important?’

‘It makes it more likely that she was killed here rather than just dumped,’ she said. ‘And we might get some of his DNA from her thighs or face.’

‘Provided he wasn’t wearing gloves.’

Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘That goes without saying.’

Carson nodded. ‘What about the clothes?’ he said. ‘She didn’t walk down here naked.’

‘He’s got some forensic awareness, because he realised that his DNA would be all over her,’ Laura said. ‘He took the clothes away to stop him from being identified, which makes it more likely that he wore gloves, as a precaution. And he’s cool.’

‘What do you mean?’ Carson asked.

‘Look around,’ Laura said, and she pointed towards the houses that overlooked the scene. ‘All it would take is for someone to look out of their bedroom window, or even hear the struggle, and we would be down here. An eye-witness is the best we can hope for right now, unless he’s slipped up.’

‘Anything else?’

Laura looked at the body, and as she felt Carson’s stare bore into her, she tried to think of something she might have missed. Or maybe he was just trying to make her spout wild theories to use against her later. She wasn’t the only woman on the team, but she still felt like she had to prove herself for spoiling the macho party, and she’d heard the little digs that she was Joe’s new favourite.

Then it struck her.

‘If she was alive when he was filling her with soil, it meant that she wasn’t being raped when she died,’ Laura said. ‘If all of that was in there, he couldn’t have been, and so whatever he did afterwards was just to degrade her.’

Carson tilted his head and Laura saw the skin around his eyes crinkle. It looked like there was a smile there. Test passed.

Laura looked at Joe and saw that he was still staring intently at the corpse.

‘What is it, Joe?’ Carson asked.

Joe didn’t respond at first. That was just his way, quiet, contemplative, but then he rose to his feet, his knees cracking, and looked down.

‘This isn’t going to end,’ he said, his voice quiet.

‘Why do you say that?’ Laura said.

‘Because he has attacked before, and once you start, you don’t stop,’ he said.

‘We know he’s done this before,’ Carson said, his brow furrowed. ‘Three weeks ago.’

‘No, even before then,’ Joe said, and gestured towards the body with a nod of his head. ‘The signature is so fixed. The debris and soil in the vagina, the mouth, the anus. Too much like the last one. But why does he do it? No one just chances on that, the perfect method. Signatures grow and develop. This one? It’s a replica of the first.’

Carson sighed behind his mask. ‘This is sounding like a long haul,’ he said, almost to himself.

Joe shot worried glances at Laura and Carson. ‘We haven’t got the time for that,’ he said. ‘We need to catch him quickly, because the gap will shorten.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

Joe nodded. ‘These murders are three weeks apart, but identical methods were used. He’s found his style and likes it.’

‘Why is all that dirt in there?’ Laura asked.

Joe looked down at the body, then he looked at Carson, and then at Laura.

‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘And we will need to work that out if we are going to catch whoever did this, but I do know one thing: he’s going to want to do it again.’

Chapter Four

Jack put his camera away as he watched the activity at the crime scene.

He had managed some shots of the white suits as they were bent over the body, knowing that Dolby would like those. And as he’d zoomed in, he’d recognised one of the white suits as Laura McGanity, his partner.

He smiled to himself. No, not partner. Fiancée. They had been engaged for a few months now, but things had changed since he’d proposed. Laura had thrown herself back into her career, and it seemed they saw each other only briefly in the house, pit-stops between her shifts. She complained that he was showing no commitment, that he was stalling about the wedding, but it was more that they didn’t have the time to talk about it. Laura wanted it low-key, because she had been married before, a marriage that produced a son, Bobby, the main brightness in their lives, eight years old now. Both of Jack’s parents were dead and so he had no one to offend by keeping it small, but it felt like it wasn’t the same big deal for her, because Laura had already had the big white wedding with all the trimmings.

As he watched her, Jack knew that Laura was the reason why Dolby had asked him to cover the story, hoping for an inside line, maybe a loose word over supper. But Jack knew better: Laura wouldn’t give anything crucial away. Having a reporter as her squeeze had caused her enough trouble before, hints and jibes that she was whispering secrets along the pillow. It would only take one lazy article, where he forgot what was official and what was secret, and Laura could lose her job.

The crowd around the police tape had grown, from the simply curious passing through, some with dogs straining on leads, the police blocking access to the usual dog-walking path, to the unemployed looking for a way to fill the day. Teenagers hung around on bikes, some just watching, others riding in tight circles, all in black, hoods drawn over their faces in spite of the warmth, laughing and talking too loudly. Young mothers smoked and gossiped, and two men at the end were drinking from a can of Tennent’s, which was passed between them as they watched the police at work. A police van drifted across the junction at the top of the street.

All the activity was taking place in a small patch of trees between some houses, the police in the shadows, talking in small clusters. Some flowers had already arrived and been placed by a lamppost, although the identity of the body hadn’t been released yet.

Jack approached the crime scene tape, hoping to overhear the police talking, but as he got near, a female officer put her hand up.

‘You need to move away,’ she said, the light tremble in her voice telling him that she was new to the force.

‘I’m a reporter,’ he said, and then he pointed to where the body had been found. ‘Do we have a name?’

She shook her head and repeated, ‘You need to move away.’

‘I don’t want to get closer. I just want to find out who she is. Do you know yet?’

She was about to shake her head, but she stopped herself and put up her hand. ‘Please, move away.’

‘Can you tell me anything?’ Jack persisted. ‘How did she die? When did she die?’

‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything,’ she said, her voice firmer now. Jack could tell that he had annoyed her.

He smiled an apology and then turned away as he realised that he wasn’t going to get anything else from the scene. He checked his watch. No information would be released for a few hours, and so it was time to go to court, the crime reporter’s fallback, low-life tales of shame from the grim streets of Blackley. That was how Jack made his living, writing up court stories. He would have to speak to Dolby about the Whitcroft article later, because he got the sense that it wasn’t going to amount to much, despite the shopkeeper’s views. Perhaps he would go back later, when the sun had gone down.

Jack watched the crowd for a few seconds more, as they waited for a glimpse of something they didn’t really want to see, like knitters at the guillotine, but it felt grubby, like he wasn’t really that different to them. He had just found a way to make money from the excitement, that’s all.

He turned to walk towards his car. No one really noticed him going, and so he turned his thoughts to what might lie ahead at the courthouse.

The police van drove slowly past the crime scene. He couldn’t help but look, but as he glanced over, he could hear a ticking sound. Not loud. Just like a scratching noise on the inside of his skull. It wasn’t enough to distract him or make him close his eyes.

He allowed himself a smile. Now was the time. It had taken longer than he’d expected for her body to be found, considering that the path nearby was used by joggers and dog-walkers. He must have concealed it well.

He turned away when he saw people look over. The gaggle of the crowd. Someone taking photographs. Like fucking sheep heading for the pen. The first stretch of the crime scene tape and they all shuffle forward. All of that thrill could have been theirs, but they’re spineless, like leeches, second-hand thrill-seekers.

And then the images came back to him in flashes, bright snapshots of her clothes, of her walking, the cloth moving against her soft skin, young and unblemished. Not knowing. Just another night. Then that look in her eyes. The flash of fear replaced by anger, and then back to fear when she knew that her time had come.

Then it came, like always, the sharp focus, where he could see everything more clearly than ever before, in more detail than is possible with the naked eye. Her pupils, black saucers, but he could see the other colours in them too, swirls of dark green and deep blue, the clear view broken only by the flecks of spittle that bubbled up when she first went to the floor. And the coughs of mud. He could see the soil turning in the air in front of him as she spluttered, tumbling in the fading sunlight. Just tiny specks, but he could see their form, uneven and dirty. He remembered the whites of her eyes. He had seen the veins in them and how they were broken by the small explosions of red, just pinpricks, like splashes as the blood came to the surface.

He grinned as he felt the familiar tremble in his groin as he thought of her struggling, the fight under his hand. He knew it would come. He was waiting for it. He liked to feel it, to control it. He could do that, control it, so that it was a present for later, something he had to touch, to feel in his hand as he thought of her struggling and then slowly giving up the fight, her body limp.

He gave the crowd a salute but no one was watching as he slipped away.

Chapter Five

Laura leaned against her car and peeled off her forensic suit. The hood had made a mess of her hair, dark and long, and so she used the wing mirror to tease it back to life. The body had been taken away, rolled onto plastic sheeting and then wrapped up in a bag, and was on its way to the mortuary. Now it was time for the fingertip search of the undergrowth, and she could see the line of police in blue boiler suits waiting to crawl their way through the small patch of woodland. Joe was looking back towards where the body had been found, his hood pulled from his head. Carson was in his car, talking into his phone.

‘What is it, Joe?’ Laura said, reaching into her car for her suit jacket.

He didn’t answer at first, his gaze trained on where the stream headed under the estate. Then he turned round, chewing his lip.

‘Something about this isn’t right,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The location. It doesn’t make any sense. Why here?’

‘That occurred to me too,’ she said, and looked again at the houses that backed onto the crime scene, a line of wooden fence panels forming the boundary on both sides.

‘It isn’t secluded at all,’ Joe continued. ‘One scream from her and all of those lights are going to flicker on, and what escape route is there? There is only one way to the street, because the other way is down that path, into the woods, but he couldn’t get a car down there. So if he drove to the location, he would have had to leave his car on the street, and so he would be blocked in and easy to catch.’

‘Perhaps she was just walking past?’ Laura said. ‘You know, the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was hiding in there, waiting to pull someone in.’

‘Same thing applies,’ Joe said. ‘Too many houses. What if she fought back? If she ran or screamed? There is a whole community to wake. And you saw how the body was concealed, just left on the ground and covered in leaves and bark. She was always going to be discovered.’ He sighed. ‘It just doesn’t feel right.’

‘You’re giving the killer too much credit,’ Laura said. ‘How many people do we catch because they do dumb things?’ She checked her hair in the mirror again, and then pulled away when the sun glinted off some grey strands. ‘So what do you think?’

Joe looked around again. ‘It must have been the victim he was after, not someone random. He wouldn’t have chosen this location unless it was the only place he could get to her, and this is all about the victims, not the killer. We need to know about her.’

They both turned as they heard a noise behind them, and they saw it was Carson, grunting as he climbed out of his car.

‘We’ve got a possible name for her,’ Carson said. ‘Jane Roberts.’

‘Don’t know it,’ Laura said.

‘No, me neither,’ Carson responded. ‘But I know her father. Don Roberts.’

Laura shrugged, the name didn’t mean anything to her, but she saw the look of surprise on Joe’s face.

‘The Don Roberts?’ Joe said.

Carson nodded. ‘It was called in yesterday, when she didn’t return home at the weekend.’

‘How sure can we be?’ Joe said.

‘The description matches, and she doesn’t live too far away.’

‘It’s Wednesday today. Why would Don leave it so long?’ Laura asked.

Joe turned to her. ‘Because it involves calling us,’ he said. ‘Don Roberts will not want us digging into his life. He’s a long-time thug, Blackley’s most violent doorman before he started to run his own gang of bouncers, leasing them out to the clubs. He’s turned to clamping as well, and trust me, you were wise to pay rather than contest it.’

‘But why would that make him want to keep away from us?’

‘Because he makes a lot of money, and that cannot all come from fixing metal clamps to car wheels. However he makes his cash, he won’t be happy to see us looking into his life, and I can tell you one thing: we’ve got trouble now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because this is one of two things: targeted or bad luck. We need to look into the last murder again, see if there is any link with Don Roberts, and if there is, we can expect the revenge killings to start.’

‘And if it is just coincidence?’ Laura asked.

Carson almost smiled at that. ‘The killer just has to hope that we catch him first, because if Roberts gets to him, he will die, but it won’t be quick and it won’t be pleasant.’