Blood Axe (27 page)

64

Ian waited a few
doors away from Sophie's flat, tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. He tried again but Naomi still wasn't answering her phone. She was probably in a supermarket by now, as Ted had suggested. With no phone signal, she was busy shopping for her weekend. That was fair enough. Her shift was over. There was no reason for her to have returned to the police station at the end of her day. It was just unlucky that they were worrying about her when she had no phone signal.

The side street was quiet. If it seemed unlikely that a brutal killer was living in one of those ordinary-looking houses, it was still harder to believe in the identity of the axe murderer. Still, this wouldn't be the first time he had tracked down an unlikely suspect. Whatever he might think about it, the DNA evidence was conclusive. Now that the forensic lab knew what to look for, they had been able to confirm that samples of the DNA found on the axe had also been present in Tim's shop. That in itself wasn't proof that it belonged to the killer. Traces of a lot of different DNA were discovered in the shop. Nevertheless, taken in conjunction with the DNA found on the axe and on the materials discovered in the ditch, there was no longer any room for doubt. The killer was a woman. She had naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. Everything pointed to the one person working at Jorvik they had overlooked. It would be easy to confirm that the killer's DNA matched Sophie's, but right now Ian had to focus on Naomi.

He felt as though he had been waiting for hours when Ted drove up. The sergeant parked badly and leapt out of his vehicle. Ian could see the anxiety on his face before Ted reached him.

‘She hasn't been back to collect her own car. She's still out somewhere in an unmarked vehicle,' Ted gasped as soon as he was close enough to be heard.

Naomi wasn't shopping for the weekend. She was working, her last known destination Sophie's flat. Ian jumped out of his car and joined his sergeant on the pavement.

‘Do you really think all those murders could have been committed by a woman?' Ted asked.

‘Insanity is no respecter of gender.'

‘But would she have been strong enough?'

Ian remembered what Jonah had said. Sophie wouldn't need to be especially strong if she was using an extremely sharp axe. However unlikely a suspect Sophie might have appeared at first sight, there was no longer much doubt about it. They had discovered the identity of the axe murderer. But before they moved in, they had to consider that Naomi might be in danger.

Sophie rented a room in a house where she shared a kitchen and bathroom with a flatmate. Now there were two of them, Ian and Ted agreed they would go ahead and enter the property as quickly as possible, even if they had to smash their way in. If Naomi was in there, the sooner they could reach her the better. First they rang all the door bells except for the one labelled ‘Flat 3'. After a moment, they heard footsteps approaching. The door was opened by an elderly man who peered up at them. He was wearing a threadbare grey cardigan and trousers that were too big for his shrunken frame.

‘Go away!'

The old man shuffled sideways and began to close the door. Ian put his shoulder against it and brandished his warrant card in the other man's face.

‘Police!' he snapped. ‘We need to gain access.'

‘Not bloody likely,' the old man retorted. ‘I wasn't born yesterday.'

There was no time to remonstrate. Ian elbowed him out of the way. He knew this was the kind of behaviour that gave the police a bad name and resolved to return with an apology when the case was over. For now, he was focussed on rescuing Naomi, if she was there. He turned to the old man who was cowering against the wall.

‘Don't hit me.'

‘No one's going to touch you. I told you, we're police officers. We need to find Sophie James' flat. Which floor is it?'

The old man shook his head.

‘Which one is it?'

‘Number three, on the first floor. I'm calling the police,' he called after them as they ran to the stairs. ‘You won't get away with this.'

They ran up the stairs and found number three. Ian knocked. They waited. There was no response from inside. Not being an external entrance, the front door to the flat was relatively flimsy. Ian knocked again. After a moment, he stood back and turned to Ted.

‘Break it down.'

Ted stared at him, his face taut. ‘Back-up is on its way…'

‘We can't wait. We need to get in there now.'

With a nod, Ted braced himself. ‘Stand back from the door,' he yelled, ‘we're knocking it down. Stand back from the door!'

With a loud grunt, he kicked the door. It shuddered. He tried again. At the third impact it burst open with a crash. Ian stepped into the silent flat with Ted at his heels. All at once, Ian raised his hand. They listened. Nearby they could hear muffled whimpering. Ian jerked his head towards one of the doors.

‘Come on,' he whispered. ‘It's coming from in there.'

Ian tried the door but it was locked.

‘Stand back from the door!' Ted yelled again.

Almost at once they heard an answering shout from the other side of the locked door.

‘Will you stop kicking doors down? It sounds like Armageddon out there. Jesus, give me a chance. Didn't you hear me shouting?'

Ted stepped back, frowning.

‘Was that Naomi?' Ian asked.

65

The door flew
open. Naomi stood in the opening, her face flushed, her hair a mess. Her eyes looked wild. On one side of her head strands of hair were tangled and matted with blood that was seeping from a wound in her neck. Staining the collar of her white shirt, it was barely visible against the dark fabric of her jacket, making it impossible to see how much blood she had lost.

‘You're injured,' Ian said, starting forward.

She glared at him. ‘Yeah, thanks for pointing that out.'

‘How bad is it?'

‘I'm not a fucking doctor.'

Ian understood the constable was in shock, but he needed to get past her belligerence as quickly as possible and ascertain the extent of her injuries. She was still standing upright and talking coherently, but he was concerned about her loss of blood.

‘Let me take a look.'

She stepped back.

‘Stand still, constable,' he snapped. ‘That's an order.'

‘Yes sir,' she replied, with a sarcastic emphasis on his title.

She didn't move as he lifted her hair gently off her neck and examined four deep scratches. They looked like flesh wounds, not very deep.

‘She did this with her finger nails?'

Naomi nodded and held out her right arm. ‘The fucking bitch bit me. I'm not sure she broke the skin through my jacket but it hurts like hell. She's a lunatic.'

‘Where is she?'

Naomi half turned so that Ian could see into the room. Behind his injured colleague, Sophie was crouching on the floor on her hands and knees, snarling like a dog. Her palms were flat on the floor, her wrists manacled together.

Ian went up to Ted and spoke very softly. ‘I'll hold her down while you put cuffs on her ankles. We want her immobilised. But be careful. She's likely to kick. I don't want a second officer injured.'

Taking care to avoid her gnashing teeth, Ian grabbed hold of Sophie, pinning her to the ground, with one of his hands firmly pressing her head into the carpet. At the same time, Ted seized hold of her legs and snapped cuffs on her ankles. She wriggled and groaned, but without the use of her arms was incapable of resisting the strength of two men.

With Sophie rendered powerless, Ian led Naomi over to a chair. ‘Back-up will be here soon. We need to get you to a hospital and get you checked out.'

‘I'll probably need a bloody tetanus jab, thanks to that maniac.' She jerked her head towards Sophie, and winced as she moved her neck. ‘Talk about a head case. There was absolutely no warning or I would have stopped her in her tracks. One minute we were sitting chatting, the next minute she just leapt at me, growling like a fucking animal, biting and scratching. Honestly, it was unbelievable. Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed to get my truncheon out of my bag.' She paused, frowning. ‘The funny thing is, as soon as I flipped the truncheon open, she fell on the floor like a limp lettuce and let me cuff her hands without so much as a squeak. It was weird. I tell you, if she hadn't stopped with her biting and scratching, God knows what might have happened.'

Hearing footsteps charging noisily up the stairs, Ian joined a team of uniformed officers outside Sophie's flat to stop them trampling all over the carpet. The flat hadn't yet been searched. Treating it as a crime scene might yield useful evidence. The officers were accompanied by a couple of paramedics who arranged for Naomi to be taken to hospital.

In the midst of all the kerfuffle, Sophie's flatmate turned up.

‘What the hell's going on here?'

‘Who are you?' a uniformed officer asked.

‘I'm Fiona Greenway. I live here. Let me in.' When Ian stepped forward and explained she would not be able to go in the flat until it had been searched, her face went red and she started shouting. ‘What are you talking about? I live here. You can't stop me from going into my own home! You might not believe it but I pay good rent for this shithouse. Now let me in…'

She broke off as Sophie was carried out, strapped to a stretcher.

‘What the hell are you doing to her? Let her go! What have you done to her? Why have you tied her up like that? This is – that's it.' She pulled out her phone and took a photo of her flatmate. ‘This is going online right now. You can't do this to people. We're not living in a police state yet. You'll never get away with this…'

‘Put it online and tell people they can walk the streets safely now because the axe murderer has been caught,' Ian interrupted her sharply.

‘That's ridiculous!' Fiona said.

Ian hesitated before allowing her to approach her flatmate.

‘Be careful. She bites,' he warned her.

Fiona stepped forward.

‘It's all right, Sophie,' she began.

Sophie's eyes focussed on her flatmate. With a sudden jerk of her head, she snapped her teeth at Fiona who leaped back just in time.

‘What the fuck? She tried to bite me!'

Quietly Ian explained that the police had reason to suspect Sophie was a dangerous maniac who had been committing murders on the streets of York.

Fiona's eyes grew wide with alarm. ‘You mean she's really the axe murderer?' she whispered.

‘That's for a jury to decide,' Ian replied, ‘but we have evidence that suggests she is the axe murderer.'

‘Was,' Ted corrected him. ‘She won't be doing any more of that where she's going.'

Recovering from her outrage, Fiona agreed to go and stay with a friend for a few days, until the police had finished with the flat.

‘To be honest, I'm not sure I'd want to come back here,' she added. ‘But at least I suppose I could sell my story to a magazine.'

‘Your story?' Ian repeated.

‘Living with an axe murderer! Not that I knew she was, of course.'

Ian sighed. With all his experience on murder investigations, people still amazed him. Selling a story like that would have been the last thing on his mind if he had been in Fiona's situation. It made sense, of a kind.

‘Young people don't think the way we do,' he muttered to Ted who looked at him in surprise.

They went downstairs. Sophie was being thrown in the back of a police van, snarling and snapping like a dog. Ted looked pale and Ian wasn't sure if his colleague was trembling slightly.

About to ask the young sergeant if he was all right, Ian changed his mind. ‘Oh well, that's what you might call a good day's work,' he said instead. ‘That was a bit hair-raising, wasn't it?'

‘It certainly was. What a nutcase!'

‘A dangerous nutcase. You OK?' he added, as though it was a casual remark.

‘I'm fine,' Ted said.

On the way back to the station to write up his report, Ian thought how lucky he was with his colleagues. Although he had struggled to deal with the crazy killer, Ted had coped, and Naomi had conducted herself with admirable professionalism. Ian was proud to be part of the team that had caught a dangerous murderer.

66

Ian went into
work late on Saturday. Ted arrived in the canteen about half an hour later. From beneath his lowered brows the sergeant's eyes squinted as though he was dazzled by the light.

‘You look as hungover as I feel,' Ian greeted him.

‘I feel terrible,' Ted said, sitting down and sipping a mug of coffee. ‘I'm so hungover it's not true.'

‘Me too.'

Ted frowned at Ian who was tucking into a plate of egg and sausages with beans and mushrooms and fried bread.

Seeing his colleague's expression, Ian put his fork down. ‘Best thing for a hangover,' he assured Ted. ‘The more you eat, the more you soak up the alcohol.'

‘That's bollocks. It's far too late. Once your brain is fried, you can't unscramble it.'

Ian laughed. ‘The way you talk, it sounds like your brain's made of eggs, fried or scrambled, but I'm telling you, you'd be far better off eating them.' He scooped up a forkful of egg. ‘Food and lots of it. It's the best cure for a hangover.'

He raised his fork. Runny yolk dripped on to his plate.

‘If I swallowed a mouthful of that shit, I'd throw up,' Ted said.

Ian nodded cheerily. ‘That's another way to cure a hangover.'

‘Thanks for that. You're in a good mood.'

It was true. Ian thought for a moment. Instead of feeling devastated by the breakdown of his marriage, he felt elated.

‘We caught the killer,' he said at last.

‘And you're going to be a dad.'

Ian paused, fork in mid air. ‘Oh, that,' he replied as carelessly as he could. ‘No, that's not going to happen. At least it is, but I won't be there to see it. We're not together any more.'

‘What?'

‘She left me.'

‘But she's pregnant…'

‘It's complicated.' Ian leaned forward. ‘I'd appreciate a bit of discretion here, but the truth is – well, I don't know what the truth is.'

As he was speaking, it occurred to Ian that his hangover hadn't hit yet. He was still drunk. He probably shouldn't have driven into work that morning. All at once his mind began darting around, out of control. The thought of Bev giving birth without him at her side was unbearably sad. She would be all on her own. Worse, another man might be there in his place. She had told him the baby wasn't his. That meant she was seeing someone else. He shook his head, forcing a mental shutter to close out the disturbing thoughts. He had believed he was fine with it, but he wasn't ready to think about losing Bev yet. None of it seemed real: her pregnancy, their split, her affair – it was all like a horrible dream. He wanted to cling to his state of disbelief for a little longer. He regretted having confided in Ted.

‘Don't mention this to anyone at all, ever,' he said fiercely.

‘Silent as the grave.'

They sat for a moment without speaking.

‘So, how was your evening?' Ian asked at last, with forced good humour.

‘Oh shit. I'm sorry – it's not the best time to be saying this, but Jenny and me are engaged.'

Ian couldn't help laughing at his sergeant's stricken expression.

Scowling, Ted pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘I'd better get to work.'

‘Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. To be honest, I'm still a bit pissed.'

What he should have said was ‘congratulations,' or ‘commiserations,' but he just laughed again. He couldn't help it.

‘Do you think there's a kind of balance in the universe?' Ted asked, sitting down again, Ian's apology clearly accepted. ‘You lost a wife, I gain one. Almost like there's a finite number of marriages possible in the world.'

‘Stop talking shit and go and write up your report, if you're not prepared to do something sensible like join me for breakfast.'

Grumbling that he never should have sat down to watch Ian eat, Ted left. Ian finished his breakfast and made his way along the corridor to his office. Scene of crime officers had finished examining Sophie's room. Ian wasn't surprised to learn the search team had discovered a hoard of small metal objects, mostly coins and jewellery, hidden under a loose floorboard beneath Sophie's bed. Some of the jewellery matched the description of Beryl's rings. When it was all over, and evidence could be released, he would make sure Beryl's rings were returned to her husband. It would be a paltry comfort. Apart from a few cheap pieces, the other jewellery came from Tim's shop. It was a slight comfort to know that all of the identifiable property in Sophie's stash was accounted for. There was nothing to suggest she had killed anyone else.

Ian and Ted faced Sophie across a table. The preliminaries had been dealt with. It was time to start the formal questioning. Ian was glad the interview was being taped, not filmed. Unshaven, with slightly bloodshot eyes, Ted looked as though he had been sleeping rough. A faint sprinkling of dandruff on his shoulders added to his unkempt appearance. Straightening his tie, Ian noticed a patch of crusty yellow on his creased shirt where egg yolk had dripped. By contrast, Sophie looked surprisingly fresh-faced and clean despite having spent a night in a cell. An uninformed observer might conclude that she was the professional police officer, questioning a pair of dodgy characters.

With enough evidence to secure a conviction, they should only need to go through the motions. Their job was made easier by Sophie's refusal to be represented by a lawyer. All the same, Ian was on his guard. Even at this late stage in the proceedings it could all go terribly wrong if he failed to adhere to strict procedures. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act had tripped officers up before on cases that should have resulted in straightforward convictions. Regulating police treatment of the public was necessary to make sure officers didn't exceed their powers, but it made interviewing suspects a minefield. In this instance it would not only be a travesty of the justice system if Sophie were released on a legal technicality, it would let a dangerous psychopath loose. Eileen was away or she would have been present. As it was, the future safety of the streets depended on two hungover detectives. Ian took a deep breath and began.