Cold Kill (37 page)

She thought of him as he had stood over Rachel. That distracted her for a moment as she thought of what he had done to her. She concentrated on getting rid of those images. She had to think about him, not Rachel. She thought at the time that she hadn’t been able to see his face, that he was always in shadow, but as she thought some more, there was something. It was the way he cocked his head, like a bird, curious, as he watched her come towards him. He never lost his nerve. He just waited for her to get close, so that he could get her with the Taser. Laura knew that she had to get within fifteen feet for the Taser to be effective, and so he had been patient. For Laura, that made him dangerous.

She tried to think of how he seemed when he had leaned over her. Laura’s body hadn’t been working, but her senses were, and she remembered there was a smell, and with her eyes closed, it came back to her. It was something damp and musty. And cigarettes. But not filtered cigarettes. No, it was the rich, cloying smell of roll-up cigarettes.

Laura thought of him as he leaned over her, her body incapable of reacting, his hands long and thin. Then she thought of the way he looked again, his head cocked. And something about that niggled her. It seemed familiar, she had definitely seen it before, but she couldn’t be sure where.

He was a police officer, that’s where all the clues pointed. The Taser gun. The handcuffs. Was he killing people when he was on duty, using his uniform to lull these women into a false sense of security? They hadn’t found Simon Abbott as he wasn’t on duty and wasn’t at home, but it wouldn’t take long, she was sure of that. But Shane was dead, so they thought, and so was Simon Abbott just exacting some revenge for a friend?

But it might not be Abbott. She tried to think of all the officers who passed through the station. Was there anyone that tall who struck her as being too quiet, maybe too attentive towards her? But she knew that that line of thinking wouldn’t lead her anywhere, because murderers often appeared to be the most ordinary people in the world. The nice man from down the street, or the one who helped out with church on Sunday.

Then she thought of something. She remembered the van. It had been behind her when she was jogging home, which meant that the killer knew where she lived. She sat up straight in the bath, goosebumps on her arms. He could come to her home. She was naked, vulnerable. Why had she told Jack to go out?

Laura stepped quickly out of the bath, wrapping a towel around her body. She needed to get away from the house.

Chapter Sixty-Two

Emma was sitting on her doorstep when Jack got there, her head against the door frame, her eyes almost closed. There was a glass in front of her, half-filled with cider. Her eyes opened slowly when Jack got closer.

‘You’re back,’ she said, and her hand moved unsteadily towards the glass.

He kneeled down in front of her and moved her drink away.

‘What did you see?’ he said urgently.

She went as if to grab the glass, but Jack held it further away, so that she slumped backwards against the door frame. She took a few deep breaths, and Jack thought she was going to be sick, but eventually she said, ‘I told you, Don took him.’

‘When was this?’

She shrugged, her movements uncoordinated. ‘I came home, and then I rang you. Thirty minutes before. Maybe.’

‘Are you sure it was Don?’

Her look darkened at that, her face seemed to gain a bit more focus. ‘Do you think I don’t know Don Roberts when I see him? He was dragging Simon to the car. Two men were holding his arms.’

‘Do you know where they were taking him?’

‘I didn’t ask. I just watched.’

Jack stood up, frustrated. He was about to leave Emma when she added, ‘Don’s got something in town.’

‘What do you mean, something?’

‘Like a workshop.’

‘How do you know that?’

Emma wiped her nose with her hand and beckoned for him to hand the glass over. She drank some greedily when he gave it to her, and then said, ‘I make it my business to know about him. I wanted to burn the fucking place down. But what’s the point?’

‘Where is it?’

Emma gave him vague details, her memory blurred by drink, and then he ran back to his car, leaving Emma on her doorstep, with an almost empty glass of cider for company.

Laura ran into the police station, banging the door against the wall. She was wincing from her bruises, the cuts on her knee bleeding again, making small stains on her trousers, but she tried to rush through, to get to the top floor. She avoided the lift, despite her sense of urgency, and climbed the three flights of stairs instead. When she reached the top, she grimaced and took a moment to catch her breath, before hobbling along to the CCTV room.

The operator barely moved a muscle as she walked in. He was drinking coffee and eating a sandwich from a small plastic box he had brought in from home.

‘Do you remember the footage I asked you to look at yesterday, of the man who came to the police station?’ she said, still panting a little.

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, why?’ he said, his mouth full of bread.

‘Have you still got it?’

He nodded. ‘You asked me to save it for you, so I did,’ he said, putting his food down. He sighed as he rummaged under some papers on one side of his desk and found a disc. ‘Here it is.’

Laura went to a computer terminal at the end of the screens and inserted it. The software seemed to take an age to load, and she was about to turn around to get some help when familiar images jumped onto the screen, the view from the camera that overlooked the reception area.

She was impatient as she scrolled quickly through the footage, the washed-out outlines like flashes as she went through it, and then she stopped when she saw him, the slow nervous shuffle of Rupert Barker fast-forwarded into a rush. She took the footage back and pressed play, and then watched carefully, looking for something she had missed from her last viewing.

The camera looked towards the large exit doors and the row of seats opposite the glass kiosks. The chairs were in front of a window, but it was hard to see what was in the car park because there was a van parked there, a white Transit with the police crest on the side.

Rupert looked hesitant and nervous, she thought, his hand stroking his cheek, and at one point it seemed like he was about to turn around and leave. But she told herself to ignore Rupert Barker. She knew already what he was thinking about when he came to the station. Shane Grix, the file he had uncovered. It was the people at the station she was interested in now.

Laura watched as Rupert looked along the row of seats. There weren’t many people in the station, just a bored-looking teenager in the obligatory tracksuit and a solicitor preening herself at the end of the row. Rupert sat down and fidgeted. Two police officers went through the reception area, their belts heavy with equipment, and Laura looked closely to see whether either of them glanced Rupert’s way. Neither did.

Then Rupert walked off camera. That must have been when he spoke to the counter assistant.

There was a delay before Rupert appeared back on screen, when he sat down on one of the seats, his head forward, his hands clasped together, looking towards the floor, his feet tapping on the ground.

Another police officer marched in through the doors, just moving out of the way to let two female officers out, closely followed by a police driver, who was dragging a trolley of bags to the exit.

Laura straightened, frustrated, and looked away for a moment, sure that the answer must lie somewhere else, glancing back at the CCTV operator, ready to ask him to tee up the external footage. Then she saw something. She looked back at the screen and watched Rupert again, who was still sitting down, looking nervous. There were no more police officers, and the driver was just banging through the doors with his trolley.

She went to scratch her head, but then remembered the stitches and pulled her hand away. She had seen something, she knew it.

She leaned forward to take the footage back again, but then she stopped. It was the driver who drew her attention. He was tall and skinny, the sharpness of his shoulder blades visible through his thin blue jacket. He was standing by his van, visible through the window behind Rupert, not moving. But it was the way he held his head, cocked to one side, like a bird listening out, that made her heart beat faster.

Laura felt a shiver of recognition and cold goosebumps prickled the back of her neck. Her mouth went dry and she felt light-headed as she thought back to the person who had stood over Rachel. She swallowed hard and tried to focus on the screen, ignoring what had happened earlier. Her hand went to the mouse and it felt slick under her hand as she dragged the footage back to where the driver first came into view.

Laura watched as he seemed to slink in, just the top of his head visible at first, a bald patch spreading on the crown of his head, hair light, and his head forward, so that his shoulders were hunched, one arm down to pull the trolley loaded with blue bags, ready for delivery to the prosecution in their office on the other side of Blackley. Then it was there. The glance over to Rupert and a stutter in his walk, just for a moment, barely noticeable, but that falter was what she had seen before. He kept on going though, but he seemed quicker as he went, banging through the doors with his trolley.

Then Laura watched him as he paused by the van, his head cocked, making no effort to load it.

Her eyes went back to Rupert, who was now looking up, towards the doors that Laura had headed for when she had got the message about him. Rupert hadn’t noticed the driver, and Laura saw the final nervous look on Rupert’s face as he turned and walked quickly out of the station, rushing past the van, the driver looking down, his arms by his side. As Rupert went out of shot, the driver looked up, and he seemed to be watching in the direction Rupert had just gone.

Laura jabbed the eject button and almost shouted at the computer as it took an age for the drawer to open. Then she grabbed it and hobbled towards the door, going to the balcony to look out into the atrium. She was seeing if there was someone there she knew, or even the driver himself, but as she looked down, she saw only empty tables, the metal shutter on the canteen fastened down.

She headed for the stairs, taking two at a time, despite the complaints from her knee, and went towards the Incident Room, bursting through the door.

Carson was there, in conversation with the other detectives, their expressions pained, and Laura knew that they were talking about Rachel, how the case had come too close to the team.

‘I’ve got something,’ she said, and held up the disc. ‘It’s not Simon Abbott we’re looking for.’

‘What is it?’ Carson said, moving towards her.

‘Joe talked about the killer being Mr Invisible, about his frustration at being just an anonymous little man,’ she said. When Carson folded his arms, she continued, ‘What if he isn’t a police officer after all? What if he is just someone who works here, who floats around the station, ignored by all of us?’

Carson’s lips pursed as he thought about that. ‘What’s on there?’ and he pointed towards the disc.

‘I’ll show you,’ she said, and went to one of the computers and opened the disc drive. As the software loaded, she said, ‘It’s one of the drivers. Is there anyone more invisible? They get full access to everything, to deliver files and exhibits, but do we ever really notice them?’

Carson started to nod. ‘It would fit,’ he said.

‘So watch this,’ Laura said, and leaned forward to take control of the computer. She took the footage forward to where Rupert came into the police station.

As Carson watched Rupert, Laura said, ‘We thought yesterday that the killer knew that Rupert would recognise the methods he’d used, or else he knew that Rupert had been to the police station.’ Laura watched for Carson’s reaction, and when she noticed the slight widening of the eyes as the driver came into view, at the stutter in his walk, and the way he loitered by his van, Laura knew that Carson had seen what she had.

‘Does it look like him?’ he said, his lips tight, a flush to his cheeks.

Laura nodded. ‘Very much,’ and then she watched as Carson ran from the Incident Room.

The other detectives crowded round to look at the footage.

‘We know who he is now,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘We’ve got him.’

Suddenly, Carson came crashing through with one of the drivers, dressed in a blue jacket and trousers, a Lancashire Constabulary crest on his chest.

‘Who is that?’ Carson barked, pointing at the screen.

The driver looked scared, not used to having people shouting at him, but he took a deep breath as he realised that this wasn’t some minor enquiry.

‘It’s Peter Williams,’ he said.

Carson slapped him on the back and then told him to sit down. ‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Don’t call anyone, don’t speak to anyone,’ and then Carson gestured for Laura to follow him. As she ran out of the room, she felt a certainty that they were almost there.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Carson drove quickly away from the station.

‘Do you think he’ll be expecting us?’ Laura said.

‘Murderers are always expecting us, because they know we don’t give up. He’ll have his story worked out. I just don’t want him getting rid of any evidence before we get there.’

Laura looked out of the window, her jaw set, her mind working its way through the different stages of guilt. She should have got a better view of him. And just a couple of hours earlier, could she have done more? She should have rushed him, but she hesitated and let him get away.

They had to cross town to get to where Williams lived, along terraced strips and up a long climb away from the town centre that took them towards the town’s hospital, which overlooked the green roll of the moors, an antidote to the glass and steel of the hospital building.

Laura’s phone rang. It was Archie, one of the detectives from the squad. ‘I’ve just spoken to the agency that recruits the drivers for us,’ he said. ‘He joined us six years ago. He said that he had been working as a motor cycle courier in London, and then a delivery driver, but both companies have since gone bust. His national insurance number was checked out, and he had no convictions, and so all the tests were passed.’