Blood Atonement (5 page)

‘No, she definitely said Kent. I think it might have been Deal.’

Heather scribbled a few more notes. ‘She never mentioned who the people were that raised her?’

Darlinghurst drew on her cigarette and looked away.

Then she shook her head. ‘Not specifically, no. I always thought it was an aunt or something, but I don’t remember her actually saying that.’

‘So presumably they weren’t invited to her wedding to

Stephen Buckingham?’

‘God, no. Few people were. Just a small group of friends at a registry office in Chelsea then a gigantic piss-up afterwards.

His parents were not amused at being frozen out.

Don’t think they ever forgave him.’

‘What sort of relationship did she and Stephen have?’

‘Quite a good one until he started shagging everything

that moved. Egregious little shit. He broke her heart. I’m not sure she ever really got over it. After he left she turned down several jobs because of Naomi. She had friends who would take her — and I did a few times, too, when she was a bit older — but Naomi remained the priority. Stephen did more than just break Katie’s heart. He screwed up her career. Yet despite all that, she tolerated him for Naomi’s sake. Actually, for the past few years her attitude towards him had softened somewhat. I remember her telling me it was difficult to stay angry for all that time. She still hated the miserable little prick, though, and with good reason.’

Foster thanked her and handed her his card in case anything else came to mind. As she showed them to the door, she remembered something.

‘Last time we met Katie, two months ago, said she’d

lost her belief

‘Her belief in what?’ Foster asked.

‘That’s what I asked her. She didn’t really answer, so I assumed she meant in her ability.’

What exactly did she say?’

‘She said, “There’s just an empty hole where my belief

used to be.” That’s all. Then she switched the subject.’

As she closed the door behind them, Foster saw the

tears well in Sally Darlinghurst’s eyes.

It was almost midnight when Foster returned to his terraced home in Acton, swallowed two painkillers and washed them down with a hearty slug of red wine. It was

at least a day or two past its best and no way to treat a bottle of Haut-Brion so prized by his father, but the old man wasn’t around to berate him for it and the nearest off-licence had long since closed. He refused to drink

water except in times of extreme thirst. Grown men and

women walking around clutching little bottles of water

like a child with its milk because they were told it was good for them. When did people start asking to be treated like big babies?

He sat at the kitchen table where his laptop sat idle, and took the weight off his aching leg by pulling out another chair to rest it on. It was a familiar position. Much of the last six months had been spent in the same seat, staring at the same screen, drinking from the same glass, often until dawn seeped through the window. He avoided bed and the dread that accompanied the silence and the dark. On

the nights he did try to sleep, he would wake up sweating after reliving those hours of agonizing torture at the hands of Karl Hogg: his ‘payment’ for the sins of his ancestor, a Victorian detective who helped speed an innocent man to the gallows, thus allowing a demented serial killer free to butcher his family, and leaving a stain on the bloodline that Hogg sought to expunge. Foster’s jaw, his collarbone, wrist and shin bones had all been shattered, and his life would have been taken had it not been for Nigel Barnes’s intervention. The wounds would always be with him but his spirit remained intact. Just about.

He fired the machine up and as it rumbled into life he

took another gulp of wine. After visiting Darlinghurst, he and Heather had gathered together the team working on Katie Drake’s murder at their Kensington headquarters to sift through what information they had, while the team scouring London for her daughter continued their search.

Each hour was vital. Leave was cancelled, overtime a

necessity, accepted without question. The likelihood that she had been meeting a lover, or prospective lover, at her home had given them a renewed sense of purpose. They were in touch with every dating agency they could find to see if Katie Drake was on their books. Foster kept coming back to the entry in her daughter’s diary: ‘Can’t have met a man cos she not been out in years…’

The computer was ready. He joined the Internet, a

home from home for the six months of his recovery. But

he bypassed the motoring sites, the poker sites and the

message boards where he debated the modern world with

anonymous Internet warriors, and headed straight for the Internet Movie Database. There he entered Katie Drake’s name into the search field. In return he was met with her entire TV output and a picture, showing dark hair that fell alluringly over hooded eyes, full lips and a look of youth that bore little similarity to the mutilated corpse he had seen earlier that day. She had been, as her ex-husband said, a real beauty.

There was a short biog that mentioned her training at

RAD A. Foster made a note to check their records in the

morning. Her CV appeared to list every popular TV show

of the last two decades of British television, among them a long-running police drama so inauthentic that simply the sound of the theme tune raised Foster’s hackles. She appeared in two different bit parts more than a decade apart, the makers presumably assuming their viewers had

short memories.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He was

aiming to get back to work for 6 a.m. the next morning, well before the search for Naomi resumed at first light. In his mind he reviewed all that he knew about Katie Drake. An actress who took the first opportunity to leave her smalltown upbringing and head for London, where she quickly got work. The dream appeared to be going well, regular

theatre and television work, until she had her daughter. But even then, she was soon back at work, though when her husband left her it dried up. From that point it had never recovered. Her daughter had become her life but at the back of her mind her missed opportunity must have

gnawed away at her. She started to drink, heavily it seemed, and retreated from the world. Foster glanced at his glass of wine. He wondered what a fourteenyear-old’s diary might make of his habits.

She would be fourteen now. Perhaps fifteen. The date

of her birth was vague, probably because he hadn’t been

present. By then Linda had long gone, bored of his

absences. He tried to explain that being a detective wasn’t a vocation, it was a curse. She’d ignored him and said she’d rather raise a child on her own than with him, words that still cut to the quick. Not that he blamed her. He’d treated her terribly, particularly when he learned she was pregnant and determined to keep the baby, no matter how much he tried to dissuade her. Last Foster had heard they were in Edinburgh, living near her family. But that was more than ten years ago. Who knew where they were

now? Happy, he hoped. He drained the glass of its remnants.

Fuck the past, he thought. As Katie Drake’s story

showed, there was nothing but vanquished hope and

regret. Reasons to be cheerless.

He put those memories out of his mind and returned

to the case. After a few moments in thought he was overcome with a dull ache behind his eyes. I’m tired, he thought, even though it’s not long after midnight. He

flicked off the kitchen light and trudged up the stairs to his bedroom.

For the first time in months he slept without seeing

Karl Hogg’s face in his dreams.

A beautiful, wholesome blonde teenager from a respectable home had gone missing. Attractive mother, an actress, which meant lots of pictures on file, brutally murdered.

All in the sanctuary of their 850,000 pounds home. Innocence despoiled. A community united in shock and terror. It was all guaranteed to have the most placid newspaper

editor salivating. The British press had not disappointed.

The picture Foster had seen on the Internet the previous day now stared out from the front pages of every tabloid and broadsheet, while rolling news channels cleared their schedules, star reporters put on the lipgloss, fretted over whether to do their piece to camera hair up or hair down, and decamped to the end of the road within sight of the

scene.

Faced with the media’s feasting, Detective Superintendent Brian Harris had taken overall charge of the investigation.

Foster had been summoned to a meeting with

him, DCI Williams, DCI Chilton and a few other senior

detectives. He entered with a heavy heart, and fended off the inquiries into his health and well-being with as much good humour as he could muster. Harris looked pale and drawn but grimly determined. What wonderful strategy

does he have in store for us? Foster wondered.

His spirits rose when Susie Danson, former forensic

psychologist turned professor of applied psychology,

entered the room, trailing a strong scent that instantly afforded him a remembrance of investigations past. It had been four or five years since he’d last seen her, but time had treated her well. Same dyed-blonde bobbed hair, same pale-blue eyes lit by a fierce intelligence, same flame-red lipstick. She was wearing a tight blue suit, white low-cut top underneath her jacket. He thought she’d given up criminal profiling in favour of writing books, giving

lectures and making money.

Harris introduced her to those who hadn’t had the

pleasure, as if she was the Queen and they were a football team, putting a slightly creepy hand on her back as he ushered her round them. She nodded politely, almost

brusquely. He came to Foster last.

‘DCI Grant…’

‘We know each other pretty well,’ she interrupted, and

flashed him an immaculate smile. ‘How’ve you been,

Grant?’

Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?’ he said, shaking her

hand. ‘I’ve been better.’

“Yes, I heard,’ the smile faded, replaced by a look of

concern. Foster wasn’t sure if it was clinical.

‘I’ve asked Susie to get involved because she’s the best there is,’ Harris explained to the group. ‘She’s had a look at the files, the autopsy report and the scene. She’s going to help us narrow the search.

Good, Foster thought. Before he’d met and worked

with Susie Danson, he’d dismissed profiling as a bit of

well-meaning mumbo-jumbo. She had taught him otherwise.

Harris

gestured that the floor was hers.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said, surveying the room, her file in

front of her. ‘Of course, all that I’m about to say is based on only a glancing acquaintance with the facts. These are some impressions I’ve formed that you’re free to do with as you wish. I’m going to try and come up with a more considered opinion but you know as well as I do how time in these cases is utterly crucial’

She paused, looked down at her notes, clasped her

hands in front of her.

‘This killer was organized,’ she said. ‘There was no

frenzy — he was cool, calm, collected and methodical. This was planned, not opportunistic. There was no sexual molestation of Katie Drake. He did not masturbate near

the body, strip her or interfere with her in any way, pre or post mortem. There is an absence of any sexual desire in her killing. However, given what she was wearing, the fact she allowed him entry, all suggests he has charm. She wanted him. I’d suggest this is a man in his late thirties at the youngest, but probably in his forties and still in pretty good shape. I’m also convinced his intended target was Naomi and that his interest in her is sexual and predatory.

He reasoned the way to abduct her was to befriend her

mother, whom he knew to be vulnerable.’

No one said anything. Foster knew Susie didn’t like

these briefings to be a soliloquy. That she liked her opinions to be challenged. ‘But why did he kill Katie?’ he said.

Why not just abduct the daughter? Most paedophiles

don’t kill other people to get to their targets.’

‘Good point,’ she said, nodding. ‘I’ve given that a lot

of thought because, as you point out, it doesn’t fit the usual pattern. But we know that paedophiles can be very enterprising and very determined. Maybe he deduced

that the only way he could abduct Naomi was by getting

inside her house to do it. Fourteenyear-old girls are not easy prey, not so easy to pluck off the street, unless he knew her very, very well. I guess he decided his best method was to charm and seduce her mother and be

inside the house when she came home. And that to

abduct Naomi without her mother preventing him he

needed her silenced.’

‘What sort of bloke do you think we’re dealing with?’

Harris asked.

“I think this man has dated women. I think he’s probably of above-average intelligence. His real interest is young girls, early teenagers, on the verge of womanhood, between the ages of eleven and fifteen. You need to look at men who might have been charged with sexual offences with women of that age group, and men who have been

charged with offences against their girlfriends’ daughters, or even their own daughters. Start with the local area and move out. I’d also add that your killer obviously drives. He is also reasonably fit and strong. I think I can come up with some more given time.’

‘Thanks, Susie,’ Harris said. ‘That’s all very helpful.’ A murmur of assent passed around the gathering. She flashed a quick smile but her look swiftly became sombre once more.

What about a media appeal?’ Foster said. “I spoke to

Naomi’s dad. He’s willing to do one.’

Your call,’ she said. ‘Some paedophiles get their kicks

from watching the family of their victims suffer. That may well be playing right into his hands.’

“I agree,’ Harris said. ‘Let’s make him sweat.’ The others nodded their heads.