Hurt (The Hurt Series) (8 page)

Jessop stood, angled the light to the top of Darren’s head slumped at an awkward angle against the door. She peered closer, inspecting the mop of hair and seeing spots of congealing blood from where the killer had yanked hard enough to pull hairs from the boy’s scalp. She directed the beam along the window’s broken edge, spying more blood, drawn, she suspected, from Darren’s naked back as he fought for his life. She considered the petrified twenty-one year-old brunette’s breathless interpretation of what happened next.

‘
And that’s when he spoke. He told me if I left the car I would be next. Then he said something like only when I’m no longer afraid can I begin to live. He sounded so fucking normal…calm. I mean, how can that be? How can he sound so fucking normal after what he did? So I just sat there, didn’t I? I sat there and threw-up all over myself while Darren’s guts spilled out all over my lap. I sat there because I didn’t want to die and I didn’t know what else to do. Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus-fucking-Christ!’

She
drew in a breath as she pointed the beam of light at the dark mess of intestines that hung from the ragged vertical cut along Darren’s flat belly. The boy was slim and in good shape, with defined muscle on his chest, arms and shoulders. Rebecca was right in thinking whoever had managed to yank her boyfriend halfway out of the window by his hair and control the fit, young kickboxer long enough to inflict such a deep knife wound had to be fucking strong.

Jessop could not help but picture little Keisha Adams being restrained by such strength as she was made to watch her mother bleed to death. Rebecca Forrester was three times Keisha’s age, but when giving her statement, had looked not a day older than the seven-year-old with whom she now shared the most horrific nightmare.

Aware of her footsteps in the gravel, she followed her steps back to the tarmac drive that led from the road up to the small car park in the heart of the park. Darren and Rebecca had arrived here at around 11.50pm after catching a 9.00pm movie and grabbing a Burger King after. Rebecca was adamant there were no other cars here when they’d arrived. This was to be the young lovers first time having sex outside the safe confines of their bedrooms. Rebecca was reluctant when Darren had whispered the idea in her ear earlier today during lunch. She’d eventually agreed, but was not sold on the park’s location. It just seemed
too
public. She’d later relented after the movie on the condition they’d be absolutely alone in the car park.

Five minutes after arriving at the park, and completely satisfied there were no other cars or people in the area, Rebecca and Darren swapped front seats for the back seat and started to fool around. They only got as far as taking their tops off between kissing and fumbling when the first knock came upon the window.

And even then, Rebecca swore there were no other cars in the vicinity.

Jessop surveyed the surroundings. North of the small car park was a four acre copse; east, a children’s adventure playground; south the drive up here from the main road, and west, the exposed expanse of open grass. Yet this was not what Rebecca and Darren would have seen when they’d arrived here an hour ago. Because now the immediate area was lit up from the response vehicles that were attending the scene.

Stepping into the centre of the circus, she called out, ‘Can I have everybody’s attention!’

A moment later, when all eyes were upon her, she instructed everyone to kill all the vehicle lights inside and out. A few confused frowns later, and the only light on the area was from the moon’s weak light filtering through charcoal clouds.

She waited a couple of minutes, allowing her eyes to adjust to the new landscape of black silhouettes and dense shadows.

But from which of these shadows had the killer emerged?

She turned toward the kids’ playground, now but a dark smudge some hundred yards away. Beyond that the park stretched another kilometer before reaching the road. She then turned to the foreboding mass of dense shadows atop the shallow north incline that was the copse. Beyond the four acre woods, the hill it populated took a steep, half kilometer decline before reaching the road. Finally, turning west, she looked out over the vast expanse of black grass that ended on the inky horizon. Such were the distances to the road in each direction the killer could not have parked up and made it to Darren’s car on foot in the ten minutes Rebecca said had passed between them arriving here and the killer knocking. And even if she were wrong about the time and the killer had sprinted here, such was the expanse of the park, how did he know they had taken the turn in here?

Jessop turned south to the only direction she hadn’t explored yet: the direction the killer
must
have come from. She squinted, gazing down the tarmac drive as far as her vision allowed, a decent fifty yards or so. How far away would the killer have had to have parked for Rebecca and Darren not to have seen or heard his car?

She
called to a young PC, told him to drive his car with the lights off down the tarmac until she radioed him to stop. A moment later she was staring at the back of the squad car gradually melting into the shadows of the sycamore trees lining the drive.

‘Okay, stop,’ she said into the radio.

Wearing a black overcoat, charcoal v-neck sweater, and jeans, Mason joined her in time to see the car’s brake lights blink red in the distance. ‘They wouldn’t have heard the car that far away from inside their car,’ he said.

‘Uh-huh.’ She looked up to the sky above where she’d seen the brake lights flash. Into the radio, she said, ‘Can you see us from there?’

Sat in his car, somewhere in the darkness beneath the silver smudge of moonlight ahead of them, the PC replied, ‘Yeah, just about.’

She noted the time on her watch, beckoned Mason to walk with her down the drive. They met the PC two minutes and ten seconds later. Rebecca said the killer appeared roughly ten minutes after they’d arrived. Jessop turned to face the way they’d come, and sure enough, thanks to the weak moonlight behind them, she could see Darren’s car.

Had the killer taken in the same view, waiting in the dark for his moment to strike after following the lovers from the mall?

Mason asked, ‘What do you think?’

She peered down at the tarmac, spotted a squashed cigarette butt. ‘I think I wanna hear what Tom has to say.’

Chapter
Eighteen

Seated at the table in the centre of the war room, DC Tom Davies slumped back in his chair and sipped from his third can of Red Bull. Shook his head. ‘I’ve reviewed footage from every CCTV camera, traffic camera, and bus lane camera within a two mile radius of the city centre and Crossfields Park… Sorry, folks, but Darren and Rebecca were not followed tonight.’

‘Impossible,’ Mason sniped from behind his cup of coffee.

‘It is what it is,’ Davies said apologetically. Dressed in a sloppy maroon hoody, white t-shirt, khaki combat trousers and skater trainers, the twenty-seven-year-old detective raked a hand through his spiky, blonde hair and stifled a yawn.

Jessop had borrowed Davies from PCeU (Police Central e-crime Unit) two years ago when she and the team were struggling to catch a killer who hunted victims through internet dating sites. Davies’ input had been invaluable and she had been as impressed as hell with his technological know-how and tenacity. Somehow, after they had caught the killer, Davies had forgotten to return to PCeU and had remained a welcome and permanent addition to her team.

‘I picked up Darren’s car leaving the mall car park at 11.26pm. Picked him up again down The Bath Road at 11.34, then again at Hurst Lane at 11.46. Eventually got him turning into Crossfields Park at 11.51pm. Sorry folks, there was no tail. No other car entered or left the park until we rocked up at 12.28pm.’

Jessop thought about the cigarette butt she’d found, the hope it would prove significant fading fast. ‘What about footage of the park’s perimeter?’

‘Covered it best I can, but it’s a big area with a shit load of blind spots to sneak through, especially the north side behind the woods.’

‘The perfect escape route,’ Mason offered.

‘If you were on foot, yeah,’ Jessop agreed. ‘Still doesn’t explain how he knew Darren and Rebecca were going to be there in the first place.’

‘Maybe he just happened to be there at the time?’ Davies muttered with a hint of sarcasm. ‘Wrong place wrong time syndrome.’

Jessop shook her head. ‘No way. This bastard’s too meticulous for a random hit.’

Mason picked up a biro, twisted it between his knuckles. ‘Okay, so the only other logical explanation is that either Darren or Rebecca had bragged to a friend of their plans to go to the park. Either the friend is the killer or the conversation was overheard by the killer, who then hid in the park and waited for them to arrive.’Jessop agreed. ‘Rebecca said she only agreed to the park’s location in the Burger King
after
the movie. Which would mean the killer would have had to have overheard the conversation and followed them to the park, or put his foot down and beat them there. Yet, according to Tom’s findings, neither had happened.’ She closed her eyes, massaged her temples where the conundrum coupled with the lack of sleep was beginning to spawn a gnawing headache.

After a minute of silence in the room, Mason said, ‘There is one other possibility. Maybe Darren was so confident Rebecca would agree to his plan, he’d gone ahead and bragged about it to a mate
before
she’d consented.’

Jessop opened her eyes and regarded her DI, as awake and alert as she’d ever seen him. That
was
the only other possibility. She rubbed her hot eyes, stifled a yawn behind her hand. ‘First thing in the morning we grill Darren’s friends and workmates about it. In the meantime go home and get some sleep.’ She glanced at her watch: 2.31am. In five hours time she’d have to be back
here.
Calculating the thirty minute each way drive to her house and back, that gave her a realistic three hours of sleep.

Hardly worth it.

Her eyes moved to the glass partition separating the war room and her office. Locked on the brown two-seater sofa she’d spent many an uncomfortable night on.

‘Shit.’

Chapter
Nineteen

She popped an Aspirin and swallowed it with a gulp of water. The gnawing ache in her temples had escalated into a pounding throbbing behind her eyes, not helped by the hour she’d chosen to spend beginning the profile on their killer. But now the words on the screen were just blurs, and the “back-breaker” beckoned.

Reluctantly, she lay down on the hard cushions and tucked her feet up.

Six days, she thought. Six days before she was stretched out on a king-sized bed in their hotel room overlooking Lake Michigan, fearing neither the ring of her phone or the buzz of the alarm clock.

Six days before she and her new husband dared to stand on the famous glass ledge 1353 feet up The Willis Tower looking down on Chicago.

Eight days before they drove beneath the St Louis Gateway to begin the first leg of their trip to LA along America’s oldest road.

Seventeen days before they took a detour from the route in Arizona and stood on the South Rim of The Grand Canyon and marveled at nature’s magnificence.

One day before Dodd walked a free man.

‘Boss…’

Jessop startled awake. Disorientated, she looked towards her door from where the voice had come. Wearing a deep grey suit with a feint pinstripe, white shirt, and slate tie, Mason looked as though he’d just slid from the pages of GQ instead of the sheets from his bed. He held two steaming cups, and had a slim paper file tucked under his arm, ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.’

She hadn’t realised she’d been asleep. Neck as stiff as the cushions she’d slept on, she glanced at her clock on the wall above Mason’s head: 7. 01am. ‘You wet the bed?’

‘Early bird and all that.’ Mason took a seat, offered her one of the cups of steaming coffee and opened the slim file. ‘I’ve been working the killer’s quotes.’

Taking the cup, she wondered what dark motivation kept her groomed DI from bed in favour of paperwork. Other than his fondness for nice clothes, keeping fit, and catching bad guys, she knew little about the man behind the frown’s personal life. From his file she’d learned he was an only child, and that he’d left his sleepy coastal town aged nineteen to seek a career in the police force. He never spoke of the family he left behind or of a loved one with whom he may or may not share his rented two bedroom apartment. If the subject of the other half was ever breached down the pub, he would dodge the topic by nipping to the toilet or shouting the next round, of which he would partake only in bottled lager and never spirits, and then never to excess. Unlike the rest of her team, she had never seen Mason drunk or out of control. This, she’d accepted a while ago, was no bad thing, especially when it came to catching the proverbial worm.

‘First impressions suggest out boy’s well read, right?’

Head still fuzzy, she nodded from behind the welcome cup. She recalled the sentence she had written before her eyes had given up on her about the killer’s signature suggesting he was well educated. ‘Go on.’

‘Thing is I crossed checked both the Gibran and Dumas quotes on several search engines and found them both on a number of wisdom and inspirational quotation websites.’

Jessop’s attention perked up. ‘And the latest quote?’

‘Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. Dorothy Thompson, the so-called First Lady of American Journalism.’ Mason handed her the file. ‘Also on the sites.’

Liking
what she was hearing, she flipped through the pages, confirming all three quotes did indeed appear on the same websites.

Mason said, ‘He’s not as smart as he wants us to believe.’

‘Doesn’t make him any less dangerous.’

‘So what does it make him?’

She considered the profile she’d been working on. The majority of serial killers were of the hedonist type, killers who commit his or her acts for sexual pleasure or just for the thrill of it. The monster they sought now was not one of these animals. He fitted into another category of which there were to be found a less impulsive and reckless animal. It was the type she feared the most. And it was time to warn Mason what they were up against.