The Killer Inside: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 1) (15 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he?’

‘You should know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You lot banged him up two years ago.’

B
efore looking up Shaun Hogan
, Jessica had first gone to talk to Kim. The girl hadn’t been too keen to speak at first, but then they brought Emily in to sit next to her and the aggression level dropped. Much of what she said confirmed what they had already been told by her sister.

Kim lived in a flat half a mile or so away from her mother and reluctantly admitted she’d had enough of living with her mum a few months previously. When she had lived at home, Kim hadn’t been allowed a key and there were certain hours of the day when she hadn’t been permitted to be inside, instead spending her time roaming the streets. She had done that for the best part of five years – beginning when she was only thirteen.

The poor girl’s childhood had been ruined, Jessica reflected, having seen the things she must have done. Despite all of that, she refused to criticise her upbringing.

Given what connected the first two victims, there was one question Jessica had been waiting to ask: ‘Do you know if your mother was ever burgled?’

‘What would you have cared?’

‘We would always respond to something like that.’

‘You didn’t do much when those kids were harassing her.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘You weren’t too bothered when your lot were threatening to arrest her and scaring her off the street.’

Emily helped calm her sister and Jessica eventually got her answer: ‘No.’

Jessica already knew Claire Hogan’s flat wasn’t one of the addresses from which Wayne Lapham had been caught in possession of stolen goods, but he was still their only link to the first two victims. ‘Was’ now seemed to be the appropriate word. If the prostitute’s murder was linked to the other two, then the one connection they thought they had – burglary – was no more.

Shaun Hogan was an interesting character, though. He was twenty-one and it seemed there were a few minor crimes on his record, things like shoplifting when he was in his teens. He had been jailed two years before for a serious assault on a man outside a bar in Leeds city centre. Emily and Kim both seemed reluctant to talk about him, but the older sister told them her brother had left the area shortly after Claire had moved into the flat.

For reasons that seemed obvious, given the lack of room, he had apparently not been too keen on living with his mother and younger sister. When Claire had moved out of whatever house she shared with her husband and moved into the flat, both of her eldest children had left home quickly: Emily at eighteen, Shaun at sixteen. Emily had somehow managed to turn her life around, but Shaun had gone the other way. He’d moved to another city and had ended up in jail. He was currently three months away from potentially being paroled in HM Prison Leeds. Kim, meanwhile, had stayed at home for almost the entire time.

It was a very mixed-up family and Jessica knew how lucky she herself had been to be brought up well. It put her silly argument with Caroline into perspective.

She called the prison and arranged to visit Shaun on the Monday. Someone would break the news about his mother to him in the meantime.

After that, she spent the rest of the day in meetings with DCI Aylesbury – who didn’t seem overly pleased at being called back to the station – and DI Cole. For the moment, there was nothing concrete to link the latest killing with the previous two. The initial forensics results should at least confirm a similar murder weapon. Jessica felt sure everything was somehow connected and that the property had been locked almost to taunt them. Whoever the killer was could easily have got access to the flat, given Claire’s profession. Getting out might have been more difficult, but whoever was responsible had set the scene in a similar way to the previous ones for a reason.

Witnesses would be a problem. Even if someone had seen a strange person entering Claire Hogan’s flat, it wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary. The police weren’t expecting too many of her clients to identify themselves.

This one was going to be hard to manage via the media. Getting members of the public to pay attention to a murder appeal for someone who seemed a bit like them, suburban and respectable, was easy. Getting people to care about the murder of a prostitute would be more difficult. Cole suggested embracing the ‘Houdini’ name, although it was the last thing they wanted to do. Jessica hated the idea, but had to admit it would keep the media on-side and give them their best opportunity of getting people to contact them.

As she emerged from the discussions to head home, she noticed there were three missed calls on her phone. She’d had it on silent all day, moving from interviews to meetings. The caller’s identity was obvious, her only surprise being he hadn’t called earlier. Jessica thumbed the redial button and he answered on the first ring.

‘Mr Ashford,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

G
arry Ashford
still felt as if he was constantly riding his luck at work. The profile he’d done of DS Daniel had somehow managed to get him into everyone’s good books. He even had a text message from her saying she owed him. He would have settled for any kind of communication that didn’t involve copious but impressively creative insults – but that was even better.

He hadn’t been entirely sure how his piece was going to go down in the office but the editor had been upbeat about it. Garry had claimed it as an exclusive, even though much of it hadn’t come from Jessica herself. That, along with the background piece he had put together on Wayne Lapham, had given him two more days of decent coverage.

The pay rise still hadn’t materialised, though.

Despite the text he’d received from DS Daniel, he hadn’t responded and hadn’t contacted her since. Garry figured it was probably best to keep that goodwill stored up in case something else significant happened.

This particular Saturday, he’d been hoping for a quieter day, given what he had ended up being asked to do over the past few weeks. When he saw his source’s number on his ringing phone, he groaned. He half-thought about ignoring it, but then took the call. He listened to the details and wrote everything down, before hanging up and calling DS Daniel. There was no answer and he wondered if she was avoiding him. He phoned his editor and then set off to catch a bus out to the latest victim’s address. His source said they didn’t have a name but knew where the crime scene was. He tried DS Daniel one more time but there was still no answer.

‘Another fine Saturday,’ he moaned, to no one in particular.

‘
H
i
,’ Garry said. ‘I guess you know why I’ve been calling.’

‘You’re still going to have to tell me what you think you know,’ Sergeant Daniel replied.

The journalist informed Jessica that he had visited the murder site and had spoken to the upstairs neighbour. He knew Claire Hogan’s name, and the woman who lived upstairs had been keen to talk about the dead female’s chosen profession, as well as telling him how the police had smashed in the door that morning. He wanted Jessica to confirm that this murder had been committed by the same person as the first two.

Jessica could answer that question honestly: ‘I don’t know that yet.’

‘What do you think, though?’

‘I think you’re putting me in an awkward position. We don’t have any results yet. There hasn’t been an autopsy. I shouldn’t be talking to you.’

‘I don’t have to use your name.’

Jessica thought for a few moments. ‘Who will you quote?’

‘A senior source close to the investigation.’

‘“Senior”?’

‘Okay. A “source” close to the investigation.’

‘“Close”?’

‘Come on… You’re taking the mick now.’

Jessica laughed. ‘Yeah, I am. Okay, fine, I
do
think it’s the same killer, but that is it. I owe you no more. We are even.’

‘All right.’

‘And no more phone calls. You’ve got to go through the press office like everyone else.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes! I know my sexy phone voice is a big turn-on for you, but talking to the media can get me into trouble.’

Garry Ashford laughed awkwardly. ‘Okay.’

W
hen Jessica arrived home
, Caroline was waiting for her in the living room, alone. Jessica had gone to leave her bag and shoes in the usual position, on the floor by the door, when her friend turned around to look at her.

‘Hi,’ Caroline said.

‘Hi.’

‘Long day?’

‘Another body.’

Caroline raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘You’re joking?’

‘I wish.’

They looked at each other and there was a short pause that Caroline broke. ‘Are we okay?’

‘Course we are.’

Caroline sighed and sagged in relief. ‘I was only trying to help. I wanted to cheer you up.’

‘I know.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Ryan? It doesn’t matter really.’ Jessica sat next to her friend on the sofa and hugged her. ‘Where’s Randy?’

They both giggled.

‘I told
Randall
I wanted to spend the evening in with you.’

‘That’s nice. Is he still looking after you?’

‘He’s a great guy. He was really upset the other morning. Neither of us knew what had happened with you and Ryan. You had both left. We were staring at each other in confusion. He felt bad his mate had upset you.’

‘It wasn’t Randall’s fault.’ Jessica moved away from the embrace. ‘Wine?’

‘Of course.’

Jessica was feeling a lot better as she fetched some glasses and a bottle from under the sink. At some point, someone would call her with the results they were waiting on, and they had Shaun Hogan to see on Monday. She was expecting a busy week and was pleased to have made up with her friend.

Back in the living room, she sat next to Caroline, putting her feet up on the sofa and pouring them each a glass of wine. ‘Is it getting serious with you two?’

‘Maybe,’ Caroline replied with a smile. ‘He’s been talking about getting a new job. He’s had enough of working on the market. He’s better than that, anyway.’

Jessica weighed up what to say next. She knew what she wanted to ask. ‘Are you going to move in with him?’

It was something Jessica had been thinking about since she had first seen the two of them together. The way they looked at each other...

Caroline looked directly at her friend. ‘It was always going to happen to one of us sometime...’

‘I know. We’ve had a good run.’

Jessica could see a tear in her friend’s eye but was determined not to cry herself after her recent sob fests. She put her arm around her friend. ‘What type of job is he looking for?’

‘I don’t know. He’s only worked on that stall, fixing shoes and other bits and bobs. He’s skilled though. Good with his hands.’

Jessica burst out laughing.

‘Not like that,’ Caroline clarified, giggling herself through a thin stream of tears. ‘Dirty mind. He’ll find something.’

‘I’m pleased for you both.’

‘We had talked about looking for a place when he gets himself fixed up with a better job. It was his decision. I said I could afford it on my own at first but he reckoned he couldn’t let me do that.’

‘You’re not going to move
away
away, are you?’

‘Course not. You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.’

‘Shame; I could get some good rent for that room.’

J
essica had never been
a big fan of the British railway network. For one, she hated facing backwards while the train moved forwards; there was something inherently unnatural about it. She wasn’t that keen on the sideways-facing seats, either. Why was it so hard to have rows of seats that all faced the same way? They managed it on aeroplanes.

She was sitting next to Cole on their way to Leeds, facing backwards and feeling slightly sick. Travelling in a car across the Pennines was a nuisance at the best of times, but during the morning rush hour on a Monday, traffic was at its peak. As much as she would never admit it to anyone, especially not Rowlands, Jessica rarely took her car on the motorway. She relied on it to get her a few miles to work and back, and occasionally trusted it to complete a return journey to her parents’ house, although only on the minor roads. She definitely didn’t have faith in it to get her from one side of the country to the other. The force didn’t like paying out expenses on car journeys either, so a trip on the train it was.

The scenery thundered past as they made small talk. Neither of them seemed keen to speak about the case, and Cole told Jessica about his Sunday out with his wife and kids. It felt like another world to her, and made her think of poor Kim Hogan and how she hadn’t had the opportunity of a proper upbringing.

Both she and Cole had seen the initial autopsy results. Claire’s neck wounds were almost identical to those of Yvonne Christensen and Martin Prince. The instrument used was again some type of steel wire or rope. With that and the way the flat was locked, they were as sure as they could be that the murders had all been carried out by the same person. Forensics had once again failed to find any trace of the killer. There were lots of fingerprints to identify around the flat – but none that had any particular match to their database. There was so much DNA at the scene that it was overwhelming – but there was no blood other than Claire’s, and nothing under her nails. It didn’t look as if she’d had sex the night she died.

At the other scenes, the murderer would have had to be careful. Not so much at Claire’s. If there were any skin cells or hairs left by the killer, it would be bundled along with the hundreds of other fragments found in the house.

Meanwhile, the cash that had been left on the side had at least six different sets of fingerprints between the two notes, as well as traces of cocaine. The labs were working on isolating anything that could be useable but Jessica wasn’t hopeful. Even if they did get something they could check, it would only rule people out – unless they got a match on the National DNA Database.

At this point, Jessica would have been happy enough with someone to rule out.

She had seen Garry Ashford’s name on the front page of the
Herald
again that morning. The other media outlets had the story too, but Jessica doubted they had spoken to the woman who lived above Claire. In a good way for him, Garry was showing himself to be a bit of a pest. He was certainly persistent, but Jessica wondered who his source was. There were plenty of possibilities. Someone on the Scenes of Crime team, maybe? They were the only people who had actually been to every scene – but then, somebody had told him about her interview-room meltdown too.

The train steadily pulled into their destination but they remained sitting until the other commuters were off – a wall of suits, smart shoes and briefcases hurrying away almost as one.

HMP Leeds was a massive old Victorian building for B-class prisoners. The categorisation meant the authorities thought Shaun Hogan didn’t need to be kept with the most violent offenders, but didn’t trust him enough to be in an open prison.

Jessica had read his file and knew the GBH he had been sent down for was something that happened all too frequently. It reminded her of Tom Carpenter, but without the knife: two men fighting outside a bar after drinking too much on a Saturday night. Shaun Hogan had ended up head-butting the victim, before kicking him in the head on the ground.

He was lucky he hadn’t killed him.

Even with his guilty plea, he had been sentenced to five years in prison, but he would be out in a few months because of time spent on remand and apparent good behaviour. He would have served a little over half his sentence.

From the outside, the prison building looked like a castle, with imposing cylindrical walls at the front and an enormous heavy set of wooden doors.

A taxi dropped Jessica and Cole off outside and they headed into reception. They showed their credentials and were searched. The fact they were police officers meant they were given more leeway than most, but everyone was patted down and had to go through the metal detectors.

The governor was a strict-looking man in his late forties with a short, tight haircut and fierce-looking eyes. He had a voice that, even with his Yorkshire accent, was a little too high-pitched and didn’t quite fit with his role. He introduced himself and shook both of their hands, saying he was taking them to the visitors’ centre. He told them it wasn’t visiting hours yet, so it would only be the two of them, plus Shaun Hogan and the guards in the room.

He led them across the main yard, explaining that this was where prisoners were first brought in, and then took them through two sets of lockable doors before they emerged back outside into another yard. He told them about the facility itself and pointed them to the various wings, explaining where the old buildings ended and the new ones began. It obviously wasn’t an inspection, but the governor seemingly wanted to impress them.

They crossed a second yard and headed along a concrete walkway towards a separate building as the governor told them he had informed Shaun about his mother’s death on Saturday.

‘How did he take it?’ Jessica asked as they walked side by side.

‘He didn’t react. He nodded and asked if he could return to his cell.’

‘Seriously?’

‘He didn’t seem upset at all.’

‘How has he behaved since he’s been with you?’ Cole asked.

‘Incredibly well. He’s not been in trouble, he’s done any jobs assigned to him and worked hard in class, according to the tutors.’

‘Is that normal?’ Jessica asked.

‘Sometimes you get the odd one, but most people who want to cause trouble end up at Wakefield or one of the other Category A places.’

The governor led them into a building that was newer than a lot of the prison, up a flight of stairs and into a large visiting area. The room was enormous, with vending machines lining the sides, interspersed with posters that had words like ‘Respect’ and ‘Think’ written in large letters. The windows, high on the walls, were covered by metal bars and there were large banks of white strip lighting across the ceiling. Rows of grey and red plastic tables were bolted to the floor, with two chairs on each side.

They were led to one of the tables near the front as the governor nodded to the two guards who were standing next to a separate door. One of them unclipped a radio from his belt and spoke into it as the governor said his goodbyes. Cole took out a notebook and pen and moments later they heard the door at the front being unlocked. A man was led in by two guards.

Prisons would often have their own interview rooms, similar to a police station’s, but Shaun Hogan wasn’t a suspect for any crime and they were talking to him to hopefully gain some background on his mother. Because of that, speaking to him in a more informal environment such as the visiting room, as opposed to an interview room, would perhaps get him to open up.

The prisoner was wearing a grey sweatshirt and slightly darker tracksuit bottoms. He had short, almost shaven, dark hair but no other particularly distinguishing features. With some people, it was obvious they had spent time inside. They would have tattoos or scars and, sometimes, even the way they walked made them stand out from the rest of society. Shaun Hogan wore none of those giveaway signs as he was ushered to sit in front of the two detectives, the four prison guards standing by the door again.

‘Are you Shaun Hogan?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Detective Sergeant Daniel and this is Detective Inspector Cole.’

‘Are you here about my mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not sorry she’s gone…’ The prisoner stared at Jessica, not in a threatening way but fixed enough to let her know he meant it.

‘Why’s that?’

‘She’s never once came to visit me.’

‘Is that why you’re not upset?’

Shaun ignored the question, glancing away towards the windows high up the walls. ‘Have you spoken to Em?’

‘Your sister? Yes.’

‘She’s been a few times. She even talked about helping me when I get out.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘She’s done well since she got away. I guess she told you all about Mum’s
job
.’

‘Yes.’

Jessica left it a moment and then asked Shaun why he’d moved to Leeds.

Shaun shook his head and then rubbed his forehead with his hand. ‘I wanted to get away. Mum had moved out of our house a few years ago ’cos she had no money, and set up in that flat. She was always drinking and there was no room. Em was a bit older and moved out straight away. There wasn’t much there for me, so I went, too. Some kid I knew from school that I still knocked about with reckoned there was some building work out here. It’s not like I had anything better to do.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Sixteen. I ended up bunking in this disused pub for a few months. We had a great time; the work was easy and we got paid cash. No one said anything.’

‘Was that the last time you saw your mother?’

‘Nah, I went back a few times but she was still in that flat with Kim and she’d moved on from the drink…’

Jessica let his answer hang for a moment. ‘How did you end up in here?’

‘It was my own fault. I’d been to visit Mum earlier in the day and we ended up arguing. I was doing okay then – earning a bit of money and I had my own place out here. It was nothing special but it was good enough for me. I’d said something about her having to sort herself out for Kim’s sake. I know Emily had been saying it, too.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know. When I got back here, I’d gone out for a few drinks and things… happened.’

‘I mean what happened with the argument with your mother?’

Shaun looked at Jessica, then away again. ‘She blamed me.’

‘For what?’

‘Everything.’

Jessica was confused. She glanced at Cole, who also seemed slightly bemused. It was the inspector who spoke next. ‘Why did she blame you?’

Shaun closed his eyes and breathed out deeply. Jessica didn’t know if he was going to say anything, but then came a quiet, ‘Because it’s my fault.’

There were now tears in Shaun’s eyes but Jessica felt there was something important still left to be said. ‘Why is it your fault?’

Shaun spoke slowly and didn’t look up from a spot on the table on which he seemed fixated. ‘When Dad left, we all held it together pretty well really. It was hard, but Mum managed to keep us all in the house. Then… everything fell apart because of me.’

Jessica shifted onto the edge of her seat and leaned in towards the table. ‘What did you do?’

Shaun wiped his eyes with his sleeve and looked towards her. ‘I can’t tell you.’

‘You can.’

‘I can’t. I’m about to get out. I want to sort things out with Em and have a normal life.’

‘Shaun…’ The prisoner looked up at Jessica, meeting her eyes. ‘Someone killed your mother last week and whatever you have to say could be the key thing in finding out who that was.’

Shaun closed his eyes and breathed out deeply before opening them and staring at Jessica. His eyes narrowed slightly and he said two words softly but clearly: ‘Nigel Collins.’