The Killer Inside: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 1) (19 page)

The scrolling text at the bottom stopped and it was as if everyone held their breath collectively. The room was silent as the presenter frantically looked behind. The breaking news ribbon began to move along the bottom of the screen again, the words scrolling in slow motion.

As soon as the words had been revealed, the room erupted with shouts of derision and cries of unfairness.

Outrage. Shouting, swearing. Vs being flicked at the screen.

As Peter Hunt emerged from court side by side with Tom Carpenter, there was a collective shushing. The camera dashed towards the two people in the court’s entrance. Microphones appeared from all directions and finally, everyone in the station quietened down.

Hunt was beaming wider than his client. He had made an extra special effort with his appearance that morning. He was more polished than ever and had some unnamed aide holding an umbrella over him. Jessica thought she wanted to listen to what he had to say, but as soon as Hunt’s first words came, ‘This is justification…’, she drifted away from the pack towards her office.

Poor Harry.

F
or the rest
of the week, the papers and news bulletins were full of both Tom Carpenter’s acquittal and the force’s failure to find Nigel Collins. Peter Hunt had a field day, appearing on a breakfast news programme, both of the major twenty-four-hour news channels, and in at least two national newspapers.

He had been the main guest for a radio phone-in where the question was: ‘Are Britain’s police incompetent?’ As she listened to the broadcast on her drive to work, Jessica wondered what kind of lonely lunatic rang these types of show, spouting ill-informed, mindless nonsense. She reckoned they would be on the phone pretty sharpish if they needed the police’s assistance. The presenter’s smug annoying tone –
Are Britain’s police a total bag of useless shits
, he might as well have been saying – drove her crazy. She made a mental note that if she ever came across an emergency call from someone called ‘Sue from Bromsgrove’, she would quite happily ignore it.

‘We’ll see who’s incompetent then, you old hag,’ Jessica told the radio.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Tom Carpenter had sold his story to a red-top tabloid. CRAZED COP GLASS TERROR put across his version of events in all its made-up glory. Harry had been painted as an out-of-control, drink-fuelled, corrupt officer. Jessica had tried calling Harry half a dozen times since the verdict, but his phone wasn’t on.

It summed up her week. Even though the SCD had taken their case, her department was still getting hammered on two fronts. She had been forced to brief one of the SCD officers the day after handing the files over, talking them through her notes and letting them know where everything was on the computer system. The smug git had spent the entire two hours with a ‘we’re cleaning up your mess’ look on his face that Jessica had felt desperate to wipe off.

She had been put on the case of a man who had robbed an off-licence. The shop’s owner had been smashed in the face with a claw hammer and had had a week’s takings ransacked from the safe. Jessica had spoken to the distraught victim, who kept repeating he was pleased his wife hadn’t been present, as she often worked that shift.

Jessica did her best to work as she usually would, gathering the CCTV footage and so on, but her heart wasn’t in it. Every time she was driving, whenever she went to bed at night or had a quiet moment, her thoughts drifted back to Nigel Collins. She felt bad for not focusing fully on her job but had invested so much energy in the ‘Houdini’ case, it was hard to forget.

By the Friday night, she was sick of the week as a whole, and pledged to curl up at home with her old friend: the local supermarket’s own-brand cheap rosé wine. Caroline and Randall had gone off to set a few things up in their new flat, ready to start moving, so she had the place to herself.

Jessica was halfway through watching a repeat of some talent show in which she had no interest, when a thought dropped into her head. She had gone through two-thirds of the rosé bottle by herself, which she was pretty sure was influencing her decision-making. She picked her phone up from the coffee table, scrolled through her list of contacts, and pressed the ‘call’ button when it reached Garry Ashford’s name.

It rang twice before being picked up. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s Jess Daniel.’

‘DS Daniel?’

‘Call me Jess.’

‘Okay… Are you all right?’

‘Wanna come keep me company?’

‘Sorry…?’

‘One-time only offer.’

‘I guess…’

The poor guy sounded scared stiff. Jessica gave him her address. ‘Oh, and Garry?’ she added. ‘
Don’t
wear the tweed.
Do
bring your notes about Houdini and
do
bring wine.’

She hung up.

G
arry Ashford arrived
forty-five minutes later with a carrier bag full of notebooks and two bottles of wine: one red, one white. ‘I didn’t know which you preferred, so bought one of each,’ he said.

‘I usually go for rosé,’ Jessica replied with a wink, taking the bottles.

In the time before him arriving, she had phoned up the takeaway a few streets over to order some curries. The first bottle of wine had begun to kick in and she fancied something hot to go with it, but the food hadn’t arrived yet.

As Garry walked in, Jessica thought he was actually dressed like a functioning member of the human race. He was in a pair of regular blue jeans with a red T-shirt. She let him into the flat and led him into the living room, before leaving one of the bottles of wine in the kitchen and opening the other. She took an extra glass into the living room and handed it to her guest, before filling both.

He was on the sofa and had started taking his notebooks from the carrier bag. Jessica sat next to him.

‘Did you make all this effort for me?’ she teased. ‘Your hair looks as if you’ve only been dragged through a hedge once tonight instead of the usual three or four times.’

Garry smiled. ‘I feel privileged now I’ve finally achieved the Holy Trinity of insults.’

‘Huh?’

‘You’ve now taken the piss out of my name, dress sense and looks.’

Jessica did actually feel a bit bad, realising not everyone would get her sense of humour. ‘I was only joking.’

‘It’s all right. At least I don’t look as bad as that photo we used of you on the front page. I mean, what kind of crazed woman grins underneath a headline about a murder?’

Jessica playfully punched him in the shoulder. ‘Oi.’

They both laughed and then Garry asked the obvious question: ‘Why am I here?’

Jessica downed the rest of her glass in one and looked at him. ‘I’m not sure. You know they’ve taken the case away, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve looked over my notes and the files and it’s been in the back of my mind the whole time that I’ve missed something obvious. I guess I thought… I guess it’s because you’re not police. Before I’m ready to let it go completely, I suppose I wondered if you might have picked up something I missed.’

‘I doubt it. I’ve only been following where you lot have been, talking to the same people and so on.’

‘Maybe…’

Garry took out his first notebook, but as he did so, the doorbell went.

‘Curry,’ Jessica said.

‘Right.’

‘Don’t worry, I got you something mild and wimpy. I thought it seemed your style.’

Garry shook his head and shrugged. ‘You’re probably right.’

After Jessica returned with a grease-soaked paper bag and some forks from the kitchen, Garry opened his first notebook. Jessica had a peek at the contents in case she could make out a name that could be his source.

The journalist clocked her doing so. ‘Their name isn’t written here, y’know.’

‘Whose?’ Jessica replied.

Garry nodded and started to talk her through some of the people he had spoken to and what they had said. Jessica knew she probably shouldn’t but, given she was now off the case, she filled in some of the blanks for him. He asked if he could make new notes on what she had told him.

‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘But only because you brought wine.’

They ate as they worked. Jessica had gone for the hottest chicken dish on the menu, but Garry struggled with his mild lamb meal.

The journalist spoke about Stephanie and Ray Wilson and how Stephanie hadn’t had too much to say, but had genuinely seemed disturbed by the loss of her friend. He said the husband had phoned the paper every day for the week afterwards to remind them that he and his wife were available for photographs if the paper needed them.

As he got to his notes about the meeting with Jessica herself, he veered off to tell her about the pressure he was under and how his career hadn’t turned out the way he had hoped. He talked about his editor and how sales were affecting all of the staff. Until the last few weeks, he had been thinking of quitting, and would have done so already if it wasn’t for the money.

‘What else would you do?’ Jessica asked.

‘I don’t know. Write? I have no idea. It’s not easy to drop everything. You don’t want to end up going back to your parents to admit you’ve made a right mess.’

Jessica couldn’t disagree with that.

Garry told her about his meeting with Marie Hall and the way he had been bullied into buying a host of drinks to get details about Wayne Lapham. Jessica admitted she hadn’t known who the woman was before, but laughed at Garry’s pub story. Then they both dissolved into giggles when he spoke about the dressing gown the woman had been wearing.

‘Was it peach?’ Jessica asked.

‘She hadn’t fastened it completely, either.’

‘Oh God, you couldn’t see…?’

Garry didn’t answer but the look on his face made Jessica explode with laughter. She went to put the empty food cartons in the kitchen and get the other bottle of wine Garry had brought. She was feeling decidedly tipsy, but refilled both their glasses and let the journalist continue.

‘…Then I finally ended up speaking to you,’ he said, flicking through pages and pages of notes. ‘You were very, erm… revealing.’

Jessica felt a bit embarrassed, remembering her phone confessions to him. ‘You took advantage of a distressed young woman. You should feel ashamed of yourself.’

‘Young?’

‘Oi, you cheeky…’ For the second time that evening, Jessica playfully punched her guest in the shoulder. ‘How did you end up talking to Kim Hogan?’ she asked, as Garry opened another notebook.

‘It was an accident. I was at the house talking to the neighbour, who was spilling everything. The other girl stormed up and started swearing at the both of us.’

That sounded familiar.

‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I said that she could put her own version across if she wanted. She asked if there was money involved…’

‘Really?’ Jessica interrupted.

‘Some people are like that, no matter what the circumstances.’

‘Did you pay her?’

‘I gave her twenty quid. It was all I had on me. I ended up walking back to the office because I didn’t have anything left for the bus.’

‘Doesn’t the paper pay for things like that?’

‘You’re lucky if they pay for notebooks and pens.’

‘What was she like?’

‘I’ve had worse interviews, but not many. She was okay, but it was hard for her. There was lots of swearing. She hates your lot and kept going on about kids bugging her mum and how you never did anything.’

‘What about Paul Keegan?’

Garry let out a massive sigh. ‘It was horrible. I didn’t want to knock on his door, but the editor told me to do it. I thought the guy would tell me to get lost but he invited me in and went to put the kettle on. It was surreal.’

Jessica had thought that the whole time she had spoken to Paul Keegan. She could see that his heart was broken but that he was trying not to show it. She wondered how he was coping behind closed doors, especially with what had happened regarding his stepson.

‘He talked and talked,’ Garry added. ‘He said they had only got married a few years ago. He showed me all the photos and told me everything that ended up in the article. He was a really nice guy and told me to call back if I wanted to check anything, He phoned on the day of the article to say thanks. He said he was going to keep the paper and reckoned it was a perfect tribute to her.’

‘Poor guy.’

‘I felt so sorry for him. You don’t know what to say. He said they’d had problems with kids in the area, but thought your lot had done your best. Bit of a difference to Kim and Marie.’

Garry gave a small laugh but Jessica didn’t. He must have seen the shift.

‘You all right?’ Garry asked.

Jessica held up an empty glass. ‘Too much of this. Shall we call it a night? I’ll pay for your taxi.’

‘It’s okay. I reckon I’ll get another story out of the bits you’ve told me. “Senior source”, right?’

‘Source.’

‘Whatever.’

Garry packed his things back into his bag and gave a little wobble as he stood. Jessica could feel the alcohol inside her, too. She walked him to the door and found herself giving him a brief hug as they said goodbye. Bloody wine! She thought his cheeks had reddened slightly, but it could have been the booze.

‘Thanks for your help, Garry.’

‘No worries, Det… Jess.’

Jessica closed the door, but instantly took her phone out and typed a reminder into the calendar for the next morning. It was probably nothing and possibly the wine doing her thinking, but she’d had an idea and didn’t want to forget it when she woke up.

J
essica had never had
big hangovers in her life. There had been the odd morning-after when Caroline had been at university and the two of them had gone out, but nothing crazy. She had never lost days or anything silly like some of the stories people could tell.

She woke up on the Saturday morning, though, with an aching neck, a world-class headache and the distinct taste of last night’s curry. She fumbled her way out of the cocoon she had made of her duvet and realised she was still wearing the clothes she’d had on the whole of the previous day and evening. Craving water, she staggered out of her bedroom and made her way groggily towards the kitchen.

‘Caroline?’

She hadn’t heard her friend and Randall come in the previous night but, considering how much she had drunk, that was no particular surprise. There wasn’t any answer anyway, so presumably the two of them had stopped the night at the new flat.

Jessica turned on the sink’s tap and watched the water gush, almost hypnotised by it. Vague memories of her chat with Garry the previous evening came flooding back. Had she hugged him? She saw the three empty bottles of wine next to the bin. She probably had hugged him.

She shook her head and snapped her gaze away from the water, snatching a glass from the draining board and filling it. She downed the whole glass in one and filled it again. After that, she hunted around in the drawer under the sink for some aspirin and took three, along with another full glass of water. She was pretty sure the recommended dose was two tablets, but that was surely for a standard headache?

Regardless, she fumbled her way back to bed and lay down. The ceiling was spinning, but not too badly, and she could hear a buzzing noise from somewhere. She looked from one side of the bed to the other, confused by the sound, before realising it was her phone. Her head had started to clear but she still struggled to pick her phone up. It was definitely making a different noise to her alarm and text message sounds. Her fingers didn’t seem to want to do what her brain was willing them to, but she eventually unlocked the screen to see a calendar alert and a separate text message.

She read the text first. It was from Caroline.

Jessica then pressed the button to read the note she had left herself the previous evening.

It may have been the ramblings of a drunk woman but she had nothing better to do. Jessica resolved that as soon as she’d had a shower, she would follow the note up, even if she did end up looking stupid.

‘
S
orry
, who are you?’

Jessica was listening to an irate voice on the other end of her phone.

‘Kim, it’s Detective Sergeant Daniel. We spoke at the station. Do you remember?’

‘What do
you
want?’ Kim Hogan’s tone didn’t indicate that she was overly receptive to being called by a member of the police.

‘I wanted to clarify a point or two with you, if that’s all right?’

‘I read yesterday your lot had been booted off the case or something like that. Some super cop people brought in to clean up your mess and find that Collins psycho.’

‘That’s not really true.’ In essence, it
was
correct but Jessica still wanted the girl to answer one question.

‘What do you want?’ Kim asked. ‘I told you everything last time.’

‘I want to check one thing.’

‘Get on with it.’

‘You know when you told me we hadn’t done much about kids harassing your mum, what did you mean?’

‘Well, you didn’t, did you? Your lot wouldn’t even come out.’

‘To what, though?’

‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’

‘I’m not trying to trip you up, Kim. I want to make sure we’ve checked all angles.’

Kim huffed a loud breath of annoyance. ‘Fine! There was always kids knocking on the door and running and all that, harassing her on the street. But then one of them put glue in the front-door lock one night. We had to climb out the window. Your lot hadn’t done anything before, and were always hassling Mum on the street so she couldn’t be bothered to contact you again. She got someone she knew to fix things.’

Jessica’s heart was racing, all signs of a hangover long gone. ‘Who?’

‘I dunno. I wasn’t even in. Someone she knew.’

Jessica didn’t want to ask the obvious, but couldn’t see a way around it. ‘One of her clients?’

‘Don’t talk about her like that.’

‘Please, Kim. I… It could be really helpful.’

‘Whatever. I don’t know. It was someone she knew.’

Jessica apologised for the call, ignored the sweary response and hung up. She was in her living room, sitting on the sofa in a still-empty flat. She took a deep breath, her heart still charging. She would have to make at least two more phone calls – the first to Garry Ashford to get Paul Keegan’s phone number. She kept the call to Garry short and didn’t give him any reason why she needed the number. He sounded more hungover than she did, but texted the number through.

Jessica called Paul Keegan straight away. The poor guy sounded shattered on the other end and she couldn’t bring herself to ask him anything over the phone. She asked if he could spare an hour or so and they arranged to meet in a café local to him. He sounded grateful to be getting out of the house. Jessica considered driving but didn’t want to risk still being over the limit from the night before. The place they were meeting was only a bus ride away and she figured it would give her time to consider how best to approach things.

P
aul Keegan was already waiting
for Jessica when she arrived. The place they had arranged to meet was his choice: a greasy spoon off a main road not too far from his house.

Jessica could smell the fat as she walked through the door, instantly reminding her of childhood. She and her parents used to spend two weeks every summer in Blackpool. At the time, the seafront was lined with similar places to this: dirt-cheap cafés competing to sell the most inexpensive cup of tea and fighting to get as many bingo players in as possible. This was the sort of place that had once been the lifeblood of a city like Manchester but had largely died out, replaced by posher, more expensive chains. There were still a few remaining, mainly on the outskirts of the city, where defiant locals would still go for a fry-up and a brew a couple of times a week.

There was a low chatter in the room. Jessica spotted Paul Keegan not far from the counter. He had a mug of tea on the table. She said hello and asked if he wanted anything to eat, or a refill, but he shook his head to both. Jessica ordered and paid for a cup of tea for herself.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said.

‘No worries, it’s fine. It’s nice to get away from the house. We weren’t allowed back for a couple of days and now it doesn’t feel right.’

Jessica didn’t know how to respond to that. It was a horrendous thought for a person to have to return to live in a house where a relative had been murdered. Paul was trying to sound positive, but his sad, slow response made it clear he was struggling to cope. Jessica didn’t think going straight in to ask the one question she wanted to would be that tactful.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

She knew the answer wouldn’t be terrific, but she didn’t want to ask directly about his stepson. Magistrates had refused Scott initial bail, fearing he and the other two who had admitted to assaulting Nigel Collins could run. They had all confessed to the crime and it was a matter of time until it came to court.

‘I don’t know,’ Paul said. ‘It’s Steven I feel sorry for the most. He’s had to go back to do his final exams with all this hanging over him. Mum dead, brother inside. With all the funeral arrangements and everything, I’ve not stopped for the past few days. I even went to see Scott yesterday…’

Jessica must have looked surprised because he added, ‘Scott’s not a bad kid. He had a rough time when his dad and Mary split up. Don’t get me wrong,
I
know and
he
knows that what he did was unforgivable, but…’

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Jessica knew what he was alluding to. Most people did something stupid when they were younger. That wasn’t to excuse what Scott had done in any way, but one stupid, immature decision made when he was barely a teenager was going to cost him any semblance of an adult life. She couldn’t help but be impressed by his stepfather. Paul Keegan had every right to hate a son who wasn’t his own flesh and blood, who had indirectly caused the death of his wife. Yet he didn’t. It seemed he had already forgiven him.

Jessica nodded towards his now-empty cup on the table: ‘Do you want another?’

‘Okay.’

‘Anything to eat?’

Paul shook his head.

He looked as if he could do with a meal.

Jessica headed to the counter and ordered a new mug of tea before returning to the table. When she sat down, Paul asked why her team had been removed from the case. She gave the best answer she could, trying to sound professional and remarking that the Serious Crime Division had more training in this type of area now the case had essentially become a search for one man. She thought it sounded good, even if she didn’t believe it herself.

‘I wanted to check one thing, if that’s okay?’ Jessica said.

‘No worries.’

‘Do you remember when you told me you’d had a few problems with kids? What kind of problems did you mean?’

‘The usual. Kids out and about at night, noise and that. Someone ended up putting glue in our locks. We had to climb out the window, then get someone to change them and get a bunch of new keys cut.’

Jessica gasped. How had she not asked this question before? She started to speak, but stumbled over her words. It felt as if time had slowed before she finally managed to reply. ‘When?’

The penny dropped for Paul too. ‘Why? Do you think…? A few months ago, five or six.’

‘Who fixed the locks?’

‘I don’t know. I was at work while Mary was off but, um…’ He stopped speaking and was mulling something over. ‘Yeah, yeah, I remember. We got this flyer through the door the day before it happened. It was some kind of special offer thing. Mary always kept the mail and everything so neatly on the table next to the door. It seemed like a piece of good fortune at the time.’

Jessica’s mind was racing, and she prayed the answer to her next question would be positive. ‘Did you keep the flyer?’

‘I don’t know. Mary usually kept things like that, in case. I don’t know if it was one of those things you had to hand in to the company to get the offer.’

‘Can we have a look?’

‘Of course.’

Paul quickly stood, understanding what could be happening. He marched towards the door, Jessica a little behind. His house was only a few minutes away and Jessica followed him along a cut-through towards the estate. Neither of them said a word. Jessica could feel the nerves in her stomach. Things suddenly seemed to make sense, at least for the final two victims.

Nigel Collins had tracked down Claire Hogan and had perhaps befriended her as a client. He’d sabotaged the lock on her front door by squirting glue into it and was then there to fix it for her. It would have been so easy to keep a copy of the key for himself. He could have either let himself in, murdered her, then left, locking up on the way out; or he could have gone to her as a client, killed her and locked the door behind him.

Even the ‘why’ seemed clear. It was as Hugo had said – misdirection. Nigel had even used the trouble with local kids as another way of directing attention away from himself. The victims had blamed local children for the trouble, not bothering to trust the police to do anything.

Something similar would have happened with Mary Keegan, except Collins had been even more clever, all but ensuring that the Keegans would come to him to get their door fixed. He’d posted a flyer through their door offering a cheap deal, and had then damaged their locks not long after. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but everyone liked a good bargain.

It would be a pretty good bet that the Christensens and Princes had had their locks changed after being robbed too. Most people would want it doing for their own peace of mind – and it was usually an insurance requirement after a burglary, anyway.

How Collins had managed to make sure he had a key for those two properties wasn’t clear, and there were still gaps, such as how he’d known where everyone lived – but Jessica knew she had figured out a large part of everything.

Now she had to solve the final but largest part of the puzzle – where was Nigel Collins?

Paul Keegan unlocked the same front door that Jessica had not that long ago, and they headed in. She remembered the tidy stack of post on the table next to the front door, which looked as if it had been added to. She was led into the kitchen and Paul opened a drawer to the left of the sink. ‘We keep things like menus and vouchers and so on in here. If it’s not here, it won’t be anywhere.’

He pulled out a mountain of glossy pieces of paper and put them on the kitchen table. Jessica was on one side as he sat opposite her, and they started looking through the pages. Jessica worked quickly. Some of the vouchers had expiry dates that were years old. The whole house was spotless, but this seemed to be something of a forbidden drawer, where all sorts of miscellaneous junk was thrown.

Jessica copied Paul by putting the pamphlets that weren’t useful in a separate pile. Her stack was twice the size of Mary’s husband’s, who was taking time to read each piece of paper, while she was far more ruthless. There were lots of menus, plus vouchers for money off fried chicken and pizza, various flyers for local supermarkets or the off-licence on the main road. Between them, the initial selection was down to around a quarter of its original size.

She had almost put one more sheet on her discard pile when she saw it. She had been so close to tossing it away, but stopped mid-action and brought the flyer back towards her so she could read it. She scanned the words, eyes flicking from side to side, reading the contents twice over.

She knew where to find Nigel Collins.