Gut Instinct (19 page)

“Are our women safe on the streets?”

“How close are you to catching him?”

And so, on and so on.

Stephen had waited until they had all stopped.  He was not going to be answering their questions individually.  He had a ready prepared speech and that was all that they were getting.
He held up his hand and commanded silence, and as Stephen always did, he got it.

“Today, we have been investigating a third murder in this city.  All three were single women in their thirties, and all were killed in a similar way.

There is a pattern forming and we do believe that this is the work of one man

On Thursday 3
rd
April we arrested and charged a man for the murder of Jane Smith and Lizzie
Benton, we are now having an internal investigation to assess whether we did in fact arrest the wrong man for these crimes.  If this is the case, this man will be released from
Winson
Green prison over the next couple of days.  However we will still be expecting him to help with our enquiries.

The police are doing all we can to solve these serious and unprovoked
attack
s. We have several leads to follow up and we are working around the clock and will do so until this crime is solved and the perpetrator is caught.

In the meantime we advise that all women are careful, that they walk home in pairs
, that they are vigilant and wary of strangers.

We would like to request that anyone that knows anything that may help the police with their enquiries, that they contact us immediately on 0800 99009
9, no matter how small and any
call will be treated
sensitively and
confidentially.

You have my personal assurance that this man will be caught!

Thank you”

Stephen turned back into the police station ignoring the stream of questions that followed him.

**********

They were all sat in the meeting room waiting for Stephen to appear.  It was Thursday 24
th
April and they’d all been working full out to try and catch this killer.

Stephen had called this meeting to look at what they had got, discuss the recently received pathology report and to plan their next move.

Stephen did not have to command silence when he walked into the room this time.  They were already silent, they were tired from days of adrenalin boosted work, frustrated from the dead ends they repeatedly kept coming to, and quickly losing their motivation.

Stephen could feel this, he’d been sensing it for the last two days, and had tried his hardest to keep the momentum going, keep their morale
that was slowly dropping down high
.

It was getting exceedingly harder and harder as the hours passed.

“Right guys” he announced “let’s look at what we have got and
lets
join forces and work out a plan on how to catch this bastard.”

“But before we start, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your hard work it has not gone unnoticed by me or the powers to be upstairs, and what I can tell you is that when
it’s
all over and we have this moron safely locked away, there
’
s a big fat gypsy party for you all
with free drinks all night and I’ve had that from the money man himself.
”

The whole team cheered
, morale rising, Stephen knew this would work, that’s why he had gone to the trouble of getting it authorised with Michael, a team with a low morale
decreased their chances of finding this, now what they all believed, serial killer.

“Firstly” Stephen
said as soon as they had all quietened down.

“Fiona Stafford was suffocated with her own pillow as
were
the others; however it looks like she put up a fight first.  There were traces of skin in her finger nails, which were not her own. Therefore our perpetrator may have scratches on him.

The cells have been sent off for DNA and.....”

Before he could finish everyone had groaned, he knew the problem
,
they were thwarted by the time that this usually took.

“
and
” Stephen added “the database staff have acted with urgency on this one and have scoured their data base, but they do not have a match”

Another groan.

“The positive of that is that when we get him, there will be no mistakes this time we will have his DNA”
he paused.

“The pathologist believes that she was struck over the head with a hammer, we are in the middle of trying to get some clarity on if this was her own hammer, borrowed or if maybe the killer brought it with him.

Owen believes that Fiona had intercourse the night of the attack, there were slight bruises inside the vagina, however this could have been down to rough sex rather than a rape, as there was no other bruising on the body
to indicate that she was pinned down, however this does not rule out rape
.
” He heard himself saying for the second time this month.
 

“
No semen this time.” Again he paused.

“
The toxicology report states that she had cocaine, crack and
rohypnol
in her system

There was no forced entry again as you know, and a calling card was left” he glanced
uncomfortably at Paul as he said this.  “We all know what the calling card said and I can still not decipher its meaning. Over to you” he said, handing the floor to his team.

Both Vera and Paul went to speak at the same time. Vera hung back and let Paul go first.

“The reason she was able to fight back sir, maybe because she had a high tolerance for
roofies
,
erm
rohypnol
sir”

“Why would that be Paul?” Stephen asked.

“People that take crack sir often need to take something to bring them down; the most common drugs that they use are
roofies
which is the street name for
rohypnol
, heroin,
and diazepam
or in some cases cannabis.
  If Floss had been taking
roofies
regularly for this purpose, then her tolerance would be stronger than say a non drug user”

“Thanks Paul” Stephen said, never able to understand why drug users used drugs to lift
themselves up, then drugs to bring them back down, what was the point in that he thought.

“You may have hit the nail on the head, the perpetrator may not have known that, now Vera what have you got”

“The quote sir, it should read God”

“God?”
Stephen asked.

“Yes sir, ‘God gives every bird a worm, but he does not throw it into the nest’ I found it on the internet”

Everyone sniggered.

“So what’s he suggesting” Stephen said absentmindedly losing his cool in front of the team “that I’m God!” he asked.

No-one answered.  No one dare.

Paul would have liked to but thought better of it.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

How come you are reading this?

Don’t you have other things to do, place’s to be, duties to carry out and problems to solve?

Isn’t every moment spoken for twice over?

No, you just want to invade my personal world again don’t you, judge me, and grow to hate me.

Let me tell you something
;
you do that to avoid,
to avoid
looking at your own world and its miseries. While you are looking at me and judging me and despising me you don’t have to look at yourself do you?

Well if you really want to know, I
don’t feel so good today, things went drastically wrong,

I don’t know why it didn’t work, the drug that is, maybe because she was overweight, perhaps I should have put more in.

I will have to put more in, in future.  I can’t risk that happening again, I might have been hurt.

I’m depressed now, don’t worry about me though as I have my souvenirs, I have the lipstick stains that I can smell and taste.

I hate violence and I had to use violence I had no choice, she fought me like
an alley cat, scratched my face, there was a hammer laying on the table so I
had to
hit her with it. 

This is not my style but I had no choice, I hope you can see that. 

I hope you don’t see me as a monster. 

I am not a monster; I just had to protect myself and my identity to enable me to continue my work.

You can see that can’t you?

I have victim empathy, I never hurt them,
I
have only ever suffocated my victims with a pillow.

I learned this method by chance when I was nine years old. 

I wanted a pet, but my mother hated animals,
she just
liked treating people like animals, well me in particular.

One day when she was out I heard a sort of crying
at the back door, I wasn’t sure what it was but it sounded like something in distress.

I wasn’t supposed to open the door to anyone but this day I did. 

I found on the doorstep a little kitten, black and white it was.  I loved it the minute I saw it and brought it in and gave it some milk.

I wanted to keep it,
but she would never let me, would probably hurt it in some way if she saw it.

I worked out a way that I could
keep it
without her knowing.  I would keep it in my bedroom; she would never know because she never went in there.

So I did.  I even named it, mittens, after
its
black paws.

I had something of my own, something to love and something that would help me through my miserable days
. 

I would sneak food up to it every day, and lay newspaper down so that it could do its business and sneak it out to the bin whenever she went out.

My life felt better then, I so loved that kitten.

Mittens had been living in my room for about three weeks when I think I must have given it something that upset
its
stomach, because one particular night she began crying.  I tried everything to console it, but it would not stop crying. 

If my mother found it we were both for the chop, so I
took it into my arms and took it
to bed with me. 
It
still continued to cry.

I put the pillow over its face and after a while it stopped.

I miss mittens with all my hear
t
.

I despised her more after this.
 

The abuse continued for all of my life, and the sexual abuse was periodic
but
got more frequent when she didn’t have a man to satisfy her.

I began to despise my penis more too, now that she was using it.

I left home just after my sixteenth birthday,

I had made that decision at a very young age.  I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do, but anything would be better than staying with her.

By this time she had
almost
stopped going out,
she went out to collect her benefits and alcohol and a meagre amount of food once a week and that was it.

She would then
s
i
t in the chair all day,
she
never washed, never changed her clothes and never did anything but watch television and drink.

I was doing everything for her.
I had become her slave.

She was a full blown alcoholic by this time, her first drink in the morning would be Gin and she would drink through the day rather than eat.

She was deteriorating rapidly and I was not going to
be looking after her when she became really ill.  She could rot in hell for all I care.

So one morning having
packed
what little belongings that I had, and stealing f
ifty pounds from
her purse, I left my luggage in the hallway and I went into the now smelly living room and said,

“Mother, why do you hate me so much?”

She looked at me for a long time, almost as if she had trouble comprehending what I had said, then replied,

“I don’t hate you son, I just love me more”

“Then why have you hurt me so much?” I asked,

T
hat was
it,
her usual tirade of abuse came flooding out,