The Disciple (29 page)

‘It’s a girl thing.’

‘Well, let’s make sure they haven’t given our rooms away first, and then I think I’m finally ready for a bite to eat.’

A few minutes later the pair sat in the Midland Hotel lounge, both feeling the effects of a disturbed night – two in Hudson’s case. Grant poured two coffees from a coffee pot and handed one to Hudson who took a hearty draught around a mouthful of ham sandwich.

Finally Grant broke the silence. ‘Guv. You were pretty sure about Brook.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Telling Charlton he’s not The Reaper.’

Hudson rubbed the six o’clock shadow on his chin. ‘It’s all wrong, luv. Five families killed in their own homes and sandwiched in between The Reaper supposedly kills a fit jogger in a public place. It makes no sense. The only connection we’ve got here to Brighton is the drug used in the Wallis killings, two years ago in Derby. Apart from that, nothing else The Reaper’s ever done connects with Harvey-Ellis. Wrong MO, wrong victim. The Reaper didn’t kill Harvey-Ellis.’

‘Then why dangle his murder in front of Charlton?’

‘It got us on the taskforce, didn’t it? Let’s face it, the Chief Super didn’t need much pushing. This way he covers all bases. Besides we’re getting bugger-all-where with the Harvey-Ellis
Inquiry and our chief suspect is here. This is where we need to be. This is where we find our killer.’

Laura Grant nodded. ‘Brook.’

‘It’s possible. He has motive
and
opportunity for Harvey-Ellis. But there’s no way Brook killed this or any other family. It’s not him. Not without a good reason.’

‘Maybe he
has
finally gone off the deep end and is starting to become what he’s hunted all these years.’

‘Bollocks. You’ve seen him. He’s as cool as they come. And he wouldn’t have been caught red-handed. No, there’s something going on here … something interesting.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know yet but I’d like to find out. If we flip this thing over and assume Brook’s telling the truth about that email, and that he didn’t kill that family last night, it means that somebody took the trouble to lure him there and make it look like he did.’

‘And you want to know who, guv.’

‘I want to know why. And there’s something else. I don’t know anything about this Victor Sorenson being tagged as The Reaper, but he’s the guy Brook nailed for killing that schoolgirl, Laura Maples and got him to confess. The one who tried to poison Brook – I remember the name now.’

Grant nodded. ‘Interesting.’

Hudson yawned and looked at his watch. ‘The briefing’s at four. I think I’m going to have a shower and grab an hour’s shut-eye.’ He pulled a book from beneath his overcoat. ‘Then I’m going to do a bit more background.’ He flashed Grant the cover of Brian Burton’s book.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘I borrowed it from the desk sergeant, Hendrickson. The one I spoke to on the phone. He had several copies, couldn’t wait to give me one. I’ll see you in here at three. What are you going to do?’

‘Same as you – after I buy some underwear.’

When Chief Superintendent Charlton entered the Incident Room with DCI Hudson and DI Brook, the hum of conversation stopped immediately. The room was filled with about twenty officers, some CID, some senior uniformed officers – Traffic, Community and others – whose input might initially be called upon in a potentially massive inquiry.

Charlton walked over to the table, hesitated for a second while he assessed whether he could ask everyone to sit, then, realising there wouldn’t be enough chairs, he leaned against the table. Brook was next to him, standing several inches taller.

‘Stand easy, everyone,’ he said and most of the assembled throng either sat down on chairs or sagged onto nearby tables.

Brook looked around at the crowd. As well as Hudson and himself, there were several detective sergeants, including newly promoted Jane Gadd and Rob Morton, who’d both worked on the Wallis Inquiry two years before, in addition to Laura Grant and John Noble, who were chatting in one corner of the room. Another six detective constables had been added to the team, including DCs Bull and Cooper who had also been in Brook’s previous team to catch The Reaper.

‘We don’t want this to take long because we’ve got a killer to apprehend,’ continued Charlton. ‘But I want to know that this inquiry has everyone on the same page,’ he added. ‘I can confirm that DCI Hudson and DI Brook are jointly heading
up the taskforce to find this man; but this is a Derby inquiry and I will have ultimate responsibility.

‘I will also take charge of the public face of the investigation as much as possible, and will deal with the media, allowing senior detectives to focus all their powers on bringing this madman to justice. Now, this is most important. My predecessor brought me up to speed on mistakes that were made on the Wallis Inquiry two years ago. One thing beyond her control was the leaking of information to the local media and this is something I will
not
tolerate. Anybody undermining this investigation with little whispers to the press, will find themselves back in uniform doing match-day duty at Ilkeston Town.’ A general groan was followed by a few guilty titters. ‘And I mean
anybody!’
He glared around the room. ‘Anything to add to that, Inspector Brook?’ Brook shook his head. ‘Chief Inspector Hudson?’

Unlike Brook, Hudson had a few people skills and grinned at the assembled team. ‘I’d like to thank everyone at this station for the warm welcome. I know it can’t be easy to integrate new officers into a successful CID unit overnight, especially a hand-picked and talented team like yourselves. DI Brook and I know we can rely on your support to get a result.’

Brook darted his eyes around the assembled faces – all seemed to be buying into the middle-management drivel.

‘I’ll be leaning heavily on the expertise of all Derby officers,’ continued Hudson. Brook was almost relieved to spot the expression of scepticism flash across Laura Grant’s face. ‘Because they have more direct experience of this killer and this MO. But remember, anything anybody wants to say to me or DI Brook about the direction of the inquiry, please don’t hesitate to speak. My door is always open.’

‘Where is your door?’ asked a likely-lad DC. A peal of laughter broke out around the room. Only Charlton didn’t join in.

Hudson smiled. ‘It’s a symbolic door at the moment, but we’re
sorting something out.’ He glanced at Brook, who stood to address the briefing.

‘DS Noble has been organising most of the information we’ve gathered so far, but we’ll assemble again tomorrow morning to talk through further developments. John.’

It was DS Noble’s turn to stand and face the throng. ‘We’ll have hard facts by tonight for full briefing tomorrow morning at eight a.m. sharp…’ more groans followed ‘…yes, I know. You’ll just have to set your alarms.’

‘Enough of that,’ bellowed Charlton, folding his arms.

The noise subsided quickly and Noble began again. ‘Let’s deal with what we know. As we speak there are six corpses lying in the mortuary.’ He waved a hand at the crime scene photographs on the boards behind his head, as if it were necessary to prompt colleagues to examine them. As well as the crystal-clear SOCO pictures there were a couple of grainy mobile phone shots taken by PC Duffy using Brook’s phone before the ambulances had arrived. They showed an unconscious Jason Wallis on the sofa, first with the bloodied scalpel under his hand and then with his phone on his lap.

Consulting a notebook, Noble continued. ‘The crime scene is 229 Drayfin Park Road. Miss Chelsea Ingham, a thirty-two-year-old unemployed beauty consultant, was found in the main bedroom of the house. In the same bed was her current partner, twenty-three-year-old Ryan Harper, who we’ve identified from his fingerprints. He appears to be an unemployed labourer though he has a fairly long jacket of minor offences, the most serious of which was assault.’ Brook and a few others were nodding in recognition at the name. ‘Both of these victims had their throats cut. Also found dead in the bedroom was Miss Ingham’s nine-year-old son by a previous partner. D’Wayne I think it is – that’s the son, not the partner. The lad had been hung, although the pathologist is not certain that was the cause of death. He’d also had two fingers removed and placed in his pyjama pocket – a Reaper
signature from the first killings in Harlesden twenty years ago.’ All parents in the room lowered their heads. The rest stared unblinking at the relevant photograph. ‘The files on all the previous killings are on the system so any spare minute needs to be spent reading up on The Reaper’s MO.’

‘Anything on the ex-partner?’ asked Hudson.

‘In the clear, sir. He’s a builder and working in Dubai,’ answered Noble. After a pause to shake out any further questions, he pressed on. ‘Also, in the backyard of 229, we have the bodies of three seventeen-year-old males. Stephen Ingham, Miss Ingham’s elder son by another partner, and Benjamin Anderson. The third body we believe is David Gretton. Those IDs are dependent on formal identification by relatives. A fourth male, Jason Wallis, is now in the Royal Derby, recovering from mild hypothermia. Most of you know his history from the previous Reaper investigation nearly two years ago.

‘The three deceased outside the house all had their throats cut in identical fashion to the two adults in the bedroom. The cuts were clean and professional, there were no signs of hesitation and the weapon used was a scalpel recovered at the scene from Jason Wallis’s hand. Provisional blood analysis would seem to suggest that, apart from the little boy, all victims were killed where they were found. Lividity would seem to confirm that.

‘The three older boys were sitting on two old sofas in the yard and had probably been consuming significant amounts of alcohol and soft drugs.’

‘What drugs?’ broke in Charlton.

‘Marijuana definitely, sir, but the post-mortems will give us a clearer picture. Now at the moment we’re assuming that whoever attacked the Ingham home is still at large.’ Grant glanced across at Brook with a raised eyebrow. ‘Jason Wallis did come under brief suspicion for the killing of his family two years ago but was subsequently cleared, and we’re reasonably sure that once again Wallis is not our killer. However, his presence at a second
Reaper killing is unusual to say the least. His
survival
, for the second time, is even more unusual, so we can’t rule him out. We hope to interview him later today, provided he’s regained consciousness. As Jason’s the first living witness to survive a Reaper attack – if you discount the Wallis baby – we may have some significant details for tomorrow’s briefing. The murder weapon, the scalpel, was covered in blood and presumably will have Jason’s prints on it…’

‘Sarge, am I missing something?’ asked DC Cooper. ‘Why can’t Jason Wallis be our killer? Seems straightforward to me. Sole survivor. Weapon in hand.’

‘It appears the weapon was placed under Jason’s hand rather than in it.’ Noble indicated the picture on the wall showing the scene before Jason was lifted onto the stretcher. ‘Also, had Jason been the killer, he would have had to stand behind the victims, and the sofa where he was found unconscious would have been covered in blood spatter even if he had sat back down. It’s not.’ Noble looked round for any follow-up.

‘Our best guess on time of death is between 1.00a.m. and 1.53a.m. this morning. You’ll find out why 1.53 in a minute; obviously that’s provisional and as the three older boys were out in the cold it’ll be more difficult to pin down in their cases. We’ve already got door to door underway and we’re coordinating any relevant CCTV around the area. Hopefully we can discover how the killer arrived at the Ingham house, but for now nothing is ruled in or out until we have something solid to get our teeth into.

‘Until we get a heads up on definite leads from Forensics and the post-mortems we have to get stuck into the legwork. If the killer’s local, fine, but if not it means looking at ways in and out of Drayfin
and
Derby, so we look at bus and rail passengers and cab firms, we check with Traffic and trawl through the cameras. We search the entire estate top to bottom.

‘Van hire firms need checking as The Reaper hired locally two years ago. Also any hotels or B&Bs with male guests staying last
night or the night before who have checked out. Get lists and addresses and any credit card details and cross-reference those with descriptions from previous investigations on file. But remember, assume nothing.’

‘Why are we so sure it’s a male?’ asked DS Gadd. ‘The Wallis victims two years ago were poisoned before they were cut open. That’s a woman’s MO.’

Brook spoke now, pausing briefly to find a way to give nothing away. ‘That’s true but the MO’s not exclusive to women. Older, weaker men use it as well. Like Crippen.’ ‘Like Victor Sorenson’ remained unsaid. ‘And all descriptions from previous Reaper killings point to a lightly-built, middle-aged male. Possibly older.’

‘Also we’ve something concrete on that shortly,’ added Noble. Again he paused for any follow-up before continuing. ‘We also look at the victims – we look into their history, see if there’s anything in there that might have caused someone to do this to them. Two years ago we were sure the Wallis family were targeted because of their petty criminal background, specifically Jason Wallis’s sexual assault on a Mrs Ottoman, a teacher at his school. The antisocial behaviour and petty criminal background of the victims would fit with previous Reaper murders.’

‘Didn’t the Ottoman woman have a nervous breakdown and attempt suicide?’ said Laura Grant.

‘I think she did,’ said Noble. ‘And that made her husband John Ottoman briefly a suspect in the Wallis Inquiry…’

‘Then why suggest the offence was petty?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t say it was,’ answered Noble.

‘You said…’

‘How did this Wallis escape The Reaper last time?’ asked Hudson, changing the subject. ‘The files aren’t clear.’ He glanced over at Grant who read the signal and decided to leave the rest of her sentence unsaid.

‘That’s because we were never certain,’ jumped in Brook, seeing Noble hesitate. ‘At first we thought he was lucky and arrived
home after the murder of his family. We assumed he’d staggered home drunk and ate some of the drugged pizza delivered by The Reaper. He was unconscious at the scene and didn’t even know his family were dead until the next day. It was only later we had to face the fact that The Reaper was probably at the scene the same time as Jason, but left him alive for some reason.’