The Killer Inside: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 1) (7 page)

T
here would have been
no instant reason to link this second killing to the first – no reason, that was, until Jessica saw the crime scene. The house was less than half a mile from Yvonne Christensen’s residence. This time, the victim was found in an armchair in the living room. It looked as if there had been more of a struggle, but there were still deep, vicious wounds in the victim’s neck.

There was one other major difference: this time, the victim was male.

After viewing the crime scene, Jessica headed into the interview room at Longsight, not knowing how to feel. She had been at work the entire day and the wine she’d shared with Caroline on an empty stomach was only now wearing off. It was late, and she was tired. As time edged into the late evening, her stomach started rumbling and she didn’t feel right. Any crime scene could be enough to make a person feel a bit queasy, but Jessica guessed that a large part of how she was feeling was down to mixed emotions. A part of her was exhilarated that something was now happening, and relieved that she wasn’t necessarily a failure. But another part of her was feeling guilty about feeling that way, because after all, someone had died.

DI Cole was already sitting at the table opposite the station’s duty solicitor, who was next to a terrified-looking young man.

Jonathan Prince still lived at home with his parents, despite being twenty-two. He had come home from work and found the body of his father, Martin, in an armchair – photos of which the Scenes of Crime Officers would be taking right now.

Cole started the tape and Jessica spoke to confirm everyone’s name, plus the time and date, before pausing for a moment. ‘Are you okay, Jonathan?’ she asked.

No response.

‘Jonathan?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m okay…?’ The young man made it sound like a question.

‘I have to ask you a few questions, all right, Jonathan? I know you’ve had a horrible time, but anything you can tell us will help us find out who did this. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah, yeah… I know.’

‘Can you tell me what you’ve done today?’

Jonathan took his time, blinking away the tears that seemed permanently close to falling. He said he had got up and gone to work as normal. He was a builder, and left the house at half past six every morning. His mum, who worked as a secretary for the council, was always up at that time too, although Jonathan rarely saw his dad before he got home. His dad had used to work for a printing company but had been laid off a few years before. He hadn’t found work since, and rarely left the house.

‘He couldn’t find anything to do with himself and no one wanted to give him a chance because of his age,’ Jonathan said. ‘He became a different person. Not bitter… Just
sad
.’

Jonathan explained that he had thought a few times about moving out, but his rent helped pay his parents’ mortgage and he didn’t want to leave them in a tough situation.

‘Okay, this is going to be hard, Jonathan, but can you talk us through finding your dad?’ Jessica asked.

‘It was about three o’clock or so,’ Jonathan started, ‘and we were done for the day. I didn’t have anything on, so I went to the pub for a bit with a few guys from work. After that, I was going to go home and play on the PlayStation.’

‘Did you drive home?’

‘No, God no. I’d been drinking. Got a taxi.’

‘And what happened when you got there?’

‘I let myself into the house…’

‘So the front door was locked when you arrived?’

‘I guess…’ Jonathan paused, and then started nodding emphatically. ‘Definitely. It was locked. I had to use my key to get in.’

‘Is it usually locked when you get home?’

‘Sometimes. I mean, if my mum leaves for work and Dad’s not up yet, I know she’ll leave it locked just in case. It depends if he’s out of bed.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I’d gone into the living room to say “hello”. Usually the first thing I hear when I walk in the front door is the TV, but it was quiet. I walked into the room and he was there…’ Jonathan tailed off.

At the crime scene, it had already been established that the back door and each of the windows were locked. It was the first thing Jessica had asked to be checked when she arrived. The front door was, of course, open – but that was because Jonathan had let himself in before finding the body. Martin Prince’s own house keys had been found next to his wallet, upstairs on the nightstand adjacent to his bed.

Again, there had been no obvious way in or out for the killer.

Jonathan’s alibi of being at work all day would be checked with his workmates and boss, but Jessica had no doubt it would be legitimate. As for his mother, Sandra Prince had got home as the police were arriving at the scene. When she’d realised the authorities were entering her house, and had had the news broken to her about her husband, she had collapsed, unable to accept what she’d been told. She had been taken to hospital in an ambulance – probably much to the delight of all the curtain-twitchers.

However, she’d been in the hallway when she’d fainted, which meant that her handbag had been left behind, inside the house. Jessica had looked inside the bag to see if Sandra’s house keys were in there. They were, of course – as Jessica had known they would be.

They would interview Sandra when the doctors said she was up to it, but given the circumstances – and the fact she had likely been at work all day, which would be easy enough to check – she wasn’t a suspect, either.

Jessica finished the interview with Jonathan, and went outside to organise a lift for him to visit his mother in the hospital.

‘DS Daniel?’ asked a uniformed officer. ‘DCI Aylesbury wants to see you and DI Cole in his office.’

Jessica and DI Cole took the stairs up to the first floor and made their way past some of the rooms used for storage into the DCI’s office.

‘What do we reckon?’ Aylesbury asked when they were inside. ‘Same killer?’

It was clearly what both Jessica and Cole had been thinking. Cole spoke first. ‘We think so, sir. Obviously there are no forensics yet, but the neck wounds look similar and the house seems to have been locked up like the first one.’

‘Did you get much that was useful from the son?’

Jessica spoke this time. ‘Not really. He was pretty shaken. He confirmed he unlocked the front door to let himself in, then found the body.’

‘And all the other windows and doors were locked?’

Jessica and Cole nodded in unison. ‘Yes,’ Jessica said. ‘The house could have been unlocked during the day – we won’t know that until we speak to Mrs Prince – but the son says it was locked when he got home.’

‘We’re going to have to keep this out of the media for now. We can’t have talk of a serial killer at this stage, especially one killing people in their own locked homes. We should wait for the autopsy and the lab tests to come back. Then maybe we can talk about releasing information. I’ll draft a press release with the office, something about a body being found and so on. You two, keep your mouths shut – and tell all the other officers to do the same. We can’t have this getting out, not like last time.’

They were dismissed with Aylesbury’s words ringing in their ears. Jessica walked through the station’s reception. She hadn’t driven in because of the wine; one of the other officers was going to drop her home. She was heading towards the bay of marked cars when the familiar sound of her ringtone started, muffled by her bag. She fished around and pulled out the device. The caller’s name was only half a surprise. She had saved the number as something she thought particularly appropriate:
Tweed Wanker.

Jessica pushed the touch screen to answer and put it to her ear.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

She didn’t know if Garry Ashford knew anything about what had happened that evening, but she definitely wasn’t going to give away any information by accident.

‘Hi, it’s Garry from the
Herald
. Can you speak for a minute or two?’

‘Not really. People to see, places to go, bed to get to.’

‘Can I run something by you?’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got it on good authority another body was found tonight.’

‘Whose authority?’

‘
Good
authority.’

Jessica bit back a sigh, trying to stay calm. ‘You’re going to have to talk to the press office. They deal with media requests, not me. You can’t keep calling me.’

‘Are they going to put out a statement about this murder being linked to the first one?’

Jessica winced. ‘I don’t know who told you that, Garry, but I think someone’s pulling your leg.’

‘Or maybe you are?’

Jessica was fuming, not knowing how to respond.
How could he know?
He might have found out a body had been discovered – there had been plenty of people having a nose along the street where the Princes lived – but how could he know that the police suspected it was linked to the first murder?

Either someone involved with the investigation was feeding him information, or…

‘Are you my murderer, Garry?’ Jessica spoke coolly and calmly.

‘What? … No. Of course I’m not.’

‘You seem to know a lot about things. Maybe things only the killer would know?’

‘It’s not like that.’

Jessica didn’t think for a moment he was her man, but thought she would give him a bit of his own medicine. ‘So what is it like, then? I’ve got some guy who seems to know an awful lot about my case but doesn’t seem willing to speak about it. Meanwhile, he’s writing stories blasting me and my fellow officers. Maybe I should bring you in for questioning?’

She could sense him squirming at the other end.

‘No, no. Look, I didn’t write all of that. My editor, he—’

‘He what?’ On the other end of the line, Jessica heard the caller give a large sigh.

‘Can we meet?’ Garry asked.

‘Are you asking me on a date? I don’t go out with killers, Garry.’

‘Not like that. I’d like to talk to you. Two people have died.’

It was that which brought an end to the charade. Jessica was still annoyed, but she could hear in the journalist’s voice that he, like her, recognised that the two dead people were almost becoming a side issue.

‘I’m busy at the moment,’ she said.

‘Fifteen minutes. Tomorrow afternoon? There’s a coffee shop near my office.’

‘Text me the address. I’m not promising.’

‘Great. I’ll do it now.’

Before he could end the call, Jessica thought of one final thing. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Don’t wear the jacket.’

Jessica hung up.

T
here wasn’t
much coverage in the following day’s papers – it had probably been too late for their deadlines. The morning news broadcasts were running with the line fed to them by last night’s media release and everyone seemed fairly happy that a lid had been kept on specific details of the case.

Jessica went to see Aylesbury in the morning to give him a brief rundown on her conversation with Garry Ashford the night before. She didn’t particularly want to be part of an internal investigation, so thought it was best to tell him she had agreed to meet with the journalist later that day. The DCI pointed out that, considering there were no test results back from the scene and that they had been unable to speak to Sandra Prince, anything appearing in the media about the murders being linked could cause a panic.

‘They’ve already got us looking like blundering incompetents,’ he said. ‘What with these murders, and that shambles of a court case going on, we’re in everyone’s sights at the moment.’

A ‘shambles’ was certainly one way to describe how the case surrounding Harry’s stabbing was proceeding. After Harry’s no-show on the first day, the prosecution had asked for an adjournment based on ‘illness’. Peter Hunt, for the defence, had vigorously opposed the request but, given the jury had yet to be selected, the judge had reluctantly delayed the case for the rest of the week. Jessica had tried calling Harry but, as usual, there had been no answer. Rumours had flown around the station that he would refuse to give evidence and the case would fall apart. With the Christensen investigation going nowhere either, everyone had been tense.

However, the case had started the week after and Harry had been present each day. The jury had been selected and the opening arguments presented, and it would be Harry’s turn in the witness box that day. Jessica was not allowed to attend because she was a witness, so she was relying on the desk sergeant – who seemed to know everything going on – and the television news for information on the case.

‘What about whoever’s leaking this stuff to Ashford?’ Jessica asked Aylesbury now.

Aylesbury looked at her as if to say,
I’m not convinced it isn’t you
. He didn’t follow it up, instead replying, ‘For now, things are fine, but if anything else gets out it will become a matter for the Internal boys.’

T
he station was buzzing
that morning. There was nothing like a body turning up to get everyone moving. A photo of Martin Prince had joined that of Yvonne on the incident room’s whiteboard to keep everyone focused, and the morning’s briefing had gone along much the same lines as what Aylesbury had told Jessica in his office.

He reminded everyone of the need to keep things in-house, then Jessica talked the floor through what they knew. Jonathan Prince’s alibi had been checked and confirmed and, even though Sandra Prince was still in hospital, it had been verified she had been in work the previous day. A uniformed officer had been placed at the hospital with Mrs Prince, and Jessica would be told when it was okay to interview her. Forensic test results were due to come back later that day but, for now, everyone would operate under the assumption the murder had been carried out in the same way, probably by the same person, as that of Yvonne Christensen. The marks on the neck were enough to give a pretty good indication that the murders were linked.

As she spoke, Jessica was very careful not to mention the phrase ‘serial killer’. Those were dirty words.

She continued to brief the floor. A phone number had been given out to all media the previous evening, and officers were again needed to take hotline calls. Some uniforms were going door to door in the area where Martin Prince had lived and another sub-team had been given the job of trying to link the two victims. It was a possibility they had been killed at random, but far more likely they had something in common that, if discovered, could lead to a person who might want to murder the pair of them. One of the first things the sub-team would do would be to contact Eric Christensen and ask him if he knew Martin Prince.

‘Find the link, we find the killer,’ Jessica told the assembled team.

T
o say
Garry Ashford was nervous about his meeting with DS Daniel was an understatement. One of the first things a journalist was taught was to protect their sources. There was no way Garry would reveal who had given him information about the killer. As for his conversation on the phone with DS Daniel the previous evening, he still wasn’t sure whether or not she
actually
thought he was a suspect.

Probably not, he told himself.

For now, he hadn’t told his editor that he had any extra information about the second killing. The basics had been released to the media, and his boss had asked him what else he knew, telling him to get back on to his contact and get the full story. Garry promised he would – and had half told the truth when he said he would be meeting the detective sergeant to talk about the case. He
was
meeting her, of course, but only to confirm the information he already knew was true.

Since his boss’s editorial criticising the police using Garry’s information and byline the previous week, Garry had been a lot more tentative about what information to give up. He didn’t necessarily have a problem with breaking any of the police’s embargoes or with revealing information they hadn’t released, but he
did
feel uncomfortable with how his information was being used to bash the police in a way that gave little thought to the victims. Since then, Garry had somehow managed to walk the line of staying in his editor’s good books while also feeling as if he hadn’t compromised himself.

He was sitting in a small café around the corner from the newspaper’s office in the centre of the city. It was an old-fashioned establishment that looked drastically out of place, surrounded as it was by newly built or renovated glass-fronted buildings. It had character and smelled of exotic tea in the way only old cafés could. It was where Garry went for lunch a couple of times a week, attracted by its cheap prices.

He ordered a cappuccino and told the blonde server he was waiting for a friend. He was wearing a regular coat over his shirt, after DS Daniel’s fashion advice the night before. She was five minutes late when he saw her coming through the door wearing her best scowl. She spotted him instantly and made her way over.

The waitress made a move as if to come over to their table, but the officer gave her a look that advised her not to.

‘Hi,’ Garry tried as DS Daniel sat down.

‘What do you want?’ the detective sergeant replied. She looked a little windswept; her long hair had been blown around and she fiddled with it, trying to move it out of her face. For the first time, Garry actually noticed her eyes. They were half green, half brown. He liked them – but he did not like the way they were looking at him.

‘I wanted to check some things with you,’ Garry said.

‘Clock’s ticking...’

Garry flicked through his notebook and read from it without looking up. ‘I’ve been told that the body you found last night was probably killed by the same person who killed Yvonne Christensen. Both bodies were found in houses that were locked and you don’t have much idea about how the murderer either got in or back out again.’

DS Daniel looked down and took a deep breath, then looked back at him. Her expression had changed. She no longer looked angry, just weary. ‘You can’t print this stuff. We don’t know if everything you said is true. People have died. What we want is help finding whoever did it, not headlines that are going to make people panic.’

Garry agreed with her to some degree, but he was a journalist, after all. He didn’t see why the information couldn’t be used as long as it was done responsibly.

‘I didn’t write those headlines before,’ he said. ‘My editor did. You can’t expect me to sit on information when I get it. I have a job to do, too.’

‘That might be true…’ DS Daniel tailed off. ‘I’m not telling you what you can and can’t do – I’m saying that scaring people is wrong.’

Garry nodded, apparently understanding. ‘Can I quote you?’ he asked.

‘Don’t push your luck. I don’t trust anyone that can’t spell their own name properly.’

‘Huh?’

‘Garry has one “r”, you moron.’

J
essica was sitting
on a bus that would take her almost the whole way back to the station. It would leave her with a five-minute walk at the end, but she didn’t mind that. She hadn’t fancied driving into the centre for her talk with the journalist. It was always a nightmare to park, and she hadn’t planned on spending too long with him.

She was relatively pleased with how the meeting had gone. She’d believed Garry when he’d said it was his editor who had written the stories up to have a go at the force. When Harry used to take her out, he’d spoken about the value of journalists. ‘Be careful which ones you trust,’ he’d told her.

Garry seemed all right. He actually seemed to care, which was always a good start. And having someone she could trust in the media could be key to finding the link between Yvonne Christensen and Martin Prince.

As she wondered about that, the time the bus journey was taking reminded her why she didn’t use public transport very often. It wasn’t
that
far back to the station, but the time really added up when the bus waited at every single stop. There was some guy chatting far too loudly on his phone in the seat in front of her, with three teenagers listening to some dreadful dance music through the speaker of one of their phones at the back. Near the front there was a baby strapped into a pushchair, crying its eyes out while its mother chatted to her friend in the next seat. Noise, noise, noise.

Jessica closed her eyes for a moment but couldn’t blank any of it out. As she looked towards the rear of the bus, she saw one of the youngsters had lit a cigarette. She sighed, wondering whether she could be bothered with it.

She took a deep breath. ‘Oi,’ she snapped at them, pointing at the no smoking sign on the window next to them. They were about three rows behind her.

‘What?’ the one with the cigarette said, taking his first drag.

‘Put it out.’

By now, most of the other passengers were looking at her.

‘Why? What are you going to do about it?’

This was all she needed. Jessica reached into her inside pocket and pulled out her warrant card, getting up from her seat and walking towards them. She hoped the bus wouldn’t stop suddenly, or she would stumble and look a right fool. She perched on the seat closest to the teenagers, and shoved the card under the smoker’s nose. ‘Put it out and stop being dicks.’

‘You can’t talk to us like that,’ one of the non-smokers said.

‘And you can’t smoke on a bus, so put it out.’

The smoker pressed his lips together, weighing up his options, but eventually stubbed the cigarette out on the floor.

Jessica put her identification away and headed back to her original seat, thinking she’d drive the next time.

S
he would not have been
in such a hurry to get back to the station had she known the news awaiting her. The desk sergeant pulled her to one side to update her about Harry’s court case. She didn’t know who the officer’s source was at the Crown Court, but whoever it was must have had a front-row seat.

Harry had been called to give evidence that morning but things hadn’t gone well. He had responded almost entirely with one- and two-word answers to the prosecuting lawyer and had only shown any animation when Peter Hunt had begun cross-examination. Before the judge had stepped in, Harry had called Hunt ‘scum’ and a ‘parasite. He had eventually responded to the questions but, with the jury present for everything, the damage had already been done. If he couldn’t control himself in a courtroom, why would they think he could control himself in a pub?

Jessica decided to try to call him again that night. He probably wouldn’t answer, but she didn’t want to abandon him.

As soon as she had finished at the front desk, and before she could get back to her office, she ran into Rowlands. ‘What bad news has my spiky-haired harbinger of doom got for me today, then?’ she asked.

‘Funny you should say that…’

‘Go on.’

‘Sandra Prince. Her doctor won’t let us speak to her for at least another twenty-four hours.’

‘Great. Anything else?’

‘We spoke to Eric Christensen. He says he’s never heard of anyone called Prince. We showed him pictures of all three family members and he doesn’t know any of them.’

‘Has anyone come up with any other link between the victims?’

‘Nope, and door-to-door haven’t got anything, either.’

‘Calls to the hotline?’

‘A few things to check out, but probably not.’

‘Any forensic results back yet?’

‘Only basics. It looks like it’s some kind of steel rope again. It’s all on your desk.’

Jessica sighed. ‘Do you have any good news?’

Rowlands beamed at her. ‘Tomorrow night I’m off out with that new girl uniform have hired.’

Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘
Good
news, not creepy news.’