The Sister (25 page)

When Kennedy met Jack Doherty at reception, he cut an imposing figure. At least two metres tall and very heavily built; his head was larger in proportion to his size than might have been expected. Kennedy couldn't help wondering if the smaller man had felled him with a headshot. The other man's hand engulfed the DCI's as they shook. He led him down to the interview room, where Tanner joined them.

Doherty was clearly not overly concerned with cosmetic appearances; he wore a large black patch over his missing eye. It reminded him of the cup from one of Marilyn's bra's.

When all three had sat down, the big man insisted on giving them some background to himself, the sort of man he was, how he'd been looking for a bit of 'sport' as he called it that night. He described his opponent and the fight at length, and how he remembered the girl he'd since learned was Kathy in the pub. He never showed any emotion; his voice was low and flat, difficult to understand at times and there was a kind of sadness in his broad potato face. From what he'd said about himself at first, it was clear the experience had changed him, perhaps he was thinking about the girl, perhaps mourning the loss of his eye, or a combination of both.

"What makes you think you'll be able to give sufficient details to the technician after so many years, Jack?"

"Do you not think I'd remember the man that did this to me?" he said, fixing Kennedy with a look, and then he reached under the eye-patch and lifted it, exposing the stitched shut and sunken eyelid. "And there's something else, let me tell you. When you fight a man, you don't watch his hands, you watch his face."

Kennedy acknowledged what he said. It was a perfect example of 'Flashbulb' memory, where the effects of a traumatic event burned themselves into the brain in fine, recollectable detail.

Later, when he saw the results of Doherty's work with the E-Fit operator, he was certain that the man did indeed possess such powers of recall.

It triggered instant recognition for Kennedy. It was 'Michael,' no doubt about that in his mind. With Doherty's positive ID of Kathy's photograph,
"I'll never forget her face; it was all I could do to stop myself crashing into her."
It meant they were in the same pub. It was all too much to be just coincidence. The interview had thrown up something else as well; Doherty had sketched the unusual belt buckle too. It was similar to the sketch he'd produced himself years back.

"Who
are
you?" he said to the E-Fit. Then he called Tanner in and briefed him.

"I agree with you, sir, it's got to be him. I'm not sure how we find him with what we have though. He doesn't match any 'knowns' on the database."

" Have you followed up the bare-knuckle lead from Doherty?"

" I don't think we'll get anywhere with that one, the travelling community don't talk to the police . . ."

"So you haven't tried then?" His eyes bored into his assistant.

"I needed to wait until we interviewed the Irishman, sir."

Kennedy gave him a withering look.

"I'll get right onto it, sir, but it's a bit difficult to know where to begin."
You can be so impatient and unreasonable at times, sir,
he thought.

Where to start?
Tanner sat in his own office thinking it all through.
Even if this character was still fighting in his mid forties, who'd remember him twenty-three years later?
Doherty gave the impression he was an accomplished fighter.
What if he was that good, a legend and hero among his own people?
He thought that he could pose as a writer who was doing a piece on the best bare-knuckle fighters of the last twenty-five years. If he could meet with community leaders, he could ask for any old photographs they had to support his story. He smiled to himself . . .
Now that's not a bad idea, Tanner.

He ran it past Kennedy.

"It's a good idea, but it's a shot in the dark. I can't justify sending you in undercover, based on a hunch."

"I understand that, sir, but I have a friend who's a reporter - well used to this sort of thing - and in exchange for the exclusive when it comes out…"

"I can't
sanction
that either, and you know it. I don't want the press getting hold of anything they don't already know."

I can't sanction that either
. . . he frowned. Kennedy had said it with an emphasis on
sanction
. The expression on his face lent him to believe he wasn't expressly forbidding it, so he decided to get his contact to dig at it from another angle, but without revealing the real reason. Tanner made a call later that night.

The result was disappointing; the journalist was too busy to help, but if it could wait . . . It had waited twenty-three years; a few more weeks were hardly likely to make a difference.

Chapter 47

The stranger found a newspaper picture of Kennedy on the internet. Although the photograph was grainy and at least ten years old, he had no trouble recognising him when he came out of the station.

He pretended to be working on a motorbike in a bay in the car park just over the road. At almost 6:00 p.m. the DCI drove out in his car. He sparked up the bike and tailed him home.

He watched him at varying intervals for days. Sometimes, he left with a plain-clothes man about the same age as he looked in the internet photograph. At this stage, the other man was of no interest to him.

There was a pub about a mile or so away; they would drive and park nearby. They never stayed in the pub for more than a couple of hours. When he slipped in the first time to eavesdrop on them, they spoke in confidential tones. They couldn't keep their conversation from him as long as he could see them because he was lip-reading. From where he sat, he could only interpret one side of the dialogue. Reading Kennedy's face as well as his lips, he registered his concern in talking about his mother, "… she's sick, but fiercely independent…" "… Dad drinks too much." It was clear she was totally dependent on his father's ability to carry on.

You're only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, you should know that, Kennedy.

His continuing surveillance revealed where Kennedy's parents lived, also leading him to his secretary's address. She'd left the station one evening with her boss in his car; he imagined briefly that he might get some footage of them together in a compromising position, but he'd dropped her off at a garage, where she transferred into another car and continued her journey. He followed her.

She lived alone with her teenage daughter. In the dead of night, rifling through the refuse in the bin outside her house, he quickly established there was no man living there. No beer cans, no letters addressed to Mr Dick Head. No man-things at all.

You could learn a lot from people's rubbish by examining discarded envelopes and empty boxes. If they had a cat or dog and how well fed it was. Near the top of the bin was a tampon wrapper. Someone was having, or just finished their period. From the mini size, he concluded it had to be the daughter. One of the best things about recycling, he mused, was that there was no more sorting through smelly food waste to build a profile of the inhabitants of the house. Picking up an old prescription box, the label revealed it belonged to Miss Terri Hunter. It was for Seroxat. He made no sound other than the dry, plastic whispering of the bags as he put them back where he'd found them.
No dog, no man, no surprises.

Around midnight he fished through the letterbox with a specially shaped piece of metal. Sometimes his victims doubled locked the doors and then he'd have to find another way, but not tonight. Tonight was easy. He looked forward to warming up; the cold had chilled his bones, God, how he'd love to warm up with her. Silently opening the bedroom door, he listened to the soft sound of her breathing. His eyes adjusted to the light; he could make out her features, moving closer he leaned in over her and breathed in her exhaled breath.
Now you're mine.

Theresa stirred and turned onto her side. Biting his lip, he lifted the cover exposing her voluptuous form. Reaching to touch her, he bit down harder and controlling himself; he withdrew from the room. He had things for her to do first and then . . . after that; she'd be eating from his hand. His lips tightened at the thought, into a semblance of a smile.

He did not get home until the early hours of the morning, but he wasn't tired, instead strangely elated. Typing in
Seroxat,
he googled it and found it was used primarily in the treatment of anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He wondered if she might be suffering from all three.

His observations also revealed the DCI had a taste for prostitutes. It quickly became apparent he was using one in particular, on a regular basis. He staked out her home, originally with the intention of finding a way to film him in the act. In order to do that he would have to break in and set up remote cameras that he could monitor from outside . . . And he already knew Kennedy had visited on three consecutive occasions, two Saturdays and a Friday. Patience would reward him with the opportunity to blackmail him and discredit him so thoroughly . . . He half smiled as he arrived outside the flat around midnight. Up on the fire escape, blended almost perfectly against the black metal escape landing, was someone dressed in dark clothes. He stood in the shadows watching, as the figure furtively peered through the gap in the blinds covering the back door.

A Peeping Tom!

Settling down into his haunches, shielded from the peeper's view by a row of low bushes, he checked the direction of the breeze, satisfied it would not alert the man, he lit a cigarette behind his cupped hand and watched him. The cigarette inspired a shift in his thinking.

An hour later, he trailed the peeper home.

Chapter 48

In late January 2007, police authorities launched a joint coordinated action across several counties, code-named: 'Operation Moonlight' in an effort to flush out the perpetrator of a one-man crime wave, dubbed the Midnight man by the press. The campaign included the surveillance and monitoring of known criminals on a scale not seen for years.

At the same time, a series of prominent adverts announced in the local press.
We Buy Your Unwanted Jewellery - Platinum, Gold, Silver - Top Prices Paid!
Undercover officers took over
vacant retail outlets and ran them as second-hand dealerships.
We Buy Anything!
By installing covert CCTV camera and recording equipment in the shops, detectives hoped that some of the jewellery stolen in Midnight's raids would surface, providing a lead back to him. The operation caught droves of junkies, muggers and casual criminals, but none of the items recovered matched any of the Midnight cases.

Kennedy had set up just such a unit under his jurisdiction, and he monitored the arrests with interest. The Crimewatch programme had failed to achieve the results he'd hoped for, and he began to harbour a secret wish that 'Midnight' would surface in his Manor. If he did and Kennedy caught him, it would be a real feather in his cap.

The activities of the Midnight man were traceable as far back as early 2001, when a series of 'creeper' burglaries began to take place all over the country. He never struck more than two or three times in the same town. The next victims would not be anywhere close, not in an adjacent town, or even county; they would be many miles away. He could strike in Scotland one day, Cornwall a week later, Essex after that. There was no discernible pattern. It was just as likely he'd strike on a council estate, as in middle class suburbia. Because he wasn't a ransacker, most victims wouldn't discover the robbery until the next morning, or even later. This type of robbery was a creeper burglary because the offender usually gained access to the properties while the occupants were asleep. It took a disturbing change in his modus operandi for his activities to attract the coordinated attentions of the police.

In early January 2005, a woman woke to find him leaning over her, masturbating furiously; he ran off. She said in her statement that he wore household gloves and a lycra outfit, similar to what cyclists or jogger's wear; it could have even been a black ski suit. In the dark, she couldn't tell. She couldn't see his face either; he was wearing a three-holed, black ski mask. It would be only a matter of time before the Midnight Man raped someone.

The police did not publicise specific details for obvious reasons. The sheer number of victims involved in the robberies made it difficult to contain. Inevitably, someone leaked information about his habit of striking around midnight, leading to his soubriquet in the press.

The methods of entry varied from fishing for keys through letterboxes, to using specially shaped pieces of metal to reach in with and undo night latches. Sometimes, he would simply pop a tiny piece of leadlight glass in a window and get in that way.

Usually, he only targeted the homes of single women, widows and divorcees. Mostly he took things that fitted easily into pockets, typically cash, jewellery and watches. Sometimes, and for reasons known only to him, he would choose certain items that the owners wouldn't miss straight away, leaving Detectives baffled at his motives.