He washed his hands, snapped on a new pair of gloves and dimmed the lights a little. Sat back in the leather desk chair to study his victim board, covering most of the wall in front of his desk. Four unlucky women. Two blondes now, two brunettes. Leon liked to know about the victims – toreallyknow about them – that was what set him apart, made him different from the rest. Not just who they were before they died, but who they loved, how far the ripples of their murder spread. To really appreciate the true impact on their families and friends, on their colleagues, on society. Especially when the cases remained unsolved, when the guy responsible was still out walking the streets, continuing with life as if nothing had happened. Continuing to hunt.
Leon smiled.
His eyes moved from one victim to the next, over the words and numbers beneath each picture. Dates of birth, of death. Place of discovery. Name. Age. Address. Occupation. An exclusive club with only four members. The third victim was special though, different – there was something about her that he couldn’t put his finger on.
So he did what he had always done, in time-honoured tradition. Maybe not time-honoured, exactly, but an updated version: emails and texts to family members from multiple sources – a refund, an invitation, a letter, an apology – messages on WhatsApp, direct messages on social media, all looking reasonably genuine and carrying the same link with the same payload. All the parents had to do was click on that link once, on any of their devices. It didn’t matter if they ignored, blocked, deleted most of them, because sooner or later they would click on one in a moment of distraction, or tiredness, or boredom – and then he was in. The payload delivered a small piece of malware giving him remote access to that device, and from that point on he was no longer on the outside looking in.
He was on theinside.
He hadn’t even been looking for it, not exactly. He just wanted to get inside their heads after their daughter had been taken. Get the inside track.
That was how he had found out. They’d used coded terms at first, even with each other, but over time it became clear that there was something in their family that no one else knew about. Something they had kept hidden.
A terrible, dangerous secret.
A baby.
The shiver of excitement was still fresh. The thrill of discovery, of knowing before anyone else, being in the unique position to do something about it. The knowledge of the danger she represented, the danger she would be in.
The baby is the answer, the thing around which all the rest of us are in orbit.
She was the key to all of it.
And that was why her picture was destined to end up on his wall.
26
I drive slowly, the engine grumbling in third gear. The staggered junction is little more than a trim triangle of grass, a carved wooden signpost across the way pointing to nearby villages, a black-painted barn on the left and a high stone wall facing me on the far side. I steer through the slow turn and catch sight of the barmaid further up the road. Beamond End Lane. The road is narrower here and the footpath has disappeared so she’s walking along the road, beside a neatly-clipped hedge. Still on her phone. I brake and pull in again behind a Mercedes estate parked on the left.
If she’s spotted me, she gives no sign of it. About a hundred metres up she crosses the road and walks into a driveway, disappearing from view. I pull out again and drive closer, slowing to a crawl as I pass a row of ivy-covered cottages that ends in an open wooden gate, a sign for Silverdale Barn. The drive leads into a courtyard where a couple of cars are parked, a two-storey barn conversion on the far side. Two front doors on the ground floor. Flats? The barmaid is trotting up a wooden staircase at the end of the barn, to another door on the first floor.
There. She knocks on the door and I pull away again in case she turns and sees me.
Another barn conversion stands opposite, with another large courtyard. No cars, no animals, no signs of life in the windows. Hopefully they are at work, at whatever City hedge fund or investment bank that means they can afford to live in this little corner of home counties paradise. I pull into the courtyard, gravel crunching noisily under my car tyres, and kill the engine. Grab the AA map book from the back seat of my car and open it across the steering wheel to give the impression of a wayward traveller, angling the rearview mirror so I can see the barmaid at the top of the wooden staircase. She’s talking to someone, but she’s side-on to me so I can’t see who’s answered the door. I say a little prayer that it’s Kathryn, that she’s standing on the doorstep bouncing Mia on her hip, that she’ll look at the handbag and shake her head, wondering what’s going on.Nope, sorry, the bag’s not mine, never seen it before.
The barmaid hands over the bag, gives a little wave to whoever’s at the door and makes her way down the staircase again. I watch in the mirror as she ambles across the courtyard towards the road, towards me, before turning left to retrace her steps to the Red Lion. She’s back on her phone again, head down, thumbs flying over the screen.
I give her a minute to get to the crossroads before unclipping my seatbelt. I’m about to get out of the car when there is more movement in the mirror. The front door to Kathryn’s flat opens and a man steps out, moves back to talk for a moment, hands over a card to someone in the doorway. He is wearing a dark suit and tie. He turns to go and I feel a cold wash of unease as I recognise him: slim build, sharp haircut, strong jaw.
Detective Sergeant Holt.
That can’t be good news. I look past him, expecting to see DI Gilbourne emerge from the flat behind his partner and follow him down the steps. But he doesn’t. Holt is alone. The door shuts behind him and he hurries down the wooden staircase. He takes out his mobile and puts it to his ear, pulling open the door of a black Ford Focus parked in the courtyard. The arrogance of our last meeting is gone – today he looks shifty, almost surreptitious in the speed of his walk and the hunch of his shoulders. He gets into the car, still talking on the phone.Did he hear the exchange at the front door just now? Did the barmaid mention my name when she handed over the bag, or wasHolt the one she actually talked to?It could mean more trouble for me, if he was. I slide down a little lower in the driver’s seat, hoping the young detective hasn’t seen me. Holt guns the Ford’s engine and turns out of the courtyard in a spray of gravel, disappearing down the road.
I wait five minutes, to be sure that Holt and the barmaid are both clear and gone. While I wait, I take out my phone and google ‘Kathryn Clifton’. There’s only one bar of reception here and there’s a lag while the results page loads. She has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. Some links to posts for a university magazine from a couple of years ago. A few other hits, but nothing particularly controversial. I google ‘Kathryn Clifton sister’. No news stories, no obvious controversy, nothing out of the ordinary.
I frown and put my phone away. If journalists have been causing trouble for her and her family, surely there would be evidence of it on the internet somewhere? Isn’t Google the place none of us can escape, where everything lives forever? The landlord’s words come back to me.Probably best if you don’t go knocking on doors, not after what happened to her sister.Maybe I’d be breaking some sort of rule about not contacting witnesses. The duty solicitor mentioned something about that on Tuesday night but I was so exhausted by that point that I can’t remember the details.
And I’m here now. In for a penny, in for a pound.
I get out of my car and walk across the road into the courtyard opposite, past the sign for Silverdale Barn. I climb the staircase quickly and knock twice on the smart wood-panelled front door, a large silver three at its centre. I hear the thudding of heavy footsteps from inside, quick and urgent, and the door is opened by a muscular young guy in tracksuit bottoms and a black vest. He’s somewhere in his mid-twenties, dark hair shaved close to his scalp and a full sleeve of tattoos up his left arm, patterns and skulls and Celtic swirls accentuating the swell of muscles. There is a scattering of stubble across his jaw, dark circles under his eyes.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Is Kathryn home?’
He frowns at me, leans out to look down the outside staircase. Checking if I’m alone.
‘If you’re looking for that other policeman, he just left.’ When I shake my head, he says abruptly, ‘What do you want then? Are you a journalist?’
