Fallen Angel (5 page)

His stomach was full of butterflies – he could almost feel them moving. His large hands were clammy. There was a spring in his step. It had been a long time since he had been this excited about anything. He liked it. He liked it a lot.

He entered the lounge with its late-1970s decor. The light-brown corduroy sofa and armchair were slightly worn, but otherwise the room was in pristine condition. Someone had taken pride in this house. All the photographs on the ash-veneer sideboard and drinks cabinet were of him as a young child with his parents and grandparents. The walls were bare apart from a picture of the crucifixion of Christ. It sat pride of place above the dark-green tiled fire surround. The only modern items in the room were the large flat-screen TV with a Sky box and DVD player/recorder on a glass stand nestled in the corner.

As he sat down in the armchair, he noticed the remote controls were in the wrong order on the coffee table. He slapped his forehead hard and rearranged them – TV, DVD, Sky – then walked back out of the room, mumbling to himself. ‘Everything must be right – stupid man – stupid man.' He counted to ten, as he always did, but this time much too quickly, as the excitement of what he was about to do engulfed him. He turned and re-entered the room.

He sat in the armchair; the machine was all cued up and ready. He pressed the remote control, and the hum of the large TV came to life and then the DVD. He sat forward excitedly, but the first time he played it, he could barely watch himself. There was something
about seeing his own body through the lens of the video camera, so new, so different. He couldn't get used to it at all. He didn't like it. So he had learned to block out the sight of it. Now, when he looked at the screen, he no longer saw himself, just whoever was in the picture with him.

The boy looked a lot younger than eight. He had been surprised when he saw him close up for the first time. He had long thought that with better nutrition and health care, that kids were bigger and stronger than ever. But not this one. Scrawny, stunted. A mass of bones. And he was so pale. But that might have been the fear. Yes, it was almost certainly the fear.

The boy's back appeared on the screen – which meant he didn't see him approaching from behind. That made him smile, the way he managed to sneak up on him like that. The boy was crying so loudly he didn't even hear the door open. And by the time he realized what was happening, by the time he tried to move into the safety of the corner, he was right on top of him. His body was sweating and he could feel the pounding of his heart as he continued to watch for what he knew was coming.

The light from the camera was shining directly in the boy's face, and he was frozen, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. A rabbit. He liked that.

Then came his favourite part. The part where he attacked him. He paused the DVD, then slowed the action down and ran it back and forth again and again.

When he had finished, which was much too soon for his liking, he set the disk back to the beginning. He sat there and watched the whole thing through again, beginning to end. The remote controls were by his hand, but he didn't need them. No fast-forward, no rewind, no pause. And of course it was even better the second time around. Not because he knew what was coming, not because he
could move his lips in time to each and every one of the little cries and screams that escaped from the boy's lips, but because this time was special.

This time he was making a copy.

Stacey Collins was woken by the summer sun streaming into her bedroom, casting the silhouette of the neutral curtains on to her cream bed linen. Her mind was foggy, the result of yet another night with an over-the-counter sleeping pill. Whenever she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep because of the stress of work or guilty feelings about Sophie, she would take a pill or two. As her thoughts cleared, she began to recall the events of the night before, and with these memories came the horrible realization of the task ahead of her.

Her mobile began to buzz on the bedside table, startling her from her troubled thoughts. She picked it up and saw the caller was identified simply as JS. She let it continue to ring and headed for the shower.

Stacey looked at her naked body in the mirror. She was thirty-five years old, with light-blue eyes and mousy-coloured, shoulder-length hair that had been gently highlighted and parted at the front. She had taken care of her body, and it showed. Her looks ensured she had no shortage of male admirers, but she remained single out of choice. Her relationships were always on her terms and rarely lasted more than one night.

As she entered the shower, her thoughts returned to the missed call. Only one contact on her mobile had been given initials instead of a full name. Jack Stanley. A blast
from the past who had a habit of cropping up time and time again in the present. He was one of the few people outside the force who had her number, and it was the fifth time in as many days that he had tried to call her. She had ignored him every time. Whatever Jack Stanley wanted, he would simply have to go to hell.

It was just before eight o'clock, and her parents and Sophie were still asleep. Stacey poured herself breakfast – a bowl of good-quality muesli and a fresh vegetable juice. She would get her usual double espresso from the local Italian deli just around the corner from the station. No one had appeared by the time she finished, so she left a note for Sophie on the kitchen worktop:

Hi babe,

Sorry about last night
Will call you later

Love

Mum

xx

The investigation into the death of Daniel Eliot was to be headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Higgins of the Homicide and Serious Crime Command. Higgins had been in the force since his early twenties. Now in his mid fifties, he had been involved in many cases that had exposed London's darker side and in the process had gained a great deal of respect from all the officers around him.

The media had learned of the case within an hour of
Daniel's body being found. The front page of virtually every Saturday-morning paper carried a picture of a small body bag being wheeled out of the church and into a waiting ambulance. Earlier that morning Higgins had met with his superiors along with DCI Blackwell. The public outcry was going to be enormous, and the police would be under intense pressure to catch the killer quickly.

The incident room was set upon the first floor of Peckham police station, and, as Higgins made his way up the stairs with DCI Blackwell in tow, one concern was in the back of his mind – DI Stacey Collins. She and her team had been there for the crucial ‘Golden Hour' and visited the parents. They had spoken several times on the phone, and she had done everything that he would have expected. He knew she was an outstanding detective, but in such a high-profile case the ability to liaise with the media and public was crucial. Collins had a reputation for being outspoken and arrogant. Was she the best lead officer for this investigation?

Higgins entered the incident room. His tall elegant posture, brown eyes, slicked-back grey hair and deeply lined face made him look ten years older. The whisper campaign had already started, and the talk in the room was all about SCD7 and how badly they'd fucked up. All eyes were fixed on Blackwell as he followed Higgins to the front of the room, where a white board with pictures of Daniel and the crime scene had been assembled.

Collins was sitting on a window ledge with her team – and chief amongst them was Detective Sergeant Tony Woods. Tall, black and twenty-seven, he had graduated from Cambridge University with a First in Psychology
before joining the police force. A potential candidate for fast-track promotion, Woods had decided to remain at DS level for a couple of years because he enjoyed being at the sharp end of street work.

‘The trouble with the police,' he had told her soon after they met, ‘in fact the trouble with any profession is that as soon as you get good at a particular aspect of the job, they promote you so you have to start doing something else. Once you get good at that, they promote you all over again, until eventually you end up doing something you're crap at. For the time being at least, I'd like to stick with something I'm good at.'

And when it came to detective sergeants, Tony Woods was one of the best Collins had ever known. His knowledge of psychology gave him an uncanny ability to read people and situations. More than once he had asked the right question at just the right time to elicit a confession or produce a vital clue that helped bring a case to the right conclusion. Woods also had a reputation as something of a ladies' man, using his excellent knowledge of human nature to charm any attractive woman that he fancied. Under different circumstances, Collins might well have been tempted herself, but the fact that she was his superior officer seemed to have proved an incredibly effective deterrent so far as Tony making any moves was concerned.

Her team also included Natalie Cooper, a young detective constable who had caught Collins's eye during an earlier investigation. What appealed most about her was her attention to detail – careful almost to the point of obsession. In a world where people increasingly relied on
a computer to draw out similarities between two seemingly unconnected cases, it was often forgotten that a computer is only as good as the information put into it. With Natalie, every entry on the computer was pure gold. If the clues were in the data, she would be sure to find them.

All three looked up at the Detective Chief Superintendent as he turned to face them. ‘Settle down, please – settle down.' Higgins spoke in a deep Mancunian accent. It was a voice you didn't mess with.

‘As I'm sure all of you already know, this case started out as a kidnapping. DCI Blackwell from SCD7 is joining the incident room to be our liaison from the original investigation.' Higgins had seen all eyes on Blackwell as they entered the room. ‘Believe me when I say that the death of Daniel Eliot was in no way related to the procedures that SCD7 followed. They did everything by the book. Do I make myself clear?' There was muted agreement in the room.

Despite what Higgins had said, Blackwell still felt uncomfortable. He knew what his fellow officers thought of him.

Collins looked around to see if there were any other familiar faces. One, a young Asian lad, caught her eye and gave her a weak smile. It was obvious from his expression that he was having trouble with the photos on the wall. Did she know him? Something about his face certainly looked familiar. And then it occurred to her. She had seen his face in the newspaper a few months earlier. This was Rajid Khan, a recent and highly controversial recruit to the civil support unit. Just nineteen, Khan had been a member of a notorious computer-hacking ring called the
Sons of Eve, which was named after a popular computer game. Highly skilled, he dropped out of college to spend his days hacking into games and extracting ‘cheat' codes to enable lesser gamers to proceed more quickly without having to spend months building up their skills. Charging a small fee for the service, Khan had soon found himself sitting on a nice little earner.

But his path to the inside of a police station had been a curious one. One of his cousins had been mugged on his way home, and, despite providing the police with a detailed description of his attacker, the officers at his local station had failed to make an arrest. A few hours later the cousin's house was burgled by someone using the keys that had been stolen during the mugging. When the police finally turned up, an officer explained that there was little chance of their finding the culprit and recovering the stolen goods. Furious, the cousin complained to Khan, who had promptly hacked into the website of the Metropolitan Police, changed all the faces of the senior staff into pigs and filled the ‘Welcome' page with slogans advising the public that they were wasting their time asking for help and would be better off tracking down their local Mafia representative. The damage to the website had taken days to correct, thanks to a clever replication virus that had been hidden in the code. Each time the site was cleaned up, the modifications would return in a matter of minutes as if by magic.

Khan had been careful to cover his tracks, but his cousin had been so proud of what had been done on his behalf that he bragged to everyone who would listen. Within a week the story had made it into the papers, and
the police were knocking on Khan's door. When the Assistant Commander in charge of the division found out what had happened, he proposed a novel solution: Khan could choose between criminal prosecution or working for the police. With only two options, it didn't take Khan a long time to decide. Since then he had helped to track down a gang of people traffickers through emails and mobile phone signals. He had also traced a paedophile ring to a computer hub on the south coast, which led to the arrest of more than fifty people.

Undisciplined, unruly and, to some degree, untrustworthy, Khan was nevertheless an asset. Whoever was responsible for Daniel's death had managed to send emails and video clips to the family without revealing anything about where he was. It was understandable why Higgins had brought Khan in on the case.

Collins focused back on Higgins, who was handing out assignments. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘Collins with her team are lead investigators. The civvy team are going to track down the emails that the kidnapper sent out to the parents. Up until now we've hit a brick wall with this. I'm hoping to get a breakthrough soon.' The four people in the team, including Khan, nodded silently.

Higgins turned to the team headed by Detective Inspector Yvonne Drabble, a CID high-flyer. ‘You guys, I want you to pull in footage from every CCTV camera in the area around the church. And get every piece of film you can from the vicinity of the money-drop: there's a good chance that he was there before, in the past couple of weeks, so check it out. You know what we need. And I want to know the name of every sex offender and
registered paedophile within a thirty-mile radius of this crime. I want to know what each and every one of them was doing from Wednesday to today.

‘DCI Blackwell will be looking into other cases of kidnap for ransom, involving both children and adults, going back at least ten years. DC Cooper will be responsible for the HOLMES, so I want to make sure that every statement, every piece of evidence, every fact that we retrieve, is channelled through her.'

Higgins looked towards Collins and her team. ‘We need to know more about the parents. How much do we have on them, on the father in particular? Remember that in seventy per cent of child murders one of the parents is to blame. I want to know everything about them, their background, their alibis. Be sensitive, yes, but don't feel you have to tread on eggshells. You might piss them off, but that's nowhere near as much as you're gonna piss me off if three months down the line you tell me the prime suspect was staring us in the face all along.' Collins nodded.

‘Finally, I know this is a very emotional case, and we all want to catch the killer. But today's papers already have pictures of Daniel being removed from the church, and we don't want the sort of news coverage that will fuel public emotion further. We need to be at our best and most professional at all times – do I make myself clear?' Everyone nodded.

‘Okay. Collins, come with me. They're ready to do the post-mortem. The rest of you know what you're doing, so let's get on with it.'

The people in the room began to disperse as Collins
pulled Woods and Cooper to one side. ‘Listen, guys, be discreet when you're doing the background checks. Don't let the parents know what you're up to.'

‘Why?' asked Cooper.

‘Because the last time they saw their son he was on a slab.' Cooper and Woods nodded. ‘Tony, we'll go to see the parents when I get back from the PM.' Then she turned and followed Higgins out of the room.