Hurt (The Hurt Series) (11 page)

‘Yeah, I get it now.’ Knowles puffed out his ruddy cheeks. ‘Anyway, you’re far too young to be thinking about chucking it all in.’

‘Thanks. But we all have our shelf lives.’

Knowles nodded, took a thoughtful sip of Guinness, no doubt considering his own sixty years of age. ‘Speaking of long and illustrious careers,’ he said licking the foam from his white moustache. ‘Trawling through the forensic database brought back a few memories.’

Jessop sat forward, attention back on the job, and hopefully, good news.

‘I must’ve worked with every one of those ugly mugs at some stage or another. Honestly can’t think of one who fits your profile and would turn rogue like this. Sorry, Cathy.’

She offered a weak smile and sipped her lager, trying not to show her disappointment.

Knowles added, ‘Your boy
is
very talented, though. There’s no disputing that. But does he have a forensic background?’

She considered this for a moment. ‘Could be a student.’

‘Possibly. Forensic science is a rapidly growing sector. When I started a thousand years ago there were only a handful of us in the country. Now, thanks to the advent of DNA profiling and those god-awful CSI programs, our universities are spitting out nearly two thousand graduates a year.’

‘Which is no bad thing.’

‘Not if you’re one of the lucky few to secure one of the two hundred or so positions that arise each year.’ Knowles graced her with a warm smile. ‘Forensic science may be the new rock and roll, but it hasn’t got the budget to turn all its graduates into the new Gill Grissom or Horatio Caine.’

‘Thought you didn’t watch those shows?’

‘Just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean I don’t watch them.’ Knowles shot her a wink.

She said, ‘I’m thinking we check out the university tomorrow.’

‘I wouldn’t be too hasty.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Think about it. Why are we here discussing this?

‘Because the killer’s good at leaving zero evidence of his being at the scene.’

‘No. He’s not just
good
, Cathy, he’s
brilliant
. Only a CSI could be so talented, right?’

She saw where this was going.

‘Chances are if our boy does have a CSI background it wouldn’t have come from the job or a university degree. And especially a local university.’

She met Knowles’ sharp blue eyes. ‘Because that’s where we’d be looking for him, right?’

‘Right. This boy excels in covering his tracks. That’s his craft. The last thing he’s going to do is leave us a trail of breadcrumbs straight to the place he learned it.’

Jessop stared into her lager, reluctantly conceding Knowles was right.

‘Nevertheless,’ Knowles added, ‘in the interest of thoroughness, I’ve put the discreet word out to some of my closest colleagues in the teaching sector. However, my guess is your boy picked up the tools of his trade either from some online forensic course, of which there are hundreds, or just by watching too much TV and youtube.’

‘Whoa…wait a sec’, Mike. What did you just say?’

Knowles fixed her with a quizzical frown. ‘About watching too much TV…’

‘
No,’ she said reaching beneath her chair for her briefcase. ‘About the tools of his trade. Shit…’

‘What?’

Jessop opened the briefcase, fumbled out Darren Spencer’s case file and flipped to the coroner’s report. ‘According to this our boy used a Stanley knife to open up Darren from sternum to pubis. The direction of the incision suggested the killer had used his right hand. The incision itself was ragged and crooked, probably due to Darren’s squirming and the knife’s small blade.’

‘Yep, I’ve read it.’

‘But why choose such a small knife for such a big job? I mean, there’re plenty of more suitable knives on the market, butcher knives or chef’s knives, all with blades designed to carve through sinew and muscle.’

Knowles answered with a shrug.

She reached back into her briefcase, pulled out the file on Spartan the dog, again flipping to the coroner’s report. The fatal wound to the dog’s neck was caused by a blade roughly 18 mm wide and 74 mm long, consistent with that of a penknife.

‘Thacker did this with a penknife?’
Mason’s question to Neil Harris as he looked down on George Armitage’s mutilated body.

‘Spartan was killed with a penknife,’ she reminded a bemused looking Knowles. ‘The next day, Thacker kills George Armitage with a penknife.’ Prickly with a sudden adrenaline rush, she fingered through the file until she found the transcript taken of Thacker’s interview. Ran her finger down the page until she found the paragraph she sought. Read aloud:

‘That’s when I go for him
.
I don’t give a shit if he blinds me. He can fucking cut my head off for all I care. He killed my fucking dog and he’s gonna pay. I land a punch and floor the fucker. But just as I go in for the boot, he punches me in the bollocks and floors me. Next thing I know he’s out of there. Fucking gone he is. I think about going after him, but then I sees Spartan and… The fucker killed my dog, man!’

Jessop looked up from the page to see Knowles smiling warmly at her. ‘So much for reaching your shelf life, detective.’

Chapter
Twenty-six

She made the call from the pub, instructing the duty sergeant at the station to ask Wayne Thacker
if
Spartan’s killer had dropped his penknife during their struggle. And if so, was that the same knife he had stuck George Armitage with?

By the time she and Knowles had walked back to the station she had her answer.

Yes on both counts.

Was this the real reason the killer had returned to the squat? On the off chance he’d find his weapon? When he didn’t, did he take out his frustration on Spartan’s corpse, and make damn sure Thacker got the message?

Located in the building’s basement, Knowles’ lab was as meticulously organised as the man himself, who was now adorned in a fresh white lab coat and latex gloves and was working fast.

Upon one of his spotless work tops lay a black-handled Victorinox Swiss Army Knife covered with a thin film of light grey aluminium lifting powder. The knife was open, revealing among other tools a Phillips screwdriver, wood saw, wire stripper, can and bottle opener, and a lethal looking serrated edge blade.

‘Okay,’ Knowles said. ‘I’ve got prints from the knife matching those of your boy Thacker.’

Jessop turned away from the knife and peered over Knowles’ shoulder at the PC screen, whereon was a magnified fingerprint alongside the mug shot of Thacker taken earlier.

‘Good news is I’ve also found a partial print on one of the blades not consistent with Thacker’s. I’m running it through IDENT1 now.’

Jessop tensed against a fluttering of apprehension in her belly. Eventually these moments always came, and when they did the rush was intoxicating.

She turned to another computer, where the screen flickered with thousands upon thousands of prints, searching the extensive IDENT1 database for a match out of the 8000,000 or so prints on file.

‘Keep everything crossed this bastard’s on file,’ Knowles said.

She hadn’t let the possibility of their boy not being on file cross her mind. Getting your hopes up was a dangerous business, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

She turned from the screen, paced the small room with its many elaborate tools of the Objective Investigator. These tools were born out of a necessity to catch killers with facts and evidence. As a Subjective Investigator, her tools were hunches, instinct, and tenacity. These were born from a dire need to heal the tear in her conscience over her family’s death, and honed from a life hunting the ghost of the man who’d torn the hole.

Her attention was drawn toward the bag of little Keisha Adam’s clothes. How would she deal with the horrific trauma? Would she get mad or even? Become crackpot or crusader? Because one thing was for certain, scars that run that deep never healed. They just scabbed over until you were old enough to pick the scabs off and confront the horror beneath.

Just as she would have to tomorrow.

‘Cathy?’

She snapped back to the present, saw Knowles grinning at her. ‘Sorry…what?’

‘We lucked out. Got an eight point match on the print. That’s pretty damn conclusive.’

She joined Knowles in front of the PC, stared at the black and grey fingerprint and the mug shot beside it. Late thirties, early forties, the Caucasian man had cropped hair, dark, intelligent eyes, and a strong nose. Around a sharp jaw line and thin lips he sported a couple of day’s worth of dark stubble which accentuated his high cheekbones and narrow face.

Their killer?

‘Terence Randal,’ she read over Knowles’ shoulder. ‘What’s his story?’

Knowles clicked on the mouse and Randal’s record appeared on the screen. ‘Born 1969. Father of two. English Literature teacher at Chatham Comprehensive until charged November 2002 for sexually assaulting one his eleven-year-old male pupils. Served nine of his fourteen
years,
where he retrained as a barber of all things. Released on good behaviour March this year.’

‘Is he on the sex offenders list?’

Knowles opened a link, scrolled and searched. ‘Yep. Currently resides at 16 Pell Street, care of us generous tax payers. Cuts hair full time at
Cut Backs
. Catchy name, huh?’

‘Sweeny fucking Todd would be more appropriate,’ she hissed pulling out her mobile and dialling Mason.

‘Got a suspect,’ she said as soon as Mason answered.

‘Who?’

‘Name’s Terence Randal. Sex offender. Lives at 16 Pell Street. I’ll rally armed response and meet you there in thirty.’

‘I’ll meet you there now if you like,’ Mason said.

‘Come again?’

‘16 Pell Street. I’m already there.’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘That suicide I’ve been working…Guess who?’

Chapter
Twenty-seven

Built on a sharp incline two kilometres east of Crossfields Park, Pell Street was a short, narrow street consisting of thirty terraced two ups two downs. The few residents who dared to live here were either students, drug dealers, or illegal migrants working for the dealers or for the small pizza/kebab takeaway on the corner of the street.

Recoiling from the smell of spiced meat and cooked cheese from the run-down takeaway, Jessop walked up the street’s steep incline toward the scrum of activity outside number 16. With every step she took she could feel the residents’ eyes boring holes in her back from behind the row of grubby, torn net curtains. She was no stranger to such paranoia, yet it never ceased to unnerve her, especially since thirty percent of the firearms locked in the evidence room back at the station had at one time or another passed through this postcode.

Standing a good three inches above the tallest of the group, Mason peeled away from the huddle of coffee drinking CSI’s and greeted her with a nod. ‘It’s definitely Randal. Sent Knowles his prints and he confirmed it.’

‘Time of death?’

‘Around three, three-thirty in the morning. Heating was on full so decomposition was accelerated. Still, it means he could’ve been at Crossfields Park around midnight and made it back here in plenty of time.’

It did, Jessop thought. ‘What about alibis for yesterday morning and last Saturday morning?’

Mason cast a glance down the infamous street, shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Of those who bothered to open their doors, not one’ll vouch for him. Brooke’s at his place of work now.’

‘Anything suspicious about the death?’

‘Everything’s suspicious in this bloody street. However, this one does what it says on the tin.’ He handed her a face mask. ‘Trust me, you’re gonna need it.’

The front door opened up directly into a shabby box living room with pea green painted walls and a threadbare blue carpet. The sparse furniture consisted of a tired faux leather sofa, an MDF bookcase stuffed with books, a five bar fire, a 15” TV, and what looked like an old VHS player.

In the centre of the room stood a flat-pack coffee table on which sat an ashtray spiked with butts, several spent Stella cans, a half full bottle of Bells Whiskey, and the local newspaper opened at the puzzle page, where Randal had nearly completed the days Sudoku puzzle.

‘Neighbour called it in,’ Mason said. ‘Wanna guess what tipped them off?’

Despite the mask Jessop wore, the stench of excrement and bodily gases was nauseating. Wouldn’t take long to penetrate the paper thin walls and find its way into the antiquated plumbing system. She wrapped her knuckles on the thin wall. ‘Neighbour didn’t hear anything?’

‘Nope. Said Randal was the perfect neighbour. No noise, no fuss, kept himself to himself.’

Murderers and sex offenders often did, she thought, turning to the man in question.

Naked from the waist down and wearing only a grey sweatshirt on top, Terence Randal hung against the door leading to the kitchen by an extension cord. His feet were but an inch from the carpet, on which lay a scattering of books and a TV remote control.

She followed the cord over the top of the door to where it was tied to the door handle on the other side.

Death by auto erotic asphyxiation? Didn’t exactly fit with the power seeker profile she’d built on their killer. But then such killers didn’t have a tendency to play by the rules. If they did,
her
life would be a hell of a lot easier.

Eyeing the TV remote, she asked, ‘What was he watching?’

Mason tensed, shook his head. Stepped over to the TV and switched it on. A moment later she had seen enough and instructed the film be turned off.

She took a measured breath. She could stomach most things, but paedophilia was beyond her comprehension. ‘Do we know who the boy is?’

‘Not yet. The recording’s a VHS tape. Dated Feb 96. My guess is the boy must be in his mid twenties by now.’

‘Could be the pupil he raped. Get Davies hunting him down. Any other known victims?’

‘None.’

She stepped toward the bookcase, curious to know what a paedophile English teacher liked to read. Kahlil Gibran or Alexandre Dumas maybe?