Hurt (The Hurt Series) (12 page)

Wouldn’t that be nice?

She ran her eyes along the parade of book spines, the majority belonging to Stephen King, John Grisham, and James Patterson. Easy reading at its most commercial. Further down, stuffed between more King and a handful of Dean Koontz she spotted John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Orwell’s 1984, and Salinger’s Catcher In the Rye. Staple school Curriculum classics every kid should read.

Had Randal’s two kids read them?

She asked Mason, ‘You notified next of kin yet?’

‘On it now.’

‘Who is it?’

Mason scrutinised his mobile, reading from the screen. ‘According to Davies, his youngest son, Nathan. Got himself a D and D charge three years ago.’

‘What about his eldest son?’

Mason scrawled down the tiny screen. ‘Oliver Randal. A year older. Corporal in the Marines. Serving in Afghanistan when he was killed in action August 2010.’ Mason’s mobile rang. He answered, listened, the furrows deepening on his brow. Hung up. ‘Shit.’

‘Brooke?’

‘Yep. Randal was working yesterday. Started at 10.00am. The shop’s got CCTV of it.’

Jessop grimaced. ‘How old’s Nathan?

‘Twenty-six.’

She glanced at the blank TV screen, on which a minute ago a young boy was being sodomised by the monster hanging beside her.

Crackpot or crusader?

‘Mid twenties, huh?’ she mused.

‘Yep.’

‘Nathan local?’

‘Tippet Court.’

‘What does he do?’

Mason tapped and scrawled. ‘Estate agent. City Living Properties.’

‘Call them.’

A minute later Mason was off the phone. ‘Nathan threw a sicky. Said he had a sore throat.’

Jessop looked at Nathan’s dad, his throat red and swollen from the cable biting into his neck. ’Must be hereditary.’

Chapter
Twenty-eight

‘The pupil Randal raped is one Toby Nash,’ Davies reported through Jessop’s mobile on speaker phone. ‘Twenty-seven. Lives with his family in Belfast since they moved there thirteen years ago. Needless to say, he wasn’t exactly overcome with grief when I told him about Randal.’

‘Any family over here?’ Mason asked.

‘Nope.’

‘Hunt down his class mates,’ Jessop instructed. ‘And any local friends he may have kept in touch with over the years.’

‘On it.’

She hung up as Mason eased the car to a stop alongside Randal’s car, a black Mini Cooper S with his firm’s livery stencilled on it. She surveyed the six-year-old estate of luxury apartments, each with a balcony overlooking the river, and none going for any less than £200,000. She remembered when this plot of land used to be the city’s bus depot until it was relocated across town to a cheaper postcode.

She also remembered finding thirty-three-year-old Haley Mercer buried in a shallow grave in one of the flat’s foundation holes after her debt-laden husband, Justin, a contractor on the new build, had taken out his frustration on her with a tire iron.

Another neighbourhood, another ghost.

Mason said, ‘Nathan’s sheet said he was single at the time of his arrest.’

‘So?’

‘To afford to live here, he’s either sharing the place or he’s the slickest estate agent in the city. Rent or mortgage can’t be any less than eight hundred a month.’

Jessop considered this as Mason led the way, taking long strides to the block’s communal door. She could sense the urgency in her DI, could see his perpetual frown furrowed deeper than ever. Such intensity was part of the man’s appeal. It suited him, was as much a part of him as his brooding eyes and strong jaw, and she struggled to imagine him any other way.

Mason buzzed the intercom to Nathan’s apartment. ‘Think he’s in?’

‘He’s ill isn’t he? Where else would he be?’

‘Yeah?’ came a voice from the intercom.

‘Nathan Randal? I’m Detective Inspector Scott Mason. I need to have a chat about your father.’

‘What about him?’

‘I’d rather not say over the intercom.’

Mason waited for a response, received none. Pressed the intercom again, stepped back from the block’s communal door and looked up. Jessop followed his gaze to the two apartments on the third and top floor. With the late October dusk drawing in, both had lights on, yet the intercom remained silent.

She met Mason’s eyes and nodded. Mason punched the intercom, this time pressing buttons at random. A moment later a voice asked who was there.

‘Police. Open up!’

‘How do I know you’re the police?’

‘Come down here and I’ll arrest you for obstruction. How’s that?’

The door buzzed open and Mason barreled through. Jessop followed, taking the stairs two at a time, and was still a floor behind by the time she heard Mason banging on Randal’s door.

‘
Nathan? You aint doing yourself any favours here, son. All we wanna do is chat about your old man!’

Mason rested an ear against the door, listening. ‘Nothing.’

Jessop stepped to the door. ‘Nathan, this is DCI Catherine Jessop. The longer you leave this the more grounds we have to break the door down and let ourselves in. And then it won’t just be a quick chat we’d want. Your choice.’ She nodded to Mason, who made the call for armed response. She watched the peep hole in the centre of the door for any movement. Saw none and felt a sense of dread creep beneath her flesh. The door was solid wood, and even the super fit Scott Mason wouldn’t be able to break through as he had at Carly’s yesterday.

‘How long?’

‘Ten,’ Mason said, hanging up.

‘You see any other way out of his apartment? A fire escape or anything?’

‘Nope.’

‘Christ.’ Jessop paced the landing, looked through the window to the dark river that flowed alongside the estate. She saw Randal’s mini still parked next to Mason’s car, and recalled seeing lights on in both of the two apartments on this floor.

She stalked across the carpeted landing to the second of the two apartments. Sure, people had a tendency to play deaf dumb and blind where witness statements were involved. But when it came to direct involvement in an unfolding drama, curiosity or the need to help were compulsions few could resist.

But not in this case it seemed.

At the door she looked directly into the peep hole. Saw quick movement, a blink. She knocked and stepped back. Mason joined her.

‘Get ready,’ she whispered.

The door opened two inches to reveal a security chain and one half of a forty-something male face with light brown skin and lank, black hair. Jessop held up her ID and smiled. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir − well, that is if we haven’t disturbed you already with all the shouting and banging.’

‘How can I help you?’ asked the man with a heavy Asian accent.

‘We have a couple of questions regarding your neighbour, Mister Randal. May we come in for a sec?’

She spotted the widening of the man’s pupil; a typical reaction to threat and fear. The man frowned and a droplet of moisture fell from his brow onto his nose. Yet his hair and face were dry.

She tapped Mason’s arm and quickly stepped aside. Mason kicked the door harder than she’d expected, his long leg powering through the door. There was a loud crack and a yell as the chain splintered from the wood frame and the man took the door’s full force in the face, knocking him back onto the floor.

Mason rushed in, tripping over the felled resident. Jessop followed, catching sight of another figure racing into the living room and yanking open the glass balcony doors. Mason reached the balcony and grabbed the figure’s shirt, and was nearly taken over the side of the balcony as the figure jumped.

Jessop’s heart skipped a beat as she grabbed for Mason hanging over the balcony and heard the splash from the river below. ‘Fuck it!’ Mason gasped, righting himself and sprinting back into the flat.

Outside, Jessop kicked off her shoes and chased after Mason sprinting along the river bankand into the dark. Her lungs screamed and her head pounded with the exertion. And then, suddenly, she could see her younger, fitter DI. He’d stopped running and had his hands on his
knees,
sucking in deep breaths.

‘Shit!’ Mason’s exclamation echoed along the river.

Jessop glanced downstream and spotted a figure scrambling out of the water up onto the opposite bank. It didn’t look back. She blinked, and it had disappeared into the shadows. Gone, just like that.

Chapter
Twenty-nine

Nathan Randal’s door opened with a crack as the weight of the battering ram knocked it from its frame. With Mason quiet and seething beside her, she stepped over the door and into the apartment, its layout a mirror image of Mr. Kutani’s apartment across the hall.

Knowing there was no way out of the block without being seen, Randal had knocked on his neighbour’s door and sought refuge with the help of a kitchen knife and a threat to stab MrKutani if he didn’t do as he was instructed. There Randal would hide out until he had safe passage away from whatever it was he was running from. When the knock from the police came on MrKutani’s door, the smart move was to answer; not to would arouse even more suspicion. Unfortunately for Randal, his threatening behaviour had been his undoing when Jessop had seen the fear in MrKutani’s eyes and the perspiration on what was otherwise a dry head and face.

The short hallway led into a comfortable living area with neutral décor. The sparse furniture consisted of a chocolate leather corner sofa, state of the art music system, a laptop and portable DVD player, and a sizeable flat screen TV mounted on the East wall. Upon the other walls hung framed movie posters, all of the torture porn genre Jessop despised so much.

‘Charming,’ Mason sneered, veering off into the open-plan shaker style kitchen.

Jessop noticed an ornate steel DVD tower tucked next to the sofa. She thought of Nathan’s old man and his love of literary horror and courtroom thrillers. Nathan favoured movies about serial killers, chainsaw wielding maniacs, drug dealing gangsters, and a certain American TV series Mike Knowles loved to hate, of which Nathan possessed more than a dozen box-sets.

‘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….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 You Tube.’

‘Knife missing,’ Mason called from the kitchen. ‘Probably the one he used to threaten the neighbour. Other than that he’s one tidy son of a bitch.’

‘Yeah,
too
tidy,’ she agreed, running a latex gloved finger over the PC screen and finding no dust. ‘Obsessively so.’

She stepped back into the hallway, opened the door to the one and only bedroom.

Her entrance did not disturb the blonde girl on the bed.

Slim with petite features, pale skin, small breasts, and prominent ribs, the girl lay in a foetal position upon a crisp white duvet wearing nothing but a pair of three inch black heels.

Jessop reached the head of the bed and peered down at the heavily made-up face with rivers of mascara and eyeliner snaking down the girl’s hollow cheeks. She was reminded of Tanya Adams, albeit Tanya was a good five or six years older than this girl.

Nathan Randal, like his old man, liked them young.

‘Hey there,’ she whispered, but already knew by the absence of movement she would receive no reply. She checked for a pulse, surprised at how cold the girl’s flesh was and how stiff her arm had become. Looking closer, she noted the purplish bruising along the girl’s right side caused by the heart’s failure to circulate her blood and causing it to settle and pool.

Mason appeared at the door, hesitated at seeing the girl. ‘Dead?’

Jessop motioned to the bruising. ‘Liver mortis suggests she’s been that way for four to five hours.’ Only then did she notice the video camera perched on a tripod next to the door. And beneath it, a hardware carrier bag stuffed with what looked like heavy duty refuse sacks.

Mason
followed her gaze, stepped over the bag and behind the camera on which he pressed a couple of buttons. Jessop watched her DI’s normally stony expression slip to something more human. ‘Death occurred approximately 1.33pm,’ he mumbled.

Picturing the torture porn posters in the next room, she asked. ‘A snuff movie?’

‘Uh-uh. Looks like an accidental drug overdose.’

She joined Mason behind the camera, peered at the small screen whereon the girl convulsed violently on the bed where she lay. Next to the bed, on the glass bedside table, which was now empty and gleaming, sat a clear plastic bag of white powder alongside a sizeable sex toy. Above the girl’s breathless screams a male voice mumbled ‘shit’, and the screen went blank.

Jessop surveyed the room, as tidy and spotless as the rest of the apartment. No sex toys and no trace of cocaine in sight, only the bag of refuse sacks at her feet in which, she guessed, he was going to dispose of the body. ‘He’s meticulous, all right.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Mason said.

Jessop stepped toward the two built in wardrobes and slid back the mirrored doors. In one wardrobe hung half a dozen suits along with a collection of casual clothes, among them, she saw, were a couple of pairs of faded jeans and a dark hoody. She looked down at the shoe rack, noted a pair of grubby white trainers amongst the small collection of footwear, and made a mental note to get Knowles to bag the garments.

Hung from hangers in the second wardrobe was an assortment of women’s sexy outfits ranging from schoolgirl to dominatrix. Beneath was a chest of drawers.

She opened one of the drawers, surveyed the assortment of sex toys. Opened another drawer: more toys, and handcuffs. Another drawer: sexy lingerie. Another drawer: a collection of DVD discs in clear plastic sleeves. She estimated at least sixty of them.

Picking one at random she read the title written in black marker: Tracy: 6/10/11.

From behind her Mason said, ‘Could be how he’s subsidising his income to afford this place. Amateur porn’s big business this day and age.’

She agreed. What with the advent of digital cameras, smart phones and bloody YouTube, everyone was doing it. She replaced the disc and opened another drawer. Froze.