Never Look Back (17 page)

Lockyer was struck by how normal he sounded.

‘I need to get to Lordship Lane, top end, near the curry house,’ Amir said, leaning into the Nissan.

Turner nodded his head. He seemed unfazed, unthreatened by the intrusion to his vigil. ‘All you need to do is walk to the end of this street,’ Turner said, pointing to the far end of Surrey Road, ‘make a right and walk all the way down to the end till you come to the traffic lights and the edge of the Rye.’

‘Yeah, down ’ere, right, to the end, lights, the Rye, got it,’ Amir said, looking in the direction he would be going.

‘That’s right. Then you need to take a left . . .’

Russ was approaching Turner on the driver’s side but as he reached for the door the radio attached to his belt came to life, crackling and giving off high-pitched feedback. Turner’s head whipped round and everything seemed to happen in slow motion as he kicked open the car door, flooring Russ with the impact. Amir still had his head stuck inside the car, so was helpless when Turner cracked him on the head with what looked like a steering-wheel lock. Lockyer looked on in stunned silence as Amir’s legs crumpled beneath him.

The slow motion suddenly jumped to real-time as Turner got out of the car and set off running. After a moment’s hesitation Lockyer was chasing after him, shouting, ‘Stop, police!’ as Turner disappeared around the corner of Sarah’s street, sliding in the snow and slush.

When Lockyer reached the corner he saw Turner take a right past Nunhead Cemetery. He pushed his muscles to go faster. Despite the shock of an impromptu run, he could feel his breath steadying as he got into a rhythm. His radio banged against his right leg, his boots alternately collecting and dumping slushy piles of snow with each step. As he made the right past the cemetery he could see that he was gaining. Turner was no more than a hundred yards ahead now. Lockyer used his arms to give him extra momentum and sprinted down the centre of the street.

‘Stop, police!’ he yelled again. As he pounded the wet tarmac he could see curtains twitching. So much for a quiet take-down.

As Turner reached the end of the road he slipped and fell but was up and running again in seconds, heading straight down the alleyway that led from one side of the cemetery to the other.

‘Gotcha,’ Lockyer said on an exhale of breath. The path ran for a good half mile. There was no way off it. A high wall on the left and an even higher fence on the right. He swerved onto the path and raced up the steady incline. Unless Turner was super-fit, sprinting uphill was going to slow him down considerably.

As Lockyer rounded a corner he saw him, now only fifty yards out in front. Turner stopped and began trying to scrabble up the fence on his right. When that didn’t work he tried the wall to his left.

‘It’s over – stop!’ he shouted but his words only seemed to spur Turner on as he managed to get a hold on the wall and heave himself a couple of feet off the path.

Lockyer jumped, slammed into Turner’s side and both of them came crashing down onto the footpath. There was a loud crack when they landed but that didn’t stop him positioning his knee firmly in Turner’s back, broken arm or not.

‘My arm, my arm,’ Turner screamed, struggling beneath Lockyer’s weight.

‘The more you move, the more it’ll hurt,’ Lockyer said, turning to look behind him at the sound of footsteps. It was Jane and a limping Russ.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Russ said, holding his stomach, clearly out of breath. ‘Bloody radio tuned into another frequency.’

Turner’s protests had become dull whines as the shock of the break and the exhaustion of the chase caught up with him.

‘Where’s Amir?’ Lockyer asked, easing the pressure on the prostrate man’s right arm. He wasn’t going anywhere, so there was no need to crush him, although the idea appealed.

‘Left him in the car, sir. He took a blow to the head,’ Russ said, glaring down at Turner lying on the ground.

‘Harassment, resisting arrest and assaulting two police officers. Who knows what else you’ve been up to, Mr Turner?’ Lockyer said, talking quietly into Turner’s ear.

3 February – Monday

Lockyer waited behind a line of rush-hour traffic for the temporary lights to change. It was an act of will, resisting the urge to turn on the sirens in order to power through the gridlock.

He would be interviewing Malvern Turner at 11 a.m., provided he actually managed to make it into the office at all. He cursed as a courier bike hurtled past him, clipping his wing mirror in the process. Pedestrians were slipping around on several inches of snow. King’s College A&E was going to have a busy day tending to broken ankles.

It had been easy to keep Turner overnight. Lockyer had a veritable smorgasbord of charges to choose from. So many, in fact, that the original reason for Turner’s arrest – the alleged harassment of Sarah Grainger – had barely been discussed when the thirty-seven-year-old was booked in, after his own trip to A&E to set a fractured radius. Lockyer inched the car forward. It was going to take another ten minutes to get to the office at this rate. He leaned on the horn. He could see the station car park ahead of him. His hand hovered over the switch for the siren again.

When the lights finally changed, Lockyer revved his engine and shot through, swinging his car onto the wrong side of the road and into the station car park. His phone began to ring on the passenger seat. He grabbed it and pushed answer.

‘Lockyer,’ he said.

‘Morning, sir. Where are you?’ Jane asked.

‘I’m pulling in now. I’ll be there in five. I want to run through the questions for the interview with Turner. Bring his arrest sheet, will you?’ There was a long silence and Lockyer held the phone in front of him to see if the signal had dropped out. It hadn’t. ‘Jane, you still there?’

‘Yes, sir. You’re going to have to postpone the interview.’

Lockyer doubted that very much. He had already lost twelve hours because of Turner’s hospital visit and overnight stay at the MPS’s local holding facility. He didn’t want to waste any more time. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘I just got off the phone with DI Baker. His team were called out when a body was found over in Richmond Park earlier this morning . . . from what he’s just told me, it sounds like our guy.’

Lockyer felt as if his whole body was being squeezed like a wet rag. ‘But it’s only . . . that’s not even two weeks since Debbie,’ he said, ramming his car into reverse.

‘I know, sir. Dave’s on his way there, so we can wait for confirmation if you want, but . . .’ Jane stopped short. He could hear the adrenalin in her voice. She was ready to move and he needed to get into the same mindset.

‘Right. You come with me and tell the rest of the team to meet us there.’

‘I’m on my way,’ she said, hanging up before he could say anything else.

Twelve days, only twelve days. Phil had said that the time gap between murders for cases like this would get shorter, but this felt crazy. He looked up to see Jane running across the car park. Turner would have to wait.

3 February – Monday

Lockyer pulled up behind Dave’s battered white BMW and turned off the sirens. It wasn’t even 8.30 a.m. but Roehampton Lane was swarming with squad cars, three SOCO vans and a plethora of other on-site officers’ cars. There were also two press vans.

No one in the melee in front of him seemed at all bothered by the three inches of snow. Before he had a chance to engage the parking break, Jane was out of the car and talking to three of the on-call team. He followed her, turning up his collar against the chill. The snowhad finally stopped but from the look of the sky, it seemed the break might be short lived. He walked towards the main gates of Richmond Park, stopping at the outer cordon to put on shoe covers. Jane was close behind him, scribbling in her notebook. He wanted to hear her initial, un-biased reactions but he was also conscious that she hadn’t been with him when Debbie was found. If today’s victim was in a similar state, it was a lot to take at this time on a Monday morning. He watched her as she grabbed her own pair of plastic shoe covers from the waiting constable. She leaned on Lockyer’s arm to slide them over her sensible shoes. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Jane never wore heels anymore. She looked calm and focused. He didn’t need to babysit her. He never had.

‘Jane. I want you to talk me through the scene, start to finish. Anything that comes to mind I want to hear it, OK?’ he said, gesturing for her to go ahead of him.

‘Yes, sir.’

They both ducked under the perimeter tape, and as they crossed the threshold into Richmond Park Jane said, ‘Wow.’ She was looking up, down and all around her. ‘I feel like I’ve wandered into Lapland. Hardly any of the snow has melted.’

He looked out at the snow-covered parkland. Dozens of footprints broke the surface of the icy crust where they were standing, exposing brown, sodden grass. It looked like the SOCOs had put down as many walkways as they could, but as he and Jane moved further into the park it was clear that the evidence trail was going to be a nightmare. There were numerous footprints, all going in different directions. No doubt some of the prints belonged to the person who discovered the body, some to the first responders to the scene, and some would be the killer’s, but deciphering which would be impossible now.

‘Tell me,’ he said, walking towards the cover of trees to the right of the entrance.

‘Well,’ Jane began, opening her notepad, ‘I spoke to Baker’s DS and she said that the victim is Hayley Marie Sawyer; nineteen, five foot five, petite build, reddish hair. She lived in a flat across the road, Aubyn Square, with two other girls. She was a student at Roehampton University.’

‘OK, what else?’ he asked, trying to ignore the reaction his stomach was having to the news that it was another redhead.

‘Most of the Aubyn Square block is second-year accommodation, if they aren’t in halls of residence. One of the flatmates . . .’ Jane flicked through her notepad, ‘Louisa Samad, said she heard Hayley leave the flat at about seven on Sunday morning. The other flatmate was staying with her boyfriend in Islington, North London.’ Lockyer watched as Jane put the pad to her lips, resting it there. ‘It would still have been dark. Sunrise isn’t till about 07.45 and the park opens at 07.30. It had snowed heavily overnight, so it would have been even deeper than it is now.’ Jane looked at him with one eyebrow arched, her lips pulled down to accompany a shrug of her shoulders.

‘An odd time for a walk, then,’ he said.

‘I would think so,’ Jane said, chewing the end of her pen.

‘She could have been meeting someone . . . a guy, maybe,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Jane said. ‘The flatmate’s statement says Hayley was shy, not good with guys at all. Family’s from a small village in Devon. Hayley had struggled to cope in London. The flatmate was surprised she even came back this term.’

‘And what does that tell us?’ he asked.

‘Maybe she wanted to be alone, enjoy the quiet. She might have seen the park as a little piece of home.’

‘Maybe, but the thing that feels odd to me,’ he said, walking towards the tree line, regaining his composure, ‘is why she would come here, alone, in the dark, when we’ve had warnings on the news every night for over a week?’ He looked at Jane for some kind of answer but she just shook her head. He continued, ‘Either she doesn’t watch the news or read the papers, or she doesn’t give much credence to her personal safety, don’t you think?’ His voice was muted as they entered the cover of the trees.

‘The warnings have focused on south-east London, sir. Maybe she didn’t think they applied to her. And the attacks have been late at night. Perhaps she thought being out that early in the morning was safe,’ Jane said.

He looked up at the arch the trees had created, thirty feet above their heads. The boughs swayed and creaked. He walked down the woodchip path, Jane close at his side, muttering to herself as she scribbled notes into her pad. The path itself was clear of snow due to the canopy of trees. As they both followed the route marked out by the SOCOs, Lockyer took great lungfuls of air, clearing his mind, focusing on Hayley’s last walk and, in turn, the killer’s movements, not too far behind her.

‘What else do we know about her?’ he asked, looking ahead to the throng of officers around the body. They were all here to help Hayley but he couldn’t help thinking that they resembled a pack of vultures, their backs arched as they picked their prey clean.

Jane flicked back several pages in her notepad. ‘She was studying psychology and social studies.’ He looked at her but neither of them voiced what they were thinking. All that learning about how people think and how the world works, and she still managed to end up in a ditch. Jane continued reading, ‘Father, mother, two older brothers. No known boyfriends either, back at home or here at uni.’

He chewed his thumbnail. ‘I’ll ask Dave to check for evidence of a termination in the post-mortem, but we’ll need her medical records ASAP so we can add her name to the list we’ve got out with the local clinics and women’s centres.’ He watched as Jane made neat notes of his instructions. ‘We need to find out if south-east and south-west London have a centralized database that could be accessed and, if so, who could access it.’ He covered his mouth with his hand. ‘I don’t feel good about him moving boroughs at all, Jane. It means he’s getting more confident . . . spreading his wings.’

As they approached the crime scene, Dave stepped out of a crowd of white-suited SOCOs and walked towards them, peeling off his gloves to shake Lockyer’s hand.

‘Hello, you two. Impressive, isn’t it?’ he said, gesturing towards the snow-covered park.

‘There’s no denying it looks like a Christmas postcard in here, but something tells me you haven’t been examining an unfortunate Santa,’ Lockyer said.

‘I’m sorry to say there’s nothing festive about this one,’ Dave said, gesturing for him and Jane to follow. ‘So, DI Baker didn’t mind you taking over his case, then?’