The Advent Killer (14 page)

‘Just checking it out.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘No cigar yet, but these chat room dudes say some scary shit. Look at this.’

Hawkins joined him at the terminal. The forums were full of discussion about Nemesis. And, more worryingly, as many were in favour as against.

‘You know bookmakers are taking bets on when we bring this guy down?’ Mike covered a flashing Ladbroke’s advert with his hand. ‘You don’t want to know what odds we’ve got for tonight.’

‘What the hell did I miss?’ Hawkins said, irritated suddenly. ‘When did murder become a form of sodding entertainment?’

‘Hey.’ Mike gripped her arm. ‘Look at it like this – he saved us a job by getting famous. We don’t find him soon; I’ll just order a signed photo from the fan club.’

‘Sorry,’ Hawkins relented. ‘When did I get so serious?’

‘Watch out. People will think you care.’

‘Yeah.’ Their eyes met. ‘Thanks.’

Hawkins looked away first, pretending that something on the computer screen had caught her attention; moving the conversation on, ‘So, have you found a place to stay yet?’

‘Yes I have, thanks to the good old office bulletin board. Moved in with Johnston from traffic.’

‘Well, I’m sure you and Eric will be very happy together.’ As she spoke, the boxes lining her hallway flashed through Hawkins’ mind. She needed to contact Paul about collecting them, although she couldn’t imagine how that conversation would be anything except a disaster.

At least long shifts meant she wasn’t home alone, watching some tragic festive TV special, waiting for Paul’s
next tearful, or worse, silent, phone call. It was nights like these that had brought her and Mike close in the first place. And here they were again. Except this time she had no reason to feel guilty.

She noticed that her hand had strayed onto the back of his neck as she steadied herself on bending down to look at the screen, and removed it quickly, ‘Don’t you have a press conference to go to?’

Mike looked at his watch. ‘Geez! Where’d the morning go?’ He stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘I’ll go straight to the Yard after. We can meet there.’

‘Keep your head down on the way out,’ she called as he left the room.

‘Don’t have to,’ he shouted back. ‘Nobody’s asking.’

She realized he was right. The inquisitive looks from other officers around Becke House all posed the same silent question:
How close are you really to catching Nemesis?
But looks were all they got.

Everyone wanted to know, nobody wanted to ask.

Officers were being dragged off other cases at an alarming rate: 150 from all over the UK had been seconded onto the investigation so far. Showing interest was the quickest route to selection, but few chose to get involved with nightmare cases like this. Secretly though, Hawkins appreciated the respite.

She sank onto a chair, feeling light-headed. Was it hunger, or apprehension? She watched a full minute tick away on the wall clock. It was coming. They still looked like underdogs and, in just under thirteen hours, the game would begin for real.

She turned to switch the computer off, just as the Sky news headline flicked onto the entertainment heading. She shook her head.

Douglas Donald had won
Celebrity
Big Brother
.

Two hours, eleven minutes.

‘Antonia?’

One hundred and thirty-one minutes.

‘Quit staring at the clock.’ The American accented voice was more insistent this time. ‘You’ll wear it out.’

Hawkins sighed and looked over at the room’s only other occupant. There was no point trying to deny that for the third time tonight, Mike had caught her calculating how long was left until Sunday began.

‘Fine.’ She dumped her pile of transcripts on her desk. ‘I’m going to get some water. Would you care for some, DI Maguire?’

‘Yeah, I’ll have mine boiled, with coffee, milk and one sugar. Thanks.’ Mike turned back to his radio before she could respond. ‘Team 14, we have a possible sighting in Wandsworth, can you attend, over? Ow!’

Hawkins had clipped the back of his head as she left the room. The two of them were using a vacant office near the incident room at Scotland Yard as a temporary operations base. Radios had been set up for them to co-ordinate the sixty-odd response teams, which comprised every available officer from uniform to sergeant level.

She and Mike had already read through hundreds of ‘emergency’ call transcripts from all over London, without finding a single genuinely promising link to the killer.
They were at full stretch, but if they overlooked a lead that might later prove to have been an actual sighting of the killer, the consequences would be catastrophic.

It was going to be a heavy night.

Hawkins passed the first few windows of the incident room. The blinds were closed, but as she neared the door a young operator wearing a Santa hat flew out into the corridor with a fresh stack of transcripts. He grunted his frustration as he dropped a few from the bottom of the pile, then gathered them up and headed for their office without even seeming to notice her.

The racket from inside the room was silenced suddenly as the door banged shut, but the momentary blast of jumbled noise had suggested that a familiar level of activity existed within. Hawkins resisted the urge to push the door open again for a peek at the chaos, and resumed her course towards the kitchen.

Barking instructions into the radio to co-ordinate dozens of officers under her command should have given her a certain sense of control. If she was honest, though, she felt pretty helpless. The response teams already had a backlog of calls to follow up and, inevitably, that list would continue to grow: they’d have to be even more selective about which calls they responded to as the night progressed.

Voices became audible as Hawkins approached the kitchen area, and she entered the room to find a dozen or so uniforms seated around a couple of the tables, obviously just having finished a shift. Heavy winter coats and festive gloves were being put on, suggesting that a Christmas excursion was about to begin. She caught
sight of the vodka bottle as it disappeared beneath the table.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘Get out there and enjoy yourselves. That’s an order.’

Hawkins’ encouragement had the desired effect. The bottle reappeared, and she was even asked if she wanted to join the gang for a drink as they left. She declined, feeling more like tolerant auntie than credible peer.

The young officers filed out, leaving Hawkins alone. Only the hum of vending machines and a wall-mounted television quietly showing the news broke the silence. Outside the window, snow continued to fall.

She filled the kettle and flicked it on before getting herself a glass of tap water. On the TV screen, an image of King’s Cross station was overlaid with the caption ‘Curfew: London’. . She turned up the volume.

‘…
estimates from the retail sector suggest that last-minute pre-Christmas sales fell by as much as seventeen per cent today, as concerned shoppers avoided the capital. The mayor urged people to remain calm but vigilant in the wake of a second message printed yesterday in one newspaper. Verified by police as “almost certainly genuine”, the message claims to be from the person known as the Advent Killer.
In it, the author refers to himself as “Nemesis”, and promises further bloodshed in the city tonight. The mayor hit back, guaranteeing the Met’s response to the threat would be “decisive and unprecedented”
…’

The kettle clicked off, but the familiar faces appearing onscreen held Hawkins’ attention. It was the first time she’d seen footage of Mike’s press conference from earlier.
Lawrence Kirby-Jones sat beside him at the now familiar press-briefing desk. The man was an intimidating presence in any room, and even on the pixellated display his air of superiority sent a shiver through her. She turned away, distracting herself by attempting to make coffee in a decisive and unprecedented manner.

Behind her, Mike was asking the public to report anything suspicious via the dedicated phone line. She looked back at the screen just as a close-up of Mike’s face addressed Nemesis directly:

‘
The net is closing. Hand yourself in now, and we’ll get you the help you need. You’re only making things worse for yourself by drawing this out
.’

Hawkins cringed. TV Mike sounded calm and in control, but he knew as well as she how far he was stretching the truth. In reality, they were still nowhere near to apprehending the Advent Killer, while the tidal wave of calls continued to create pandemonium just along the corridor.

But disinformation was now part of their strategy. It sought to create a personal battle between Mike and the killer, hopefully getting Nemesis angry or anxious enough to make a mistake.

But as far as she was concerned, Simon Hunter had been optimistic in stating that serial killers typically became complacent after a few successful murders. Unfortunately, there was nothing typical about Nemesis.

Hawkins picked up the drinks before heading back to their temporary operations room.

‘Your coffee, sir. Any luck?’

‘Nope. Welcome to Paranoid City, have a nice day.’

‘Latest batch?’ Hawkins pointed to the fresh tower of paper threatening to overwhelm her desk.

‘Yeah, and those are just the sensible ones. You wanna see the rest – Brian says read them on screen. They’re running out of paper.’

‘Fantastic.’ She began flicking through the pile. It seemed every lone guy in London had become threatening tonight, from the man sweeping platforms at Liverpool Street station to the bus driver who stared for too long.

At least their current situation could be considered as practice. All three previous murders had happened during the first sixty minutes of Sunday morning, and midnight was still almost two hours away. Even if Nemesis had already chosen his target, he was unlikely to hang around at the scene making polite conversation until it was time for the kill.

She sighed. ‘What are the chances that any of these will lead anywhere until after midnight, anyway?’

‘Practically zip.’ Mike picked up the phone. ‘Want me to tell the DCS we’ve stopped looking?’

‘Good point.’ She smiled ruefully and levelled a finger at him. ‘Maybe I just need a few minutes of not thinking about how far up Shit Creek we are.’

‘We deserve a break, anyhow.’

‘Won’t argue with that.’ Hawkins sipped her water as her eye ran down the first of the transcripts on the desk in front of her.

‘Why did you take this case?’ she asked without thinking.

Mike’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean, did I know we’d be working together?’

She hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Maybe.’

‘Well, if that is what you meant, then no, I didn’t.’

‘Oh.’ Hawkins tried to think of a light-hearted response. ‘OK.’

‘However,’ Mike continued, ‘if you meant did I
hope
I’d be working with you again, then the answer’s yes.’ He rolled his chair towards hers. ‘And if you meant did I feel like doing a little dance of celebration when you said you’d split up with Paul, then the answer’s yes to that, too.’

‘But you hardly reacted.’

‘I know.’ Mike reached out and touched her neck. ‘I practise that.’

Hawkins felt the strum of anticipation, but managed to play it down, ‘It needs work, really. You didn’t fool me.’

‘I missed you, Toni.’

He was so close. She reached for the back of his head. ‘I missed you, too.’

And, for the first time in three weeks, Hawkins forgot all about the Advent Killer as she gave in completely to the kiss.

The atmosphere in the tube carriage was electric.

Alive with fear.

People crowded around him, the overriding flow towards the city mainly comprising braver members of the public, dressed up for Christmas Eve in the capital. But the average travellers among them provided greater insight: there was something unusual about the otherwise characteristic silence with which people endured their journeys.

The Indian woman a few seats from him had maintained a firm grip on her young son from the moment they got on, scolding him whenever he tried to pull away. Now she had the boy clamped in what he guessed was supposed to look like a hug.

He suppressed a smile:
Who was protecting whom?

Another woman, Caucasian, younger, was sitting opposite him. She was smartly dressed, as if she had attended a Christmas function, or sacrificed a day off in the name of career advancement. To the casual observer she might have appeared relaxed, nonchalantly reading on the train ride home, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

She hadn’t turned a page for ten minutes.

Panic was inevitable, thanks to the terror he had created with help from the media. He’d made the front page
of every newspaper, every day, since the first message had appeared.

A copy of the
Metro
lay crumpled on the seat beside him. It carried images of all his victims, and a blacked-out figure behind a question mark, with the headline:
WHO DIES NEXT?

He had glanced at the paper several times already, expecting each time to be affected by the memories. But tonight his emotions seemed muted, as if the thrill of a new chase had overridden them.

He felt sharp.

Focused.

Propaganda was his ally. Nobody wanted to become the next victim; nobody wanted Nemesis calling at
their
door. And the convenient result was that people were keeping their eyes off each other. Off
him
.

The train began to slow, and the blackness outside gave way to dirty tiles and dim lighting. Faces slid past the window, although none studied the carriage’s occupants as they might have on a normal evening.

Seconds later the doors hissed open, but nobody entered, and finally the familiar beeping signalled that the doors were about to close. He had enjoyed the sound several times on this journey already – it reminded him of the movies, the final few seconds before the bomb went off, or as a missile locked onto its target. Except this time, the countdown was his.

The train eased away, gathering speed, back into unlit tunnel, carrying him towards his destination. He swayed as the carriage rocked. Sometimes the lights would flicker and go out for a few seconds, heightening his senses.

He heard the metallic whisper from a pair of earphones, and the tortured screams of wheels on tracks as the train rounded a bend. Being completely in the dark made him smile.

So this was how it felt to be Mike Maguire.

He would definitely enjoy enlightening that American idiot when the time came.

By now the police would be spreading out across London, ready to bounce like pinballs between distressed members of the public in a futile attempt to track him down. That was the beauty of his method. Those calls would be from the careful ones – the people who would never be targets. His victims were ignorant of the penalties imposed upon those who lived without regard for others. They deserved to die precisely
because
they were oblivious to the warning signs all around them every day. Which, poetically, meant they never saw fate coming.

His visit to Brighton yesterday had been even more valuable than anticipated. If he hadn’t been within yards of Summer Easton as she left Old Glad Soul’s Roadshow, he would never have been able to follow her to the small flat he had since confirmed she occupied here, in London.

Previously, he’d expected Easton to spend Christmas with her colleagues, given the close-knit reputation of travelling communities like hers. He’d assumed, incorrectly, that people who enjoyed such nomadic pursuits were somehow dissatisfied with home life, even though, he considered, his contact with her mother had demonstrated no such animosity. But none of that was important now, because he knew where she was, and had passed the
property several times that afternoon to confirm she was still at home.

There was no guarantee she hadn’t left in the meantime, but that was a risk he had to take. As far as he could tell, she’d be there tonight. And, judging by the poky nature of the flat and the lack of visitors so far, she’d be alone.

Obviously his impending activities would be more difficult in the terrified capital than they would have been in Brighton, but the disorganization he had prearranged among the Met’s ranks would mean he would not be disturbed during the attack.

The carriage’s lights flickered again, re-igniting one by one along the length of the coach as the train emerged into Baker Street. He remained seated, taking a final look at those around him.

The Indian woman was already dragging her son towards the doors, moving around a man in ripped jeans who was taking an iPod from his pocket. As the man reached up to adjust the volume of his earphones, his sleeve slid back to reveal a large wristwatch.

He was right on schedule.