The Blissfully Dead (7 page)

Chapter 12
Day 4 – Patrick

T
he Rocket Man Film and Photography Studio was hidden away on a grim industrial estate at Sunbury Cross, close to the top of the M3, between a food-packing warehouse and a factory that manufactured sex toys.

‘For all your Rampant Rabbit needs,’ Carmella deadpanned as Patrick took in the run-down buildings, shivering as a frigid wind whipped across the estate. In the distance, he could hear the roar of cars and lorries heading west, but apart from that, all was silent. This whole place looked a long way from sharing in the bounty of economic recovery.

The SOCOs’ vans were parked on the wide driveway of the studio, several officers milling about in the entrance. Above their heads, a window was smashed and Patrick mentally marked this as a possible entry point. But it was more likely to be the work of bored local kids or squatters.

On the way over, Carmella had looked up the studio on Google while Patrick drove.

‘So . . . Rocket Man . . . opened in the early eighties and was used mostly by the music business for photo shoots and pop videos. It shut down a year ago. Their website is gone too, but there’s a news story about it closing here . . . The owner said that they were a casualty of the music biz tightening its belt, most of the music magazines and papers going bust, et cetera.’

‘Seems a weird place for a studio,’ Patrick said.

‘I guess the rent was cheap. And it was out of the way. Less chance of the pop stars being papped as they came in and out. Oh, listen to this, from the news story last year: “New boy-band sensation OnTarget shot the video for their debut single ‘Our Little Secret’ at Rocket Man, one of the last promo films to be made at the studio.” I’m starting to feel haunted by that band. You know, I popped to the shops yesterday and the amount of OnTarget
merchandise
I saw was unbelievable. Soft drinks, lunch boxes, loom bands, socks, pyjamas, dolls, mouse mats, sweatshirts – and their perfume, Friendship. If I’d known then that Friendship was the
perfume
that had been sprayed into Rose’s wounds, I’d have bought a bottle.’

Patrick had steered the car onto the estate. ‘I think Rose was carrying the Friendship perfume with her. Women do that sort of thing, don’t they?’

Carmella smiled.

‘And the killer used Rose’s own perfume on her.’

‘Rather than bring his own?’

‘That seems the most likely scenario. And he removed it along with all her other stuff. I’m hoping he’s kept it all as souvenirs, so when we find him . . .’

Carmella scrolled down on her phone. ‘There’s one more thing. Allegedly, the studio was also used recently to shoot porn movies.’

‘I’d have thought that would keep them going.’

‘You’re behind the times, Patrick. No-one’s willing to pay for porn anymore. It’s all freely available online.’

‘Oh yeah. So I’ve heard.’

Now, the two detectives approached the building. Patrick exchanged a few words with the SOCOs, who handed them full protective gear and told them where the body was located. They suited up and headed straight into the reception area, where a
corridor
led past another empty room to a single studio.

The building smelled musty and unpleasant – pigeon shit and rat piss – a cloying smell Patrick had encountered before, in the abandoned flats on the Kennedy Estate a couple of miles up the road. As they opened the door of the studio, though, another odour reached Patrick’s nose and he exchanged a look with Carmella.

Friendship
.

Patrick quickened his pace, his natural reluctance to see the body overridden by the need to see if he was right, and the smell was indeed the OnTarget perfume that he and Carmella had just been talking about. They did not speak, and the shuffling of their blue paper overshoes in the dusty corridor sounded loud in the silence.

The SOCOs were gathered, in their protective gear, in a cluster at the far end of the surprisingly large studio, in front of a torn white screen that remained from when this place had played host to glamorous pop stars. There was no longer any whiff of glamour, just the stink of decay and neglect. And, now, death. There were no windows in the studio, and the lights had been removed, but the SOCOs had brought lamps that cast shadows around them like crosses. Without the police lights, this place would be dark even during the day.
Jessica
McMasters must have died in the shadows.

The chief SOCO, Neil Maslen, whom Patrick knew reasonably well, came up to them.

‘Who found her?’ Patrick asked, after they’d exchanged
greetings
.

‘A security guard,’ Neil said. ‘He comes round once a day to make sure squatters haven’t broken in, apparently. He said he noticed that a window had been forced open round the back and came in to investigate.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘In the back of the van – we’re waiting for him to stop puking before we take him in for questioning. He’s already splattered the crime scene once and I don’t want any more of last night’s chicken tikka masala ruining the evidence, so we put him in there with a placky bag, a bottle of water and some wet wipes.’

‘OK. I’ll talk to him later,’ Patrick said.

Jessica had been reported missing at 7.35 p.m. the previous
evening
, after not being seen all day. Her mother had thought she was out with her friend Chloe, since it was a Saturday. So the last person to see her alive was the mother, who’d looked in on her when she was still asleep at 8.15 a.m. that morning, and now the body had been found at 8 a.m. the following day? That meant Jess could have been killed at any time during that twenty-four-hour period.

‘I’m not imagining the smell of perfume, am I?’ Patrick asked, and Neil shook his head. In this large space, the smell was less
concentrated
and eye-stinging than in the hotel room at the Travel Inn, but it was unquestionably the same. And as the SOCOs parted and gave Patrick his first look at the body, he knew without doubt that, regardless of the connection or lack thereof to the murder of Nancy Marr, this was the work of a serial killer.

Jessica lay on her back on the hard floor in front of the tattered screen. Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the dead strip lights. Her body had a curious orange sheen that, Patrick realised after a moment of confusion, was fake tan, streaked in places. She was naked, much skinnier than Rose had been – not anorexic but definitely underweight, her ribs sharp beneath her skin.

Patrick felt the low stirring of rage deep in his belly. He moved closer, Carmella at his side, and took in the worst of it: the bruising on her throat, showing that she’d been strangled, and the cuts. Hundreds of tiny cuts across her body. Just like Rose, except many of these cuts were deeper, longer, as if the killer had found it harder to maintain control. There were marks on her face too: her lower lip cut and puffy; a mark on her cheekbone. A clump of hair had been pulled out. And most sickening of all: the tips of several of her fingers were bloody and raw. He had pulled four of her fingernails out.

Patrick turned away, the white, cold anger pulsing inside him.

He forced himself to stand still on one of the metal stepping stones protecting the scene, taking it all in. Her left forearm was adorned with a huge, smudged tattoo of a person – Patrick couldn’t tell whether it was meant to be male or female until he read the name underneath it:
Shawn.
It looked nothing like the lead singer of the band, as far as he could tell, but it was clearly meant to represent him.
Silly girl
, he thought. How would that have looked when she was in her forties?

But now she would never even see her twenties.

Noticing something else, he stooped low and examined the underside of Jess’s other wrist. She had a small red tattoo there: a love heart with a pair of crosshairs through it – the OnTarget logo.

Patrick looked around. As with Rose, there was no sign of the clothes the killer had removed from Jess. None of her possessions were to be seen anywhere. He approached one of the SOCOs.

‘Her fingernails . . . Have you already picked them up?’

‘No, sir. We did a sweep of the floor, but there was no sign of them. They might turn up, but . . .’

Patrick clenched his teeth. The murderer had taken them. But why? Why leave the bodies where they were so easy to find, but remove everything else? Was it because he wanted souvenirs? Or did he have some other purpose for the girls’ belongings?

He took a final look at Jess’s body and thought, ‘We’re going to find him, sweetheart. And when we do, I’m going to make him wish he’d never been born.’

It was only when he saw the way Carmella was staring at him, mouth agape, that he realised he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.

Chapter 13
Day 4 – Patrick

P
atrick paced the incident room, the rest of the team gathered nervously around the edges – all except Winkler, who was perched on the edge of a desk, arms folded, wearing his omnipresent smirk.

Patrick had asked Gareth to print a map of the area, on which they’d marked the murder scenes of the teenage girls in red, their homes in green. Jess and Rose lived less than a mile apart but went to different schools – Jess attending the grammar school, Rose the local comprehensive. Patrick paused by the map and drew a circle that encompassed the four points.

‘Two girls, both fifteen, living close to one another. White,
middle
-class, though Jess’s family appear to be better off than Rose’s – much bigger house, nicer car, et cetera. Rose’s parents are divorced; Jess’s are still together. We know that both girls were
massive
fans of OnTarget. According to Jess’s mother, she attended the vigil for Rose at Twickenham Stadium.’

This fact made him shiver. He and Carmella had been in the same small crowd as the second victim-fan. He had no recollection of seeing her. But it made him wonder – had the killer been the
re too?

And had the murderer’s
next
target – because he had no doubt this was not the end, the killer wasn’t going to stop now – been at the vigil as well?

‘Jessica was at the vigil with her best friend, one Chloe Hedges. Jess told her mum that she was going round to Chloe’s house, but she didn’t turn up. Gareth is going to interview Chloe later.’

Patrick went on to describe the similarities between the two murders: the cuts; the perfume; the fact that their clothes had been taken.

‘Was this one wearing lucky knickers too?’ Winkler asked.

Patrick looked at him with disgust. Trust Winkler to seize on the girls’ underwear. ‘What?’

Winkler shrugged. ‘I noticed on the info sheet about Rose – she was wearing knickers with
“
LUCKY
”
written on them, wasn’t she? Thought it was pretty ironic.’

‘Yes. Well, we have a full description of Jess’s clothes on your new sheets, but it appears she was wearing new, black underwear.’

Winkler nodded and made a note.

Patrick moved on. ‘We know from the mothers that both girls were extremely active on the band’s forums and talked about them endlessly on social media. We’ve looked at their Twitter accounts – Rose was tweeting about OnTarget up to a hundred times a day; Jess even more. Jess’s mum says that her daughter lived and breathed the band, that she became obsessed with them from the moment they were put together on that talent show. She got those tattoos last month despite being underage.’

‘Crazy,’ Winkler muttered.

Patrick counted to three, not wanting to lose his temper. But before he could speak, Wendy, the young-looking DC who had transferred from Wolverhampton and had admitted to being a fan of OnTarget, spoke up.

‘Why is it crazy? Ill-advised, yes, but this is what a lot of teenage girls do – they form an intense interest in a band, or a pop star, or an actor. It’s a normal part of growing up. It’s only because of social media and the Internet that it becomes more visible, more . . . amplified.’ Her confidence visibly grew as she went on. ‘Because now they have a channel, a way of broadcasting their love for these boys. When I was a teenager I was a massive Blue fan. But I didn’t go on Twitter to talk about it – I wrote endless declarations of love in my diary.’

‘You probably still do,’ Winkler said.

Patrick was amazed and impressed by Wendy’s outburst, partly because he too understood how it felt to be a huge fan of someone. When he was a teenager he had been . . . well, he hesitated to use the word ‘obsessed’, but he had spent a huge amount of time and energy thinking and talking about his favourite band, The Cure. He spent all his money on their records, collecting rare vinyl and posters, wearing their T-shirts, going to gigs and connecting with like-minded fans who spent many hours sitting around analysing Robert Smith’s lyrics.

‘Thank you—’ he began to say, but Wendy spoke over him.

‘The point I’m trying to make,’ she said, a pink flush creeping across her throat, ‘is that we shouldn’t dismiss or judge these young girls. We mustn’t call them crazy.’

The whole room, including Winkler, was silent in the aftermath of Wendy’s words, everybody following her gaze towards the photos of Rose and Jess that were pinned to the board beside the map.

‘Thank you, Wendy,’ Patrick said, finally, smiling at her. She looked at her feet.

Winkler said, ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

Patrick pointed at the map again, drawing a line with his finger between the two houses. ‘We need to find out every connection between these two, apart from their love of OnTarget. Did they know each other online? Had they met? Mutual friends and acquaintances – they must have some. Is there any connection between their families? Places they both frequented – somewhere the killer might have spotted them. I also want to know about boyfriends. Again, according to their mothers, neither girl had a boyfriend. Mrs Sharp says that, to her knowledge, Rose never had a boyfriend, though of course she might have had one her mum didn’t know about.’

‘Or she could have been gay,’ Carmella said.

Winkler rolled his eyes.

Patrick didn’t think that fitted with Rose’s boy-band obsession but said, ‘Of course we should keep an open mind. Jess’s mum says that her daughter was very popular, that boys were always asking her out, but – and I quote – “Jess was saving herself for Shawn”.’

‘Deluded,’ said Winkler.

‘A bit like you,’ Carmella said. ‘Thinking any woman would be interested in you . . .’

‘As a matter of fact—’ Winkler began.

Patrick cut him off. ‘All right. Let’s focus. Wendy, I want you to find out everything about these girls. And I mean everything.’

‘So are we assuming that my case isn’t connected to the girls now?’ Winkler asked, sounding hopeful. ‘Can I get on with my investigation without you interfering?’

Patrick stared at him. He didn’t want Winkler involved; he didn’t want the Nancy Marr murder tied to this one. Apart from wanting to jettison Winkler, the elderly woman’s murder didn’t fit. It confused things. But they couldn’t dismiss it, not after what Daniel Hamlet had said. And Suzanne wanted them to consider every possibility.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We have to do what the DCI asked, until we find evidence that Mrs Marr’s death isn’t connected to the other two.’

‘It’s a bloody joke.’

Patrick ignored him, biting his tongue again, and turned to the map, drawing a question mark on Nancy Marr’s home, which was also the scene of the crime.

‘I want to go over your case notes with you,’ Patrick said, and Winkler reacted as if Patrick had told him he wanted to have sex with his mother.

‘No fucking way.’

Patrick was aware of everyone else in the room watching them.

‘Let’s talk about this afterwards,’ he said.

Winkler gave him a Medusa-like stare and folded his arms, glowering at Patrick.
Less Medusa, more feral cat
, Patrick thought.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Patrick said under his breath. He took a moment to gather himself and turned again to the photos of Rose and Jess, emotionally anchoring himself, reminding himself of what needed to be done and why. He needed to ignore Winkler, not let the little twat get to him – though he was going to get a look at those case notes if it killed him.

‘Any joy with the hotel key card?’ Patrick addressed Gareth, who shook his head apologetically.

‘But I’m talking to Cyber-Crime later, boss. Peter Bell reckons he could have some leads for us.’

‘OK, good.’ Again, Patrick pulled the lid off a marker pen and wrote a heading on the whiteboard beside the map.

SUSPECTS/TARGETS

‘All right. We don’t have any named suspects yet. But let’s think about our line of inquiry. Who is doing this, and why? Until we know more, let’s assume that the strongest things that connect Rose and Jessica are, first, their interest in OnTarget and, second, their consequent use of the band’s social media.’ He wrote these two points on the whiteboard. ‘Martin, can you share what you’ve found out about the girls’ Internet use so far?’

Martin Hale hauled himself to his feet, wincing slightly –
Patrick
wasn’t sure whether this was from an injury or at the thought of speaking to the assembled group.

Hale didn’t need to refer to his notepad – the details of this case were etched on his mind, Patrick knew. As he spoke, Patrick added notes to the board.

‘I haven’t had much time at all to look into Rose’s Internet history, but here’s what I’ve got so far. Both girls used the official OnTarget forum, which is hosted on the band’s website.’ He shook his head. ‘There are girls on there who write a hundred posts about Shawn every single day . . . Apart from that, they both used
Twitter
extensively and have unprotected accounts. They had Facebook accounts but barely used them. They were both on StoryPad, which is a site where teenagers write short stories and poems. Um . . . what else? Rose had a Tumblr account where she posted about the band, as well as numerous Pinterest boards where she pinned endless
pictures
of Shawn and his bandmates.’

Winkler muttered, ‘Give me strength.’

‘I’ve found something that could be useful regarding Rose’s phone,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve been through her phone records and there are no unknown numbers – just lots of calls to her mum and dad, texts between her and her friends. Between leaving her house and going to the hotel, she didn’t make any calls or send any texts.
However
, she did use a fair amount of 3G bandwidth during the hours before her death.’

‘You mean she was online?’ Patrick asked.

‘Exactly. She might have been on the Internet on her phone or using apps that connect online. Unfortunately, the mobile provider can’t tell us what she was doing. I’ve checked her social media and she didn’t tweet or update any of the other sites she uses regularly.’

‘But perhaps she was communicating with somebody?’

‘That’s what I think. She might have been using one of those messaging apps. From the amount of bandwidth she used, it’s
possible
she was sending or downloading photos, or even a video.’

‘Good stuff, Martin. See what else you can find out. We need to talk to her friends and her online, er, buddies and see if she shared anything with them.’

‘And I’ll see if there was similar activity on Jess’s phone.’

Patrick popped the lid back onto the marker pen and looked around at the, mostly, eager faces. The one bored face belonged to Winkler, which was hardly a surprise. Winkler’s attachment to Operation Urchin felt like a pebble in Patrick’s shoe.

Catching Patrick watching him, Winkler looked up and raised his eyebrows. ‘What are you staring at?’

It took all Patrick’s inner strength to stop himself from regressing to the primary school playground and saying, ‘I dunno – it hasn’t got a label on it.’

Most of the assembled officers filed out of the room, leaving Patrick gazing at the whiteboard. He sensed a presence behind him.

‘Boss?’

It was Wendy. She fidgeted, knotting her fingers together in front of her, shuffling one foot.

‘I hope you didn’t think I spoke out of turn,’ she said in her
lilting
Black Country accent.

‘No, not at all. I was impressed, Wendy. It’s refreshing to hear somebody speak up for these girls. To talk about them like they’re real people. You showed empathy. I like that.’

Two bright spots of pink glowed on her cheeks. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said, her eyes focusing on the photos of Rose and Jess.

‘Go on.’

‘You said you want me to find out everything I can about these girls.’

Patrick noticed that she didn’t refer to them as the victims.

‘Well, what if I were to, you know, covertly go on the OnT forums and social media and pose as a fan? Get to know members of that community and try to connect with other people who knew Rose and Jess?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s a specialist skill.
Martin
has had the training.’

She stopped fidgeting. ‘But, boss, with all due respect to
Martin
, he’s . . . well, he doesn’t know how to think like one of these girls.’ Before Patrick could interrupt she said, ‘I understand them. I know that world. I can chat about OnTarget without sounding fake. I really think I’m best placed to do this.’

‘I know what you’re saying, but—’

‘Please. Let me do this. Give me a day or two and if I don’t make any progress, I’ll hold my hands up and hand it over. At least let me set up the profiles, reach out. I’d only have to give Martin a crash course in OnTarget fandom anyway.’

She grinned and Patrick found the smile infectious.

‘I won’t let you down.’

He sighed. ‘All right. But keep me fully informed. And if it doesn’t seem like you’re making swift progress . . .’

‘Thanks, boss. I’ll get on it straight away.’

She strode from the room before he could change his mind. Why, he wondered, as he faced the pictures of Rose and Jess, a wave of tiredness crashing over him, did he feel like he’d just been steamrollered?