The Trophy Taker Page 21

  ‘Like Jason Jennings then?’

  Hunter nodded. ‘Those two come from the same mould; both victims of the care system. Bet and Paul are checking schools and care homes now to see if there is a common location they both lived or were schooled at. Susan’s the odd one out now as far as our victim profile is concerned... and all our fucking suspects were out and about last night.’

  He got out and slammed the door a little too hard, striding away towards the crime scene. Charlie followed, running to catch up and apologising to the officer on the cordon, whose request for ID had been summarily dismissed by Hunter with the thrust of his warrant card and a grunt.

  When she finally caught up, Hunter was staring down at the mutilated body of Tanisha Fleming. She looked the same as the others except that her skirt had been pulled up, revealing her naked groin and thighs.

  ‘Looks like there might be a sexual element to this one.’

  She nodded. Even though Tanisha was a prostitute Charlie still wanted to cover her over; to her mind there was something inherently wrong in leaving her exposed.

  They lapsed into silence, stepping round the body carefully, staring down into the young prostitute’s thoracic cavity. Instead of the glint of a metal ring as Charlie was expecting, Hunter was pointing towards a small piece of transparent blue plastic, containing a small, creamy crystalline rock.

  ‘Crack cocaine, by the look of it.’ He said what she was thinking. ‘What the hell is the significance of that?’

  ‘Maybe, the drugs taking over her life? He’s shown previously that he’s not interested in the monetary value of what he leaves.’ Charlie was as perplexed as he. ‘The relevance of the objects he’s left is important to him, irrespective of how much they’re worth; Susan’s wedding ring and JJ’s commitment ring and now, Tanisha’s drugs?’

  Hunter turned his own wedding ring on his finger. ‘Rings are gifts of love – ‘til death do us part and all that - but why remove their hearts and leave the ring in its place? Or in this case a rock of crack?’

  ‘To symbolise something that’s replaced their heart? Or his perhaps? He’s cast their hearts away in each case, maybe he feels they did the same to him. Maybe he’s loved them all in the past?’ She was on a roll. ‘Each victim has found a replacement for him; in Susan’s and JJ’s case a partner, in Tanisha’s case addiction to drugs? Our man has known and loved them all, that’s why it’s so personal.’

  Hunter was nodding enthusiastically.

  ‘And in Tanisha’s case maybe he had a sexual interest too, but we won’t know whether sex has taken place or he’s just left her naked to humiliate her until the post mortem.’

  They moved back carefully and Charlie bent down as she saw a large pool of blood, clotted underneath the prostitute’s stiff left hand.

  ‘Boss, her finger is missing too. I doubt she’d be wearing a ring, in her profession. I doubt she even owns one. She’s an addict; she’d almost certainly have cashed it in for drugs. So, presuming there’s no ring, why cut her finger off?’

  ‘Because he can? Because he wants a trophy from each victim? We haven’t found them yet have we, the fingers? Maybe the sick fuck likes a little memento to remember each victim by?’ Hunter shook his head in disbelief. ‘Dr Crane has confirmed JJ’s finger was removed while he was still alive, like Susan’s. It looks like Tanisha’s was cut off before she was killed outright too. God knows what the bastard wants with them.’

  Charlie shivered, trying hard not to imagine the pain and terror of the woman’s last moments. The thought of their killer collecting fingers chilled her to the bone.

  ‘Dr Crane also thinks the implement used could be similar to rib cutters, which are specialised implements he uses himself when he performs post mortems. Like most things these days you can order them on the internet, apparently on medical websites. If not rib cutters then possibly bolt croppers or something comparable that is sharp enough to cut through bone and ligaments in one snip.’

  He stepped back as his phone started to ring and looked at the display, before handing it towards her.

  ‘It’s Paul. You answer it. I need time to think.’

  Charlie held the phone to her ear, watching as Hunter paced away back towards the gate.

  ‘Hi, Paul. It’s me. Hunter’s busy.’

  ‘Can you tell him that Emma Barton has just called to say her father will be coming in to sign on as usual, later this morning, so we should be able to speak to him then and, before you ask, she doesn’t know where he was last night. I asked her in conversation. ‘Oh and even more interestingly, Bet has been going through the school records. It appears that Vincent Atkins worked at a St Bart’s Junior school in the eighties but then moved to Aspire Academy, a school for problem children in Lambeth, between 1989 and 2004. Guess who else was there?’ He didn’t wait for her reply. ‘Only Jason Jennings. Bet phoned Aspire direct and asked them to check their records. He was definitely there when Atkins first started. He must have taught or at least known JJ.’

  ‘That’s brilliant Paul. I’ll let Hunter know. Hopefully it’ll be something we can get our teeth into. Do you know if Tanisha Fleming went to any school that Atkins taught at?’

  ‘Bet’s just checking that now. I’ll get back to you. One more thing Charlie.’

  She caught the hesitation in his voice. ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘The Chief Inspector is on the warpath. He’s getting it in the ear from above and wants to speak to Hunter personally to find out why we’ve not got any results as yet.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. What does he think we’ve all been doing? Sitting on our arses writing poetry?! OK, I’ll let him know, though he’s literally going to burst a blood vessel. That one on his forehead has been beating at twenty to the dozen all morning as it is.’

  She put the phone down and looked across at Hunter who was standing by the gate, staring up at the written tributes, flowers and verses of condolence to all the fallen poor. She walked across to join him, watching the concentration on his face turn to excitement.

  ‘Look!’ He pointed at a message pinned to the bars of the gate. ‘I think our theory might be right.’ The paper the message was written on was plain, sodden with the night’s rain and its edges curled inwards but it appeared less worn than the rest. The handwriting was elaborate and ornate and the ink had run a little but it was still legible. She peered towards the words and read the message out loud.

  ‘You ripped my heart out! Now I’ve had yours. Soon I will have another.’

  *

  The door was boarded up when they arrived at Tanisha’s registered address but it had been forced open again and the catch just about reached the lock on the damaged frame.

  Hunter didn’t bother to knock. Pushing the door, Charlie watched as it sprang open easily and he stepped into the crack house. She followed in his footsteps and together they walked into the lounge area of the sixth-floor flat. It was as she expected. She’d been to many such dwellings and they were all depressingly similar. Filthy clothing and empty food containers were untidily thrown in piles, amidst a mass of broken furniture. A mattress, stained and dirty, lay in the corner of the room, alongside a large four-seater settee, the cushions of which were piled up at one side to allow its use as a bed. A coffee table, with its glass top covered completely in ashtrays and the remnants of drug use, was positioned directly in front of the sofa.

  A young girl, who didn’t look much older than eighteen sat on the settee, her head lolling back; bleached blonde hair spread out against the back of the cushion. Another, only slightly older, stretched out across the mattress, in a state of undress. Both appeared spaced out on drugs.

  ‘Hello? Police,’ Charlie called out, shaking the arm of the girl on the settee.

  She stirred, opening bloodshot eyes and trying to focus on who had spoken. ‘What the fuck are you doing in ‘ere?’

  She ignored the question. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Her voice was slurred an
d loud within the confines of the small room.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. We just need to speak to you. Do you know Tanisha Fleming?’

  ‘Yeah, I know Tash. She’s my mate. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Because we think we may have found her.’

  ‘What’s she been up to this time? If she’s bin rippin’ off a few punters, then don’t ask me for no sympathy ‘cause I ain’t got none. The dirty bastards deserve everything they get.’

  ‘It’s nothing like that. When I say we’ve found her, I mean we’ve found her body, at least we’re pretty sure it’s her.’

  The girl suddenly let out a high-pitched wail, like a young child, causing the other girl to stir. Even Charlie jumped slightly in surprise.

  The girl turned towards her friend and cried out again. ‘Redz, someone’s killed Tash. The filth 'ere have found ‘er body.’ She turned back towards Charlie. ‘Sorry, miss, didn’t mean to offend ya.’

  ‘You haven’t. Anyway we need to know as much as we can about Tanisha. Family, friends, where she’s lived, where she went to school, any regular punters, especially any who might have a bit of a thing for her; you know, the weirdos and nutters; who her dealers are; anyone she might owe money to or that might have a grudge. What is your name by the way?’

  ‘I’m Caz; short for Charlene Zara Philips. Sounds quite posh, don’t it? Think me mum named me after that royal bird.’ She let out a shrill laugh.

  ‘Well Caz. Can you come with us now? I’ll get a colleague to take a statement straightaway.’

  She frowned. ‘I dunno. I don’t wanna get in trouble with me pimp. He’ll want me out earnin’, ya see. I don’t want no beatin’, just ‘cause I’m talkin’ to ya. He hates you lot. Redz what d’you think?’

  Redz had already lain back down on the mattress and was half asleep. The news had clearly not affected her, like it would a normal person. Her reality was a long way from most people’s. Charlie wondered briefly what it must be like to live and sleep with the possibility of death with every car they got into; every client they serviced.

  Hunter was poking about on the coffee table when Caz turned back.

  ‘Oi, what’s he doing?’ she pointed towards him.

  ‘Is this yours?’ He held out a small blue wrap in his gloved hand.

  ‘It’s not mine,’ she said automatically. ‘You’re not gonna nick me for it, are you?’

  Hunter shook his head. ‘I know it’s crack Caz, and I’m not going to nick you for it, I promise. It’s wrapped up exactly like a rock that Tash had on her when we found her. All I want to know is whether it is likely to have belonged to Tanisha, or did it come from the person who killed her?’

  ‘It’s ‘ers probably. Our dealer wraps them in blue. Says it’s so we know that the good gear comes from ‘im.’

  She got up unsteadily and brushed herself down while Hunter put the rock of crack in a property bag. ‘Right lets go. If we’re gonna get this done, let’s do it quick like, so I can be back before me pimp misses me.’

  ‘Thanks Caz.’ Charlie smiled at the young girl. ‘We appreciate this, especially as I know it might be difficult for you. I’ll make sure you get brought back as soon as we can.’ She took hold of Caz’s arm and helped her to shuffle towards the front door, stopping for a second to pull out her phone and scrolling through the photos. ‘While you’re with me, do you know this man?’ Cornell Miller’s face stared out from the phone screen.

  ‘Yeah, why? He comes in here to score sometimes. Nasty bastard, always boasting ‘bout poppin’ or burnin’ foreigners. We call him Slasher ‘cause he always ‘as a blade or bottle wiv ‘im; waves it through the air like he’s slicin’ someone.’

  ‘Caz, he’s wanted for doing exactly that. He’ll kill someone if we don’t get him soon. My name’s Charlie. If I give you my number could you ring me if you see him?’

  The young prostitute thought for a second and nodded. ‘Yeah I could do that for ya Charlie; but only if you make sure I get back from the nick, quick, like.’

  Chapter 30

  The briefing room was full when Charlie and Hunter returned. She’d phoned ahead and everyone from their office and the Murder Investigation Team was waiting, pens and paper at the ready.

  Detective Chief Inspector Declan O’Connor was hunched forward over a desk at the front of the room, glaring at each new arrival through the door and twitching each time it wasn’t Hunter. Charlie had gone on ahead with Paul, Bet, Naz and Sabira, while her boss apprised himself of any last minute snippets of information that might appease the DCI. She could feel the tension in every bone of her body and each member of the team looked strained and nervous. The body count was rising and so were the stress levels.

  She looked at the Chief Inspector, bushy-haired and windswept, with his trademark crumpled cream linen suit, and remembered with amusement a colleague asking if they were related in any way. They certainly had the same lack of attention to detail when it came to looking professional. She hoped that people were realising that behind the rather scruffy outer persona she actually was professional.

  At precisely eleven o’clock the door opened and Hunter strode in. Instead of his previous ruddy-cheeked apprehensions, he appeared confident and authoritative. He nodded to the DCI and stood in front of the table to speak.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, our suspect has today given us warning that he intends to kill again. We believe he left a handwritten note on the gates of Cross Bones Graveyard in Borough after committing a third murder. The note is being examined by Scenes of Crime as I speak for any possible DNA or fingerprints and by a handwriting expert. The letter says, “You ripped my heart out! Now I’ve had yours. Soon I will have another.”

  ‘We are here to stop him, and stop him we will.

  ‘You know the MO folks. Each victim has been drugged, probably with GBL, bound and gagged and each one taken to a separate cemetery; the first to West Norwood, the second to Downs in Brighton and the third now in Borough. The ring fingers have been severed with a sharp implement, possibly rib cutters or bolt croppers, while the victims are still alive; the heart has then been pierced with a stiletto-type blade, the thoracic area carefully cut open and the ribs pulled apart. Each victim’s heart has literally been ripped out, leaving torn parts of the pericardium still attached to the end of the aorta and blood vessels. The heart has been thrown to one side and wedding rings, or in this case a rock of crack, placed in the empty cavity. Each victim, although drugged would have been in extreme and enduring pain from the amputation, until their heart was pierced. Thankfully it looks like this was done before our man starts to open them up.

  ‘There is virtually no forensic evidence from any of the crime scenes. They are all out in the open, with the weather conditions further hampering the retrieval of samples. Our killer is careful. He leaves nothing and tidies away after each killing. There have been no fingerprints or DNA found on any of the three bodies; or certainly not on the first two. He appears to have used the same tools and we have a few odd fibres that we may be able to match up when we get a suspect, but as yet, nothing to identify him.

  ‘The first victim is Susan Barton, a middle-aged white woman, of good character, who appears to have been an exemplary teacher, churchgoer and mother. Her body was found in West Norwood cemetery. Items of property were left at her side, including her handbag and phone. Her heart was found nearby and her wedding ring was in her chest. We still do not know whether she was wearing her engagement ring at the time of her death; it was not in the house where she kept her jewellery. It has now been found hidden in a toilet cistern at the home of her estranged husband Mickey Barton, who I’ll call our first suspect.

  ‘There has been nothing of note found at her home address; there was no forced entry, so she either let someone in voluntarily or left to meet someone independently. Barton had keys to the house. ‘Her phone has been seized and examined and the call record does not show any phone contacts after a call from her daughter Emma at around 7
p.m. A few earlier calls and texts from friends and acquaintances have been checked and ruled out as routine. She had left her husband a few months previously and had recently started an affair with the headteacher of the school she worked at, Vincent Atkins, our second suspect. There were calls from both of these two, among others, but no evidence of what was said during the call.

  ‘There is no CCTV in the area of her house and her car was still on the driveway. A dark blue Vauxhall Vectra estate, registration number LV07JCF, was seen entering the cemetery at 23.19 on the night of her murder and left again at 01.34. It appeared to only have one occupant but we know Susan had been drugged so could have been lying in the back. The car is registered to our third suspect Oscar Abrahams, an extremely unpleasant paedophile with previous convictions for child sexual assault and possession of kiddie porn.’

  Charlie watched Hunter as he spoke. It was what she admired the most about him. The way he could recall names, registration numbers, times, methods; details that most people would have had to use notes to refer to. Even at his age and with his eyesight failing, his memory was as sharp as ever. She hoped to be the same as him when she got to his amount of service. He had hardly paused to get his breath before moving on.

  ‘Our second victim is Jason Jennings or JJ, as he was better known. He was a forty-two-year-old homosexual man, in a civil partnership with a slightly older man called Roger Stevenson. Stevenson was away on the night of JJ’s murder and has a cast-iron alibi to that effect. JJ was also drugged and killed with the same MO and his ring left in his body cavity. His phone was also left and records show no unusual calls leading up to his death. Stevenson has stated that JJ had a difficult childhood, intimating that he was frightened of someone and had run away at the time they met. He had been reported missing a few times and on one occasion JJ had been anxious that he might be found and asked for the police investigating his disappearance not to divulge where he was staying. As far as we have been able to gather, this report was made by a third party and the details of the person actually reporting him missing were not recorded. His father who had mistreated him as a child has been traced and eliminated from our enquiries.