Grave Doubts Part 32

Fenwick breathed slowly to calm his irritation. It was always unwise to lose one's temper, more so when on strange territory and particularly with a woman. He also had to remember that she was doing him a favour. Constable Powell had been about to go off duty when he'd found her in the canteen and told her his problem.

'It's just up there on the right.'

She steered the patrol car down a lane and turned the car into the drive. The house was in darkness.

'Great, just what we need. She's gone to bed.'

'Maybe she's watching TV without the lights on.'

They waited a long time in the porch then rang the doorbell again. Janine opened the door a crack, saw the policewoman's uniform and opened it wide.

'Bill?' she said, her face full of unspoken horror for her husband. Constable Powell calmed her and introduced them, explaining that their visit was urgent.

'Come in then, but for heaven's sake be quiet. Carl's a light sleeper.'

She led them into the kitchen.

'What do you want?'

There was defensiveness in her voice that put Fenwick on immediate alert.

'Have you found any papers, anything at all that might have been left behind by the owners?'

'I told you before, nothing. There must've been loads of tenants before us. If there'd been anything they would've pa.s.sed it to the agents.'

'What about the loft?'

'I can't believe there'd be anything up there after all these years.'

'Would you mind if we checked? And in the shed and garage. You'd be amazed what people forget.'

'Well you can look outside as long as you're quiet but I'm not having you rummaging around upstairs. You'll wake Carl.'

Robyn Powell went to search the outbuildings. When they were on their own Fenwick's face hardened.

'Mrs Grey,' she started at his change of tone. 'I'm not in the least interested in what your husband is up to.'

She was bone white now, staring at him as if he were a mind reader.

'I want to catch a killer, a nasty vicious man who tortures his victims before he kills them. If there's any trace of him left in this house I want to find it and I won't stop until I've searched. If you deny me now I'll simply return with a warrant and then it'll be all over, won't it?'

'And you promise not to tell?'

'About what?'

The poor woman looked as if she was about to be sick. It was time to try sympathy.

'Look,' he said with a sad smile, 'you can't undo the fact that I'm here. If you help me I won't personally say anything about what I may see, OK?'

'And your colleague?'

'I can't speak for her. So if we're going to look upstairs we should do it now while she's busy.'

Janine rubbed her head in worry, but she went to a kitchen drawer and found a set of keys.

'You'll have to go up there, I hate that ladder. Give me a minute.'

On the count of ten he went to find her.

She'd spread a duvet cover and dressing gown over piles of cartons. He could read names of popular brands of cigarettes in the gap between one cover and the next and sighed with relief. Only petty smuggling. He'd been afraid it would be drugs. If it had been, his promise would have meant little.

The attic was almost empty. He took a builder's light from a hook and crawled forward on rough flooring, catching his knee on a raised nail as he did so. His trousers tore and he felt a stab of pain as it broke the skin.

'b.u.g.g.e.r! Why is it always this knee?'

Muttering he crawled forward, feeling a bigger fool by the second. He saw a battered suitcase, a bin liner and a box that said 'A4 paper' on the side. The suitcase held clothes that reeked of mothb.a.l.l.s, the bin liner old curtains, but when he opened the box he found a photograph in a frame on top.

'Could you give me a hand? I'm going to wrap something in a curtain and lower it to you. Got it?'

'Yes; you're bleeding, and you've wrecked your trousers. I hope this is worth it.'

'So do I. Now I need you to sign a paper and it will say that you gave this to me willingly.'

'You're joking!'

'It will be a lot simpler and one good turn deserves another.'

She signed grudgingly, hating him with her eyes but he didn't care.

Constable Powell was waiting for them downstairs. On the way to the car she turned to Fenwick.

'There's something funny going on there, Chief Inspector. She was so nervous.'

'What do you think it is?'

'Whilst I was outside I had a good poke around and there were dozens of empty cardboard boxes, the sort you see wholesale cigarettes in. Her husband's a lorry driver isn't he?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Well then. What do you think?'

'I think that you're smart. Make sure you put all that in your report.'

'You don't want to handle it?'

'Not my patch, not my case and you deserve the credit,' he smiled into the darkness.

He waited for the lights of the police car to disappear then tried to decide what to do. The man had been carrying something and he'd worked out what it might be. A box had turned up from his dad's office one day and he'd put it to one side to deal with later. He'd burnt so much stuff that he could not believe he had forgotten the box.

On impulse he wheeled his bike out into the lane. He wasn't used to being out of control and he needed to find out why the police had been at the house. The car had disappeared by the time he was on the main road but he guessed that it had gone towards Telford and caught up within minutes. They went into the Police Station but the woman was back out again almost immediately. He let her go and waited for the man.

It proved to be a long wait. At eleven o'clock he reappeared carrying an overnight bag. Another man was with him, much younger, with acne. They kept on foot so he left the bike and fell in behind them, used to being discreet when he needed to be.

The street was empty and he could hear stray strands of their conversation.

'...a walk will do us good, Knotty. It's only half a mile.'

'But sir, my blisters!'

'Don't whinge.'

They stopped outside a B&B and the young one started up the path.

'This is it?' The older man asked.

'Yes, sir. The hotels were so expensive.'

'Very well. Go on.'

The door was answered at once by a woman.

'Ah, Chief Inspector Fenwick. We've been expecting you. The police are always welcome here. Come in. You'll find us a home away from home. London wasn't it?'

They went inside and the door closed leaving him in the dark. A chief inspector from London, and at his old house. It could just be a coincidence but if it was, why had he taken the box away with him? And the name, it rang a bell but from where and when?

During his ride back to the hills he almost convinced himself that his fears were groundless. The police could have no idea of his existence or of what he'd done and planned to do. In his whole life they had rarely come close to him, well except that once all those years ago but since then he'd become much smarter. They had nothing on him. But that man Fenwick had visited the house. It proved that his instinct to make a complete break from the past and start all over again had been right. He was always right.

Constable Powell had revised her opinion of Fenwick. At first she had thought him an arrogant southerner, issuing orders and expecting a driver to be produced for him at the drop of a hat. She still thought he was arrogant but he'd allowed her to take credit for the idea to get a search warrant for the old Smith house. He had a nice smile and attractive eyes, yet he didn't behave as if everything in a skirt should fancy him, which most men did in her experience. So she was pleased when the Duty Sergeant told her that Fenwick had asked for her specifically. She ignored the catcalls and wolf-whistles that greeted this revelation and went to find him. He'd been given a pokey office but didn't seem to mind, and he'd taped up A1 pages from a flip chart all around the walls.

'Ah Robyn, excellent they found you. This is Constable Knots, Knotty to his friends. Knotty this is Robyn Powell. She helped me at the Smith's house last night and is going to work with us. Here's a list of what we found in the box plus copies of relevant photographs.'

'That was quick work, sir.' Robyn checked her watch. It was only eight o'clock. They had brought the box in less than twelve hours before and at some stage he must have eaten and slept. Fenwick ignored her remark and read aloud.

'One photograph of three people, presumably Mr and Mrs Smith and David. He looks about twelve. I'm having the image aged so that we can compare it with the e-fits in London.

'There's a desk diary but the only entries appear to be work appointments. One bit of luck, his doctor's name and phone number are listed at the back. That's for you, Knotty. Two magazines on coa.r.s.e fishing and a draft letter of complaint to his son's school. I don't know if it was ever sent but it suggests that the headmistress and teachers might remember him.'

'What was he complaining about?'

'His son had been excluded from the school drama society for no good reason. There's a copy for you Knotty.'

'Not a lot for all the trouble we went to.' Constable Powell sounded disappointed.

'Possibly,' Fenwick masked his irritation at Robyn's lack of enthusiasm, 'but the box was covered in prints and my betting is that one of them is David Smith's. I'm sending it to London to be checked.

'Now, today's challenges. Robyn, I want you to go through unsolved s.e.x crimes dating from ten years ago, looking for any that are in a ten mile radius of where David Smith lived and went to school.'

Her face fell.

'I know. There'll be a lot but the search area should help you focus.'

'And what am I looking for?'

'Patterns. My theory is based on the profilers' reports that Killer B, possibly Smith, and Griffiths might have engaged in juvenile minor crimes peeping Tom, indecent exposure, perhaps a.s.sault. According to the profiles it's unusual for a serial s.e.x offender to start straight in with rape and murder. And before you ask why I need to know, it's for two reasons. First, I'm looking for anything that suggests two perpetrators and secondly, Smith has disappeared, so we are looking for any clue as to where he might be.'

'Do you think there's a connection to our murder here, the taxi driver?' Robyn asked and Knotty tried to hide a smile, unsuccessfully.

'Don't know, but it's a coincidence that I am going to talk to London about. We'll meet back here at six. If you find anything interesting call me.'

There was an air of scepticism in the room that Fenwick could sense like a damp fog around him.

'Look, you may think this is daft and I'm sure you think it odd that a chief inspector is up here with you on this sort of background work but we have to start somewhere and I'm more valuable here than in London. Superintendent MacIntyre still has more than thirty officers on the case, not including the local constabulary in Wales. But, and this is important,' he paused and looked them both in the eye, 'they haven't got a single live lead. We have to cover every angle to find this man before he attacks again.'

'Why are you so sure he'll do that?' The question from Robyn was respectful rather than doubting and Fenwick relaxed. Officers who felt they were doomed to a wild goose chase were never as committed as those at the centre, except for Nightingale of course. She was dedicated even when she went to fetch coffee. Thinking of her brought a hard knot of stress to his throat, and there was increased urgency in his tone when he told them his fears about escalating violence with Nightingale as a target.

'You worked with her. I read about the case. The press made her sound like a hero.'

'She's exceptional but she's on leave of absence and we have no idea where so we can't put her into protection. We're doing this for her, and for all the other young women who have had the misfortune to meet Killer B.'

He had no desire to share with them his difficult conversation with MacIntyre first thing that morning, nor to admit how far out on a limb he'd had to climb to justify another day away. It was true that MacIntyre had a large team but the Superintendent had asked for him to be seconded to help with the central direction and management of the investigation. That morning when Fenwick had called him, he'd made it very clear that he did not approve of him gallivanting about the country on a whim.

Fenwick put the thought from his mind and he went to find the SIO in charge of the taxi driver murder and a.s.sault on Virginia Matthews. The senior officer in charge was Chief Inspector Cave, a stocky man with suspicions of Fenwick and his motives that he did not bother to disguise. Fenwick resorted to charm and persuasion. Eventually Cave accepted that there might be some relevance in Fenwick asking him questions about his case, though when he summed up their conversation it was clear that he thought his time had been wasted.

'So, this Griffiths is in prison for rape and you think he had a partner who's carrying on the good work on his own.'

'That's right.'

'Because of the missing finger in each case.'

'That and the subsequent killings and rapes. And we've learnt that one of the prison guards who singled out Griffiths for bullying was murdered horribly.'

'Coincidence.'

Fenwick kept his silence and his temper, just. Cave paused to see if he had provoked a response then continued, a half smile on his face that Fenwick was finding increasingly irritating.

'But Virginia Matthews didn't lose a finger.'

'Maybe he was interrupted before he managed to take it.'

Cave shook his head in disagreement, then gave another condescending smile.

'Well let's a.s.sume for one minute that you're right and Griffiths had a partner, and that it's this man, Smith, who killed Geoffrey Minny and raped the Matthews girl. Why go berserk and kill a man? And why is he stupid enough to come back to Telford?'

'Not stupid, arrogant. He's trying to copy Griffiths and attack outdoors but by nature he's used to charming the girls into taking him home. This crime appears to combine both methods.'

'Except that her home was several miles in the other direction.'