Remains of the Night (Murder Force Book 3), page 10
A sudden realisation came to Tony. He picked up his phone and called Dani.
“Tony,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I know why he was in the woods,” he said. “I know why I heard rustling in the undergrowth.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“His dog,” he said. “He was in the woods because that’s where he walks his dog.”
Chapter 11
“Are you sure, Tony?” Dani said.
Now that it was being questioned, his theory seemed less solid. “Well, I can’t be a hundred percent sure but I think it’s worth looking into. If he visits those woods regularly, people will know him. Or at least recognise him.”
“And why do you think he walks his dog there?”
“I heard it rustling about in the undergrowth when he was talking to me. It was somewhere behind him, moving about.”
There was a long pause. He knew she was having trouble accepting what he was telling her at face value. She probably thought he was mistaken. That his mind had been in such a heightened state of anxiety that it was hearing things that weren’t really there.
He couldn’t blame her for that; when she’d found him, he’d been lying on the ground, curled into a ball. People’s recollections of events were hazy at the best of times, but when you’d been so traumatised that you’d ended up on the ground in a ball, it was easy to dismiss what you thought you’d seen and heard.
But he knew he was right about this. He was certain of it.
“All I’m saying,” he told her, “is that we need to canvass the houses around those woods. Speak to the people who walk their dogs there, take their kids there, do whatever there. Someone must have seen this guy. Someone must remember him, or his dog.”
He heard her sigh on the other end of the line. “I’ll see what I can do. But it’ll mean funnelling a lot of resources into that area. Battle might not agree to it.”
“Well, whether he does or not, I think it’s worth looking into. Did the techs find anything in the woods this morning?”
“Some boot prints. Nothing else. We don’t even know if the boot prints are his.”
Tony closed his eyes in frustration. They were going around in circles and time was running out.
“We’ll catch up tomorrow,” Dani said. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I know, but there’s only so much daytime television I can take,” he said to lighten the mood between them.
She laughed. “I know what you mean. I was stuck at home for six weeks, remember? I was ready to throw the telly through the window after a couple of days.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
“Bye, Tony.” She hung up.
Tony threw the phone onto the sofa and sat down next to it. A few boot prints weren’t going to be enough to catch the man who’d threatened to kill again the day after tomorrow. He took his laptop out of its bag and balanced it on his knees while it fired up.
He brought up the maps app and found the woods near Chase Crescent. Zooming out, he discovered another cluster of houses miles away from the Greenwoods Development, and on the opposite side of the woods.
Someone walking a dog might enter the woods here and walk all the way to the Greenwoods side. There were plenty of paths in the woods, after all. Could “C” be from the houses on the northwest side of the woods? Did he walk his dog across to the Greenwoods side every day, and was that how he discovered the Jensons’ house? Perhaps he’d seen the family in their back garden during one of his walks and that was how he had come to target them.
No, he reminded himself. You can’t see the Jensons’ back garden from the woods.
Still, it wouldn’t be too hard to cross the field. Might look a bit suspicious if he did it too often. Unlike the woods, the field was exposed.
Maybe he only left the safety of the woods at night-time. He could probably visit the area behind the Jensons’ house as often as he wanted at night.
But that didn’t seem to fit who “C” was. At least in Tony’s mind. He was all about looking. If he only went over the field at night, the Jensons would be in bed. He wouldn’t be able to see them. Not to mention the fence that surrounded the back garden. Unless he scaled the fence, as he’d done on the night he’d killed the family, he wouldn’t see much. And constantly climbing the fence was risky.
“How did you watch them?” Tony said aloud. “You wouldn’t risk crossing that field over and over. And I think you watched them for quite some time before you made your move. You were planning this since you took the key last year. How did you satisfy that urge to see them?”
He mulled it over in his head. “Did you watch them from the street? No, you’d be seen by the neighbours.”
An idea came to him. There was a way “C” could watch the Jensons from afar without being seen himself, but to prove it, Tony would have to go back to the woods.
Even the thought of that made his hands tremble.
Surely “C” was long gone by now. Every inch of the woods had been searched by police officers, and some of them were bound to still be there. The area was safe now.
Wasn’t it?
He took a deep breath to calm himself. It didn’t work.
“I can’t go to the woods,” he told himself. “I told Dani I would stay at home. I can tell her my idea tomorrow and we can check it out together. Maybe take Ryan with us.”
Going now, by himself, was out of the question.
But time was slipping away. Tomorrow would be the day before the next murder. He couldn’t wait that long.
Picking up the phone, he dialled Tom Ryan’s number.
“Tony,” Ryan said as he answered the call. “Everything all right, mate?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Just driving around the area looking for CCTV cameras. Matt Flowers was with me, but he’s gone back to HQ to do some paperwork and review some footage. What can I do for you?”
“I need to go back to the woods to check something but I don’t want to go alone.”
“I thought you were recuperating.”
“I’m supposed to be.”
“Is that why you’re ringing me instead of DI Summers? Because my guess is that she’d tell you to stay at home.”
“Probably,” Tony admitted.
“There’s no probably about it. Tell me what’s so urgent in those woods and I’ll check it for you.”
“No, I want to have a look myself.”
“You’ll have to do it tomorrow, then. Or whenever you’re cleared to come back to work.”
“Ryan, I need to do this now!”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then, “All right, keep your hair on. I’ll be at yours in half an hour.”
“Right, I’ll see you then. Thank you.”
“See you soon, mate.” Ryan ended the call.
Tony went to the bathroom and freshened himself up before going down to the street to wait for Ryan. Standing on the pavement with his shades on, leaning against the wrought iron fence that marked the perimeter of his building’s front yard—basically an oblong of concrete with some potted plants—he watched the people walking by.
He realised with a sudden shock that if “C” was among the passers-by, he’d never know. The killer could be stalking along the pavement and Tony would be none the wiser. Despite the fact that he’d been close enough to “C” to feel his breath on his neck, he wouldn’t recognise the man if he came face to face with him.
Not like he’d recognised Solomon Gantz as the Lake Erie Ripper at first glance.
He’d worked on that case for so long, and had somehow gone so deep into the Ripper’s mind that there was no way he wouldn’t recognise Gantz when he finally saw him.
This new killer was different. Tony knew he’d hardly scratched the surface where “C” was concerned. He hadn’t had enough time to get inside the man’s mind. The killer could be walking past the building right now and Tony would never know.
A horn honked, making him jump. He looked at the car that had pulled up to the kerb but ignored it when he saw it was a black SUV and not Ryan’s Aston Martin.
“You coming or what?”
He looked over at the SUV again and saw Ryan hanging out of the window.
He went over and climbed into the passenger seat. “What happened to the Aston Martin?”
“I left her in the garage today. This is more utilitarian.”
“How many cars have you got?”
“A few.” Ryan pulled away from the kerb and they started to move across the city with the rest of the traffic. “So, what are we looking for in the woods?”
“His hiding place.”
“You think he’s got one? I’ve searched most of that woodland and I didn’t find anything.”
“I think it’s up in the trees.”
His brows knit together. “What? Like a treehouse?”
“It isn’t necessarily a structure, but I think he’s spent a lot of time in one of those trees.”
“How’d you come to that conclusion?”
“This man has spent a lot of time watching the Jenson family. He’s all about sight. Seeing things. He didn’t choose the Jensons by accident. He’d have spent time watching them, on numerous occasions. His desire would have built slowly, over time, until he couldn’t stand it any longer and went to visit them in their house.”
“All right, doc. That makes sense. But why do you think he was climbing trees?”
“You can’t see the Jensons’ house or garden from the woods. Even if you go over the field, the fence obscures the garden and the ground level. But if he was up one of those trees, the elevation would allow him to see into the garden. Maybe even through the French doors.”
Ryan shrugged. “Only one way to find out, I suppose. But what are you hoping to achieve? I don’t think they can lift fingerprints from a tree.”
“If he has been spending time in the trees, he might have drawn attention to himself. Someone might have seen him. There could even be evidence. Not fingerprints, but hair, maybe, or even skin flakes in the bark if he had a rough time climbing up there.”
“All right. That’s a good enough reason for me. We need every lead we can get. If we don’t catch this bastard soon…” He let the words trail away.
They arrived at the car park by the woods. There were no official vehicles here now, and the police tape had been removed.
The SUV came to a halt and Ryan got out, going to the rear of the vehicle. Tony followed, unsure what the detective constable was getting from the boot.
Ryan opened the boot and unlocked a steel box that seemed to be bolted to the floor of the car. He took out a handgun and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers.
“What the hell is that?” Tony asked, shocked. “You’ve got a gun?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, closing the boot.
“How have you got a gun? Does Battle know about this?”
“No, he doesn’t. And he doesn’t need to know. Relax, doc. I’m licensed to carry it, if that’s what you’re worried about. Now, are we going to have a look at those trees?” He set off towards the track.
Tony caught up with him. “What do you mean you’re licensed? You can’t be. This is Yorkshire, not Texas. You might have been armed to the teeth when you were in the army, but you can’t carry a gun in the UK.”
“I can.”
Tony’s mind raced. As a detective constable in Murder Force, there was no way Ryan was permitted to carry a gun. Only certain police units were armed, and Murder Force wasn’t one of them. They could call on an armed response unit, but were not, themselves, armed.
So why was Ryan allowed to carry a gun?
They reached the fence and slipped through the gap onto the trail. Although there was no one else around, Tony lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you work for MI5?”
MI5—the secret security service concerned with domestic intelligence—worked closely with the police. Tony wondered if they’d slipped one of their agents into Murder Force, for some reason.
“If I told you that,” Ryan said with a grin, “I’d have to kill you.”
Leaving the trail, they walked to the trees at the edge of the woods closest to the Greenwoods Development.
“Right,” Ryan said, looking up at the foliage above their heads. “Which tree shall we try first?”
“It’s got to be one that’s easy to climb,” Tony suggested. “He wouldn’t have brought a ladder with him, or anything like that. He’d try to remain hidden.”
“And if he’s spending large amounts of time up there, he’d pick one with thick branches,” Ryan said, scanning the possibilities at the edge of the wood. “Like that oak.”
Tony looked over at the tree his colleague indicated. A large, stout oak with plenty of thick, twisting branches where a man could remain hidden and comfortable. The only problem with this tree was that the lowest branches were at least eight feet off the ground. Without a climbing aid, such as a ladder, there was no way their man could have got up there.
Ryan was hunting around in the long grass and nettles by the fence that separated the woods from the open field. He seemed to find what he was looking for and reached down into the undergrowth, heaving out a wooden pallet.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is here,” he said, pulling the pallet over to the tree. Leaning it against the trunk, he stepped up onto it and, with a quick push of his leg, reached up and grabbed the lowest branch.
He swung himself up gracefully and straddled the branch. “See how much easier it is with the pallet? He brought that here for this very purpose and kept it hidden in the nettles over there. You coming?”
“You have a look around up there,” Tony said. “I’ll be up in a minute.” He wasn’t as athletic as Ryan and would rather scramble up the tree while the detective constable wasn’t watching him.
Ryan stood up on the branch and swung himself up to the one above.
Before using the pallet to give him a boost up into the oak, Tony took a closer look at the wooden slats, hoping there might be some sort of stamp or mark that identified where the pallet had come from. He knew there were probably a million of these things in the country, used to deliver all manner of goods, and they were hastily knocked together from scrap wood, so hoping to find some sort of identifying mark was being optimistic.
He didn’t find a mark but he did find something even more interesting. One of the wooden slats was stained dark brown at the corner. Upon closer inspection, Tony found a nail protruding from the wood. Had “C” cut himself on the nail while moving the pallet during one of his visits? Was this stain the blood of the killer soaked into the wood?
“This is the right tree, doc,” Ryan called down from above. “He’s broken off some of the branches to get a better view of the houses on Chase Crescent. I can see the back garden of number 42 from here. “If he left any trace on the tree, this is where they’ll find it. I need to call the techs.”
As Ryan clambered down out of the oak, Tony said, “There’s some blood on the pallet. Could be his.”
Avoiding stepping on the pallet, Ryan swung off the lowest branch and landed on his feet. “Excellent! Looks like we’ve got the bastard.”
“If he’s in the system,” Tony said.
“Still, it’s something. Let’s go back to the car and I’ll call it in.” He picked up the pallet, avoiding the stain on the corner, and carried it back to the SUV, where he leaned it against the rear bumper while he stowed his gun in the lockbox.
Tony stood by the SUV’s bonnet while Ryan called SOCO. He felt a dull glimmer of hope that they might be able to catch “C” before his deadline arrived. If the techs managed to get useable DNA from the pallet and got a hit in the system, it was all over for the man who thought he was a demon.
Twenty minutes later, a green Vauxhall Corsa pulled into the car park and a dark-haired woman got out. “Someone call CSI?”
“That would be me,” Ryan said. “And you are?”
“Helen Stafford.” She flashed her ID at Ryan. “I’m in charge of the forensic team while Rob Cross is in the lab. They’re on their way in the van. What have we got?”
“Blood on that pallet,” Ryan said. “And an oak tree that needs looking at. Our man climbed up it on numerous occasions.”
“All right,” she said. “We’ll see what we can do. We’re a bit snowed under by all the new samples we need to analyse, but I managed to pull a team together.”
“New samples?” Tony asked. Was she talking about the stuff they’d taken from the Jensons’ house?
She looked from him to Ryan. “You two haven’t heard, have you?”
Ryan shrugged. “Heard what?”
“He’s contacted the media. He’s sent letters to all the papers.”
Chapter 12
Tony sat at the back of the meeting room in headquarters, acutely aware that he wasn’t supposed to be here at all. The large room had been filled with plastic chairs, all facing the front where a laptop and screen had been set up. Battle stood next to the screen while a uniformed officer seemed to have been given laptop duties.
Dani sat on the front row, next to Matt Flowers and Tom Ryan. Ryan had driven Tony home from the woods when the SOCOs had arrived and begun their work under the direction of Helen Stafford. Tony had jumped into his Mini and driven over here as fast as he could. His enforced rest day could wait; he needed to know what “C” had written in those letters.
He was sure that Dani—thinking he was still at home recovering—intended to fill him in tomorrow, but that didn’t suit him at all. There was no time to lose. The killer’s deadline was fast approaching.
“All right, I think everybody’s here,” Battle said, surveying the room. “We’re going to bring you all up to speed on this investigation. Firstly, we’re fairly sure that the perpetrator watched the Jenson family for some time, and may have broken into the house last summer. Statements from neighbours haven’t revealed sightings of anyone suspicious in the area, but we’ll continue to question the residents of the estate, and also the people who use the woods behind the houses. It’s a popular place for dog walkers and runners.”
