The Lost Victim, page 2
Tristan laughed. They went up the steps and into the agency office. Kate switched on the space heater under the windows looking out to sea and stood in front of it, warming her hands. Tristan went into the tiny kitchen which faced the road, opened the blinds, and put on the kettle.
Their office had been the large studio flat where Kate’s friend Myra lived when she ran the caravan site. They’d kept the 1970s yellow-and-green-squared carpet and Myra’s old drop-leaf dining table, which now sat in the middle of the room as a communal desk. One side of the room had a filing cabinet and an IKEA bookshelf filled with case files and reference books. The other half of the office was designated for the campsite, with staff cleaning rotas on the wall, another filing cabinet, and six neat piles of clean bed-sheets, towels, and pillowcases, ready for when the campsite reopened in the spring.
Despite the clutter and the feeling sometimes that it wasn’t a proper office, Kate liked it. The space heater quickly filled the room with warmth, and when Tristan lit the gas burner and put the kettle on, it was almost cosy.
A DHL envelope sat on the desk with some paperwork and a copy of a true crime tabloid called Real Crime magazine. Tristan picked up the magazine and saw it had a coloured tab marking a page.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘It’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I had an email yesterday from a creative agency who want to hire us to investigate a cold case. They’re very keen. They couriered that over this morning.’
‘Ah. I see why,’ he said, opening it to the marked page, where the article headline read:
THE LOST VICTIM - DID THE NINE ELMS CANNIBAL KILL JANEY MACKLIN?
‘Yes. A case a little close to home,’ said Kate. Jake’s father was Peter Conway, an ex–police detective who was serving multiple life sentences for the murder and mutilation of five young women in and around the Nine Elms area of South London. Kate, then a police detective, had worked out that the reason the ‘Nine Elms Cannibal’, as he became known in the press, had evaded the police for so long was because he was the police. To muddy the waters further, Kate had been having an affair with Peter Conway when she cracked the case.
And after surviving his attack, Kate had discovered she was four months pregnant with Jake. The ungodly mess of it all had caused Kate to have a breakdown and turn to alcohol. She’d lost custody of Jake when he was six, Kate’s mother had stepped in to look after him, and this was the point when Kate had sought help, entered rehab, and rebuilt her life, first as a university lecturer and later when she started the private detective agency with Tristan. This whole saga had been tabloid fodder for many years, and it had been written about many times in the press.
‘Janey Macklin went missing in 1988, just before Christmas,’ said Tristan, reading through the article. ‘She was last seen in King’s Cross on December 23, getting into the van belonging to a guy called Robert Driscoll. Driscoll was tried and convicted for her murder in 1989; however, Janey Macklin’s body has never been found. . . Driscoll was convicted of her murder based on a history of stalky behaviour towards young women, and Janey’s scarf, with her blood, was found in his flat. He went down for eight years, until a retrial in 1997 acquitted him due to lack of evidence. . . That’s quite rare, isn’t it? A murder trial going ahead without a body?’ asked Tristan, looking up from the magazine article.
‘It is. But the UK is one of the countries with the most successful convictions in murder cases without a body.’
‘How is Peter Conway involved?’
Kate leaned over and turned the page. ‘Thomas Black is a child-killer serving life in the same prison as Peter Conway. For many years, he corresponded with a woman called Judith Leary. She died last year, and the letters between her and Thomas Black were auctioned off as part of her estate sale. Serial killer letters are big business for a certain kind of collector.’
‘I bet they are.’
‘Thomas Black told Judith Leary in one of these letters that Peter Conway had been seen hanging out in the pub near where Janey Macklin vanished, and he was seen grooming young girls in the weeks leading up to her going missing,’ said Kate.
‘And the client who sent all this is a creative agency?’
‘Yes. I get the impression they want to produce some kind of true crime project, a book or a podcast, based on what we could discover.’
Kate took the cover letter out of the DHL envelope, and handed it to Tristan. The kettle on the stove began to whistle and she went to make the tea.
‘Do you think they want access to Peter Conway?’ asked Tristan.
‘I presume, yes,’ said Kate, returning with two mugs of tea. ‘Jake tells me that Peter is in a bad way, health-wise.’
‘Does Jake visit Peter?’
‘No. Peter calls him once a month.’
‘What if you have to dredge up the past? After . . . After everything you’ve been through with Peter Conway?’
‘Tristan. I’ve been clean for twelve years. I go to regular AA meetings. I have a good handle on the past. It’s the investigation that interests me. We have some contract work lined up for January and February, but now, with that happening,’ said Kate, pointing in the direction of the caravan site, ‘we could really do with the money.’
2
The following morning, Kate and Tristan caught the early train from Exeter St David’s to London. It was the quiet week between Christmas and New Year, so the carriage was only half-full, and they managed to bag seats at a table. They’d split up after their conversation the previous morning, and done some research into the case.
‘This is the King’s Cross area where Janey Macklin went missing,’ said Kate, taking out a printed map and putting it on the table between them. ‘It’s unrecognisable now, from how it was in 1988. There were grimy lock-ups and derelict buildings. It’s now been supergentrified with new office and apartment blocks, and people drinking cappuccino on fancy piazzas.’
‘On the night Janey went missing, she’d been at a pub, The Jug, with her mum and sister,’ said Tristan, tracing his finger along the map. ‘It’s on St Pancras Road, which runs behind King’s Cross St Pancras station. She left the pub just before 6pm to get some cigarettes for her mum at a newsagent farther along the road, and never came back.’
‘I found a photo of Robert Driscoll,’ said Kate, holding up a printout of a Facebook profile. ‘After he was acquitted, he went back to live in the same flat where he grew up, a mile away from King’s Cross on the Golden Lane Estate.’
Tristan peered at the photo of a large man in a black T-shirt sitting on a plastic garden chair, holding a cigarette and a can of lager. His pale face was toad-like, and his shoulder-length hair was dotted with grey. He wore a T-shirt with the logo of the band Nirvana.
‘He looks a bit wild. What does he do now?’
‘I don’t know. It says in the Real Crime article that he worked in the newsagent on St Pancras Road where Janey went to buy the cigarettes. His Facebook profile is set to private. There isn’t much stuff online from when she went missing, 1988 being pre-internet, but I did find some stuff about his appeal, which was in 1997.’
Kate looked through her pile of papers and pulled out an article she’d printed from the Independent: IS ROBERT DRISCOLL IN PRISON FOR A CRIME HE DIDN’T COMMIT? Underneath the headline was a picture of an elderly woman with messy black, curly hair, who shared Robert’s toad-like features. She stood on a small balcony wearing a melancholy look on her face and a flowery housecoat, next to a row of pink geraniums in bloom. Behind her was the London skyline.
‘This is Barbara Driscoll, Robert’s mother. She campaigned heavily for his release, hired a new barrister, and got legal aid,’ said Kate. She pulled out another article, this time from the Daily Mail: MAN ACCUSED OF KILLING SCHOOLGIRL JANEY MACKLIN RELEASED AFTER SENSATIONAL RETRIAL.
‘The original murder trial hinged on the fact that Janey Macklin had dropped her red scarf in the newsagent a few weeks before she went missing. Robert Driscoll had picked it up and kept it, and it was found by the police in his bedroom two weeks later, covered in blood. They matched the blood with Janey’s. It was one of the first uses of DNA testing in early 1989. It also says he had a previous criminal record for violence and harassment against a young woman, but the article doesn’t give details.’
‘That’s what’s scary about jury trials,’ said Tristan. ‘He went down for murder without there being a body.’
‘It sounds like he had awful legal representation in the first trial, and the prosecution had the blood-covered scarf and his past record. It says that when they put him on the stand in the first trial, he was angry and belligerent. He played into the prosecution’s hands. In the retrial he was the wronged victim.’
‘And Janey Macklin has never been found,’ said Tristan, looking back at the map of the King’s Cross area. ‘What do we know about Peter Conway in 1988?’
‘He was still training to be a police officer at Hendon Police College in North London. It’s where I trained, a few years later.’
‘How long was your training?’
‘Four months.’
‘So Peter Conway was in London at the same time as Janey Macklin went missing. Was he active as a serial killer in 1988?’
‘It’s possible. He used a white van to abduct his victims, the ones he was tried for as the Nine Elms Cannibal. Dumping their bodies in parks and wastelands. The King’s Cross area was very seedy and dangerous back in 1988, and parts of it were a huge wasteland with abandoned buildings and warehouses.’
‘What about Thomas Black? He named Peter Conway in these letters, but where was he in 1988?’ asked Tristan.
‘He was living in London. He went down for abducting young boys and girls, some of them Janey’s age. He drugged them, and then raped and murdered them.’
‘He could have killed Janey?’
‘Yes. And Thomas Black is banged up with Peter. Has been for the past three years.’
Tristan tapped his finger on the map. ‘There’s been so much reconstruction in the King’s Cross area. If Janey’s body had been dumped close by, they would have found her when they were digging.’
‘Or she’s still there, buried under tons of new concrete,’ said Kate with a shudder.
3
‘How was your journey? You’ve come so far?’ asked Fidelis Stafford. The Stafford-Clarke Creative Agency had their offices in a small terraced house just off Kensington High Street.
‘The fast train takes about two hours,’ said Kate. She sat with Tristan on a small IKEA sofa in the shadow of Fidelis’s huge desk, which filled the bay window of her cramped office and looked out over an old George V postbox on a leafy avenue.
‘Good Lord. I didn’t know that. Did you know that, Maddie?’ Fidelis turned to a tall, thin, nervous middle-aged woman with glasses and long honey-blonde hair, who wore a blue knitted pullover with stirrup leggings. She’d joined the meeting shortly after they arrived, and the only place left to sit was a small leather pouffe. Fidelis’s assistant, a young woman who hadn’t yet been introduced, sat at the back behind a tiny desk, partly obscured by a pile of boxes.
‘Yes. Claudia gets that train often. She has a lovely weekend cottage in Bude,’ replied Maddie. Whoever Claudia was, they weren’t going to offer up any more information, thought Kate. Fidelis was old-school upper class. Her shiny black hair was cut in a severe bob, and she wore glasses with a thick black frame and a beautiful cap-sleeved dress with big pockets.
‘Well. Thank you for coming in during the Christmas holidays! I’m still feeling the effects of overindulgence. It’s lovely to meet you both,’ said Fidelis.
‘Yes. We appreciate your time,’ agreed Maddie. Her nose crinkled with the smile, giving the impression she was indulging them.
‘Is your son spending Christmas at home?’ asked Fidelis.
‘My son?’
‘Jake? Yes?’ asked Fidelis, peering over the top of her glasses. ‘He’s the son of . . . er . . .’
‘Peter Conway,’ finished Kate. There was a chilly little silence.
‘Is it correct that Jake is studying in America, at UCLA in Los Angeles?’ said Maddie, tottering a little on the tiny pouffe. She hitched one leg under the other.
‘I don’t understand why you’re asking me about Jake.’
‘Oh, we just did some background research on you. Both,’ said Fidelis, waving it away as if it were a trifling matter.
‘Background research?’ repeated Kate. Fidelis smiled. It was the first time Kate had seen a smile make someone look less likeable.
‘Yes. We’ve done background research on you both and this case. Nothing obtrusive. So much about you is already out there,’ Fidelis added, fixing Kate with a keen stare.
‘Jake has just finished studying film and media at UCLA, and he’s now an intern at the Jeffery Blakemore Agency,’ said Kate.
‘Jolly good for him. And you, Tristan?’ said Fidelis, turning her keen stare to him. ‘You started out as a research assistant at Ashmore University?’
‘Ashdean,’ said Tristan, sitting up and gripping his legs. Fidelis nodded and smiled. ‘Yes. That was ten years ago.’
‘And how did you find your way into that?’
Tristan hesitated. ‘Er. It’s quite a funny story. I was supposed to be interviewing for a cleaning job at the university that day, and at the same time Kate was interviewing for a researcher. But she thought they were all a bit . . .’ Tristan hesitated. Kate had thought that all the applicants were stuck-up posh kids with no imagination.
‘I wanted someone smart, savvy, and keen to learn, which I found in Tristan,’ said Kate, jumping in. She noted that Tristan was playing down his West Country accent. He glanced over at her and smiled gratefully. ‘And I hope your background search shows we now run one of the most successful private detective agencies in the south of England.’
‘Absolutely! You have quite an impressive body of work,’ said Fidelis. ‘Five murder investigations, three of them historic cold cases. And you also do work for the public sector?’
‘Yes. As well as our private work with individuals, we have several local government contracts and contracts with multinational firms.’
‘What do local governments ask you to do?’ said Fidelis.
‘It’s often a deep background check on individuals. All employers conduct a CRB check, criminal background check, and/or a DBS check, Disclosure and Barring Service . . .’
‘Yes, we’re aware of the terms as an employer ourselves.’
‘Of course. Sometimes, if an employer hires for sensitive roles, they’ll want to know more,’ said Kate.
‘We’ve also taken local government contracts which involve surveillance on an employee suspected of stealing or fraud,’ said Tristan.
‘Gosh. It all sounds so stimulating. Well done, both of you,’ said Fidelis. She smiled, but her eyes remained reserved, watching. Kate didn’t return the smile; she sat back on the sofa. They hadn’t come all the way to London to sell themselves and pitch for a job. Stafford-Clarke wanted them.
‘Let’s talk about this project, potential investigation,’ said Kate. ‘We’re intrigued, but the details still seem a little vague.’
Maddie looked to Fidelis. ‘Well, we’ve purposely kept things vague.’
‘What exactly does Stafford-Clarke do? You are a creative agency. Is that another word for a literary agency?’
‘Yes. That’s been our bread-and-butter work since I founded the agency many moons ago,’ said Fidelis. ‘But the publishing industry is constantly evolving, and so is the area of online content – audiobooks and podcasts, true crime podcasts in particular . . . Maddie, do you want to continue?’
‘Absolutely,’ replied Maddie, still trying to accommodate her gangly legs on the tiny pouffe. ‘We would be interested if you could investigate the disappearance of Janey Macklin in 1988 to see if there is a possible link to Peter Conway. Or if something else happened to her. We’re not asking you to be involved in this potential creative project. You would be taking the roles of investigators. And when your investigation has concluded, we would then have the information to move forward and potentially create something like a book or a true crime podcast . . . We may ask you to make sound recordings, which may or may not end up in the podcast.’
‘And it would all be subject to you signing nondisclosure agreements,’ added Fidelis. ‘We know you are both entirely qualified to . . .’ She seemed to grope for the right words.
‘Investigate and present your findings,’ added Maddie.
‘Yes. But a “name” writer or performer or presenter would be better placed to front an eventual book or true crime podcast.’ Fidelis said the word podcast with disdain, as if she would prefer to be working with Pulitzer Prize winners.
‘That’s what we thought,’ said Kate, looking to Tristan, who nodded.
‘What’s our timescale?’ he asked.
‘Six months. Find out as much as you can. In addition to your fee, there is a “Brucie Bonus,”’ said Fidelis, rolling her r on Brucie. ‘If you solve the case.’
‘If for any reason you don’t solve the case, we could still proceed with an “unsolved true crime case”, which ironically often makes things more creepy,’ said Maddie. ‘You are based in the West Country, and we appreciate that you can do a certain amount of work remotely. However, we have a small flat available to accommodate you, if you need to stay in London.’
‘It’s a snug little box, but it should be perfectly adequate. It belongs to the company. And it’s in King’s Cross,’ said Fidelis.
Kate looked across at Tristan. That was very interesting.
‘Your letter mentioned that you would like access to Peter Conway?’ Kate asked.
A look passed between Fidelis and Maddie.
