Jacob's Ladder (Stone & Randall 1) Page 2

  ‘You can have any number of available detectives, Inspector.’

  ‘Too many people will only muddy the waters, Chief. I’ll stick with my team.’

  ‘It’s your decision, but if you do need more people just shout.’

  ‘I will, thanks, Ma’am. The first three murders have been closed for a year, so we’ll need to get everything out of the evidence lock-up and review each case today. By tomorrow I should have a clear plan of attack, and we’ll be working through the weekend.’

  ‘Good. I have a "Disaster Fund" I can dip into. As long as you’re moving forward I’ll authorise any and all expenditure, but you should be clear that the Commissioner wants this buried as fast as possible. A killer has butchered four families over two years, and the only thing DCI Miller could do was to arrest a member of his own team. You can imagine that people in high places are not particularly happy. You have until this time next week to solve the case, and then you’ll become a sacrificial offering just like Miller. Any questions, DI Stone?’

  It all seemed clear to Molly. Solve the case by next Thursday or burn at the stake. ‘No Ma’am, you’ve given me the parameters within which I’m required to work.’

  ‘Good. I want you to come and brief me at five-thirty every day, so that I can then keep the Commissioner abreast of developments.’

  ‘You’ll be here over the weekend then, Ma’am?’

  ‘Unfortunately no, I have a prior engagement, but you can email me.’ The Chief wrote her email address on a post-it note and passed it to Molly.

  Molly stood and left. Mrs Fulbright, the Chief’s secretary, smiled weakly at her as she passed through the outer office. She went to the toilet, sat in a cubicle and locked the door. Her heart was racing, her hands were shaking, and her head was pounding. God, she was being set up just like Cole Randall. A whole sackful of detectives hadn’t been able to solve the murders in a year, and yet she was expected to solve them in… She used her fingers – maths was never her strongest subject at school. Counting today, that’s only seven days if next Thursday wasn’t included. Did Chief Smart mean the beginning or the end of Thursday? Jesus fucking wept – seven days! She knelt on the floor, gripped the toilet bowl, and puked.

  Chapter Three

  Molly was sitting on the edge of a table in the incident room. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nine forty-five and counting, she thought. She wore functional clothes, a pair of tight black slacks and a loose-fitting canary yellow blouse adequately hiding her breasts. Coming into the station dressed as a woman would have raised eyebrows. It had taken her long enough to become one of the lads, she didn’t want to destroy all her hard work by looking like a member of the opposite sex. She had a smattering of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose that petered out beneath her blue eyes. Her lips were thin, the corners pointing up as if caught in a permanent smile. She parted her shoulder-length blonde hair just right of centre, but it was scooped back into a ponytail. Her face was symmetrical, and although she didn’t wear make-up, her beauty was there for all to see. If she hadn’t chosen to rummage around in the dark cesspit of humanity she could have been a television presenter, or the face of LOréal.

  ‘This is a fucking disaster,’ she began. ‘A year ago we knew what we were doing, we were making headway – Now…’ She shrugged. ‘Shit. Right, there’s no point harping on about what might have been. Let’s start from scratch. Some of you might think you have other priorities. Let me tell you that your only fucking priority is this case. Everything else is way down the list, and that includes families, eating, sleeping, and the elimination of bodily waste.’

  There were grunts of disgust from the five members of her team.

  When she was off-duty she never swore, but at work the lads expected it. Her mum would be turning in her grave if she could hear what came out of her only daughter’s mouth.

  ‘And for those who are wondering, DCI Miller is history. The new Chief is Superintendent Avril Smart.’ They all looked at each other and shrugged as if it was a foregone conclusion.

  ‘Right, as you can see, we have no incident boards. Tony and I will deal with the latest one, but we need to resurrect the incident boards of the three previous murders. Frank, you allocate each of the other three to a board. This time we’re going to do it right. We have until next Thursday – the twelfth – to solve the murders.’ She held up her hands as the rumblings began. ‘Yes, I know it took a year to catch the wrong man last time, but in seven days time the fires will be lit and the burnings will begin. Are we suitably motivated?’

  ‘Yes, Gov,’ they mumbled.

  ‘Is DI Randall coming back?’ Frank asked. DS Frank Lowen was all sharp angles. He used Brylcreem on his dark brown hair, and looked for all the world like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Instead of changing career to become a celebrity lookalike, he transferred from Robbery in Kensington eighteen months ago. Married with three teenage children, he had been a copper for fifteen years, but had stalled at DS. When Molly had asked him what his plans for the future were, he said he didn’t have any. She knew she needed to have another conversation with him to find out if she could help him get back on track, but when did she have time to look after her team? She couldn’t even look after herself.

  She had no idea what Randall was going to do, but she kept it simple. ‘No he’s not coming back. Right, at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, after I’ve stonewalled the press, I want each person to brief everyone else on the murder they’ve been allocated. Afterwards, we’ll pull everything together, start looking for answers, and plan our attack for the weekend…’

  There were rumblings of discontent.

  ‘You’re beginning to seriously piss me off now. How would you feel if we took the weekend off to watch football and get plastered, and then another family was butchered?’

  Nobody would look at her.

  ‘I thought not. Some of us here were a part of this fuck up from the start. Now we need to fix it. If anyone else complains they’ll find themselves on Puffin patrol in the Outer Hebrides humming the Mingulay Boat Song, because that’s all there is to fucking well do up there.’

  The mood lightened.

  She liked to use the Puffin patrol to cut through the atmosphere on dark days, and this was certainly a dark day. No one had ever been sent to the Outer Hebrides, but as she kept warning them – there was always a first time for everything. ‘As far as you’re concerned,’ she continued, ‘and until further notice, Saturdays and Sundays are just normal days of the week. Any questions?’

  There were none, they knew what to do. For all their moaning and groaning these were good people.

  ‘Good, then why are you still sitting there staring into the headlights like ugly fucking bunny rabbits?’

  There was a ripple of laughter. Everyone except for Tony headed out of the door to retrieve the files of the previous murders from evidence lock-up.

  ‘What first, Gov?’ Tony asked.

  Molly looked at her watch. It was ten-forty. ‘We’ll go up to forensics first and see if Perkins has anything for us. Then you can drive me to Springfield Asylum for twelve.’

  Tony’s brow creased. ‘We’re going to see Randall?’

  ‘Me not you, you can wait in the car. It will be difficult enough between us without you there as well.’ She continued with her ‘to do’ list. At two, Doc Firestone is doing the post mortems on the bodies from last night, then we’ll come back here and create our own incident board. And at five-thirty I need to brief the Chief on what we’ve been doing all day.’

  ***

  Forensics was in a specially built annex of the station. To considerable disgust, the canteen and the games’ room had been re-located to the second floor to make way for the state-of-the-art building. It had cost three-point five million pounds and was equipped with all the latest scientific equipment to find evidence and put criminals behind bars.

  Sometimes, Molly thought the whole place was a waste of money, especially when she was tol
d that forensics officers had found no evidence at a crime scene. At 16 Crisp Road there wasn’t a shortage of evidence. The problem lay in its veracity. If the real killer had set DI Randall up by manipulating the evidence, could anything they now found be trusted?

  Perkins waited for them in his office cum laboratory. He was like a six-foot-three stick insect with wrinkled skin hanging from his skeleton. There was no muscle, and his clothes used his shoulders and hips as hangers.

  ‘DI Stone, I’ve been expecting you.’

  ‘I hope you have some good news for me, Perkins?’

  ‘Good news. Mmmm! My team has been here since eight this morning. We’ve reviewed the evidence from the previous three murders, and compared what we had with what was collected last night. You’ll be pleased to hear that the killer in each case was the same, which suggests that Cole Randall was falsely convicted.’

  ‘It’s good to have it confirmed, but it didn’t take a genius to work that out. I’d much prefer you to tell me who did do the killings, rather than who didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you would, Inspector Stone, but unfortunately we found nothing that might help you identify a suspect. There were no visible or latent fingerprints. The blood, bloodstains and other bodily fluids belonged to the victims. There was nothing of any interest under any of the fingernails. There was no impression evidence from footwear. Blood patterns told us only that the victims had been butchered and then moved around the house to their allotted locations. We compared everything that was found at the four crime scenes and discovered some fibre similarities, but nothing that I can say belongs to the killer. If you catch him, then I might be able to place him at the crime scenes, but otherwise I can’t help you, Inspector.’

  A wave of anger washed over her. ‘That’s all I ever get from you, Perkins. I have seven days, seven fucking days, to find this mad bastard, and all you can say is, "We found nothing." Well, it’s not fucking good enough, not by a long stretch. I want you to find me something I can use, something that will point me in the right direction. Go through everything again and find what you’ve missed, Perkins. And I want it by eight-thirty tomorrow morning, or I might need to call someone in for a second opinion.’

  Perkins’ mouth hung open like the entrance to the Ghost Ride at a fairground as she spun on her heel and strode out, her face set like concrete. Resorting to blackmail was not something she normally did, but then this case wasn’t normal. Being pleasant sometimes didn’t cut it.

  ‘He’ll probably complain to the Chief,’ Tony offered as he extended his stride to catch up with her.

  ‘I expect he will, but I have the feeling the new Chief will put him through the grinder. There won’t be much left of his indignation after she’s finished with him. And you never know he might even find something that he’s missed. Right, let’s go to this bloody asylum.’

  Chapter Four

  Tony’s GPS directed them down the A219 through Fulham, across the Thames at Putney Bridge, and then left along the A205 in Wandsworth to the A214 where they hung a right towards Upper Tooting.

  Members of the Press Association, like animal rights activists outside a test laboratory, were waiting to mob her. As she pushed her way through the jostling mass, they thrust cameras and microphones in her face and shouted questions:

  ‘Is Cole Randall being released, DI Stone?’

  ‘What’s happening to DCI Miller?’

  ‘Do you know who the real killer is?’

  ‘Would you like to comment on police incompetence?’

  No she fucking wouldn’t. She knew what was good for her, and she kept her mouth tightly shut.

  She shivered. Springfield Asylum wasn’t cold. It was the thought of so many locked doors between her and the outside world that made her shiver. For a moment she nearly thought of the world as normal, but she wasn’t sure what was normal anymore.

  In fact she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  She was two floors underground. The light was artificial, and the only escape route was up.

  Her father had been locked in this asylum. Not all the way down here, but on a ward above ground. Care in the community didn’t work for him. Two years ago, they released him into the safekeeping of his wife – Molly’s mother – with a rucksack full of medication. He would have been fine if he’d been taking the drugs, but he wasn’t taking them, and he wasn’t fine. After he’d killed her mum, he went out and killed an old woman, a nine-year-old girl on a bike, and then paralysed a father of four with a baseball bat. He thought they were aliens. They locked him up and forgot about him until he died a year ago. She cried herself to sleep for six months, and never saw her father again.

  Now, when she looked in the bathroom mirror each morning, she wondered whether a paranoid schizophrenic was staring back at her. Would she know? Could she already be living in a delusional world? Her GP, Doctor Lytton, had told her that because her dad had paranoid schizophrenia she had a one in ten chance of developing the illness. She had no idea what "one in ten" meant, and she was too afraid to ask.

  ‘He hasn’t had a visitor in all the time I’ve been working here, you know,’ the overweight nurse said to her. He wore a white jacket and trousers stretched tight over his obese body. The jacket buttoned on the right shoulder, and etched on his blue name badge in white was P. TOWNSEND RNMH.

  ‘Oh!’ She was surprised that none of the others had been to see him. Although she hadn’t visited either, and she was his partner. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Nine months.’

  They reached another door. She looked at the inmate artwork hung on the wall between each of the doors. Famous in their own asylum, she thought.

  ‘So, do you know our Mr Randall?’ he asked as he keyed in a four-digit code on the numerical keypad.

  ‘Yes,’ she said turning her head to the side so that she didn’t have to breathe in his rancid body odour.

  ‘I can’t believe he was one of you lot. Did he really kill his own wife and kids?’

  A year ago she had thought so, but she didn’t want to talk about her ex-boss with a mental health nurse. They obviously hadn’t told him that Randall was being released. Instead she said, ‘Is it much further?’

  ‘No, nearly there.’

  They reached the end of the corridor and were standing outside a nondescript door with a sliding Perspex panel at eye height. He slid the panel back and peered through it. ‘Move back, Randall, ’ he ordered. ‘You have a visitor.’

  Nurse Townsend selected a key from the bunch on a chain hanging from his belt, unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  ‘Fifteen minutes. I’ll be out here in case you need me.’

  Apart from the bed, a lidless toilet, and a metal table and chair fixed to the floor, there was only stacks of yellowing dog-eared books in the corner. The room reeked of urine, and she put a hand up to her mouth and nose in an attempt to filter the smell.

  Cole Randall was much thinner and older than she remembered. The grey in his hair had managed to acquire a foothold, and his face seemed to be a repository for wrinkles of all shapes and sizes. If he’d been wearing a keffiyeh he could have been mistaken for a Bedouin nomad. He had a crescent-shaped scar on the right side of his nose and he’d grown a thick grey moustache that matched his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘Hello, Sir,’ she said.

  He looked up at her, his eyes heavy with medication. ‘Another family have been murdered, haven’t they?’

  His voice hadn’t changed. The way it wrapped itself around her like an old Army blanket. He could have been a teller of fireside stories.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They made you DI?’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ she asked defensively.

  He stared at her for what seemed a lifetime. ‘No. You were the obvious choice. You’ve grown your hair longer, and there are some lines in your face.’

  She wore her blonde hair in a ponytail now, simple and easy to manage. There had been no conscious decision to grow
it longer. Like everything else in her life it just seemed to happen. As for the lines, they were a different matter altogether. ‘You still know how to flatter a girl, Sir.’

  A shadow of a smile crossed his face. ‘Hey, once you’ve got it…’

  There was no need for him to finish the sentence, she remembered.

  ‘What now?’ he asked.

  She wanted to sit down, but there was only the unmade bed. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering if it was clean.

  Seeing her looking he stood up. ‘Sit here,’ he said moving like an automaton to reach the bed.

  Pointing at the ceiling she said, ‘Somewhere up there the cogs are slowly turning. You’re being released tomorrow morning. When you come back we’ll work together to find the real killer.’

  Closing his eyes, he lay back on the bed and put his hands behind his head. ‘You don’t believe that, Molly.’ His voice came from a million miles away.

  Tears snaked down her cheeks.

  ‘I used to tell you not to make assumptions. I see my tutelage and guidance hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference.’

  She dabbed at her eyes with a paper handkerchief that she pulled from up her sleeve. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re assuming that I was wrongly convicted, that the whole thing was a set-up.’

  ‘That’s true isn’t it, Sir?’ Suddenly she began to have doubts again.

  He jerked to a sitting position. ‘Of course it’s damn well true. It was true a year ago, where were you then?’

  ‘What could I do, Sir? I was only a DS.’

  ‘A lame excuse, Molly. You believed I killed Sarah and the kids, didn’t you?’

  ‘There was so much evidence…’

  ‘And so you let that bastard Miller put me in here. You forgot about me.’

  Molly hung her head in shame and said, ‘I’m sorry, Sir. I wasn’t much of a partner, was I?’