Pulse (A Kate Redman Mystery Read online

  Snuggled on the sofa, Kate found, to her surprise, that at that moment in time, she would rather talk than make love. Aware that she was breaking one of their unwritten rules – no talking shop out of the office, no talking of their relationship at the office – she decided to go ahead anyway.

  “Hey,” she said, taking hold of his hands. “Can I ask you something?”

  Anderton groaned. “It is sexual in nature? Because I’m not really in the mood for cross-questioning at the moment.”

  Kate couldn’t help but giggle. “We’ve got all night. Can we just talk for a bit? Please?”

  Anderton sighed and sat back a little. “Go on, then. Provided that after we’ve discussed whatever it is you want to discuss, we go straight up to bed.”

  “Deal.” Kate got up and brought in the half empty wine bottle from the kitchen to top up their glasses.

  “What’s up?” Anderton said as she sat back down again. Then he grinned and said “Besides me, that is?”

  Kate slapped him gently on the knee. “Enough of that. Listen, you know you asked me to look into similar cases on the database?”

  Anderton groaned even louder. “I thought we agreed not to talk shop, Kate?”

  “I’m being a rebel.” Kate sat forward and took his hand. “Do you remember?”

  “As I remember, that was your bright idea. It was a good one, though. Why, have you found something?”

  Kate nodded. “There are two isolated cases of bodies being found in similar circumstances. Here, I printed off what I found—” She got up again, found her briefcase and extracted the folder containing the information. Anderton took it from her with a long suffering air. “Two cases, a year apart. Three years ago, for the first one, then the second a year later. Two young men, very young, in their teens, both found in remote spots.”

  Anderton began reading. Kate forced herself to shut up and let him concentrate. She busied herself with stoking up the fire and straightening the ornaments on the mantelpiece.

  At long last, Anderton put down the printed paper. Immediately, Kate seated herself by him and looked at him eagerly.

  Anderton divided the paper into two piles. “This one,” he said, pointing to it. “This one I agree could be worth looking into.” He read from Kate’s own notes. “’In 2008, the body of a young man was found in a graveyard in Ely, Cambridgeshire; cause of death believed to have been a combination of a heroin overdose and exposure. The body was ritualistically posed which suggested outside influence but nobody has been charged with the case and it remains open.’”

  Kate nodded. “What about the other?”

  Anderton frowned and shook his head. “Same type of victim, yes. But he wasn’t found in a graveyard and the cause of death is totally different. Massive blood loss caused by a knife wound to the neck. That sounds like a common-or-garden murder to me, Kate.”

  “I don’t know,” said Kate. “I know they arrested someone for it but the case didn’t get to court.”

  Anderton consulted her notes again. “This guy – the vic, what’s his name—”

  Kate already knew it. “Simon Hardy.”

  “Simon Hardy, right. He was a known criminal and drug dealer. From your notes, it sounds as though the Bournemouth police fingered one of the other cartels for the job. It happens all the time, Kate. This Hardy ripped them off so they got one of their guys to abduct him, take him out somewhere and cut his throat. Dumped his body as a warning to others. I can’t see anything sinister in that – well, you know what I mean – I can’t see anything relevant in this case to the ones we’ve got here.” He took a sharp look at her face. “Why do you think this one might be connected?”

  “It’s because of where he died.” Kate leant forward and extracted another print out, this time a map of the area in which Simon Hardy’s body was found. “That place, that wood – Scott’s Wood – that’s long been associated with—” She hesitated for a moment because she sounded pretty silly, even to herself. “That’s long been associated with vampires.”

  Anderton snorted. “What? You’re kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not. There’s a local legend that the stately home that used to be there used to belong to a – a vampire.”

  Anderton looked incredulous. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “I grew up around there.”

  Anderton looked at the map. “Oh. Oh yes, I remember. Of course you did.” He read the notes through again and looked up. “I don’t know, though. It’s pretty tenuous.”

  Kate sat back, all of a sudden feeling very tired. “I know, you’re right. It’s just – a bit of a feeling, that’s all.”

  “Hmm.” Anderton continued to read and for that Kate was grateful – that as stupid as her theory might sound, he did at least appear to be taking it seriously.

  They sat in silence for a moment while Anderton read. Kate took a sip of her wine and looked at the dancing flames in the grate. This is how it could be with us, she thought. If we lived together. The thought caused a rush of some unidentifiable emotion; anxiety or anticipation, she wasn’t sure. She pushed it back into the recesses of her mind for a later, more leisurely perusal.

  Then she leant forward and took Anderton’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “You were right earlier. This is no time to talk shop.”

  Anderton looked up, surprised. “You’ve changed your tune.”

  “I know. It’s you, you’re irresistible.”

  “Ha!” He put the printed papers on the floor and drew her into his arms. “But just before we commence, I think you might be onto something with what you’ve just shown me. Come and see me in my office tomorrow and we’ll talk.” He grinned and added “Officially.”

  “I will,” said Kate. “And now, no more talking, I promise.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kate spent the next morning gathering all the information that she could on the two cases she’d discussed with Anderton, that of Simon Hardy and the other man, a boy really, one Jay Lightner. She’d had a very formal and official meeting with Anderton in his office to discuss the possibility of liaising with the other police forces that had dealt with those particular cases. Both she and Anderton had been extremely professional in their interaction – no scribbled dinner invitations this time – and as she walked back to her desk, Kate found herself thinking that there was something not quite healthy about putting on this much of a front, for so long a period. The mental strain caused by pretending reality was one thing, while it was something actually quite different, was finally starting to tell.

  She sat down rather suddenly in her chair and stared at the screensaver on her computer screen, feeling quite like she might actually cry for a moment.

  “You all right, bird?” asked Chloe, from across the desk.

  Kate immediately sat up and pinned a smile on her face. “Fine, thanks. I’m fine. Just a bit tired.”

  “Hmm.” Chloe went on scrutinising her until Kate felt like the top layer of the skin of her face was being burned away. “Are you really?”

  “Yes.”

  Chloe continued to stare. “I’m bothered about you.”

  Kate couldn’t stand it any longer. With an attempt at a light laugh, she got up. “I’m fine, Chloe, really. Just got so much to do.”

  She walked away, ostensibly to make herself a coffee but really to have a bit of time to calm down. I’m telling so many lies to everyone. She stared blankly at the slowly boiling kettle. Was Anderton really worth this? Was he?

  She deliberately shut the thought off, made her coffee without spilling too many granules over the kitchen counter, and walked slowly back to her desk with the mug, taking some deep breaths. Chloe was answering a phone call when Kate sat back down which bought her a few more minutes.

  They worked in not quite comfortable silence for a few minutes after Chloe had put the phone down. Kate decid
ed it was up to her to break it. “Have we had the PM report in on Keith Farmer yet?”

  Chloe sounded reasonably natural. “Yes, Rav’s going through it at the moment.”

  “Do you know what the cause of death was?”

  “Yes. GHB overdose, same as Joe Vickers.”

  “Right.” Kate felt suddenly laser-focused on her work. “Don’t suppose you know if our witness Michael White has been in to do the photo-fit?”

  “Now, that I don’t.”

  “He has,” Theo called over; he had a bad habit of eavesdropping. “He’s here with them right now. Once it’s done, Anderton’s going to do another press statement so they can start circulating it.”

  “Great. Who’s checking CCTV?”

  “That’s on my to-do list today, just my luck.” Theo yawned and stretched. “What did I overhear you talking to Anderton about?”

  Kate thanked her lucky stars that she and Anderton had kept it so professional. She explained about the trawling of the database for similar cases. “In fact, Theo, it was you who made me think of it.”

  “How come?”

  “You did something similar when we had that serial case before. You know, those poor girls. You went looking for something similar, and you found it, and that helped.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember.” Theo rolled his chair a little towards her. “So, what have you found?”

  Kate explained to both Theo and Chloe the two cases she’d discovered that shared similar traits. Theo’s black eyebrows rose when she mentioned the vampire connection.

  “Really?” he said, sounding more uneasy than she would have liked. Kate remembered that odd conversation they’d had in the graveyard when Keith Farmer’s body was found.

  “It’s a legend,” she said, trying to be reassuring. “That’s all. Just an old story. But I thought – if the guy doing this has some kind of, well, vampire fetish, maybe that’s the link?”

  Theo sounded more normal when he responded. “You reckon that’s what’s going on?”

  “I think it’s a strong possibility.”

  “You could be right,” Chloe chipped in. She came around the desk to where Kate and Theo were sat and perched herself on the edge. “I wonder if it’s worth searching for a link between the gay scene and the goth scene here in Abbeyford. You know, there are fetish clubs where people get off on this sort of thing.”

  “We have a goth scene in Abbeyford?” Kate asked, knowing she was missing the point.

  “Well, goth, emo, alternative, that sort of thing. I suppose I’m thinking more of the more extreme kind of fetish clubs. Sadomasochistic clubs, stuff like that.”

  Theo was looking thoughtful. “Don’t know about Abbeyford for that type of shit. Sounds more like something you’d find on the dark web.”

  “Well, we’ll probably have to look into that too.” Kate gathered her papers together and got up. “In fact, I might go and have a word with IT right now and get them working on that.”

  She caught a glimpse of Michael White leaving the station as she passed through the main foyer of the building and decided to go and see if the photo-fit of his representation of the suspect was ready. As the department that dealt with that was located next to the IT department in the basement, it meant one quick trip, which suited Kate. She had almost decided that the two cases she’d found on the databases warranted a personal trip to both Bournemouth and Ely and wanted to run it past Anderton before too long. You just want to see him, whispered a little voice inside her head and she mentally batted it away.

  She managed to catch the head of IT, Sam Hollingsworth, at his desk and asked him to contact Chloe for a debrief of what DS Wapping wanted him, and his team, to do. Then she headed for the tiny cubicle where the round cheerful figure of Wendy Barker could be found. Wendy was responsible for creating the reconstructed images of suspects and could normally be found at her desk, eating something sweet and diligently clicking her mouse to bring a montage of facial images together.

  “Hullo, Kate, haven’t seen you for a while, me duck. What are you after?”

  Kate hovered by the entrance to the cubicle, unable to go any further because of the lack of space. “Did you sit down with a witness called Michael White this morning?”

  “Oh, that’s the one you’re after, is it? Hold on a tick.” Wendy heaved her bulk to one side with an ‘oof’ and unearthed a folder. “Just about to start filing this one. Here you go, have a look.”

  Kate took the picture of the recreated face. It always gave her something of a shiver, to look for the first time on someone who could be a killer. Of course, she reminded herself, it could be the face of someone entirely innocent too.

  It was not a pleasant face. The cheeks were scarred with the pitted remains of acne and the hair was thinning, long and straggly. Kate regarded it in silence for a moment and then handed it back to Wendy. “That’s going to the press at some point, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. The boss man wanted it by the end of the day.”

  “Could you email me a copy as well?”

  “No problem, me duck.”

  Smiling a little, Kate said goodbye and headed back for the stairs to the central office. On impulse, she swerved to go towards Anderton’s office and then just as quickly swerved back. Kate went back to her desk and wrote him a very formal email, suggesting her plans to travel to Bournemouth and Ely to liaise with the detectives who had overseen the Hardy and the Lightner cases. She mentioned the new photo-fit of a suspect and the information they’d gathered from the post mortem reports. She signed it off very professionally, writing kindest regards, Kate. Then she sent it, dismissed it from her mind, and bent to the task of the rest of her work.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a glorious day, full Indian summer with the sun shining brightly, the air warm and the sea a dark, cerulean blue. Kate drove along the cliff top road with Martha Reeve and the Vandellas blasting out at full volume, tapping the wheel and humming to herself. It was always better when she was actually doing something, rather than waiting for something to happen. This might all be a wild goose chase (although Kate, trusting her gut feel as usual, was pretty sure it would yield at least something valuable for the investigation) but actually doing something proactive felt much, much better than sitting at her desk in the office, waiting on test results and combing through CCTV records.

  It was a tiring drive, right across the widest part of the country, and the M25 was the usual horror story of traffic jams, congestion and road rage. Kate plodded on, changing the music in the car as she went through CD after CD as the miles ticked away. She’d decided to do this part of the country first, despite it being further away than Bournemouth, given the more pertinent details of the case as compared to the Abbeyford murders. She got to Ely by mid-afternoon, when the weather had changed to spitting rain and flat grey skies, stretching endlessly over the Fens.

  DI Mistle had been the man in charge of the Lightner case. He was a very tall man, built like a rugby centre forward, with pale blue eyes and a flirtatious manner which Kate, try as she might, couldn’t help responding to.

  “Jay Lightner? Poor little bugger. He was only eighteen, not much younger than you, DS Redman.”

  Kate smiled, aware that she was being flattered. “I’m older than I look. What was Jay’s history?”

  The spark in DI Mistle’s eyes dimmed. “He was in care for most of his short life. A petty criminal, minor drug dealer, that sort of thing, you know the drill.”

  Kate did know it. “So, his death was put down to a drug overdose?”

  “That and exposure. It was winter when he died, December. I remember when we found his body, it was glittering with frost.”

  Kate could see it for a moment, the small curled corpse on the whitened ground, and had to repress a shiver. “There wasn’t a full investigation into his death?” She was suddenly aware of how that
sounded and hastily rephrased it. “I mean, his death was deemed non-suspicious, is that right?”

  “That’s right. At the time.” DI Mistle leant forward a little. “But, as you said on the phone, there now seems to be a suspicion that that’s not the case?”

  Kate explained about the recent murders in Abbeyford and produced the photo-fit of the one and only suspect that they’d managed to get. DI Mistle took it and regarded it in silence.

  “Does that remind you of anyone who might have been connected with the Lightner case?” asked Kate.

  DI Mistle remained silent for a moment. Then, holding the photo-fit up and squinting at it, he remarked “It might do. Yes, it might do. If you can wait here, I can go and look up the files and see what comes up.”

  You might have thought to do that before I got here, thought Kate, but she kept a calm smile on her face. She waited impatiently while DI Mistle went and fetched all the documents he needed and then they sat and pored over them together.

  “There,” said DI Mistle, finally, putting a finger on a witness statement. “There was a care home worker who we interviewed briefly after Lightner was killed. It was the scarring that I remembered – the acne scarring on his face. I can see it now. I think it’s the same guy.”

  Excitement seized Kate by the throat. She grabbed up the witness statement and saw the name at the top. “’Robert Pound,’” she said, feeling her heart thump within her chest.

  “That’s the one. Could be the same bloke.”

  “Well, that’s a bloody lead then, isn’t it?” said Kate, forgetting she was talking to a virtual stranger and not to Theo or Olbeck. DI Mistle grinned.

  “Yep, it could be a go-er. Let me do you a copy of that statement.”

  “Is this all you’ve got?”

  “Afraid so. He wasn’t even a suspect, just a minor witness because he’d worked at the last care home where Lightner had lived.”