Page 7 of Dying Breath
He’d felt a prickle of excitement begin to rush through his veins as he’d craned his neck forwards, trying to make sense of what exactly he was looking at. He’d stayed that way until he heard the front door slam, jerking him out of the trance he was in. He’d turned and run from the room, closing the door, and gone into his own bedroom where he’d thrown himself onto the bed and pretended to be asleep. He couldn’t talk; he had so many questions. He needed to know what had happened to those women. Why they were naked? Why did his mum have their pictures? Why had he felt nothing but a rush of pure adrenaline whilst staring at them? He’d known it wasn’t right, that he probably should have felt sick and not looked at them for a second longer than when he’d first laid his eyes on them. But he hadn’t – the images were ingrained into his mind and now they were all he thought about, all day and every night.
Here he was once more, sitting in the office chair and staring at the women on the board. All of them had similar hair: long and dark. Parted in the middle in the same style. Whoever had hurt these women liked them all to look the same. Of course, if you studied their faces they didn’t look anything alike, but from a distance and at first glance they did. Underneath each one was a first name – Carrie, Joanna…His Aunt Linda’s photograph was on there. It was covered with a yellow Post-it note and he carefully peeled it back to see her dead, naked body, her eyes staring back at him.
There were three different women. He reached out and stroked the photos as if he could touch their cold, dead bodies. He liked them all, but he decided that Carrie was his favourite. She was much prettier than the others, even though she was dead. He would never have killed her if it had been up to him. He would have taken Carrie away and kept her all to himself, locked away in a special room where he could go in and see her whenever he wanted.
Chapter Eight
Lucy, who was on the phone mid-conversation with the victim’s son, Andrew Benson, paused to watch as Browning appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. Every single person on the second floor also stopped what they were doing to watch him. Her heart began to race when she realised he was heading towards her office; she knew full well who had sent them. She ended the call.
Two days ago a similar bouquet had been delivered by a florist to her home address. She’d refused the flowers and told the poor woman, who looked mortified, to drop them off at the hospice. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them; it was the fact that they were from Stephen that she objected to. It was obvious that after their last conversation he hadn’t taken her seriously, she wasn’t interested.
Unfortunately for Lucy, Stephen was, and he had left countless voicemails and text messages for her. She was now on the verge of telling him that if he continued pursuing her, she would get an officer to pay him a visit to warn him off.
As Browning neared her open office door she could see that he was grinning, and everyone was watching Lucy to see what her reaction would be. He stood in the doorway, smiling at her.
‘Get in and shut the bloody door now. What are you doing?’
Her reaction wiped the smile off his beaming face.
‘I thought you’d be thrilled – someone actually likes you enough to send you a bunch of expensive flowers.’
‘It’s complicated. Who are they from?’
She stood up and crossed the room, not really expecting him to know where they’d come from.
‘Well they ain’t off me, and I’m glad that I didn’t waste my money on them if that’s your response.’
‘I wouldn’t be angry withyou– not that you have a reason to buy me flowers. Fuck, this is so unnecessary.’
He stood there shaking his head as she tore open the card and read what she already knew. She said his name through gritted teeth. ‘Stephen.’
‘Look, boss, it’s nothing to do with me. Don’t shoot the messenger. They were dropped off at the front desk and Brenda asked me to give them to you.’
He passed the bouquet to her and stalked out of her office. She noticed him shaking his head at the others, who were still watching. Simultaneously, they all looked back down at their computers and carried on as if nothing had happened. Lucy chucked the flowers straight into the bin, where they could stay until the cleaner came in and decided what she wanted to do with them. Her hands were clenched so tight that the knuckles had turned white.
She went straight over to the major incident room across the hallway, where she found Mattie sitting at a desk typing away, head bent. ‘I’ve just been going through Melanie Benson’s post-mortem report.’
‘Did you find anything we missed?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. She had no defence wounds. He must have really meant to do some damage when he smashed her skull the first time. She would have been so disorientated and the alcohol in her system wouldn’t have helped.’
‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t. It thins your blood. She would have bled out quicker.’
‘Her son has just been on the phone – he wants to know if we’ve found her killer.’
Mattie looked at Lucy and shook his head. ‘Did you tell him this isn’t an episode ofCriminal Minds?’
She sat down on the corner of a desk. ‘It’s not looking very hopeful, is it? This is the third day and we don’t have much.’
Mattie decided not to answer that question. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. There had been no CCTV footage, apart from inside the bar area of The Ball and Chain, which showed a very loud, flirty Melanie Benson getting drunker and drunker until she’d tried to punch the barmaid, who’d then thrown her out. There was also an external CCTV camera, which was pointing the opposite way and didn’t work. She’d left the pub on her own so whoever her killer was had picked her up outside or on her walk home. It had been raining heavily and Lucy had no doubt that the amount of alcohol Melanie had consumed had a lot to do with her poor judgement.
Someone had picked Melanie up and driven her to Strawberry Fields. Every taxi driver in the town who had worked that night had been interviewed, their criminal records checked in case one of them had slipped through the net when they’d applied for their taxi licence. Nothing had come back; there were no logs of a taxi being called from Melanie’s phone. Her records had been checked, and the last phone call she’d made had been a jumble of numbers that resembled one of the taxi firms. She hadn’t got through.
‘Somebody picked her up and took her to the playing fields. Have all the constabulary and local ANPR cameras along the route been checked?’
‘Yes, Lucy, twice. All the cars that drove past them that night have been run through the PNC and the owners interviewed.’
She stared at Melanie Benson’s photograph; there had to be something. ‘Has every flat, house and shop in the local area been asked if their cars have dashcams, to see if they’ve caught anything?’
