Lee Weeks - Cold as Ice

‘If you need anything you can Facebook me. I’m Christian Goddard.’

‘Okay.’ She smiled. Christian walked back along the row and continued his raucous conversation with the women at the other end from Ebony. There were shrieks and giggles on his return.

Selena was grinning when she looked back.

‘Never takes him long to hit on the new girl.’

Ebony rolled her eyes. ‘Doesn’t he have any competition?’

‘We had a couple.’

‘Men?’

‘Yeah, there are a few around. But Christian seems to be the Alpha male.’

‘He dates exclusively single mothers,’ said Sammy.

‘I suppose he’s got a child. He wants to find someone in the same circumstances?’ Ebony said as she sipped her wine.

‘It doesn’t seem to get them very far with him,’ retorted Selena. ‘It doesn’t do them any good either. Some of them end up dropping out of the course.’ She looked across for confirmation from her friend. ‘I was thinking of a couple of women that dropped out – what was her name?’

‘Who?’ asked Sammy.

‘The girl from IT who dropped out, or she just didn’t come back. Not sure why?’

‘There’ve been a few,’ Sammy answered. ‘One was called Emily.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Did you see the news? She was pulled out of the Regent’s Canal.’

Robbo went to get a cup of water from the water dispenser by the door. He could hear a couple of officers talking way down the hall. He heard Bowie’s nervous cough. The one that sounded like he had a lump of phlegm in his throat which he hadn’t been able to shift for a decade or two. Every few moments he tried again.

Robbo knew he had gone past the point of being able to close his eyes. Now, he would have to knock himself out with sleeping pills to sleep and then he would sleep for a week, getting up only to eat, staying in his bedroom, sleeping so solidly that he wouldn’t even dream. But for now, he needed to be as mad as it took to see all the layers of the women’s suffering, to see into the mind of the man who caused it.

He got his water and went back to his desk; there were four pieces of jewellery in front of him: the charm bracelet, two rings and the chain. He ran the chain through his fingers over and over. He watched it coil onto the desk. It was mid-afternoon. Pam was watching him out of the corner of her eye. She was worried about him. She knew he needed to sleep so badly but she had seen him this way many times and she knew he would only catnap now until it was over and then he’d collapse for a week.

Robbo sat listening to the noise of the chain, a shushing noise that became loud in his head. He was waiting for HOLMES to finish a check. He picked up Emily Styles’ ring and turned it over in his hand. The sharp edges worn dull from years of use. HOLMES was finished; he printed off the pages he needed and smiled across at Pam, as taking the ring with him, he stood and stepped out into the corridor.

He felt calmer in the corridor. He walked down towards Bowie’s office. Robbo had no love for Bowie. Years ago they had worked together in CID. But Bowie had gone undercover and helped to end one of the biggest paedophile rings in the country. Robbo had been part of the surveillance team watching Bowie as he integrated into the ring. He had his methods but Robbo wasn’t always convinced they were by the book. Robbo was also not sure that anyone could do five years in undercover work and come out of it the same way they went in.

‘This is the new search that takes in the jewellery connection plus other things: age of kids, geographical location to college and within a mile of Hawk’s phone radius.’ Robbo slid a file across Bowie’s desk. On it he had the names of five women; clipped to their names were photos.

‘These women fit all the criteria. Three missing, two dead. All of these women are linked by the fact they are all in their twenties, they are single mums living in North London and they were all attending classes of some kind in order to retrain.’

Robbo handed him the print-out from HOLMES. ‘Two years ago this woman—’ he pointed to the photo of Charlotte Rogers – ‘disappeared and a year later her body was found in woodland belonging to the National Trust.’

‘What was the coroner’s verdict?’

‘Open verdict. The only thing on her was the bracelet but her mother didn’t recognize it. This is Sophie Vein.’ He pointed to another photo. ‘She was found decomposed in a forest in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire in February 2011. She’d been lying there for an estimated nine months. She disappeared a while before that, in the August of the previous summer.’

‘Anything found on her?’

‘Examination of the organs was not possible as they were too badly decomposed; there was evidence of deep ulcerated wounds, causing infections in the bone. Her mother said she always wore a small pink ring on her little finger. Could be the one we have.’

‘We’ll ask Harding to take another look at the post mortem results and get some re-analysis of the samples taken at the post mortem and the burial site. Was there nothing before 2010?’

‘Not that we can uncover. None of the women on the list who might possibly be a victim. If he follows the normal pattern of starting to kill in his early twenties then he is thirty at least.’

‘Something happened in the lead-up to that year then. Something flicked his switch,’ said Bowie.

‘He searches out single mothers; they have to have children. All the women have been described as strong women, determined, not easily fooled. None of these women were registered junkies. None of them were thought to be users of class A drugs.’

‘What were the ulcerated sites on the women’s bodies then? asked Bowie.

‘The results are still not in. But it’s certain that whatever it was started under the skin, localized; it ulcerated and then necrosis occurred,’ answered Robbo. ‘Harding said there was evidence of antibiotics in Pauline Murphy’s hair sample. Her doctor hadn’t prescribed them at the time of her disappearance – it’s the same scenario as Emily Styles. I think Hawk tries to control the infection.’

‘Did he infect them with something himself?’ Robbo shrugged.

‘I don’t know but I’m beginning to think it likely.’

‘He introduces it and then tries to control it?’ asked Bowie. ‘As in experimenting on people, watching them die? What is he, some type of Doctor Mengele?’

‘Could be,’ answered Robbo. ‘Every body is different and some organs will fail before others. When they can’t last any longer he finishes them off. He chooses the time for them to die.’

‘Do we have a DNA sample of Hawk from Pauline Murphy’s body?’

‘Yes we think we do. He left semen on Pauline Murphy’s body but he’s not a match for anyone in our system.’

‘All these women went to colleges within the North London college umbrella,’ said Bowie. ‘But we can’t bring in every male attending and working in the North London college network.’

‘I’ve worked out the dates for these missing women. They don’t just overlap; he doesn’t just replace, he keeps them together. They all cross over. Right now Danielle won’t be alone.’ He showed Bowie the last woman on the list of three.

‘Top photo is of Jenny Smith. A single parent with one child. She was attending a computer course at London Metropolitan University while staying in bed and breakfast accommodation. She left a little girl with friends overnight and failed to come in the morning to collect her. That was two years ago and she hasn’t been seen since.’

‘Eighteen months mean she would have crossed over with Pauline Murphy. Why haven’t we found her remains? He’s been leaving the others where they will be found.’