Lee Weeks - Cold as Ice

‘That’s a thing he’s grown into. Maybe that’s why he did it – because we never found her body. He wants attention. He wants recognition. What’s the point in going to all this attention to detail if no one knows about it?’

‘Yes, you could be right. Or maybe she hasn’t been killed yet.’

‘He gives a piece of jewellery to those he kills, doesn’t he?’ Bowie picked up the chain and turned it over in his hand.

‘Yes, but we don’t know what makes him choose a particular piece of jewellery to give to the women. We just know that it must be when he has decided to kill them. The chain around Emily Styles’ neck was enmeshed in her hair, caught at the back of her head where the clasp had become entangled with her hair and torn some out by the roots. The hair was torn from living flesh not dead. So he goes through a ceremony before death: mask of make-up, jewellery. He arranges them for death. I looked back through her file and Jenny Smith always wore her grandmother’s antique engagement ring. We have a photo of it.’ Robbo scrolled down the images on his laptop and stopped at the photo of the ring and then he opened his hand and placed the ring on the desk in front of Bowie. He turned it to show Bowie. ‘It’s the same one we found on Emily Styles.’

Robbo went back to his office and laid the two rings and the chain on the desk in front of him. He couldn’t stop staring at it. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what, though. He sat back in his chair and tried to close his eyes, tried to rest. More than anything Robbo had the image of Danielle Foster in the coffin. He started hyperventilating when he thought about it. He could see the body of Pauline Murphy in all its horror, inside the box. He saw the mask of make-up and a chain around her neck. The chain was enmeshed in her flesh and Robbo was trying to pick it out but it was so messy his fingers kept sliding. He looked up at Pauline Murphy’s face but suddenly it wasn’t her face he saw. It was Ebony’s.

‘Robbo?’

He opened his eyes; the smell of apple shampoo surrounded him and he saw Jeanie frowning at him, standing next to him at his desk. The next thing he heard was the almighty clamour of coffee beans being ground. He shot forward in his chair. Carter sniggered.

‘I told Jeanie not to creep up on you.’

‘Bastard.’

Robbo rubbed his face, picked up a handful of Haribo sweets and fed them into his mouth.

‘I saw your update about the ring,’ Carter said.

‘Yeah, the main thing we learn from that is that he wants to carve his name in history, have them include him in the book of serial killers. He’s making sure we know it’s him. He’s got a massive ego. He thinks he’s better than anyone else. He may have a string of short-term relationships but he can’t stay with someone long. He’s easily bored.’ Robbo slid his chair along the length of the desk and then stopped dead as he began furiously tapping on the keyboard. ‘Plus, he has a massively inflated idea of his self-worth; he’s callous, manipulative. These women he killed meant nothing to him as human beings, they were just vehicles towards his notoriety. He’s also irresponsible, impulsive. But he wanted us to find the rings.’

Jeanie picked up the chain and looked at the rings on the end. ‘The chain just doesn’t look right,’ she said.

‘He had no choice but to put them on a chain,’ Carter said as he made coffee. ‘They would have fallen off when the fingers were lost to pond life.’

‘Why didn’t he just put plastic bags over the hands like he did with the head?’ asked Jeanie.

Carter shook his head. ‘If her wrist was already opened by a wound, which it was, then it would have been got at quickly by feeders and she may have just lost her whole hand somewhere in the bottom of the canal, plus these rings were not hers, they probably didn’t fit her hand.’

‘So he had to put them on a chain. Any old chain?’

‘It’s never any old anything with him, is it? He takes months to kill, he’s not going to be rushed into anything, the smallest details matter to him,’ Robbo answered.

‘Then he chose a chain that doesn’t match the rings. It doesn’t look feminine,’ Jeanie said.

‘From another victim?’ asked Carter. ‘Or from him then?’ Carter had stopped making coffee and was focused on Jeanie. ‘Something which was his?’ Robbo was nodding.

Carter looked at his watch. ‘I have to go and meet Ebony. She’s making her way to my house.’

Jeanie’s eyes stayed on Carter as he got up to put his coat on. He looked her way and waited.

‘The more we find out about Hawk, the more nervous I become about Ebony undercover,’ Jeanie said eventually, looking from Carter to Robbo.

Carter put on his coat and stood for a few seconds in the middle of the office. He gave a small nod of the head.

‘That’s why we need her to succeed more than ever.’ He looked over at Robbo.

Robbo was swinging the chain from the ends of his fingers. He had a smile on his face.

‘Maybe we have a little piece of him here. Maybe this is his first mistake.’

Carter met Ebony outside his house.

‘I would have stayed longer but I think he needs a change,’ she said.

Carter shook his head with mock disapproval. ‘I showed you how to do it.’

‘Yeah, but I know how fussy you are about things. I couldn’t risk getting it wrong.’

Archie woke up and grinned sleepily at his dad.

‘Hello, little man – handsome little devil.’ He turned to Ebony. ‘Hope you got a lot of compliments.’

‘Yeah – I did. They all thought he was the spitting image of me.’

Carter shook his head in disbelief.

He turned his key in the front door and then came back for the buggy. He unstrapped Archie and handed him to Ebony to hold as he folded the buggy and in one move lifted it and took it inside the house. He stacked it in a purpose-built cupboard behind the front door. She followed him into the house, trying not to look like she was holding Archie at arm’s length even though she was – he smelt. Archie was wriggling to see his dad. Carter took him from her and went to change him. He brought him back in a new stripy suit and held him on one hip as he called Ebony into the kitchen.

‘Come and talk to me while I get him some food.’ He put Archie into his high chair whilst he began banging about in the kitchen. ‘Tell me, what did you find out?’

‘Emily Styles was known to the group I’ve enrolled in.’

‘She and Danielle Foster were both at the college – we know that,’ Carter said as he searched for Archie’s bowl in the dishwasher. ‘Robbo said that they crossed over in a couple of their subjects.’

‘It’s a friendly group,’ said Ebony as she perched on a kitchen stool and played with Archie who was getting impatient for food and banging his hand on the table of the high chair. ‘They do a fair bit of socializing. I think it will be easy to get inside it. I have a couple of numbers; the women seemed really friendly. I’ll be meeting one of them tomorrow – she’s going to help me prepare for the course, catch up.’

‘Any men on the course?’

‘There’s one I’ve met so far – another single parent, Christian Goddard. He seems to be everyone’s answer to Brad Pitt, has the pick of the women. He’s a good-looking, natural dad type. He told me to look him up on Facebook. I think he probably scores with most of the new women. Robbo’s still working on a Facebook profile for me now. I don’t want to risk getting it wrong.’

‘Yep. No problem. Robbo left some stuff here for you. Plus he wants me to take some photos of you and Archie.’ He stopped stirring Archie’s food for a moment, went into the lounge and came back with a buggy. ‘You take this buggy – it’s an older version of Archie’s. And we got you a realistic doll.’ Carter unwrapped the doll and held it in his arms as if he were burping it. ‘It’s one of those realistic feeding, pooping ones that they give to teenagers to put them off having kids.’