Michael Fowler - Heart of the Demon

“I don’t really want to get him into trouble if it isn’t him,” she retorted anxiously.

“Don’t worry we have the attacker’s DNA so if it isn’t him a quick test will clear him.”

Rachel unclasped her hands and set them on the table. She fiddled with several gold rings, which adorned a number of fingers on both hands. “I’ll start from when we met, that’ll give you a picture of what he’s like.” She licked her lips. “Gabe was into photography in a big way and was working as an apprentice at a big studio here in Barnwell. He used to come to our school to take all the form’s photographs. He was twenty-one when we first met and I was almost sixteen, in my last year at school before college. He chatted up all the girls but I was the one who fell for him. He told me I could be a model with my looks and figure and asked if he could take some private photos for a portfolio for a model agency he freelanced for. Like a jerk I fell for it hook line and sinker. I posed for some innocent shots at first and then he persuaded me to have some more sexy ones done. His dad had made him a photo studio in the loft and he used to photograph me there when his mum went out. Then the inevitable happened and we started having sex. Within six months, just after my sixteenth birthday, I left home after a bust up with my mum and moved into his mother’s house.” She paused her blue-grey eyes focussed on Grace. It was a gaze filled with sadness and despair. “Am I going round the houses too much for you?”

“No you’re absolutely fine. I’ve got bags of time,” Grace lied. In the back of her mind she was thinking about her girls’ netball practice, but at the same time she could see the tension etched on Rachel’s face.

“He started to do ‘kinky’ things when we had sex. It scared me at first but I suppose I just got used to them.”

“What do you mean kinky?”

“It’s a bit embarrassing this.” She wrung her hands. “Well he always wanted me to dress up in my schoolgirl stuff, which I could understand. But then he started asking me to resist so he could pretend he was raping me. Then one time he got his father’s belt and put it round my neck and started squeezing it. That really freaked me out and we didn’t have sex for a good few months after that. After he stopped sulking we talked about it and he said it was only a bit of fun, that he wouldn’t hurt me and it was just bondage. Well after we had a good drink one night he did it again to me. This time he really hurt me. He squeezed the belt so tight that I went unconscious for a good few minutes. That’s when I told him enough was enough. Things just soured after that. A couple of weeks after, he started to go out late at night and he would be gone for ages. On a couple of occasions he didn’t get back until the early hours of the morning. One night he came in absolutely lathered in sweat and I asked him what he had been up to. He said he’d just been out for a jog. But I knew he was lying because he’d never jogged in his life; he hated sport. He’d sooner light up a fag than go for a run. Anyway the next morning I saw he’d put his clothing in the washing machine but when I went to hang them out I thought there were bloodstains on a T-shirt. I asked him about it but he just said it was some dye from his photography processing.”

“When was this?” asked Grace, as she quickly started scribbling some notes.

“I’m sorry I can’t remember the exact day or even month. It would have been about a year before I left him, so you’re talking eight or nine years ago now. Why is that significant?”

“I’m not sure at this stage.” Grace thought the timing could coincide with the disappearance of Claire Fisher but she also knew there were still a number of other girls outstanding in the missing from home files they had upstairs in the MIT Office.

“Anyway after the bust-up he asked me to marry him, to show that he still loved me. I said yes thinking everything would be okay but within weeks of the marriage he was wanting to use the belt on me again and we just had row after row. I told him he was perverted and I’d had enough and he told me that if I left him he’d kill me and bury me where no one would be able to find me. A couple of weeks after that I packed what I could, and when his mother was out shopping, and he was at work, I left. I never got in touch with him again. I went to a refuge at first and didn’t even tell my parents where I was for fear he’d find me, and then they re-housed me to Sheffield and I’ve been there ever since.”

“Besides the incidents you’ve told me about Rachel is there anything else about Gabriel’s character which you found to be unusual or different?”

“Weird you mean?” She paused and ran a hand through her hair.

Grace couldn’t help but notice its lack of style and the abundance of split-ends. She knew from her experience of dealing with domestic violence that this was a girl who had lost her self-esteem.

“Well there were the pictures he kept in the briefcase of some of the girls he had photographed at school. And he also kept some local newspaper cuttings about girls going missing. I never told him I’d found them. I was too scared. That’s what’s made me come to you.”

Grace could feel the hairs prickle at the back of her neck. “Anything else about him?”

“He hates coppers — sorry police — he once told me he had been beaten up by a cop when he was a kid who had wanted him to confess to killing and cutting up a pet rabbit. He said the cop had been a close neighbour, a Mr Newstead.”

That has to be Barry, Grace said to herself.

For another half hour Grace back-tracked on everything Rachel had said, testing to see if there was anything that had been missed. She had taken copious notes in preparation for a formal statement, and though she tried her best to stay focussed on the important task in hand, from time-to-time her thoughts had drifted. She couldn’t help but bring to the front of her mind reflections of what might she might be facing within the next hour-or-so when she finally got home — late again.

DAY THIRTY-THREE: 8th August.

“Does the name Gabriel Wild mean anything to you?” Grace grabbed Barry Newstead’s attention the moment he had walked through the door. He was the first to enter the office, after her and she could hardly contain her excitement. She had to share with someone what she had learned late yesterday. Everyone had gone home by the time she had finished talking with Rachel Beddows and she had tried to get hold of Hunter before she left work but his mobile had been diverted to voicemail. It had been her intention to ring him later from her home but she thought better of it when she saw the faces of Robyn and Jade, who sent her on a guilt trip for missing their netball practice. She tried to remind herself that she had already put her career on hold on two occasions in order to bring up her daughters — that they were old enough to look after themselves and that this is what she needed to do for her own fulfilment. However, she still found herself apologising throughout the remainder of the evening, promising to do something or other with them at the weekend.

“Don’t I get a good morning Barry how are you this fine day, instead of being quizzed about a little brat who once upon a time used to live near us?”

“Don’t be such an old grouch. I got some information last night, which could end this enquiry. I hardly slept last night and look at me I’m as fresh as a daisy, not a miserable old sod like you.”

“Less of the ‘old’ will you? Anyway what can’t wait long enough for me to even have my morning caffeine infusion?”

“Gabriel Wild’s ex-wife came in late last night telling me she thinks he’s our killer. She gave me loads of examples and there’s no doubt a lot of what she told me could fit the profile of our murderer, but I checked him out on the Intelligence system and he’s got nothing at all recorded against him. She did mention however that he had had a bit of a run in with a Mr Newstead years ago when he was a teenager.”