Michael Fowler - Heart of the Demon

“A bit of a run in is an understatement,” Barry snapped, setting his lunch container down on his desk and then removing his coat. “He was a right little bloody tearaway, and a pervert to boot. He became the bane of my life.”

“Tell me about him and then I’ll fill you in what his ex-wife told me.”

“It really was a long time ago. I had just gone into CID when he turned up on my radar. He used to live a couple of doors down from us but I hardly noticed him as a youngster because whilst his dad was around he was a real polite kid. Then one day I remember his old man came home early from work and found his mother in bed with the guy from across the road. There was a hell of a bust up and he tried to throttle her. I was off duty doing the garden and could hear this commotion so I ran to their house and had to pull him off her. I managed to calm things down and I dealt with it there and then — like we used to in those days. I found out that a couple of days after the domestic he’d upped sticks and left. She was left to bring Gabriel up on her own.” His eyes drifted up to the ceiling momentarily. Returning his gaze he continued, “Over the next few years I kept getting complaints about him following girls and playing with himself in front of them and I can remember one neighbour catching him peeping through her ground floor bathroom window. I had words with him in front of his mother and I know she gave him a real good hiding for that.”

He paused a second and started stroking his bushy moustache.

“A few months after, I had to deal with him again. This time for giving a lad a right hammering. I think the lad had slagged off his mum. Well after that I used to see him hanging around the back of my house and when one day I told him to sling his hook he put two fingers up at me so I warmed his ear-hole for him.”

She saw his expression harden.

“About a week later I heard Sarah screaming early one morning from the garden. I dashed out wondering what on earth was happening and found parts of her pet rabbit had been nailed up on the Wendy house. It had been cut to pieces with a knife or something similar. I just knew it was that little bastard Gabriel and so I went straight to his house. I tried to get him to cough that he’d done it but his mother just kept covering for him. Anyway shortly after that they moved. She sold the house and the next thing I discovered was they had gone to a council house on the Tree Estate. I kept a watch out for him but that was the last I saw of him. What does his ex say about him?”

Grace tried to contain her excitement as she re-iterated what Rachel Beddows had told her the previous evening. “I’m just waiting for Hunter to come in and then I’m going to feed it into morning briefing. Fancy a cuppa?” she finished.

“Bloody hell Grace, that’s reminded me of something else involving him.” He peeled off his jumper and chucked it over the piled-up paperwork on his desk. “It must have been about ten years ago now but I’m sure that he was interviewed over a girl’s body that was discovered in some woods just over the border in West Yorkshire.”

Grace studied the thoughtful look on Barry’s face as he dropped silent. She could almost hear the cogs turning over inside his head. Then he raised a finger.

“I remember the gist of it now. A local peeping-tom out looking for couples having sex in a well known lovers’ lane heard a girl screaming and from what I can recall he either shouted or dashed towards the sound. Anyway the next thing he saw was a young man with a small dog sprinting off along the lane. He guessed something had gone off and started looking around where he had heard the screaming coming from, and that’s when he came across the body of a teenage girl who had been beaten and strangled.”

Barry dropped his eyes down to his desk deep in thought. “I think it was South Kirby way, just outside our Force area,” he continued, “I can remember seeing an e-fit of the suspect, but it wasn’t a good one and I know that Gabriel Wild was interviewed as part of the enquiry, but I never got the end result. I’m not sure if it was ever detected or not because it was West Yorks’ job, but I can make a quick phone call to one of my old buddies from there and get the heads up if you want?”

“Please if you wouldn’t mind Barry and I’ll make a brew.”

Five minutes later, sipping at her freshly brewed coffee, Grace caught the sound of Hunter’s voice outside in the corridor. As he entered the office she pushed herself up from her desk ready to greet him.

“Where were you last night when I needed you? I came back to the office from talking to a witness and it was like the Marie Celeste. I tried to ring you on your mobile but all I kept getting was your voicemail.”

“That’s because whilst you were downstairs in the interview room, me and Tony got called out to the hospital. Kirsty Evans came round yesterday afternoon. She knows who attacked her. It was a guy who took their school photographs. She knows him as Gabe.”

“What a coincidence,” Grace replied.

* * * * *

Avoiding the motorway Hunter took the A61, the less congested route into Wakefield. It was a good few years since he had travelled this road but as he passed certain landmarks the memories gave him a warm feeling. It seemed like yesterday, but he quickly recalled that it was in fact twelve years since he had made the regular twice weekly journey for a period of ten weeks to and from Detective Training School, which was situated in a side road on the edge of the city, and he just knew he would have to re-visit and view the centre before returning to Barnwell. He had had such a memorable experience learning there. He had returned to the district bursting with knowledge of the criminal law, and along the learning path had also made so many contacts with detectives from other forces, the length and breadth of England, which had proved extremely useful over the years.

As he slowed the car to join the crawling nose-to-tail traffic entering Wakefield he glanced across at Grace who he could see was still studying the notes she had made from her conversations with Gabriel Wild’s ex-partner the previous night and also Barry Newstead earlier that morning.

Together with the revelation from Kirsty Evans, Hunter knew this was the breakthrough they had been waiting for.

After Barry’s phone call to one of his old West Yorkshire colleagues Hunter had been given the telephone number of his counterpart in MIT in Wakefield. Immediately after morning briefing he had spoken with a Detective Sergeant Glen Deakins and arranged a meet at Wood Street police station situated in the centre of the city.

Following the Detective Sergeant’s instructions Hunter parked the unmarked police car in a multi storey car park and he and Grace walked the few hundred yards to the old red-bricked police station opposite the Law Courts.

Despite an attempt to give its foyer a contemporary makeover the waiting area still had that dark and gloomy feel typical of the Victorian era. Showing their warrant badges to the front-of-entrance clerk, Hunter and Grace took up seats which had been arranged along the front wall below two large sash windows, the bottom section of which held toughened and frosted glass. A pale sunlight had managed to penetrate and was lighting the dimness around them.

Biding his time Hunter coolly eyed the numerous framed force publicity posters adorning the walls and couldn’t help but smile, thinking cynically, as he read over the mission statements and modern day Whitehall spin which seemed to have even crept into the police service. ‘All this bullshit’, he said to himself, when what the public really wanted was cops on the streets.

Within a few minutes his attention was distracted by the sound of an electronic buzzer and a side door burst open. A tall, slim, steel-grey haired man appeared in the doorway. Wearing a two-piece pinstriped suit and sporting a good tanned complexion DS Glen Deakins looked more the typical business tycoon than an MIT detective. He greeted them and Hunter immediately recognised his strong Leeds dialect as he rolled his tongue around their names.