Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

‘Have you been watching the news tonight?’

‘Are you talking about the Night Creeper snatch from outside my old nick? They’ve got wall-to-wall coverage on every news channel going. That’s your case, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I thought it was. I was actually going to phone you about it tomorrow. I thought you’d be too busy tonight. Any news on how the hunt for him’s going?’

‘Nothing yet,’ she answered, realizing that she should be talking to Dougie MacLeod about this. Yet she felt more comfortable talking it through with Mike, whom she knew would be more receptive to her theories. In spite of herself, she was also glad that he’d been thinking about phoning her to discuss the case. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

‘Kent and his abductors could be anywhere by now. But they’re incredible circumstances. What’s the story behind it?’

She told him everything that had happened since Kent’s arrest, starting with the initial interviews and his passionate denials; and then the huge reams of evidence against him, his iron-clad alibi for Roisín O’Neill’s murder, the attempted poisoning in the cell, the highly professional snatch and, finally, Roisín’s father’s suspicious death. ‘I’ve got a car with false plates that was spotted driving into Kevin O’Neill’s cul-de-sac on the night he died that doesn’t belong to anyone living there. I need a check on the ANPR to see where it is now.’

‘Can’t you get your boss to authorize that?’

‘Right now, no one’s interested in looking for weaknesses in our case against Kent. They’re just interested in finding him.’

‘Which I can understand.’

‘So can I, but there are plenty of other people out there looking for him. I need to find out why it happened. And in my opinion, the key’s Roisín.’

‘But how? You said yourself, there’s a huge amount of evidence against Andrew Kent.’

‘There is, and I’m sure he killed the other four women. But he didn’t kill Roisín. He couldn’t have done.’

She heard Mike yawning down the end of the line again. ‘Blimey, Tina, this is quite hard to get my head round at half one in the morning. Let me get up. I need a drink of water.’

She waited a couple of minutes, lighting her last cigarette of the night while she listened to him moving about in his flat.

‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘It’s clear you’ve got a theory. What is it?’

She suddenly felt uncharacteristically nervous about discussing it, just in case he dismissed it out of hand, although she knew in her heart he wouldn’t. He was one of the few people in the force who’d always believed in her. He thought she was good, and she needed that reassurance now. ‘I told you we found a lot of film footage of his crimes on Kent’s computer. Well, he didn’t just like to film himself killing the victims, he liked to film them in the days running up to the actual act itself. It was a form of cyber-stalking. He’d break into their homes, bypassing the alarm systems he’d installed, which was no problem for him to do, then set up hidden cameras so that he could watch them going about their daily lives, knowing he was going to snuff them out. It must have been quite a power trip for him.’

‘And there was film of Roisín on his laptop, was there?’

‘No. There was no footage at all of Roisín. But I think that was deliberate.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The way I see it, Kent had every intention of killing Roisín. He’d installed her alarm system, just like he had with all his other victims, and I believe he also broke into her apartment in the days before she was murdered, to set up hidden cameras. We have a witness who lived in the same block of flats who saw a man coming down the stairs from her apartment a couple of days earlier, and when we showed her Kent’s photo she thought that it might well be him.’

‘But not a definite ID?’

‘It’s been a long time, Mike, but she was sure enough for me. And it fits. I think he set up the camera, then before he had a chance to carry out his crime, his father died in Scotland and he had to go up there for the funeral. Except by the time he came back, Roisín was already dead. So someone else killed her.’

‘I still don’t quite get it, Tina. If the Night Creeper didn’t kill her, then who did?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But Andrew Kent knows.’

‘How?’

‘Because he filmed it. Don’t you see? The footage must have been on the camera he’d already installed.’

Mike Bolt exhaled loudly. ‘That’s some theory.’

‘It fits the facts, Mike. And right now, it’s the only one that does.’

‘But you said there was no footage on Kent’s laptop.’

This was where Tina knew her theory became tenuous. ‘I think he must have removed it for some reason.’

‘Why would he do that?’ asked Mike. ‘It’s not as if he was expecting to be caught. There’d be no point removing it.’

But she’d thought about that. ‘There was if he was blackmailing someone. Let’s say Kent filmed the murder and managed to find out who the murderer was. He then makes contact and demands money. At the same time he removes the footage from his laptop and keeps it safe somewhere. Think about it, Mike,’ she continued. ‘It would explain why he was broken out of prison. The person he was blackmailing would know that Kent possessed explosive knowledge about him, so he set up the abduction. And now he’s got Kent somewhere. He can find out where the incriminating evidence is, get rid of it, and then get rid of Kent. End of threat. End of story.’

Bolt was silent down the other end of the phone for what seemed like a long time. ‘But that means that the person he was blackmailing has to be someone with some major clout.’

‘We both know there are people out there who could have done it.’

‘There aren’t many of them though, are there? Have you got any idea who it might be?’

‘Not yet, but from Roisín’s phone records it looks like she had a lover, and two neighbours reported seeing an older man with silver hair leaving her flat. It’s possible he killed her.’

‘It’s possible, Tina,’ said Bolt after a long pause. ‘But if her lover killed her, how did he know to cover up the murder to look like the work of the Night Creeper? The Creeper’s MO was never public knowledge, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t. But Roisín’s murder was a definite cover-up. She was the only victim to be strangled; the hammer blows were delivered to her face post-mortem. I don’t know how the real murderer knew about the Creeper’s MO, but the fact is he did. At the moment, the most important thing is for us to find out who he is. Once we’ve done that, we can find Kent, although I’ve got a feeling he’s no longer alive.’

‘How can I help with that?’

‘I’ve got a mobile number that I think belongs to the killer. It’s a pay-as-you-go, and I’m pretty certain it’s been dead since Roisín’s murder, but if there’s any way we can find out who it belonged to. .’

‘That’s not going to be easy.’

‘The phone company’ll be able to triangulate the old calls made from it though, won’t they?’

‘Maybe, but that’s more your area of expertise.’

‘You’ve got the contacts though, Mike. Can you get it checked out? Urgently.’

‘You don’t ask for much, do you, Tina?’

‘It’ll help solve a major crime,’ she persisted, knowing that Bolt would help her.

He sighed again. ‘Well, I’m awake now. I’ll see what I can do.’

She thanked him, promising to make it up to him as soon as she could.

‘You always say that, but we only seem to talk when you need something. Other times, I don’t hear from you for months on end.’