The Career Killer Read online

  ‘But look,’ Matthews said, producing photocopies of Layla Morgan’s bank statements from a folder, ‘she’s got literally tens of thousands in all of these.’

  A quick glance at the statements confirmed it. Layla had been minted for a while. ‘Those statements are all well old, love. The most recent one is for just over two years ago. If you look at them in order, her bank balance has been in freefall ever since her parents popped their clogs.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she have any recent statements?’

  It was a good question. Why had Layla Morgan kept older bank statements, but not a single printout covering the last year or two?

  ‘Maybe she closed her account?’ Matthews suggested. ‘Should I ring around and see if any of the other banks will admit to having her as a customer?’

  ‘That’s not impossible,’ Knox said cautiously. ‘But if I was a betting woman – and I am – I’d say that she probably just switched to online banking.’

  It was the simplest explanation. Now Knox had to prove it. She was tempted to just call Layla’s bank and ask nicely. That might be a waste of her time. Banks like SQ Private Bank were notoriously secretive and guarded their client’s privacy like a tiger with a new-born cub.

  ‘We’re going to have to get a warrant, Georgie. Want to come down to the magistrates’ court with me?’

  Matthews beamed. ‘Sure!’

  Chapter 21: The Dream Team

  Knox and Matthews were off looking at what Layla Morgan had been up to in life in the hopes of tracking her whereabouts in the days leading up to her death so Elsie turned her attention to the first victim, Leonella “Nelly” Boileau. She’d asked Annie and Stryker to join her in a tiny breakout room two floors above the incident room. It was cramped but at least it had a window and a table large enough for four. Elsie got there first so she could sit facing the Thames while the other two were less fortunate in having their backs to the river.

  Annie had reviewed the forensics from the first crime scene. She had Fairbanks’ paper-thin report in front of her. She scowled as she riffled through it.

  ‘This,’ Annie said, ‘is a bodge job.’

  Her face was contorted into a sneer and she looked to Elsie for agreement; alas Elsie hadn’t yet read all the forensic reports. There were simply too many to deal with.

  ‘How so?’ Elsie asked.

  She shouldn’t have asked. Annie began to reel off the errors she felt Fairbanks’ team had committed when Nelly had been murdered. ‘He only authorised enough funding for a handful of DNA samples sent to the lab from the dress, he didn’t request a toxicology report on the victim’s blood, and no analysis of the victim’s phone was undertaken. They did the bare minimum and haven’t followed through. It’s like Fairbanks didn’t even care.’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Elsie said bluntly. ‘But we do. How can we make this right?’

  ‘Got a time machine?’

  It was, Elsie thought, an unfair shot across the bow. Mere days into taking ownership of the Boileau case and she was already being punished for Fairbanks’ failure to investigate properly. No wonder he hadn’t made progress. He’d done diddly squat.

  ‘I get it, you’re pissed off. I am too, but I didn’t run the first case. This isn’t on my shoulders or yours. We can’t undo what’s been done... Help me make it right. If we catch Layla’s murderer, we get justice for Nelly too so let’s focus on what we have got, not what’s been missed, and you can scream bloody murder at Fairbanks when we’ve caught the bastard who did this.’

  The chair screeched backwards as Annie stood to offer a handshake. She extended a handshake with a look so formal it almost made Elsie laugh. ‘Deal.’

  ‘Let’s run through what little they did get,’ Annie said once she had sat back down. She flipped up her laptop and spoke as if reading from her notes. ‘The body of Leonella Boileau was recovered quickly after death. The pathologist determined that she’d been stabbed in the heart with a short-bladed knife with a smooth edge. Unfortunately, the wound was too generic for that to give us anything useful and the scene of crime officers didn’t find a knife anywhere in the vicinity.’

  Sensing that Annie was about to run through page after page of notes, Elsie cut her off before her monotone reading could become too soporific. ‘Something we can use, please.’

  ‘I was getting there.’ Annie’s tone was terse. ‘Let me lay the groundwork first.’

  ‘What I think the boss was saying,’ Stryker said, ‘is that we’ve read the report so we don’t need a recap of absolutely everything. We just need to know what you think is salient.’

  Newly mollified, Annie closed the laptop and spoke more naturally. ‘The black dress that Nelly was wearing had DNA on it.’

  ‘Yep, I proved it matched the DNA sample on the wedding dress from St Dunstan,’ Stryker said. Now that they had a DNA match, the fibre evidence was irrelevant.

  Annie waved him off dismissively. ‘Not that.’

  He looked like he’d been slapped. ‘What then?’

  ‘There were multiple DNA samples on the black dress as well as hair from multiple women,’ Annie said. ‘It must have been worn a few times at least for the quantity of DNA transfer I found and it’s quite an unusual dress.’

  It wasn’t unusual for an off-the-peg item of clothing to have contact DNA on it. Dresses were worn, handled, bought, and returned all the time. This dress was much too nice for that sort of high street manhandling. Stryker looked from Annie to Elsie and back again; he clearly didn’t understand the significance of it.

  Elsie turned to him. ‘Annie’s report mentioned the type of lace it was made of,’ she said. ‘If you Google “Leavers Lace”, you’ll see how ridiculously expensive it is. It’s only produced in minuscule quantities.’ She turned back to Annie to check that the forensic specialist was on the same page as her. ‘Is it fair to conclude it’s a one-off bespoke piece?’

  ‘I think so,’ Annie said. ‘Perhaps if you call the designer, you might be able to trace the person who bought or commissioned it.’

  It was a good shout. It was an easy task for Elsie to delegate. ‘Stryker, get on that now.’

  ‘Okay, boss,’ Stryker said. ‘But before I go, can I run you through something?’

  Elsie’s eyes had begun to shut on their own accord, the tiredness circling once more. She could do with bringing this meeting to a close and going home. The worse the fatigue was, the shorter her fuse. Every little thing niggled and she’d be best off hiding on her own away from the world. As she couldn’t do that, she nodded. ‘Have at it.’

  Stryker folded down Annie’s laptop to make room for his own and perched it precariously at the very end of the table where all three of them could see it. It showed a large map of London zoomed in so that St Dunstan was at the centre. ‘I’ve been mapping routes in and out of both crime scenes by car. The killer had to have driven in as there’s no other way to plausibly move a body into central London, and a witness saw a blue or black car speeding away from St Dunstan.’

  ‘Hold on! There’s a witness? What witness? Why am I just hearing about this now?’

  ‘Didn’t seem important, boss,’ Stryker said. ‘All he heard was a car boot bang and a blue or black car speeding off. No big deal.’

  She stood up and jerked a thumb towards the hallway. ‘Outside. Now.’

  When they were outside, Elsie shut the door behind them and motioned for him to follow her down the corridor out of Annie’s earshot, and then let rip.

  Her voice was low, but there was no mistaking the venom in her tone. Flecks of spittle flew from her mouth as she went at him, all guns blazing. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Stryker? How on earth is a witness not important?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t witness much, did he? It was only a car and he didn’t even see it for more than a moment.’

  His smug grin disappeared at the sight of her unrelenting scowl. ‘That’s not for you to decide,’ she said tersely. ‘I want a full statement from you abou
t your encounter with the witness on HOLMES by tomorrow morning – on your own time, not mine – and if you ever do this again, you’re out. Now find out who bought that dress and how it ended up on the victim.’

  ‘But boss, what about—’

  ‘No buts,’ she said. ‘Get out of my sight.’

  She spun on her heel and headed back inside.

  Chapter 22: Dirty Money

  She knew it was wrong. She knew she shouldn’t. She was doing it anyway.

  The offer had been too tempting. Five thousand pounds and only she would ever know about it. A life-changing sum and all for a bit of information that was going to come out sooner or later anyway. The Lady Killer would be in the news whether or not she handed over the folder that was ensconced in the bottom of her handbag.

  As she surfaced at Holborn Underground Station, she pushed her way past the lawyers, tourists and students jockeying for access to the Central and Piccadilly lines, and then made a swift turn to the east along High Holborn. Lost in her thoughts, she nearly walked straight into the market seller who camped outside Krispy Kreme to sell fruit and veg to passers-by. The journalist she was on her way to meet had asked her to swing by The Impartial’s glass-fronted office building on Fleet Street. That request was much too risky and so they’d compromised on meeting in a nearby pub.

  The Knights Templar was situated halfway down Chancery Lane where legal London merged with the newspaper publishers based to the south. She made it in record time, her heart thumping. The pub was part of the infamously cheap Wetherspoons chain and it was heaving. Judging by the age of the crowd, about half of the clientele were students. Baby-faced drinkers crowded around the bar with a smattering of suited and booted professionals, mostly men, sprinkled among them.

  Vaulted ceilings gave the place an airy, upmarket feel. At the end of the bar farthest from the entrance, grand stairs led to a raised area away from the crowds clamouring for their next round of drinks. She made a beeline for the back and found herself poking her head into little nooks and crannies. At the very back, sitting with his back to the wall, where he sat tapping his foot impatiently, she found her contact.

  ‘Mr Porter?’ she asked. Her tone was tentative and she glanced around furtively as if expecting to be ambushed by Professional Standards at any moment.

  Porter nodded and gestured for her to take a seat. ‘What’ve you got for me?’

  With a slender, manicured hand, she unclipped her handbag and pulled the folder free. Wordlessly, she slid it over to him. The surface of the table was sticky with the residue of cheap beer and even cheaper food.

  He pushed his glasses up to focus through the lower half of his varifocals and then thumbed through the papers in a plodding, meticulous way. It seemed as if Porter was actually reading rather than merely scanning the contents. All the gory details were in there. The autopsy reports for both victims, forensic proof that it was a serial and even a copy of the HOLMES case file.

  ‘Two and a half.’

  She reached out to grab the folder back, but he pulled it away from her.

  ‘We agreed on five.’

  ‘I said it was worth up to five thousand,’ Porter smiled. ‘This isn’t.’

  ‘I need five.’

  ‘Then I want more. These notes indicate it’s a serial. He’s not done yet; he’s going to strike again. I want everything before it leaks. Get me that and then you’ll get the rest.’

  He stood, delved into his pocket, and tossed a jiffy bag towards her. She caught it, the heft of a wodge of notes landing in her outstretched palm.

  ‘Not that you’ve got much choice now, have you darlin’?’ Porter said with a smirk. ‘If you want me to keep this little exchange quiet, you’d best keep sending information my way.’

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 23: Ring Ring

  Stryker sang cheerfully as he fetched Layla Morgan’s iPhone from the evidence locker. Dozens of cameras watched his every move from every conceivable direction as he scrawled an illegible squiggle on the release form in front of him. Where West Yorkshire Police had used a secure but informal evidence locker, the Met was professional and businesslike throughout. The man behind the counter, whose name tag read Amit Malhotra, scrunched up his face in disapproval at the Disney tune.

  Not even the hint of a smile. The morose evidence clerk slid the bag containing Layla’s phone across the opening in the plate glass.

  ‘Cheers, Amit. Choir practice same time next week? I’m thinking me, you, and chubby old Fairbanks. With my baritone and your monotone, we could sing some glorious harmonies – if you ever find your voice that is.’

  Before Amit could reply, Stryker was gone, his laughter echoing back down the corridor behind him as he left Amit scowling at his back. He leapt up the stairs two at a time until he found himself in the seclusion of the breakout room. He was on the third floor, well away from the hustle and bustle of the incident room, and he had space to breathe, to think, and to try and get into Layla Morgan’s iPhone. He knew that the boss had already tried a few times. It wasn’t the victim’s birthday, nor was it 1234, 9876, or any of the other really common pin codes. He thought for a moment and then punched in 2308. The twenty-third of August had been her parents’ wedding anniversary. It seemed like a good shot.

  Immediately an error flashed up:

  iPhone is disabled

  Underneath that, in a smaller, all lowercase font, it read:

  try again in one hour

  ‘Bugger,’ Stryker cursed. Time to take a late lunch. He slipped the phone back into the evidence bag from whence it came and shoved the whole bag into his jacket pocket.

  AFTER A BRIEF SOJOURN to the open-air food market around the corner in Strutton Ground, Stryker returned to the office with his favourite lunch. He hadn’t expected to find the Middlesbrough-inspired delicacy anywhere in London and so he’d almost plumped for the melt-in-the-mouth pulled pork burrito that Elsie had recommended. The unmistakable ’boro twang of a stallholder touting for business had drawn him further in where he’d found it – Parmo.

  One bite was all it took to take him back to childhood. Breaded chicken had been slathered with a layer of gooey béchamel sauce and then topped with parmesan before being grilled until crispy. Heaven.

  It was so good that if he’d been at home, he’d have licked the packaging clean.

  ‘Damn, that smells bloody good!’ Knox said. ‘Wanna go halfsies?’

  He quickly snatched up a tissue from his desk and dabbed at the corner of his mouth. He hadn’t realised that he had an audience.

  ‘You snuck in quietly,’ he said over a mouthful of Parmo. ‘And no, I’m not sharing. Buy your own lunch. You still hiding from DCI Mabey?’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, Seb. You were gazing off into the distance as you ate and I stomped in with all the grace and elegance of DCI Fairbanks after four double bacon cheeseburgers and six pints of pale ale. What on earth is that monstrosity you’re eating anyway?’

  ‘Food of the gods, Knox, food of the gods. It’s Parmo. Think fried chicken meets lasagne. If you’re from the north and Parmo isn’t your go-to meal, you’re not a proper northerner.’

  ‘Thank fuck I’m not a northerner then,’ Knox said. ‘I’d rather not have a heart attack before I turn forty.’

  ‘Thought you already had,’ Stryker muttered. ‘What is it you want anyway?’

  ‘To tell you to hurry up and look busy. Mabey should be out of her meeting with the finance manager any moment now and, from what I saw through the window, she’s in a hell of a mood. I’m going to get out of her way before she starts yelling.’

  It was the perennial problem, money or the lack thereof. The less they had, the further it had to go. Everything got squeezed: longer hours, fewer lab tests, and more arguments with those holding the purse strings.

  ‘Our overtime will be fine though... right?’ He looked at her pleadingly as if it were her decision. She couldn’t resist teasing the newbie.

  Knox s
mirked. ‘Don’t count on it.’

  ‘What’ve you been up to?’

  ‘Just got back from the mags’,’ Knox said as she perched herself on the end of his desk. ‘Thought the mare wasn’t going to give me my warrant for a while. As if there was ever any doubt that we’d need to look at Layla’s bank records. I should have been in and out in minutes. Instead, she wasted ages lecturing me on privacy. Privacy in a murder investigation. Madness, eh, Seb?’

  He looked up at her. Knox was far too old to be a DS. He desperately wanted to ask why someone so obviously competent was beneath him in the pecking order. He didn’t dare.

  ‘So,’ he said instead, ‘what did you find out?’

  ‘Our victim didn’t have tuppence to rub together. Like I suspected, she’d been spending like a madwoman for years and it caught up with her in September. She’s been in debt since, and let me tell you, her lender is none too happy about it. When I told ’em that she didn’t even own the house, they went ballistic so I hung up the phone on ’em. Without a house to seize they’re left holding the bag for Layla Morgan’s debts. I think it was a point of pride for ’em, not that a few grand will dent their profits much.’

  ‘Where’s she been spending the dough?’

  She handed him a printout. ‘Take a gander.’

  She’d been spending money everywhere. There was the usual array of big-name shops – Harrods, Liberty London in Regent Street, Jimmy Choo, plus some more mundane purchases at the likes of Selfridges and John Lewis. The bigger problem was the clubs. Tens of thousands of pounds at the swankiest places in town: Cirque Le Soir, Raffles and Mahiki. Then there were the plethora of charges from Uber. Miss Layla Morgan thought herself too important to join the rest of London on the Underground or on the bus.