Shadows and Sins (The Falconer Files Book 13) Read online

  Tomlinson took his cue like a professional. ‘Do you think you could get her to bring in a punnet of cherries? I heard that she was very fond of them, and I quite fancy some too.’

  Carmichael held his breath at such outrageous cheek but Falconer, unexpectedly, took this remark very well and cocked an eyebrow at the younger man. He knew when someone was trying to get a rise out of him.

  ‘I hear they’re in very short supply round here, Constable. I doubt she’ll be able to find even one,’ and, whistling to himself, he left the office to head for the canteen.

  That evening he discussed the surprising developments of the day with Honey, who had come round to see how the case was going. She could have phoned, of course, but that wouldn’t have given her the opportunity to lead him by the hand back to their special spot in paradise which, in her mind, was right in the middle of his bed.

  After an omelette and salad, he explained his very busy day and how the questioning of their suspect – definitely the murderer – had gone. ‘What really twists my guts,’ he said, ‘is why? Why did he kill any of them – and I don’t somehow think he’s going to tell me. I wondered if you’d have a talk with him. Of course, Chivers won’t possibly agree to add your services to his budget…’

  ‘No worries. I’ll do this one as a personal favour to you, free, gratis, and on the house. This guy obviously has a severe mental problem and, from what you’ve told me about him, I consider him to be a serious risk to women, and think that he’ll kill again, for what that’s worth.’

  ‘Trouble is, he’s quite a good-looking man, and I can see vulnerable women being easily charmed by him. If we can obtain anymore proof that it was him, through further enquiries, I should be able to get the CPS to take us seriously. I want this man locked away, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s guilty.’

  ‘Maybe having me serve his crimes up to him as one giant course might move him to confront the totality of what he’s done. I think getting him to tell me why he committed the murders might also make things more real for him. The telling might inspire some emotional reaction.’

  ‘Glass of wine?’ asked Falconer, rising from his seat.

  ‘I’m terribly tired, actually,’ replied Honey, faking a yawn. ‘I think maybe we could do with an early night.’

  ‘By George, I think you’re right,’ replied the inspector, grinning with anticipation. No doubt the gilt would wear off the gingerbread with time but, for now, it was completely golden in his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Falconer and Honey walked into the temporary CID office together the next morning, there was a chorus of wolf whistles and ribald comments. ‘Behave yourselves!’ he barked in his usual tones, and faces fell, before his face split in a grin of delight at this approval from his team.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t bring any cherries with me,’ Honey said in a carrying voice, ‘but Harry here is all out of them.’ Tomlinson had the grace to blush. His boss was not like other men, who slept around on a casual basis, and he was glad he had not been considered to be crossing a line with his impertinent jokey comment of the day before. By God, but Dr Honey Dubois was a truly beautiful woman – and, if he was honest, Falconer wasn’t such a bad catch either. They made a handsome couple.

  ‘OK, listen up, everybody! This is the mental health expert I want to consult with regard to our Mr Perkins, and I’m going to get Dr Dubois to interview him with a female member of staff present. She has confided to me that there might be some things that our suspect might not be happy to talk about in the presence of other men.

  ‘When she’s finished her interview we can listen to the tape afterwards, if she manages to get to him. I’m just going with her now to arrange for the man himself to be brought to an interview room and summon a female officer. I’ll be back shortly.’

  He was a man of his word, but Honey did not return for hours, and when she did, she looked quite harrowed.

  ‘Did he talk about his motives? Did he even own up to what he’d done?’ asked the inspector, assuming that she hadn’t been battering her head against a brick wall all this time.

  ‘Yes and yes,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘And I definitely think he’s a public danger, even though he returned to his cell in tears. I think the truth of his actions has finally hit him, and your questioning yesterday,’ here she nodded at Falconer, ‘has made him acknowledge that it wasn’t just recreational or a game. They were real women, and not his playthings.’

  ‘Sit down and tell us,’ urged Falconer. ‘We’ve all worked on this case, and we could do with knowing what we were up against.’

  ‘I’ll just give you a quick run-down,’ she replied. ‘As with so many murders of this kind, it was all tied up with sex. When he asked Suzie Doidge’ – she consulted her brief notes for the name of the first victim – ‘out for a drink, he had no plans to hurt her, but he was rather hoping that she might put out on a first date. He had gathered that she was a lady of, shall we say, easy virtue, and he’d not had a partner for some time. I suppose you guys,’ she said with a twinkle, ‘after the welcome you gave Harry and I, would say that he was gagging for it.’ Here, she paused to an embarrassed silence.

  ‘The man had actually put a mattress in the back of his van. After he’d plied Suzie with alcohol, he didn’t drive her straight home, but took her to a secluded spot and enticed her into the back of the van. Apparently she was quite willing, but the man lost his erection before he could enter her, and she made the, in this case fatal, mistake of laughing. She was quite drunk.

  ‘When he couldn’t recapture the moment, and she carried on laughing, he said he just saw red and, in frustration, grabbed the first thing to hand, which happened to be a knife that he had in the van with a load of other tools. He stated that the next thing he knew, she was dead. He had to dump the body somewhere, and when he’d done that, in horror, he returned home and burnt the clothes on which he had sustained bloodstains and cleaned the inside of his van with bleach.’

  ‘And was that the pattern for all the murders?’

  ‘No, not really. But he found he couldn’t achieve an erection at all without the thought of violence, and he began to vent his sexual frustration with violence culminating in murder.

  ‘It’s probably best that the bodies weren’t in good condition, because he had to cause some injury when the women weren’t willing, but the sexual urge is very strong in some, and overcomes everything else. If it weren’t for the fact that the thought of killing them was his particular trigger, we would probably still be dealing with a series of rapes.’

  ‘It’s all on the tape, if you want to listen to it. If you don’t mind, though, I’d rather not go through it again quite so soon. I will tell you about the trophies, however. When he’d dumped Suzie Doidge’s body and got home he found he’d still got her handbag in the passenger seat-well of his van, and whenever he looked at it thereafter, he was able to relive his experience. When that wore off, he killed again.

  ‘When you found the first body, he panicked because he had all the handbags in his spare bedroom and took them off to some waste ground and buried them. By the way, you’ll find the handbag belonging to a Lincolnshire woman in along with the ones you found. You’ll have to pass that evidence on to the relevant police authority, but it looks like there’s a sixth victim buried on wasteland up there.

  ‘Do you think I could go get a coffee now? It was rather a sickening experience, even given my background with mental health problems.’

  ‘Thank you so much for your time, Dr Dubois,’ Falconer said. ‘I’ll have to get your interview cleared by Chivers to submit it as evidence, but if I tell him that you came in of your own accord without promise of a fee, perhaps he’ll relent and make you a payment for professional services, especially if it wraps up five murders.’

  ‘I really don’t care after what I’ve just listened to. That man needs taking off the streets, and I should advise you to put out a warning to all women to be careful whom th
ey employ to carry out repair or maintenance works on their homes, if they’re on their own. I’m going to get that coffee, then go home for a shower. I feel soiled.’

  Perkins signed a statement of confession that afternoon, and Falconer went to see the superintendent, to keep him up to date. It would appear that the good news had preceded his visit, for he found the superior officer in a very good mood, anticipating the glory that would, no doubt, be heaped on his head. So happy was he that he would not have to keep on the extra DCs any longer, or allow anymore of his precious budget on the case, that he agreed to make the minimum payment to Dr Dubois and confirm that she had been employed professionally for her services.

  ‘Good work, Inspector. It may have cost a packet to solve this one, but at least it’s not going to cost anymore on investigation. I know we’ve used Dr Dubois’ services before, but I’d forgotten exactly how good she was. Tell your team well done from me. Now, get on with whatever you do in that office of yours.’

  He really didn’t remember what it had been like to be actively involved in an investigation, thought Falconer, as he went back downstairs to the office to tell the extra men they could now return to their home forces. It would just be the three of them again: him, Carmichael, and Tomlinson. He’d be quite relieved to see the status quo return.

  His sergeant nipped out of the station at lunchtime to visit his wife, and came back for the afternoon looking absolutely delighted. ‘Guess what, sir?’ he asked, as he picked up one of the chairs that would have to be returned to the corridor.

  ‘What, Carmichael?’

  ‘Kerry and the twins are coming home later today and I can send my mum back home.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘And,’ continued the very happy man, ‘I won’t have to put my slippers on at the door when I get in, or fold my newspaper and put it in the recycling box every night.’

  As it was just common sense to Falconer to follow these guidelines, he merely nodded in agreement, not quite understanding why his sergeant was so pleased at returning to what were obviously rather lax practices.

  With the crime clear-up rate considerably improved for the month, if not the year, the inspector left the station a happy man that night, but was very surprised to find Honey waiting for him by his car, having already phoned him to see what time he was leaving.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Harry, I need to ask you something,’ she said in a voice full of trepidation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  Detective Inspector Harry Falconer stood in the Market Darley police station car park, beside his Boxster, with his mouth wide open, so surprised he couldn’t speak.

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  Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Frazer

  Published by Accent Press 2016

  The right of Andrea Frazer to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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  These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.