Cold as Ice (Willis/Carter #2)(59)

‘We could be looking at several other victims here,’ said Carter.

‘If he’s been holding Pauline Murphy all this time it must have crossed over with Emily Styles. He must be able to hold more than one woman at once.’

‘Where’s he been, Robbo?’ said Bowie. ‘Find out. Trace similar crimes and let’s get a lead on him.’

‘I’m pretty sure he’s not in our system,’ answered Robbo. ‘Because he has definitely left forensic evidence on Pauline Murphy and he doesn’t care; he didn’t try to dispose of the body in such a way that it wouldn’t surface – the opposite. Plus, this time we have a witness and he’s calling the victim’s family to add to his game.’

‘Have we had any luck in tracing the calls?’ asked Bowie.

Carter answered: ‘No, Sir. I don’t think we will either, not unless he calls from a different phone. It’s not a contract phone. He never stays on the phone long enough.’

‘Well, then at least the phone calls give us an insight into him.’

‘Yes, Sir, if we listen to this . . .’

Carter pressed a button on Robbo’s laptop and the deep distorted voice of Hawk filled the breathless office. ‘Tracy? Are you listening to me?’ Carter paused it as Hawk began reciting the nursery rhyme about Baby Bunting.

‘Skin a rabbit. Hawk mentions skinning and that’s what he did to Pauline Murphy.’

Carter resumed play and screams from somewhere primeval filled the office. Jeanie flinched. She wished she hadn’t heard it. The sound of the woman screaming would stay in her memory banks, to be brought back on dark nights when she couldn’t sleep, or even worse when she was asleep and she couldn’t stop it coming. Jeanie seemed to be collecting bad memories in a nightmare scrapbook. But this would be nothing to what poor Tracy was having to deal with. It took someone with enormous strength to handle that.

‘He didn’t ring Emily Styles’ parents,’ said Carter. ‘He didn’t ring Pauline Murphy’s. He’s getting brazen, bold, reckless. He feels a connection to Tracy – I think we should use it. We have nothing to lose. I know Tracy has agreed to go on television and appeal directly to him. I think if he puts a face to Tracy, stripped bare, he might relent. He wants to play God, so we can appeal to that side of him – it’s all within his control. Let her go.’

Bowie was thinking it through: ‘We need to word it just right. Robbo?’ He looked across at Robbo who nodded.

‘I agree. It can’t make it worse. It might work for us. Things are different this time. Tracy seems to be significant. This time Hawk felt secure enough to take his victim from her home, in full view of Danielle’s son Jackson. Why? Maybe because Jackson has Down’s syndrome and our killer doesn’t think he’ll be able to remember things accurately enough to help. Maybe because he’s grown over-confident.’

Bowie shifted his perch on the desk, threw his coffee cup away and turned to Jeanie, who stood ready to speak.

‘First of all I want to clarify the position on Jackson’s abilities. He has learning difficulties but he’s bright. He is on the higher ability scale. I’ve learnt that he can tell right from wrong. He can count. He can draw really well for his age. There is nothing stopping us getting just as much information about what happened to his mum from Jackson as from any other kid of his age. And that’s the thing – he’s only four.’ Jeanie waited whilst Carter stepped outside to take a message from an officer from Archway police station. He apologized when he returned and said: ‘Whoever else is in the frame to be Hawk, Danielle Foster’s boyfriend Niall Manson is definitely out of it. He was killed yesterday afternoon. Someone dragged him down Balls Pond Road, left his head by the kebab shop and his body next to the Kenyos two-hour dry-cleaning shop. We’ve put up a roadblock to ask for help but I doubt his death has much to do with Danielle. He was a hit waiting to happen.’

He nodded to Jeanie to continue.

‘I believe we are slowly unravelling a description of the man who took Jackson’s mother and who he says his mother was shouting at and trying to get out of the house. As far as Jackson understands, the man is white, he has dark hair. But the most significant thing is that Jackson saw the same man when Scruffy the family pet was attacked. The way Jackson describes both the man who took his mummy away and the man who set the dog on fire is that he looks like the cartoon character “Daddy Pig”. This is a well-known character in a cartoon called Peppa Pig. The thing to say about this character is that he has round, black-rimmed glasses, designer stubble. He wears a T-shirt type of thing – usually turquoise, sometimes purple. He has a small smile.’

‘Do you have a picture?’ asked Bowie.

‘Yes.’ Jeanie tapped on her keyboard and brought up an image of Daddy Pig, which was shared with the other PCs in the room.

‘He has a sneaky-looking smile,’ Ebony said. ‘And the glasses are really fashionable now.

Jeanie looked across at Ebony and smiled gratefully. She’d worried unnecessarily about looking stupid.

Bowie stood up from his perch on the edge of the desk at the far side of the office across from Jeanie and Ebony.

‘Let’s presume Jackson is accurate and it is the same man. It’s Hawk. What does that mean to our investigation?’