Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(19)

Ned’s breath was loud and nasal as he reached down and fumbled along the neatly stacked letters, dislodging one of the piles.

“On the bottom! There!” snapped the woman, grabbing his wrist and placing his hand on Peter’s pile of letters. Ned picked them up and handed them through the hatch.

“Thanks, Ned.”

“Bye-bye,” said Ned, grinning with a truly gruesome set of broken, brown teeth.

“Bye-bye, bye,” muttered Peter as the hatch slammed shut.

He went back to his bed and sifted through the post. As usual it had been opened by the hospital, checked, and badly stuffed back into the envelopes.

There was a letter from Sister Assumpta, a nun who had been writing to him from her convent in Scotland for several years. She wanted to know if he liked the bathrobe she’d sent him and was asking for his shoe size because she’d found a set of matching slippers on Amazon. She finished the letter by offering up prayers for his soul. The rest of the correspondence was tedious to Peter: a request from a writer to supply a quote for his true crime book; a man and a woman, writing separately, to say they were in love with him; and somehow his name had found its way onto a Reader’s Digest mailing list.

He had written to Kate only once. A long letter during a weak moment when he was on remand awaiting sentencing. He had heard she was carrying his child, and he asked her to keep it. He also asked to be part of its life.

He never heard back from her. The only information he gleaned was from his mother, Enid, and the press. He had never written to her again. Her rejection of what he felt was his genuine, heartfelt letter was a worse betrayal than discovering his crimes. A court injunction was in place which prevented Peter and Enid from contacting Jake or knowing his address. Of course, Enid knew people, and she had Jake’s address, not because she had any interest in Jake, but she wanted the upper hand on the authorities.

In two years’ time, Jake would be sixteen, and the court injunctions would expire. Peter knew Kate was a lost cause, but one day he would meet his son, and it would give him so much pleasure to turn him against her.

He went to the cell door and listened. The corridor was silent. He moved to the radiator in the corner, which was welded to the wall. The radiator had a large plastic dial fixed to it to regulate the temperature, and a few weeks ago, when he’d turned the dial, it had come away from its housing, the molded plastic shearing neatly off. It was a gift, having a place to hide things. Cells were searched meticulously every day.

Peter slowly turned the radiator dial to the left and jiggled the plastic, and it came away. He picked up his reading glasses and, using the stem, fished around inside the housing. He turned the dial over in his hand, and a small capsule fell out. It was the dissolvable shell from a large Vitamin C capsule. He teased the two halves of the casing apart and, using his fingernails, took out a small roll of very thin paper, tightly bound. He put the vitamin casing back together and placed it on his pile of books. He sat on the bed, scooting up so he lay flat against the wall and couldn’t be seen if the hatch was opened. Carefully, he unrolled the paper. It was a thin, white, waxy paper. It came from one of those little machines that print off till rolls.

The small strip of paper was filled with neat black writing.

When I wrote to you before and told you I had killed a girl in your honor, you must have thought I was one of the sad, lonely fantasists who write to you.

I write again to tell you I am genuine. I am real.

I abducted and killed a second girl. Her name was Kaisha Smith, and I left her body close to the river near Hunter’s Tor on Dartmoor.

Very soon this will be reported in the press.

I continue in your footsteps and hope to be worthy of you. Please keep our lines of communication open. You won’t regret it. I have plans to continue your work, but I also want to make you happy. I will help you settle old scores, and ultimately, I will give you freedom.

A Fan



He’d read this letter many times in the past few days. His mother assured him that this “fan” was genuine, and she had met with him. It frustrated Peter that people outside the hospital gates could communicate in the blink of an eye, but he had to rely on letters and agonizingly slow response times.

He reached over, switched on his digital radio, and scrolled through the list of stations, just in time to hear the eight a.m. news headlines for BBC Radio Devon. He switched between Radio 4 and local radio every morning in the hope that something would be reported and what had been written in the letter from this “fan” would be confirmed. He listened to the full news reports, but there was nothing.

He switched off the radio and was rolling the letter back up tightly when he heard a trolley in the corridor. He couldn’t find the empty capsule on his pile of books, and he spent a frantic moment searching until he found it under the bed. It almost disintegrated in his sweaty hands as he pushed the note back inside. He only just got the radiator knob fitted back on before there was a crash and the hatch of his cell opened.

“Coffee,” cried the voice of the woman who delivered refreshments and meals. Peter went to the hatch and saw the lurid red plastic sippy cup. He was permitted one hot drink every morning, served in a sippy cup for safety. Although it seemed designed more as a way to humiliate him.

“Milk and no sugar?” he asked.

“Yes . . .”

“You don’t sound sure.”