Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(76)

“Don’t forget to take your sweets,” she said, placing the bag on the table.

“Thanks, Mum. Next time you hear from me, it’ll be by phone.”

She nodded.

Almost home free, she thought to herself. If they knew about the sweets, they’d have taken them off me.

Enid was stopped at the body scanners on her way out and taken off into a side office for another body search.

Afterward, when she was dressed, she was taken toward the exit by the big female officer who had examined her.

She was still anxious. What was happening to Peter? At this very moment, had they found her note and the note from his Fan? The notes had the final details of their plan.

“If you could join the queue. I’ll leave you here,” said the woman, indicating the line of people waiting at the X-ray machines.

“After all that, you still need me to go through?” said Enid.

“Yes please, madam,” said the woman.

“You call me madam after shining your flashlight up my arse? Fuck you,” she snapped.

“I need you to moderate your language.”

“And why don’t you sit on this and spin,” said Enid, giving her the middle finger.

The woman gave her a hard stare and then walked off.

The line of staff and visitors already waiting gave Enid a wide berth as she went through the X-ray machines. The young lad with the thin hair and odd-shaped head checked her through.

“Your hearing aid—it’s in a different ear,” he said.

“What?”

He tapped the right side of his head. “Wasn’t it in the other ear the last time you visited?”

“You must be mistaken,” she said. She took her coat and her phone from the tray and hurried out. She was breathless with fear and excitement. She hoped that Peter was able to retrieve the note without being rumbled by the guards.



Peter knew something was up when four orderlies were waiting at the door of his cell. The plastic bag of sweets felt slick in his sweating hands.

“We need to conduct a body search, please, Peter,” said Terrell. “Is there anything you would like to tell us about before we do this?”

Peter shook his head.

One of the orderlies held out his hand, and Peter gave him the plastic bag. The strip search took twenty minutes, and it was conducted by the four officers, but the whole time, the plastic bag of sweets lay discarded on the bed, and they left without touching them again.

Peter waited twenty minutes until the corridor outside was empty; only then did he open the bag and find the two notes written to him.

His heart started to thump, this time with excitement. It was time to put his part of the plan in action.





43

The van bearing the logo of the Southwestern Electrical Company was parked up against the curb. It was a quiet street, lined on one side with several run-down terraces, three of which were boarded up, and on the other side there was an expanse of fenced-off scrubland with a low bricked windowless building that housed an electrical substation.

A streetlight was flickering on and off in the twilight. The Fan sat watching the empty street through a small mirrored window in the back of the van.

His preparations had been meticulous, and his method of tracking down his victims was taken directly from the Nine Elms Cannibal himself. Find a girl who has a routine. It’s the routine that leads her to you. After-school sports clubs attended by young women were a fertile ground. Sure, many of them had loving parents to pick them up, but he had found success by zeroing in on the poorer girls, the ones with the scholarships. They often had working parents and were forced to take the bus.

This was now the fourth victim, and even though he loved it all—the stalking, abduction, and killing—he was eager to get this one over and done with. He needed it out of the way for the final, most exciting part of his plan.

The van was borrowed from the family company, and Southwestern Electrical was one of many companies who leased vans from CM Logistics. He’d stocked it with everything he needed: a drawstring bag with a thin cord, a baton, duct tape, a fresh medical kit with hypodermic syringes and surgical gauze, a black balaclava, and leather gloves. He also had a fresh set of clothes—the uniform of a deliveryman working for the Southwestern Electrical Company. The number plates were fakes, registered to a stolen van. He hadn’t done the stealing, but the plates had been put up for sale on the black market. If the van was caught and identified on CCTV, it wouldn’t come back to him.

The final pieces of the kit he placed in the van were two glass vials of isoflurane. It was commonly used to sedate animals, and deliveries to veterinarians were not so closely monitored as controlled drugs delivered to the NHS and private health clinics.

There was movement outside, and he saw an old man enter the road, walking his dog.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath. The old man saw the van and stopped at the electrical substation. The Fan had forced the gate open to make it look as if the substation were being serviced. The old man looked inside and then back at the van. His dog started to sniff around, and he called it to heel. Then he came right up to the van and peered through the front window.

“Go on, fuck off,” the Fan growled. He craned his head to see the other end of the street. If she was coming now, he would have to call it off. Weeks of work would be fucked up and down the drain.