Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(55)

‘He wipes it with a cloth, conveniently taken from his pocket. He stashes the knife in the pocket with the cloth, and then immediately turns to his right, leaving the shot.’ The team around Erika was silent. ‘I’ve lost him after that; there’s no CCTV in the residential area. He could have got in a car out of shot, or gone into a house; we don’t know.’

‘Run it back again,’ said Erika. She paused the video where the man in the gas mask emerged from the gate, and for a moment there was a clear view of the mask. She got up and went over to her desk, where she had a copy of the note sent to Joseph Pitkin. She held it up against the screen, looking at the hand-drawn gas mask in black biro ink.

‘Does this look like a similar kind of gas mask?’ she said.

‘I don’t know, it’s perhaps an old military gas mask,’ said McGorry.

‘We need to go back over the e-fit images given by the people who were attacked. And if there aren’t any, we need to go back and get them to work with an e-fit artist. Also, now we have this CCTV with the date and time stamp we could concentrate on a new door-to-door in the houses overlooking Marissa’s, in case anyone saw anything. This is great work.’

‘I was working with Kay,’ he said, grinning at her. One of the phones started ringing in the background and Moss hurried over to answer it.

‘This is good work, both of you.’

‘Boss,’ said Moss, holding her hand over her phone. ‘There’s been another attack by the man in the gas mask, in West Norwood, early this morning. A young lad on his way to work.’





Thirty-Seven





Jason Bates had been taken by police to the SARC, the Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Camberwell. Erika drove alone to the centre, and arrived there late afternoon. It was a small, nondescript building off the main road. Erika was met by a big burly police officer with a thick beard at an unmarked door at the side of the building.

‘Have you managed to take any evidence?’ asked Erika.

‘Yes, he’s already been examined; we’ve taken swabs and samples.’

‘Did you manage to get anything workable?’

‘Blood.’

Erika nodded; she couldn’t let her enthusiasm show.

‘Can I talk to him?’

‘The SIO of this case is with him now; he’s been through a terrible ordeal. He’s deeply traumatised.’

‘I know, but the murder case I’m working on has just crossed over with this.’

He nodded. ‘Wait here a moment, please.’

Erika took a seat on a small bench in the long corridor. The officer went through a door marked ‘Initial Room’, which was a forensically safe examination room: a sterile space with wipe-clean plastic surfaces so that there could be no possible contamination of evidence.

Erika looked around the corridor. There were pictures of a sunny meadow and of a few sacks of brightly coloured oriental spices that had been hung in an attempt to dilute the clinical atmosphere. The door opened and the police officer emerged with DCI Peter Farley, a middle-aged man with greying hair. Erika showed her warrant card.

‘Hi Erika, good to meet you,’ he said. She followed him into the small room, which again had been unsuccessfully disguised with posters and pot plants.

A nurse sat with a young lad who had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His bare feet poked out of the bottom of a long paper gown. There was an untouched cup of tea beside him. He was slight, with strawberry-blond hair and pale eyebrows. His left eye bloomed with red where a blood vessel had burst. His lip was cut and his nose was crusted with blood. His eyes had black bruises. He shifted in his seat painfully.

‘This is Erika; she’s my colleague,’ said Peter.

Jason stared ahead and nodded.

‘What can you tell me about the person who did this?’ asked Erika.

Jason swallowed with difficulty and winced. ‘He was tall. I’m five nine. I think he was taller than me. He wore a gas mask.’

‘Can you describe it?’

Erika listened, waiting for him to mention the white squares painted on the breathing drum. He did. He went on to describe what had happened, how the attacker’s mask had almost come off his head and how he’d cut himself on the glass in the door frame.

‘This is where we got the DNA blood swab,’ said Peter.

Jason went on, ‘He, he forced himself on… He…’ A tear formed in his bloodshot eyes and ran down his cheek. Erika went to take his hand but he pulled it away. ‘He put his, the mask, close to my face. I saw his eyes, they were dark and small, and the whites… I could really see the whites around his eyes. He then… He raped me.’ He started to gag and retch and bent over and gripped his stomach. The nurse pulled out a tissue and gave it to him to wipe his mouth.

‘We should stop there,’ she said to Erika.

‘No,’ said Jason, wiping his mouth and scrunching the tissue up into a ball. ‘I want to talk to her.’

The nurse nodded.

‘Thank you, Jason. I can understand this is hard for you,’ said Erika.

‘You don’t understand… The sick bastard put on a condom.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘He was well-built, strong.’ He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head, not believing that this was happening.