“This is going to be a waste of time,” DS Rowan stated, who seemed to be growing even more agitated with each passing visit.

  “Possibly,” Farah answered with a shrug of her shoulders. “But those are Leah’s orders, so we’ve got to stick by them.”

  Jeff studied his partner, as though seeing her for the first time. “I’m surprised you’re still styling yourself as DI West’s champion,” he noted with confusion. He’d worked with DC Hussein for a long time and had mentored her before they both transferred to Bedford. The most important quality that he’d picked up on was her unbreakable sense of loyalty. She was willing to stick by Jeff thick and thin, even after he’d been wrongly accused of corruption.

  He couldn’t help but feel jealous at the possibility of that loyalty being transferred to DI West. “Don’t forget,” he added, reflecting on one of their recent cases. “If it weren’t for her mishandling that raid, you’d never have been taken hostage.” It was a low blow admittedly, but a necessary one considering that everyone’s opinions seemed to be shifting regarding the inspector. But Farah remained steadfast.

  “I don’t hold Leah responsible for that,” she fired back with strong assurance. “I knew the risks when I was going into the operation. And you know what, if I had to do it all over again, knowing where I would end up… I’d hope I’d make the same choice.”

  Jeff looked away, saddened by the words. She truly was one of the best coppers he’d ever worked with. It killed him that he had to lie to her like this. He remembered when he had slipped the message to the suspects. He’d suspected that Farah would be taken hostage, but he was in service to a higher authority.

  When she was safely recovered, save for a bout of trauma, Jeff had been tempted to call off the attack on Leah West. But he was in far too deep. And there would have been consequences for everyone had he pulled out.

  “She’s a good detective,” Farah continued, oblivious to the guilt Jeff was facing. “I’ve learned a lot from her in the last few months. You could too.”

  Jeff bristled at this. Deciding to change the subject, he asked, “So how many more of these places do you think we need to hit?”

  “Until we find something that sticks out,” Farah replied, clearly taking charge of the investigation despite the lower rank. “We need to look at comings and goings at all odd hours, especially if they correlate with the time of death of Caroline Lennox.”

  Jeff smiled at this. He liked to think he’d achieved a lot in his career. But perhaps his finest achievement wasn’t his undercover operations, but his mentoring of DC Hussein. He hoped that maybe she could be a better copper than he was.

  As they came up to the latest residence, a B&B based six miles from where Caroline’s body was found, Jeff tapped Farah on the shoulder and asked, “Promise me this. Don’t ever stop being the detective you are. I don’t want you to lose that idealistic streak.”

  “‘Course I won’t,” Farah replied with a smile.

  They looked up at the three-floor building. By their guess, it could be housing at least nine residents.

  They knocked on the door and waited patiently for somebody to open it. Finally, a middle-aged woman came to the door.

  “Can I help you both?” she asked with a scowl that made the detectives wonder how the manner was supposed to attract paying customers.

  Jeff and Farah held up their ID cards. “I’m Detective Sergeant Rowan, this is Detective Constable Hussein. We wanted to ask you some questions about your residents staying here.”

  The scowl remained in place. “Have any of them committed a crime of any kind?” she queried, hesitant from the police attention and looking over their shoulders to see if anyone else was watching them in the street.

  “We have reason to believe that someone is attacking and killing members of the Bedford public,” Jeff told her, deciding which details to give out. “We know that they’re not living in Bedford permanently, and we’ve been going through all the local hotels and B&Bs like yourself to see if you’ve noticed anything peculiar.”

  She opened the door. “You’d better come in,” she offered, not wanting to continue this conversation in public. “So, who exactly are you looking for?”

  Jeff went silent. He could only discuss so much without blowing his cover. So Farah spoke up instead. “We have reason to believe that it’s someone who’s staying in Bedford for at least a fortnight. Have you got any guests for that duration?”

  She half expected the landlady to say no, as everyone else had beforehand.

  But instead, the answer was, “Actually, there is someone who’s here for three weeks. A man called Andrew Fletcher.”

  Farah looked to her superior, silently wondering if that was a false name. Jeff simply shrugged. “Can you describe us to him?” she asked, taking out her notebook in case she needed to put out an alert for this man.

  “I’d say late thirties, early forties,” the woman answered, folding her arms, client confidentiality going out the window. “White, quite a slim build, often wore these loose-fitting jumpers. And he always looked constantly tired. As though he was working late shifts.”

  “Did he say what he was down here for?” Jeff asked, feeling nauseous with each nugget of information.

  “He said he was visiting family,” she responded, furrowing her brow. “I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just stay with them. But he said he needed to build bridges.”

  Jeff gulped. There was a sliver of truth in that.

  “How often do you see him?” Farah asked, working her way up to ask for his whereabouts on the night Caroline Lennox was murdered.

  “He spends a lot of time in his room mostly,” the woman explained, her imagination running wild with what he could be doing in the privacy of his own living space.

  “Does he have any odd comings and goings?” Farah asked, not noticing her partner looking increasingly uncomfortable. He’d been kept in the dark about the killer’s accommodation, for both of their protection.

  The woman had an instant reply to the question. “A few nights ago, he went out late, and said he needed to go and visit somebody in the hospital. I told him that I couldn’t wait up for him, and he asked me if he could borrow a key from me.”

  Farah’s eyes widened at this, catching the landlady off guard. “What do you think he was doing around that time?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

  “I’m sorry to have to say this to you,” Farah explained, with Jeff unable to muster any words. “But a woman was found murdered a few miles from this location.”

  * * *

  “Oh, my God,” the woman muttered, holding a hand over her mouth as she came to the silent revelation that she’d spent the last few nights hosting a dangerous killer.

  “Do you have a master key of any kind?” Farah queried, holding out her hand expectantly.

  “Yes, I do,” the woman replied, rummaging around her pockets and taking it out. “If you’d like to follow me.”

  They made their way up the narrow staircase, during which Farah asked, “You don’t have any idea where he might be right now?”

  “I have no idea,” the landlady replied as she clutched onto the railing, possibly the only thing keeping her upright after the shocking revelation. “He said he was going out for some shopping. He didn’t say when he’d be back.”

  “How long is he supposed to be staying in Bedford for?” the constable asked, wondering how long it would take for him to claim some more victims.

  “He said he wanted to stay in here for at least a month,” she replied, leaving the detectives to shudder at the possibility of the killer claiming some more victims in that time.

  Finally, they came to the room and the landlady opened the door. “This is him,” she explained, gesturing to them inside.

  They looked around the room. It was a little cramped, but it seemed to have all the basic requirements.

  Clothes had been placed in the wardrobe carefully, and the bed had been made. The resident of this room showed all the signs of being a neat freak.

  But that wasn’t what drew the detectives’ attention.

  Instead, they were looking at the array of computer equipment on the table, much of it alien to the pair.

  Sitting on top was a notebook facing down, opened to an unseen page. Pulling on a pair of gloves, Farah picked it up and turned it over.

  Inside the journal was a picture of Stephen Lennox.

  “This is our man,” Farah exclaimed, to her relief and Jeff’s unseen discomfort.

  13

  For Alec Prescott, there was nothing worse than an open wound. The lack of closure.

  He’d turned to crime from an early age, feeling like it was the only place where he could get some respect. He started out with small cons involving sleight of hand, nothing too fancy, but enough to pull the wool over people’s eyes. As he got older, his crimes became more and more ambitious and he was conning hundreds of thousands of pounds out of people.

  He never gave much thought to the devastation he left in his wake. As far as he was concerned, it was just a way of making easy money.

  Naturally, his family had been disgusted by him and disowned him.

  But his sister Kim? She had been an angel. She was forever exasperated by him but always held the faith that one day he could turn his life around. She was his morality chain. And indeed, there were moments where he found himself contemplating giving his life up, if only for her sake.

  And then she disappeared. There was no saying where she’d gone; she hadn’t left a note. He’d turned their hometown upside down trying to find her. Alec tried to tell himself that she would turn up.

  But she wasn’t there the next morning. Or the next. Or the next six months.

  He’d been down that police station so many times asking for updates on her case, and at first, they’d been sympathetic for a few minutes before they realised who he was and turned him away with the same disdain they’d show a cockroach.

  Then one day, he got a call out of the blue from Kim, asking for his help, saying that she was in trouble and needed money. That she’d fallen in with some bad people and needed help.

  And Alec would have done anything for his sister. So, he scraped together all of his life savings and transferred it into an account, hoping that that might prompt her to show herself.

  But she didn’t. Days went by and there was no sign of her. Nothing to indicate she was even alive save for the conversations over the phone.

  And then she called him again, asking for more money. But this time, Alec was wise to the act. He arranged for a meeting place with his sister to deliver the money.

  And that’s when he saw his extorter. He should have known that one day his lifestyle was going to catch up with him.

  It was one of his old marks that he’d conned out of his life savings.

  He’d followed the man to his home and confronted him. The former mark seemed unafraid in the face of Alec’s accusations. When Alec asked what he’d done with his sister, the man simply responded, “I have no idea what happened to your sister. I just wanted you to know what it was like to get your hopes up.”

  At that point, something inside Alec snapped. He took the man’s head in his hands and bashed it against the radiator repeatedly until all he was doing was smashing wet chunks of bone against the metal, so he stopped.

  It was only when he started to calm down from the rush of adrenaline that he could appreciate the con. It had been well thought out, and he’d certainly been suckered into it. If it weren’t for the fact that he was the target, then he might have ever applauded the former mark.

  He searched through the house and found the audio software that had been used to capture Kim’s voice. He’d taken audio clips from a speech Kim had given online that’d been recorded and used it to recapture her voice in perfect detail.

  Suddenly, after thinking of how his life was over, a wealth of possibilities opened up to Alec. This could be the biggest con he’d ever carried out.

  Once he’d managed to master the software, he started travelling around for potential targets.

  Alec had never been more grateful to people for their lacklustre privacy settings, discovering that people who posted their entire lives online were good targets. And it was easy to tell who’d gone missing based on the flood of Facebook messages that said, ‘we miss you’ and ‘taken from us too soon.’

  He just had to find the ones who took to the social networks to plaster their personalities to anyone who’d listen.

  His first victim was a woman who’d lost her daughter. He had to make sure there were enough holes in the case so that she could consider that maybe her daughter had returned from the dead. She’d hitched a ride out of the town and never looked back. She might have been dead. But Alec didn’t care either way.

  He was able to synthesise her voice and spoke in the panicked tone her mother was accustomed to when she was in trouble, and he’d made the necessary requests for money, keeping it small at first so as not to attract suspicion. He’d hoped to get as much out of the mother as possible.

  But she’d grown wise to his act eventually.

  In hindsight, that was his biggest mistake. Having been on the right end of a con, he should have picked up on the anger. She’d stabbed him with a kitchen knife three times in the abdomen before he could overpower her. He stabbed her over and over, even after she was long dead, just to make sure she wasn’t going to get back up. And then, he had to muster the energy to leave the crime scene before anyone else could happen upon it.

  He couldn’t go to a hospital, not without drawing unnecessary attention. So, he’d patched himself up as best he could. But he’d have those scars for the rest of his life. In some ways, he wore them as a badge of honour, reminding him to never let his guard down again.

  He couldn’t afford to be sloppy. And that’s when he realised the most recurring mistake he’d made throughout his career.

  He’d left his marks alive. He’d allowed them to fight back.

  He’d have to be more thorough in the future.

  So, his methodology soon became scouting out people who lost someone years ago. Long enough for time to pass and for the police to back off from the case, but not so long that they still wouldn’t hold out for reconciliation.

  Once he found a target, he’d move to the area, and over the process of a month commence his campaign, getting as much money as possible out of them. And the moment it looked like they weren’t falling for him, he’d lure them to an isolated location and then kill them. He no longer cared about leaving anything for the police to find. As far as they were concerned, it was a vindictive relative coming back from the dead.

  He didn’t worry about police attention.

  But he did attract the wrong kind of attention.

  He pulled off a con on an associate of an associate and had arranged to collect the money from a warehouse.

  But he’d been ambushed, had a bag placed over his head, and was taken away.

  When he woke up, Alec had been hanging upside down, his hands bound behind him.

  And the man he’d tried to con walked over him, holding a large butcher knife. “You know,” he began, admiring the shining blade which had clearly just been sharpened. “Anyone else tried to pull that shit on me, and I’d gut them like a pig. And you wouldn’t be the first, believe me.”

  Alec tried to quieten the ringing in his ears. He’d cheated death before. Surely, he could do so again.

  “I had a look at some of the equipment in your bag of tricks,” he continued, placing the blade down, giving the conman a fleeting reprieve. “And I was very impressed with what you were able to pull off. You’ve been at this for some time, haven’t you? Long enough to avoid police detection.”

  “That’s true,” Alec replied, trying to sound boastful. “They have no idea I even exist.”

  “That’s actually quite a useful trick to possess,” the man continued silkily, looking over the equipment that’d been brought into the room for him. “You know your luck’s going to run out sooner or later, don’t you? Take it from someone who’s been there. No matter how many people you hide behind, how many fronts you hide behind, the wrong kind of detective will be able to ruin you.”

  Feeling brave, Alec asked, “I assume you’re speaking from experience?”

  Rather than answer, the man continued, “I should, on principle, kill you. As you said, the police don’t know you exist. And I can’t imagine they will put much effort into finding out who you are. You will be just another John Doe.”

  “So, why haven’t you killed me?” the conman asked, feeling the blood going to his head.

  “I’m willing to offer you a job,” the man explained, taking a stool and sitting in front of the man hanging upside-down until they were at eye level. “I want to give you the chance to put your skills to good use. You’ll be very well compensated for your efforts, of course. And you’re welcome to keep whatever money you can squeeze out of those gullible fools.”

  “Fools?” Alec asked, taken aback by the plural.

  “Yes, I want you to target at least three people in Bedford,” the man replied plainly, as though the entire session was a casual job interview.

  “Three people!?” Alec exclaimed, unable to contain his shock. “I’ve never done three people in the same area! The police will be all over me!”

  “I won’t deny, I’m asking you to take a huge risk,” the man explained, as though he hadn’t heard anything the conman had just said. “But the way I see it, you have two choices: you can either take the deal and come away with more money than you know what to do with, or you can die here and they won’t even find what’s left of you. I’m guessing you have a preference?”

  Though the choice was obvious, Alec couldn’t help but see the appeal of taking on such a task. It would be his greatest challenge and could set him up for new heights if he pulled it off.

 

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