Heart of the Demon (D.S.Hunter Kerr) Read online

  “When was this?” asked Grace, as she quickly started scribbling some notes.

  “I’m sorry I can’t remember the exact day or even month. It would have been about a year before I left him, so you’re talking eight or nine years ago now. Why is that significant?”

  “I’m not sure at this stage.” Grace thought the timing could coincide with the disappearance of Claire Fisher but she also knew there were still a number of other girls outstanding in the missing from home files they had upstairs in the MIT Office.

  “Anyway after the bust-up he asked me to marry him, to show that he still loved me. I said yes thinking everything would be okay but within weeks of the marriage he was wanting to use the belt on me again and we just had row after row. I told him he was perverted and I’d had enough and he told me that if I left him he’d kill me and bury me where no one would be able to find me. A couple of weeks after that I packed what I could, and when his mother was out shopping, and he was at work, I left. I never got in touch with him again. I went to a refuge at first and didn’t even tell my parents where I was for fear he’d find me, and then they re-housed me to Sheffield and I’ve been there ever since.”

  “Besides the incidents you’ve told me about Rachel is there anything else about Gabriel’s character which you found to be unusual or different?”

  “Weird you mean?” She paused and ran a hand through her hair.

  Grace couldn’t help but notice its lack of style and the abundance of split-ends. She knew from her experience of dealing with domestic violence that this was a girl who had lost her self-esteem.

  “Well there were the pictures he kept in the briefcase of some of the girls he had photographed at school. And he also kept some local newspaper cuttings about girls going missing. I never told him I’d found them. I was too scared. That’s what’s made me come to you.”

  Grace could feel the hairs prickle at the back of her neck. “Anything else about him?”

  “He hates coppers – sorry police – he once told me he had been beaten up by a cop when he was a kid who had wanted him to confess to killing and cutting up a pet rabbit. He said the cop had been a close neighbour, a Mr Newstead.”

  That has to be Barry, Grace said to herself.

  For another half hour Grace back-tracked on everything Rachel had said, testing to see if there was anything that had been missed. She had taken copious notes in preparation for a formal statement, and though she tried her best to stay focussed on the important task in hand, from time-to-time her thoughts had drifted. She couldn’t help but bring to the front of her mind reflections of what might she might be facing within the next hour-or-so when she finally got home – late again.

  - ooOoo -

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  DAY THIRTY-THREE: 8th August.

  “Does the name Gabriel Wild mean anything to you?” Grace grabbed Barry Newstead’s attention the moment he had walked through the door. He was the first to enter the office, after her and she could hardly contain her excitement. She had to share with someone what she had learned late yesterday. Everyone had gone home by the time she had finished talking with Rachel Beddows and she had tried to get hold of Hunter before she left work but his mobile had been diverted to voicemail. It had been her intention to ring him later from her home but she thought better of it when she saw the faces of Robyn and Jade, who sent her on a guilt trip for missing their netball practice. She tried to remind herself that she had already put her career on hold on two occasions in order to bring up her daughters - that they were old enough to look after themselves and that this is what she needed to do for her own fulfilment. However, she still found herself apologising throughout the remainder of the evening, promising to do something or other with them at the weekend.

  “Don’t I get a good morning Barry how are you this fine day, instead of being quizzed about a little brat who once upon a time used to live near us?”

  “Don’t be such an old grouch. I got some information last night, which could end this enquiry. I hardly slept last night and look at me I’m as fresh as a daisy, not a miserable old sod like you.”

  “Less of the ‘old’ will you? Anyway what can’t wait long enough for me to even have my morning caffeine infusion?”

  “Gabriel Wild’s ex-wife came in late last night telling me she thinks he’s our killer. She gave me loads of examples and there’s no doubt a lot of what she told me could fit the profile of our murderer, but I checked him out on the Intelligence system and he’s got nothing at all recorded against him. She did mention however that he had had a bit of a run in with a Mr Newstead years ago when he was a teenager.”

  “A bit of a run in is an understatement,” Barry snapped, setting his lunch container down on his desk and then removing his coat. “He was a right little bloody tearaway, and a pervert to boot. He became the bane of my life.”

  “Tell me about him and then I’ll fill you in what his ex-wife told me.”

  “It really was a long time ago. I had just gone into CID when he turned up on my radar. He used to live a couple of doors down from us but I hardly noticed him as a youngster because whilst his dad was around he was a real polite kid. Then one day I remember his old man came home early from work and found his mother in bed with the guy from across the road. There was a hell of a bust up and he tried to throttle her. I was off duty doing the garden and could hear this commotion so I ran to their house and had to pull him off her. I managed to calm things down and I dealt with it there and then - like we used to in those days. I found out that a couple of days after the domestic he’d upped sticks and left. She was left to bring Gabriel up on her own.” His eyes drifted up to the ceiling momentarily. Returning his gaze he continued, “Over the next few years I kept getting complaints about him following girls and playing with himself in front of them and I can remember one neighbour catching him peeping through her ground floor bathroom window. I had words with him in front of his mother and I know she gave him a real good hiding for that.”

  He paused a second and started stroking his bushy moustache.

  “A few months after, I had to deal with him again. This time for giving a lad a right hammering. I think the lad had slagged off his mum. Well after that I used to see him hanging around the back of my house and when one day I told him to sling his hook he put two fingers up at me so I warmed his ear-hole for him.”

  She saw his expression harden.

  “About a week later I heard Sarah screaming early one morning from the garden. I dashed out wondering what on earth was happening and found parts of her pet rabbit had been nailed up on the Wendy house. It had been cut to pieces with a knife or something similar. I just knew it was that little bastard Gabriel and so I went straight to his house. I tried to get him to cough that he’d done it but his mother just kept covering for him. Anyway shortly after that they moved. She sold the house and the next thing I discovered was they had gone to a council house on the Tree Estate. I kept a watch out for him but that was the last I saw of him. What does his ex say about him?”

  Grace tried to contain her excitement as she re-iterated what Rachel Beddows had told her the previous evening. “I’m just waiting for Hunter to come in and then I’m going to feed it into morning briefing. Fancy a cuppa?” she finished.

  “Bloody hell Grace, that’s reminded me of something else involving him.” He peeled off his jumper and chucked it over the piled-up paperwork on his desk. “It must have been about ten years ago now but I’m sure that he was interviewed over a girl’s body that was discovered in some woods just over the border in West Yorkshire.”

  Grace studied the thoughtful look on Barry’s face as he dropped silent. She could almost hear the cogs turning over inside his head. Then he raised a finger.

  “I remember the gist of it now. A local peeping-tom out looking for couples having sex in a well known lovers’ lane heard a girl screaming and from what I can recall he either shouted or dashed towards the sound. Anyway the next thing he saw was
a young man with a small dog sprinting off along the lane. He guessed something had gone off and started looking around where he had heard the screaming coming from, and that’s when he came across the body of a teenage girl who had been beaten and strangled.”

  Barry dropped his eyes down to his desk deep in thought. “I think it was South Kirby way, just outside our Force area,” he continued, “I can remember seeing an e-fit of the suspect, but it wasn’t a good one and I know that Gabriel Wild was interviewed as part of the enquiry, but I never got the end result. I’m not sure if it was ever detected or not because it was West Yorks’ job, but I can make a quick phone call to one of my old buddies from there and get the heads up if you want?”

  “Please if you wouldn’t mind Barry and I’ll make a brew.”

  Five minutes later, sipping at her freshly brewed coffee, Grace caught the sound of Hunter’s voice outside in the corridor. As he entered the office she pushed herself up from her desk ready to greet him.

  “Where were you last night when I needed you? I came back to the office from talking to a witness and it was like the Marie Celeste. I tried to ring you on your mobile but all I kept getting was your voicemail.”

  “That’s because whilst you were downstairs in the interview room, me and Tony got called out to the hospital. Kirsty Evans came round yesterday afternoon. She knows who attacked her. It was a guy who took their school photographs. She knows him as Gabe.”

  “What a coincidence,” Grace replied.

  * * * * *

  Avoiding the motorway Hunter took the A61, the less congested route into Wakefield. It was a good few years since he had travelled this road but as he passed certain landmarks the memories gave him a warm feeling. It seemed like yesterday, but he quickly recalled that it was in fact twelve years since he had made the regular twice weekly journey for a period of ten weeks to and from Detective Training School, which was situated in a side road on the edge of the city, and he just knew he would have to re-visit and view the centre before returning to Barnwell. He had had such a memorable experience learning there. He had returned to the district bursting with knowledge of the criminal law, and along the learning path had also made so many contacts with detectives from other forces, the length and breadth of England, which had proved extremely useful over the years.

  As he slowed the car to join the crawling nose-to-tail traffic entering Wakefield he glanced across at Grace who he could see was still studying the notes she had made from her conversations with Gabriel Wild’s ex-partner the previous night and also Barry Newstead earlier that morning.

  Together with the revelation from Kirsty Evans, Hunter knew this was the breakthrough they had been waiting for.

  After Barry’s phone call to one of his old West Yorkshire colleagues Hunter had been given the telephone number of his counterpart in MIT in Wakefield. Immediately after morning briefing he had spoken with a Detective Sergeant Glen Deakins and arranged a meet at Wood Street police station situated in the centre of the city.

  Following the Detective Sergeant’s instructions Hunter parked the unmarked police car in a multi storey car park and he and Grace walked the few hundred yards to the old red-bricked police station opposite the Law Courts.

  Despite an attempt to give its foyer a contemporary makeover the waiting area still had that dark and gloomy feel typical of the Victorian era. Showing their warrant badges to the front-of-entrance clerk, Hunter and Grace took up seats which had been arranged along the front wall below two large sash windows, the bottom section of which held toughened and frosted glass. A pale sunlight had managed to penetrate and was lighting the dimness around them.

  Biding his time Hunter coolly eyed the numerous framed force publicity posters adorning the walls and couldn’t help but smile, thinking cynically, as he read over the mission statements and modern day Whitehall spin which seemed to have even crept into the police service. ‘All this bullshit’, he said to himself, when what the public really wanted was cops on the streets.

  Within a few minutes his attention was distracted by the sound of an electronic buzzer and a side door burst open. A tall, slim, steel-grey haired man appeared in the doorway. Wearing a two-piece pinstriped suit and sporting a good tanned complexion DS Glen Deakins looked more the typical business tycoon than an MIT detective. He greeted them and Hunter immediately recognised his strong Leeds dialect as he rolled his tongue around their names.

  “Hi, I’m to give you the full works.” He held out a hand to shake. “My DCI can’t speak highly enough of Barry Newstead.” He glanced behind them. “Barry not with you?”

  Hunter shook his head.

  “Pity. The DCI was hoping to catch up with him. It appears they worked together on some secretive joint force investigation into corruption in the Met during the early eighties.”

  He held open the door as Grace and Hunter joined him and then pointed an extended arm up the open staircase that connected all three floors of the building. “We’re on the top floor. MIT has all one corridor. Too hot in summer and freezing cold in winter but whose complaining, still get the cheque in the post thirteen times a year, don’t we?” The Sergeant grinned. His features were strong and his hazel eyes displayed genuineness about him.

  The top of the stairway opened onto a bright and airy corridor that led to suite after suite of rooms and offices, each one seemed to be bustling with activity. Its airiness took Hunter by surprise.

  As if reading his mind the DS offered, “This place was given a full refurb before we moved in eighteen months ago. Everything we need is here. You ought have seen the place before it got its make-over.” He took them down the corridor. “I’ve got us a room at the far end where you can look at the files from the Kelly Johnson murder.”

  He stopped at a glass-panelled door and pushed it inwards. They entered an eight-foot-by-eight-foot carpeted room. It was lit by a pair of fluorescent lights set in a chrome frame for maximum brightness. Along one wall was a framework of metal shelves adorned floor to ceiling with boxed case files. Hunter guessed this was where they stored the cold case work; previously undetected serious crimes of rape and murder which required reviewing now that new scientific methods, such as DNA, had come into play. In the centre, two desks had been pushed together, the light oak surfaces almost covered by an array of paperwork, organised into piles.

  “The Kelly Johnson case.” DS Deakins pointed out with an open palm, almost as though he was introducing someone rather than something. “I know this job like the back of my hand. I worked on this as a young detective back in ninety-six. In fact it was my first ever murder case. I spent over six months on it before it was wound down to just a small team. It was filed as undetected after eighteen months and its one of our review cases now.” He rested his hand on one of the piles. “Everything is here. The witness statements, door-to-door reports and suspect interviews in date and alphabetical order.”

  Hunter eyed the pile-upon-pile of paperwork. “You might be able to shortcut things for us without the need to plough through all this lot, especially as you worked on it for so long.”

  “Yeah, no problem. To be honest when the gaffer asked me to show you the case it gave me the opportunity to skip read back over some of the actions I did on the case. In fact now it seems only like last week when I was working on it.” DS Deakins pointed out the chairs around the table to Grace and Hunter and lowered himself into one. Leaning forward, intertwining his fingers, he rested his chin, and flicked his gaze from one to the other of his guests. He paused for a few seconds as if gathering his thoughts.

  In the background Hunter became suddenly conscious of the bustle of activity, which was coming from the rooms further along the corridor. He reckoned behind those doors would be similar scenes to those of his own murder team back at Barnwell. Officers busy on telephones or computers following up their leads to crack the case. Working practices the length and breadth of the country were distinctly similar despite each murder being different.

  “Kell
y Marie Johnson, thirteen years old,” Glen unlocked his hands and spun an A5 size photograph of a smiling teenage girl towards them. The colours were still extremely sharp despite the photograph being twelve year old. A picture of a very pretty girl, and yet with many similarities to the other victims; dark collar length hair, glistening hazel eyes, and with an air of innocence about her.

  Hunter noticed that the girl was wearing heavy make-up and the pose of Kelly appeared more confident than the photos they had of the other girls. This shot was more professional altogether.

  Grace took the photograph from the DS’s fingers, angling it slightly towards herself. “This is an unusual photo. Was it taken in a studio?”

  “It was actually,” Glen replied. “Kelly had just been taken on by a modelling company. She was doing shoots for catalogues. That photo came from her portfolio. As you can see Kelly was a very pretty girl, looked a lot older than her thirteen years, and because of that she attracted a lot older type of boy. It caused a bit of friction with her dad.”

  “What was she like as a person?” Grace continued.

  “Well until she got the modelling contract just a normal teenage girl, but the six months leading up to her death her parents and her friends said her personality changed. She began to hang out with older teenagers. Putting jealousy to one side her closest friends painted a picture of a girl who suddenly got very cocky and arrogant and who began picking on girls who she considered less attractive than herself, humiliating them and even bullying a couple of them. She began wagging school and we found out she’d been meeting up with a couple of lads, sixteen and seventeen. We questioned them on several occasions and both eventually admitted they had had sex with her, but they insisted she had told them she was herself sixteen. What they did have however was unbreakable alibis on the day she was murdered. They were at work, witnessed by dozens of their co-workers.”