Black Heart: A totally gripping serial-killer thriller Read online

  ‘Did he seek medical attention?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rebecca says, she appears to be enjoying the conversation now. ‘They were miffed. He became something of an enigma to the GP. They ran all sorts of tests on him, especially when his teeth started falling out. Said it was a vitamin deficiency of some kind. They misdiagnosed him many times.’ She seems pleased by this, like it was a great achievement. ‘He was on all kinds of medication. He needed me to care for him when he got really sick in the end. And I did. I nursed him. Fed him, washed and dressed him, administered his medicine – and some of my own. He was completely dependent on me in his final months.’

  ‘You wanted him to suffer?’

  She smirks, a look that appears to change her whole face. And I think of what Dr Magnesson said about multiple personalities, how psychopaths can literally morph into someone unrecognisable in front of your eyes.

  ‘I never wanted that man’s suffering to end. I was sad when it did. Funny, I remember the doctors and nurses at the hospital showing me sympathy as I was crying over him on his deathbed, how they put their arms around me and comforted me. But I wasn’t grieving for his death. I was crying because his suffering was almost over.’

  I exhale.

  ‘So you got your revenge in the end… you murdered the man who abused you, a man who should’ve been protecting you. Many people, Rebecca, even a judge, might go some way to understanding your actions given the nature of your father’s crimes against you.

  But why go on to murder Nigel Baxter and Karen Walker? Was your father’s death not enough for you?’

  She laughs again, a manic horrible sound, and her eyes roll in the back of her head making her look deranged. ‘You said it yourself Daniel – sometimes there is no why.’

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  It’s gone midnight. She’s been in the interview room for almost two hours. I feel like I’m close to a confession now and I can only hope that Woods senses this too and doesn’t call a halt to proceedings. I just need a little more time: the one thing I’m running out of. And yet I can hear Dr Magnesson’s words echoing around my brain, ‘psychopaths and serial killers rarely, if ever, confess to their crimes because the truth is they don’t see them as such.’

  ‘Where is George?’ I ask her again. ‘The baby, Rebecca, where is he? What have you done with him? It’s been, what?’ I look at my watch and then at her.

  Her face has a yellow tinge to it. Perhaps it’s just the light, but her eyes appear sunken in their sockets like she’s aged ten years in two hours, her pupils are as small as pinpricks and an oily sheen of sweat covers her cheeks and forehead. Her arms are folded protectively across her waist.

  ‘What is your first childhood memory, Daniel?’ Her voice is raspy and shallow. She’s tired. Tired is good. Tired is usually the prelude to a confession. It’s often a battle of wills, the interview process, a process of gradually wearing someone down until they’re exhausted and backed so far into a corner the only way out is to cough it all up. But Rebecca Harper is a woman who has spent her entire life in a corner, conditioned to unspeakable torture. But she knows the game is up, that it’s over, or at least the part where she gets to kill people is. Only she’s still the one in control, and she knows it. She may be looking at a life stretch behind the door but she still holds the key to the little boy’s whereabouts and safety; she still has the upper hand.

  ‘Choking on a sweet at school,’ I say, ‘I almost died.’

  She looks intrigued.

  ‘My cousin gave me a boiled sweet, one of those big old-fashioned humbug ones. I put it in my mouth and somehow swallowed it whole. It got lodged inside my oesophagus and I began choking, coughing and spluttering, you know, I couldn’t breathe and I remember the panic I felt – pure icy-cold terror.’

  ‘What happened?’ Her eyes glint a little, interested in the outcome.

  ‘A quick-thinking teacher slapped me hard on the back a few times until it flew out of my mouth… I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I don’t know, four years old maybe.’

  She smiles. ‘You could’ve died, Daniel. Death by humbug – I might never have known you…’ Her voice trails off, like she’s suddenly lost her train of thought.

  ‘Guess it wasn’t my time.’

  ‘Time…’ she says, ‘the bad news is that it flies.’

  ‘And what’s the good news?’ I ask.

  ‘That you’re the pilot.’

  Touché. Well, I’m flying right now alright, by the seat of my pants – and with no working parachute. ‘Why did you kill Nigel Baxter and Karen Walker, Rebecca? Baxter was besotted by you, he paid you for sex, bought you gifts, he never harmed you, or abused you did he? And Karen, she trusted you, thought of you as a friend, said you were like “the daughter she never had”. So why kill them, either of them?’

  She’s silent for what feels like a very long time. ‘Nigel was a sad, pathetic spineless man, a pervert who betrayed his wife and got his kicks from prostitutes and watching other people fucking each other.’

  ‘Hardly warrants poisoning him and slitting his wrists does it? Betraying your wife and indulging in a kinky perversion with other consenting adults? At worst it’s unsavoury, disloyal.’

  ‘Kizzy was a pathetic wretch,’ she says, ‘destined for a life of misery, much like myself really. No matter how much she tried, no matter what she did to try and improve herself or her situation, she would’ve continually lurched from one disaster to the next.’

  ‘Even if this was so, it doesn’t give you the right to play God, to decide who gets to live or die, Rebecca.’ I’m careful to keep my tone even, as void of emotion as possible.

  ‘Some of us are destined for a life of pain Daniel,’ she says poignantly, as though I am included in this statement.

  I’m worried she might be right, that she senses this within me, that she thinks of me as a kindred spirit in this respect, but I don’t let it show. And I’m getting worried, like, seriously concerned, about her well-being. She’s shaking almost uncontrollably now, sweating profusely and her skin has changed from yellow to a deathly grey colour and I suggest that I call a doctor again. Then it hits me, hits me like a sucker punch in the guts. She went to the bathroom in the restaurant… she could’ve taken something.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Jesus, Rebecca,’ I say the words over again as I rush over to her, seizing her by the shoulders. ‘What have you taken? What have you done?’

  She starts to vomit, as though on cue, violently spilling the contents of her stomach out onto the table and over the photographs, retching and convulsing in spasms as her slight body tries desperately to rid itself of whatever toxic substance she’s put in it. She attempts to stand but I crouch down on my knees and hold her in the chair, tell her not to move, explain that help is on its way. She feels floppy within my grip, spittle leaving a long thin trail from one corner of her mouth and her head is wobbling on her neck, like it could be knocked off with a gentle push. I feel a rush of horror as I press the panic button, immediately alerting the two officers outside. I shout at them to get an ambulance and call for emergency medical assistance. I’m screaming at them like they can’t hear me, the shock on their faces lingering for a nano-second longer than I can afford.

  ‘Hurry up,’ I shout. I can feel her slipping in and out of consciousness in my arms and so I pick her up, hold her across my lap and tell her to stay with me.

  ‘My first memory…’ she struggles to speak, so I put the plastic cup of water to her lips and tell her to drink it, my heart is knocking violently against my ribs, my hands shaking almost as violently as her own. It spills out onto her dress, leaving dark stains.

  Davis rushes into the interview room, she’s clutching a piece of paper and she’s about to tell me something, the words struggling to escape her lips. I expect Woods to follow but he doesn’t. A mask of horror fixes itself across her face as she looks at the scene.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Boss. What the
fuck’s happened…? Listen, I’ve got something—’ she holds the piece of paper up like trophy.

  ‘Not now, Davis!’ my voice is even louder than I expect, more of a scream really. ‘I think she’s ingested poison… She needs help – we need help, now!’

  And I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking, that if Rebecca Davis dies then so does baby George – and my career with them both.

  ‘Rebecca,’ I say, grabbing her chin between my thumb and forefinger, ‘what have you taken? Tell me… what have you swallowed?’

  ‘… Mummy,’ she says, her eyes are half closed, the stench of vomit hits me and I swallow back the bile that is rising through my gullet. ‘Read me the story again… the story of the three bears, the one where Goldilocks breaks into the cottage and eats their porridge… It’s my favourite… one last time Mummy, read it to me one last time…’

  And in that moment it all makes some kind of sense, her memory of her mother reading her a bedtime story as a child before her life became a waking nightmare. It’s the only happy memory she owns.

  Davis hesitates for a second and I’m not sure why. She hands me the note and tries to speak, ‘Get out!’ I bark at her, causing a flash of terror to flicker across her features. ‘For fuck’s sake be quick.’ And she turns and runs.

  Rebecca’s organs are shutting down. I think she’s swallowed arsenic. I’m furious with Davis for the interruption, probably at Woods’ request. Hell, I’m furious full stop. I pick up the note. It had better be bloody important is all I can think, we’ve got a suspect potentially dying on us and… I open the note and read Davis’ unruly scrawl.

  ‘Baby George found safe and well. He’s in St Thomas’s being checked over but looks as though he’ll be okay. His mother is with him now.’

  I re-read it. I can’t be sure but I think I might be crying because my face feels wet with relief, maybe it’s the water. ‘Rebecca… Rebecca…’ I shake her like a rag doll and she vomits again, violently, involuntarily, spewing her guts over herself and into my lap, it’s hard to keep a grip on her, she’s like mercury in my fingers, her body almost folding beneath itself, slipping from my grasp. I’m about to tell her that we’ve had news that George has been found, that the game is over and he’s safe but I stop myself. She’s trying to speak, to tell me something and I think I know what.

  ‘The baby… George,’ Rebecca’s voice is barely audible, crackly and laboured like that of an asthmatic old woman, ‘the address is in my handbag, King’s Hall Road, Beckenham. That’s where you’ll find him.’

  I nod and reach for it, screwing up the note in my fist and letting it drop to the floor.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to her, ‘thank you.’

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Rebecca had gone by the time the ambulance arrived. They did their best to revive her, but I knew it was too late. The dose was ‘lethal enough to kill a horse’ Vic Leyton told me after the post-mortem. She’d left no room for error. She died in my arms in the incident room, an agonizing, undignified death, covered in her own vomit, wailing in spasmodic pain as the arsenic gradually attacked her from the inside out, obliterating her internal organs, shutting them down one by one. ‘Don’t die,’ I’d whispered in her ear, ‘don’t you dare fucking die.’ I knew that her death would be seen as the easy way out, that this way she doesn’t pay for her crimes and there will be no justice for Nigel Baxter and Karen Walker, for their families and loved ones. Her suicide will be seen as a cowardly act, a calculated, selfish means of escaping justice, but in truth I don’t think it really was. It was a means of escaping herself. Because the sad truth is, really, Rebecca Harper died a long time ago. She never confessed outright to the murders of Nigel Baxter and Karen Walker, just like Magnesson said she wouldn’t, but her oblique answers were as good as. Magnesson was wrong about her being her capable of killing a child though. When it came down to it, she’d been unable to go through with it, she just couldn’t do it, it was a step too far, even for a cold-blooded killer.

  ‘This is where the story ends, Daniel,’ she’d said as she lay dying in my arms. The final chapter. I’d brushed the hair from her face, her platinum wig slipping from her scalp as I did. I took it off her head, revealing her real hair underneath, shoulder-length and mousey brown. It felt soft to touch. ‘No more Goldilocks,’ I’d said aloud as her breathing became short and labored, an unnatural sound emanating from her throat, the sound of impending death. I didn’t tell her about the note that Davis had passed to me informing me that they had found George safe and well. I wanted her to die thinking that she’d done the right thing, as mad as that sounds – and I’ll admit, it does. Her crimes were abhorrent, evil really, and yet I still felt empathy for her. I couldn’t help it.

  Once the paramedics had taken her body away I sat in the interview room for a few moments, alone, tried to gather my composure. After a few minutes Davis entered the room. She didn’t say a word but her expression spoke volumes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say, standing, ‘tell him I’m on my way up.’

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Woods is shouting so loudly that I can’t entirely make out what he’s saying.

  ‘The IPCC is going to be all over us now… and the press, Jesus fucking Christ Riley, what a complete and utter cock-up! Do you realise what they’ll do to you if they get wind that you were actually fucking the suspect, screwing a serial killer for God’s sakes? They’ll bury you, Riley, bury you – and me with you no doubt!’

  His pacing is getting shorter, like he’s about to start walking in circles. This is the angriest I’ve ever seen him, maybe it’s the angriest he’s ever been in his life. He looks and sounds like a different man.

  ‘Who exactly knows about this…? Who knows that you and the suspect were in a relationship?’ He runs his fingers through his thinning hair manically. I don’t know why people do that, run their fingers through their hair when they’re under duress. I can’t see how it could make you think any clearer.

  ‘No one, Sir,’ I say, ‘though I think, well, I think Lucy Davis may have got an inkling… But we weren’t in a relationship, not as such… We weren’t fuc— I wasn’t sleeping with her.’

  He shoots me a look of disbelief.

  ‘Look, we met online, one of those dating websites, you know, matches you up with potential singles in your area. We started messaging, met up for coffee briefly. I took her out for a meal, we walked in the park…’ I shake my head like it’s not my own. ‘The shock, when I saw her photograph in the estate agent’s file…’ I can hear the emotion in my voice, like it belongs to someone else, like I can’t really believe it myself. ‘I was just looking for, oh I don’t know. I liked her, Sir…’ I say quietly, ‘I had no idea, not even the slightest suspicion. Not even for a second, right up until I saw her photograph.’

  Woods stops pacing. ‘Sit down, Dan,’ he says, his voice levelling off.

  I do as he says and pull up a chair.

  He’s running his fingers through his hair again and I feel like a naughty schoolboy: embarrassed and awkward.

  ‘So you met online. She gave you a false ID?’

  ‘Well, she obviously didn’t announce herself as a serial killer.’ I’m being facetious but I can’t help it. ‘She told me her name was Florence Williams and that she was studying to be an actress—’

  ‘You didn’t check her out, run her name through the system?’

  ‘I had no reason to disbelieve her. Jesus, and I thought I was the cynic.’

  Woods sighs. ‘So it was pure coincidence, just a horrible, dreadful piece of bad luck?’

  ‘It’s my middle name Sir.’ I’m being facetious again, I can’t frigging help it. Woods brings it out in me. ‘If they’re not being killed by someone else, they’re the ones doing the killing.’ I think he gets the irony, the regret in my words disguised by lame humour.

  ‘You should’ve come straight to me the moment you discovered you were sleeping with the enemy, why didn’t you Riley?’


  ‘Well, I wasn’t sleeping with the enemy. We didn’t… I didn’t… Jesus, I couldn’t,’ and I feel it then, I feel my soul emptying out, my humanity rushing to the surface. All those feelings; pride, confusion, sadness, happiness, hate, the complexity of everything I feel coming at me at once, a horrible paradox, a fruit salad of fuckery. ‘I couldn’t sleep with her because of Rachel…’ the words leave me of their own accord, ‘betraying her, I felt I would be betraying her. Rachel’s memory stopped me. I couldn’t do it… however, whoever, she turned out to be.’

  Woods looks at me then, a strange kind of expression that I don’t want to indulge. Is it empathy? Or worse, pity?

  ‘Or perhaps it was a different reason, Riley.’ He bangs his fist on the table, startling me. ‘Perhaps it was that you knew a good woman from a bad and your instincts, those instincts that have made you the man – the copper you are now – standing in front of me, they stopped you…’

  There’s this moment, this moment between us, where suddenly I see him as a human being, I see his humanity and his anger as vulnerability, and he’s given it to me, he’s put it out there first somehow. He’s telling me to come back to myself. And I see how much he believes in me and respects me, his faith in me and how much it takes for him to see that in someone. Actually, what I see is that he likes me. He doesn’t understand me maybe, but he likes me. Above all else, he is on my side. And if someone is on your side it’s worth a lot. It is golden.

  ‘The boy, the baby was missing. I knew I could get her to come to me. The photo was published in the press that night. I told Davis to hold off on the conference but it was too late… I knew, I thought there was the chance she would abscond—’