Page 32 of Deadly Cry

‘Hard to say,’ Penn said. ‘But some killers really do want to make contact with the investigators. Worked a case about six or seven years back with Travis at West Mercia when he first became a DI. Lynne had just joined the team as a DC, and she started getting these weird emails. They were sexual in nature, but there was something else about them that bothered her. The first murder was a brutal stabbing of a thirty-three-year-old exotic dancer but with additional wounds to the thighs. The emailer made references to Lynne’s thighs, but Travis wrote off the messages as being from an attention seeker.’

‘And?’ Stacey asked, noting that he’d said ‘first murder’.

‘Lynne went behind his back and had tech try and trace the sender. There was no rerouting of email addresses or attempts to hide his identity. His name was Nicholas Brewin, from Droitwich Spa.’

‘Stop making me beg here, Penn. What the hell happened?’

‘Travis hesitated in taking Lynne’s concerns seriously and it cost another girl her life. Brewin was brought in for questioning no more than an hour after killing his second victim.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah, Lynne struggled with it for a while, felt she should have pushed harder, made Travis listen sooner, but the guy was just begging to be found.’ He shrugged. ‘Might be the same with this guy.’

‘You think his real name is Noah?’ she asked doubtfully.

Penn shook his head. ‘No, but we need to check it out.’

‘Found four on the system so far and none were arrested for violent crimes,’ Stacey offered.

‘So we know Noah was famous for arks and animals. That’s a start. We should have his identity locked down by teatime.’

‘Yeah, piece of cake,’ Stacey agreed, turning back to her computer. Immediately she turned back again and had to voice the words that were running through her mind.

‘Penn, the boss has been summoned by Keats. Got to be a second body.’ She glanced at the A4 sheets she’d put on everyone’s desk. ‘You don’t think it’s something we could have stopped if we’d just opened the…’

‘I hope not,’ Penn said, reaching for his headphones.

Damn it. That wasn’t the answer she’d wanted to hear.

Twenty-Eight

‘You know they did nothing wrong, right?’ Bryant asked as they headed out of the car park. ‘If this is his second victim, then it wouldn’t have mattered what time they’d opened the post.’

Kim knew he was right, but she had a vision of that letter on the desk, crying out for help, and the two of them sitting there with their fingers in their ears.

‘You think it’s even from him?’ Bryant asked. ‘I mean, you do attract the crazies. Especially when you’re on the six o’clock news and there are even more of them watching.’

‘I’m not sure, Bryant, but we’ve got to treat it like it is.’

‘Why use the name Noah and why can’t he stop himself?’

‘Ask me one on sport, Bryant,’ she said. She’d had the letter ten minutes and those same questions were running around her own mind.

‘Who won the gold medal for the one hundred metres in the 1994 Olympics?’

‘Linford Christie,’ she snapped back.

He glanced her way. ‘You knew that?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Only you would ask me a question to which you don’t know the answer. I could have said anything,’ she replied as Bryant turned off the Thorns Road on to Stevens Park; the place Keats had instructed them to attend.

The park itself was approximately seven hectares and boasted areas that were open flat grass and those that were in shade. In recent years, a skate park had been added to the two tennis courts, outdoor gym and children’s play area. For as long as Kim could remember, the park had had a football pitch where many local schools came to play.

Bryant pulled up beside a squad car just as Mitch pulled up behind them in his white van.

‘You got the letter?’ she asked as they all got out of their vehicles together.

He nodded back towards the van. ‘It’s in there. I was just leaving the station when I got the call. Tried to get here quickly but got stuck behind a slow-assed driver in an Astra Estate who was heading for a picnic instead of a crime scene.’