Parents’ meeting. Horror. Polly had highlighted the date with a green luminous marker on her kitchen calendar the day she’d been given it and had counted down the days since the beginning of the week. She’d missed the last one and the guilt and shame had been magnified by the stiff letter she’d had from Logan’s form tutor informing her just how compunctious she should have been.
But there were so many dates to log at the beginning of each term – sports extension evenings, choir rehearsals, outings, inset days – and Polly miraculously fitted her dog-walking business around every one of them. She had been determined not to miss the next parents’ meeting, however. Had ensured she had only one client booking early that afternoon and that she had plenty of time to drive to St Jude’s.
But her smugness had evaporated after a bus had broken down on Garratt Lane and she’d spent an hour crawling through Earlsfield, willing the traffic on and anticipating the disapproving faces that would be waiting to greet her in the assembly hall.
The clock on the dash seemed to have moved on a minute every time she looked at it as she perched on the edge of her seat, willing the cars ahead to surge forward. This was the only route she could take so she had no choice but to sit and wait. It was Halloween. The kids were having a party first. Maybe that would run over.
She took out her mobile. Phone ahead. Let them know what was going on. Other parents would be having the same issue. She was about to dial when the traffic rolled forward and she had to accelerate to keep up. Was it about to stall again? But the cars kept moving and soon she was swerving around the offending double-decker and picking up speed towards the primary school.
Minutes later she turned right at the red bricked façade of St Jude’s. Pumpkins glowed in the hall window. Polly readied herself for the next gauntlet – finding a parking space. This was difficult enough on any day at three in the afternoon but as the building next door was being renovated behind polythene sheeting and there were several skips positioned in the bay usually clogged up with parents’ off-road vehicles it was going to be even more of a free-for-all than usual.
But she had one advantage – a Golf. And Polly had learned to fit it into the tightest spaces. She surged to the end of the road and spied a space at the end just in front of the entrance to the railway bridge steps.
Shit. It was excruciatingly too small. Then she acknowledged that there was somebody sitting inside the blue Toyota SUV in front of the space. It was a male with broad shoulders and her blood boiled as she noted his car had a large gap in front of it and that his vehicle was taking up two spaces.
Polly beeped her horn.
The man didn’t even turn around.
She honked again and watched his head tilt up to his mirror. He didn’t appear in any hurry to move though.
Polly was about to blast the horn again when his engine started and he leisurely rolled his Toyota forward. But he still left himself plenty of space at the front, which meant she had to carefully manoeuvre her Golf up to his bumper and almost scrape hers on the bollard behind her.
‘Moron.’ But it was eight minutes past three and she had no time to waste.
He got out of his car the same time as her and didn’t even turn back. Was he one of the parents? She didn’t recognise him from the rear.
He strode off in the direction of the high street and she followed, determined to make it into the hall before ten past and join the queue for Mr Appleton. Maybe she’d throw a remark at the space hogger on her way past.
When steel struck the back of her head, Polly’s brain briefly took her to a safe place. She thought she was sitting at home in her armchair, the lounge quiet except for the clock ticking. The sensations of the cushion beneath her seemed so real but consciousness and reality surged quickly back.
A clatter.
Polly looked down at her new trainers. There was blood on the pristine white toes. Next to her feet was a ball peen hammer and that had blood on it as well. Where the hell was she? The street was still visible but looked smudged. She realised she was behind the polythene sheeting of the scaffolding on the building next door to the school.
She tried to scream, to alert the man who had got out of the Toyota but a hand was over her nose and mouth and her panicked exclamation was held inside her head.
But the man was coming back and she yelled as hard as she could against a hot palm, felt it vibrate through the veins in her temples.
Polly could feel warmth at the back of her head and guessed it was where she’d been hit with the hammer.
The man stopped at his car, opened the door at the back, extracted a sports bag he’d forgotten and closed it again. He was only about twelve feet away from her, and just a cloudy sheet of polythene concealed her. Polly fought to cry out again.
She felt a sharp jab to the right side of her spine and her strangled howl was abruptly cut off.
Another harsh pain in her back and this time the agony went much deeper.
The man marched away but she couldn’t form another sound.
Polly tried to struggle against the figure securing her from behind but felt her strength quickly ebb. But all she was thinking about was Logan waiting for her with his tutor.
When would they find her here?
The dirty sandstone outer wall of Kerslake Prison was seemingly endless as Detective Inspector Tom Fabian directed his green Audi around its curve and struggled to keep to the thirty limit. As the road straightened out he slipped in his Bluetooth earpiece and rang Harriet’s number.
She picked up after three rings. ‘You’re late then.’
He looked at the digital clock on the dash. ‘Only by quarter of an hour.’
‘Deliberately?’
She knew him too well. Which is probably why they were separated. But he’d told Harriet where he was going and she knew how apprehensive he’d be.
Three years ago Fabian had put Christopher Wisher, infamous London serial killer, behind bars. He’d murdered nine people. Mutilated them in a way only he understood. Fabian could still remember his last victim, Justine Kavanagh. As well as subjecting her body to the same evisceration as the previous eight victims he’d also caved her head in with her own kitchen chopping board.
‘I don’t feel like being punctual.’ But he felt like he’d been summonsed. Wisher had said he would only talk to Fabian but had refused to say what it was in relation to. DCI Metcalfe, his boss, had told Fabian he had to visit him at the prison at ‘his nearest convenience.’ Fabian’s or Wisher’s?
And Metcalfe had taken great delight in insisting. Fabian knew he resented the way he’d handled the investigation in 2015 because he’d involved the media. A BBC show, Urban Predator, that had been tailing Fabian before he was assigned the case had captured every stage of the inquiry and when they’d done a TV reconstruction and appeal for witnesses an anonymous caller had given them the break they needed. The caller had used a phone box near to Wisher’s home and had never been traced. The show had won its producer, Angelina Friedmann, an award as well as a promotion; Metcalfe remained suspicious that she still had Fabian’s ear. He hadn’t spoken to her since the end of the trial, however. Not even when the show had been aired.
‘Don’t let him back in your head.’ Harriet knew about the interrogations Fabian had conducted with Wisher.
‘I don’t like that I’ve had to drop everything to be here. If this is just Wisher craving the spotlight I’ll send him straight back to his cell.’
‘You really think that’s the case?’
‘It’s exactly three years to the day since Wisher started his sentence.’
Fabian didn’t want to share a room with Wisher again but there was a chance he could close a few cold cases in the Richmond area. That’s why Metcalfe had been so eager to dispatch him there. Even though Wisher had readily confessed to nine murders there was always a chance he could be responsible for more. There were no bodies on file with similar mutilations to Wisher’s victims but that wasn’t to say he couldn’t be responsible for myriad missing persons. Wisher knew that, which was why he’d been economical with his reasons for his audience with Fabian. He doubted Wisher had withheld from him three years ago, but he had no choice other than to attend.
Fabian approached the metallic grey panelled gates and he slowed the car. ‘Heard from Tilly?’
‘Yesterday lunchtime.’
His daughter had just started her first term at Exeter University and he knew she’d already found a guy she was interested in. That had happened in the first week which Fabian thought was way too quick. Things had gone quiet since, though. ‘Any mention of Mark?’
‘No. She’s playing her cards close to her chest.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
Fabian showed his ID to the guy in the security booth and he opened the gates. He waited as they swung out to admit him and the foreboding grey brick edifice of the east wing came into view against the dingy afternoon sky. Like many in the country Kerslake Prison was overcrowded, financially in dire straits and things were going to get a lot worse before they got any better.
‘Are you there on your own?’ She didn’t answer straight away and he immediately regretted the question.
‘Yes,’ she replied warily.
He imagined Harriet, her tight brown curls wrapped in one of her bright silk headscarves, cross-legged on the old couch in the back dining room lounge with only Bacardi the cat for company.
‘I didn’t mean…’ It was none of his business. Fabian knew there was a new guy, Martin, in her life. It was still early days but he wondered how long it would be before he moved into the home he’d used to inhabit. ‘Have you had a square meal since Tilly left?’
‘Yes.’ But there was affection in the defensive retort.
‘Eating at Spigo’s doesn’t count.’
His maisonette was only a stone’s throw from her. He knew how lucky he was to still be able to drop into the house to occasionally cook dinner for her and Tilly and at least pretend that the hours he spent there were like old family time. How much longer could that last, though? Tilly had more or less left home so now there was going to be less friction if Harriet did want someone to start staying there. But it was her property. Fabian contributed but Harriet’s job with the MOD meant she could comfortably support herself.
‘If you need to talk when you’re on your way back…’
Fabian rolled onto the tarmac-paved car park. ‘I’ll be fine. Look, I’ve got to sign in now. I’ll speak to you soon.’
‘OK. Good luck.’ Harriet hung up before he did.
In the past his job meant a lot of snatched calls to Harriet to make excuses for his absence and now the instant hang-up was her control.
Fabian pulled the Audi into a space and then strode across the car park through the drizzle to sign in at the visitors’ reception, his circulation thudding in one ear. He waited for his heart murmur, the stumbling double flutter that his doctor had told him was a common complaint even for people younger than forty-four. The accelerated beat had become a constant presence.
The elderly uniformed officer sniffed intermittently as Fabian filled out the form. ‘I’m to extend you every hospitality, according to Governor Briant.’ He didn’t sound like he was happy about that at all.
Fabian was led down a corridor with dark blue doors off it. He saw his own prematurely white hair lit and reflected in the reinforced glass of the double locked doors that led to the visitors’ room. As the stocky guard with the shaved head on the other side peered through it looked like it was his. It suited him better. He buzzed Fabian through.
‘Another visitor for Wisher?’ The guard held the door open and stood back. ‘He has a busier social life than I do.’
Fabian nodded at him and swallowed dryly as he was admitted.
The guard showed Fabian to an orange plastic seat at a table in the small square room that smelt strongly of bleach and body odour. One wall was bars and the guard nodded at the other uniformed sentry behind them who trudged off, keys jingling with each step.
Fabian seated himself at the table. ‘Who’s been visiting him?’ he asked the remaining guard. Fabian knew Wisher’s immediate family had disowned him after the trial. Why hadn’t any close friends emerged in the inquiry?
‘His fan club. There’s always somebody who wants to interview him for their blog and Wisher never turns down an opportunity to talk about himself.’
Fabian knew there were certain serial killers who attained cult status but had always thought it to be more of an American phenomenon. But the fact that Wisher’s crimes had received such wide media exposure was largely down to him, Angelina Friedmann and Urban Predator. ‘What sort of prisoner is he?’
‘Exemplary… till August last year.’
‘What happened?’
The guard chewed at something. ‘You’d better ask the governor that. Don’t think Mr Wisher is happy with us any more,’ he said derisively. ‘Had his eye on a move to Bicknell Psychiatric.’
Bicknell was a modern facility that had only recently been built. The prisoners were all lifers who submitted to psychoanalysis programmes in return for better conditions.
‘Had?’
‘He’s stopped talking about it now. Maybe because he knows the governor is never going to make the recommendation.’
‘Why not?’
‘From what I hear, the governor has been stonewalling Wisher since he started his sentence.’
Part of Fabian was glad to hear it. After murdering seven women and two men Fabian hated the idea of Wisher inveigling his way into a cushy deal at Bicknell Psychiatric.
‘You’ve got to be pleased about that surely? You put him in here.’
Fabian often forgot how well known he’d become because of Angelina Friedmann’s show. He nodded. But he’d heard great things about the programme at Bicknell. If Wisher’s input would increase the understanding of his psyche, would that lead to earlier prevention of men like him preying on others? ‘It’s never going to happen?’
‘Not while Briant’s in the post.’
‘Any idea why he won’t entertain it?’
The guard shrugged. ‘Who cares? Just as long as Wisher slums it here with us, I’m more than happy.’
Both their heads turned as they heard the jingling keys return.
It had been three years but Christopher Wisher looked a lot older. His tight curls were still jet black but his round features looked a little thinner and more anaemic. Fabian felt a sensation that he hadn’t experienced since the last time he’d seen him, bubbles of unease slowly rising as they had done throughout every interview at Horseferry Police Station.
Wisher had never protested his innocence. He’d confessed to all nine murders on the day Fabian had arrested him. Hadn’t objected to Angelina Friedmann shooting every moment. Had carried on as if the crew hadn’t been hovering there and never once acknowledged them. It was as if he’d expected them to be in tow, that his crimes would have required nothing less.
Fabian had sat opposite Wisher in interview room 4 while he’d politely relayed his deeds in painstaking detail, almost as if it was a generous courtesy he’d extended to Fabian. Apologising when he briefly struggled to recall a time or date, calling on the minutiae of his homicides like the two of them were on a nostalgic journey.
But it was his own responses that unsettled Fabian. As a homicide detective, he knew how to be removed, how to coax with tact and civility. But Wisher made the process so easy for him that he could hear the gratitude in his own voice. Wisher had ignored Fabian’s co-interrogator, Detective Sergeant Natasha Banner. Blanked everyone else in the room. His eyes had been locked only on Fabian.
It had felt like they were becoming friends and that’s what had disturbed Fabian the most: the idea that they had any sort of connection.
Wisher didn’t look through the bars as he was escorted to the door. His jade green overalls looked a little baggy on his emaciated frame. He was average build, average height. Average everything. And his thick-lensed spectacles made him seem even less threatening. It was a disarming countenance for a sociopath that had killed for no evident reason other than amusement. At least, that was the conclusion of everyone who had evaluated Wisher.
There were no significant episodes in his past that would even begin to explain the things he’d done. He was from a stable, middle class family background, married with one son and had worked for the civil service since his early twenties. He was thirty-nine the day he’d murdered his first victim, a young mother named Sonia Walker, in broad daylight in a family picnic park.
The guard was close behind him and they both halted at the door.
Wisher sharply turned his. . .
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