‘You drink too much of that crap,’ she said, ‘it’s not good for the body.’
Kite bit his tongue before making a rash comment about his superior’s drinking habit. It wasn’t quite midday and he had already twice seen her with a hip-flask in hand. As a teetotaller, he didn’t know if it was Rum, Whiskey, Gin or what she had a taste for. He knew it was alcohol, and he didn’t approve. He also knew if he mentioned it to a colleague, or worse still, to Watts, she would be out of the door in a flash.
But he wouldn’t say anything. He’d keep a close eye on things, but figured that if Summers was half as good a detective as they say she is, then she’d be the one to solve the riddle of who The Phantom is, regardless of a few sips of alcohol.
Besides, The Phantom had killed her dad, victim number five. It was common knowledge within the establishment that she only joined the force to seek justice for her father and put his killer behind bars. She brought a passion to this case nobody else could match.
Of course, there had been numerous arrests and charges against suspects, but none could stick. How could they? There was never any real evidence, only circumstantial, at best.
If The Phantom took the time to hide or destroy the bodies, as he did to cover his tracks and destroy and legible evidence, then these files wouldn’t be murder cases, they would be Missing Person files.
Summers sat in her chair and gestured for Kite to go to the map of the city that was taped onto a wall of cork, to the side of the whiteboard. She told him to put yellow pins on the map where the twelve Phantom case corpses were found and green pins where the other five bodies had shown up. He did so then took a seat.
The five green pins were randomly dotted on the map, whereas the yellow pins were grouped in the north-west of the city.
‘So there were some bodies found further away from the main cluster, it doesn’t mean they aren’t linked by the killer,’ said Kite, playing the devil’s advocate. ‘Maybe he drives, or uses the tube or buses.’
‘But he doesn’t,’ said Summers. ‘If he drove, we’d have him somewhere on camera. The same goes if he took the tube or a bus.’
She stood and gestured to the twelve yellow pins on the map.
‘He lives here. He kills here,’ she said. ‘There are housing estates, fields, parks, places without CCTV.’
‘But the other five had no CCTV,’ Kite said.
‘Irrelevant.’
‘Irrelevant? How comes?’
‘Because they don’t fit!’ exclaimed Summers.
She explained to Kite again that the methods of killing were different in the five cases, that the places were too far apart, and that her hunch was the killer is a man who jogs or walks his dog, sees an opportunity to kill and quenches his thirst.
Kite nodded thoughtfully. He could see she had reason in her thinking, and to narrow down the hunt for clues and witnesses would make things easier for them, even if it did still leave nearly three square miles hosting twelve different crime scenes, ranging from eight years to two months old.
Kite flicked through the dates of the five separated case files and noted that they were all at least two years old.
‘If you’re right,’ he said, ‘we could probably ship these off to the Cold Case Department. Not that the governor’ll be pleased when you spring this on him.’
‘I imagine he already knows,’ she said.
Speak of the devil. Watts stuck his head around the door.
‘Right, you two, a couple of bodies have been found in the canal by Old Town Road. Uniforms are there already. I think you want might want to get down there,’ said the DCI before leaving as quick as he came.
‘Two bodies?’ said Summers. She looked at the map. Old Town Road ran right through the middle of the killer’s territory. ‘Let’s go.’
13
Mrs Lily Green, in her mid-forties, was clearing out what her late husband called his office, one of the small rooms in her now near-lifeless home. She put details of Graham’s clients in a black rubbish bag, along with quotes and invoices he had prepared.
She gathered the picture-frames of Graham and Ben fishing, the picture of Ben graduating from university, an old polaroid of herself when pregnant with Ben, twenty-seven years ago, and another with her and Graham, a much older man, with arms wrapped around each other. She dumped them all in the black bag with all the other junk.
Satisfied, she looked around at the room. All that remained was a desk and two chairs, a computer and a printer.
Through the window she saw a black cat in the garden, an unwelcome visitor who left Mrs Green a present every other day on her lawn, be it a dead mouse or just cat poo. She wrapped her knuckles on the window and the cat scarpered. Then she heard a key turn in the front door, so dropped the rubbish bag and walked to the hallway to greet her son, in her own, special way.
‘Thought you’d come and see if I was still alive did ya?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, Mum. You know I haven’t been feeling too well,’ he replied, defensively.
Ben now looked pale and had guilt written all over him from his earlier activity.
‘Ignoring my phone calls,’ she said, accusingly.
‘You haven’t phoned me, Mum,’ he protested.
‘You and that slag you live with, laughing at me,’ said Mrs Green.
‘Jesus, Mum. Have you stopped taking your pills?’
Mrs Green had been on antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs for as long as Ben could remember. She used to see a psychiatrist who wanted her hospitalised, for her own good, but she refused.
Her husband, Graham, could only do so much, and found himself carrying the responsibility of raising Ben almost single-handedly as well as caring for his mentally unstable wife. Maybe that’s why he loved working so much; he just needed some ‘me time’, away from the house, time to blow off some steam, even.
Now Graham was gone, Mrs Green was rapidly declining into full-blown madness.
Ben walked past her and sat down at the large table in the kitchen. His mum followed him and with a smile offered him a cup of tea, that’s how quickly she could change, Ben forced a smile back.
‘Thanks Mum.’
She made his tea as Ben explained about losing his job, how Charlie was a selfish bastard, and then going home to find Natalie in bed with another man, who happened to be his old friend, David. Annoyingly to his mother, Ben explained that he was partly to blame for Natalie’s disloyalty, as he had been so lost in his own little world recently.
‘That’s nonsense, Ben, utter bullshit. She was always a slippery one, that Natasha,’ said Mrs Green.
‘Natalie,’ he corrected.
C-CLINK
Ben jumped at the sound of the local newspaper being pushed through the letterbox. Mrs Green noticed and asked why he was so nervous. He denied anything was wrong and stood to get the newspaper. He avoided his mother’s gaze as he sat back at the table and laid the paper down in front of him, ‘ANOTHER DETECTIVE GIVES UP ON THE PHANTOM’ read the headline.
Ben skimmed over the article. The words ‘MURDERS, DEATHS, VICTIMS’ jumped out at him from the page. He pushed the paper to one side and caught his mother’s eyes still staring at him.
‘What are you not telling me, Ben?’
‘I’ve told you everything, Mum. I lost my job and my girlfriends shagging one of my mates,’ he said, struggling to maintain eye contact with her. He shifted awkwardly in his seat.
Mrs Green knew when her son wasn’t telling all. It might not have been pure love, but there was a very special bond between this mother and son. She knew when he was happy or sad. She had a great instinct when it came to her son, they shared the same blood, but it was more than that. She could read him like a book.