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  He turned his thoughts back to Kemp who was sitting there fidgeting, unfolding and refolding his arms, one leg crossed over the other. The man was tapping the toe of his highly polished and rather expensive looking brogue on the ground, he looked both slightly impatient and a little nervous. Was he nervous enough to be guilty though?

  Doyle rummaged around for a second in the sheaf of papers she had brought with her into the interview room, and retrieved two photographs. She showed Kemp the first, a picture of the latest victim, Marilyn Channing, he saw. The picture was the same one he’d shown Jackson, the one taken at the strip club. When the man nodded in recognition, she showed him the second, the picture of Marilyn’s corpse, eyes wide open, as blood congealed at her throat.

  The man gasped in horror, turning away before forcing himself to take another look, his mouth hanging open in shock. Well that was a normal reaction and pretty typical. Though one thing he'd learned in his long career was that killers came in many guises, and many were highly deceptive. It wouldn't do to be too complacent. Emotions could be faked, he knew. Some of the most dangerous criminals could be the most convincingly benign. He fingered his scar, remembering.

  Doyle must have been wondering whether Kemp’s reaction was genuine or not too, as he watched her eyeball the man out of the corner of his eyes. Ever the professional, she pressed on with the interview.

  "Mr Kemp could you please tell us where you were on the night of April 27th between the hours of 12am and 5am?" she asked him, her tone measured. Her blue eyes fixed Kemp with an intense gaze, as he digested the question.

  Kemp thought for a moment before speaking, his face blank at first, eyes moving from left to right as if he were recalling. A look of recognition came in to his grey eyes as he seemed to remember something.

  "Yes, I can,” he said. The man had a Eurasian accent, but his tone sounded odd, a little too stilted and considered.

  “Go on Mr Kemp,” he said, encouraging the man to continue.

  “I was at home in bed with my wife sleeping. Earlier in the evening we had some friends over to visit us. A married couple from Germany, Klaus and Lucille.”

  “Can they vouch that you were in the house between the hours of 12am and 5am?” Doyle asked him, her tone sceptical.

  “Yes they would be happy too,” Kemp assured her, his speech was so stiff, formal even.

  Kemp continued;

  “Klaus is on business here and he and his wife were staying at a nearby hotel. They came to dinner with us at my wife's invitation. They stayed afterwards for some drinks with us but by then it was getting late so my wife offered to put them up in our spare room instead."

  "I'll need their full names and contact details in order to check that out of course Mr Kemp?" Doyle warned him. Kemp nodded.

  "Yes I can give you that information certainly Inspector. But…" He paused, looking from Doyle to him and back again. Aha, so this is where the alibi falls apart.

  “What’s the matter Mr Kemp?” he asked the man. Kemp’s expression looked like he had tasted something rather unpleasant.

  “It’s just, well does my wife have to know the nature of this enquiry? I mean she would be very upset if she found out I’d visited a lap dancing club,” he said, his eyes hopeful as he looked at them both.

  He raised an eyebrow, so that was what the man’s pained expression was about, he was worried about the wife finding out. But was it purely because he had been caught with his trousers down? Or did he have another, more sinister reason for not wanting her to know?

  “This is a murder inquiry Mr Kemp,” he spoke firmly to the man, “but…” He paused, softening his tone as he saw the man’s worried expression.

  “As we are only making initial enquiries, though we will need to see if her version of events corroborate yours, I see no reason why she needs to know of your visit to the club.”

  “Thank you Inspector,” Kemp nodded gratefully but he ignored him continuing.

  “Providing of course you tell us everything you know about Marilyn Channing. And I can’t promise you she won’t find out eventually, especially if we need to make further enquiries, remember Mr Kemp, we are investigating the serial killing of a young woman.” Kemp nodded again, looking visibly more relaxed now.

  "Mr Kemp," Doyle pressed, leaning forward across the table to him, "Mr Kemp, you said you visited the strip club on several occasions, to see Marilyn. Could you tell us, when you were in the club do you recall seeing anyone else who seemed to take an interest in her, anyone at all?"

  Kemp narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, trying to recall, and the silence hung in the air for a moment as Doyle looked down at her notes, pretending to arrange the sheets of paper together while she waited for his response.

  "There was one man that I noticed, I thought I had seen him before in the club by…" he gulped, pausing as he faltered. Doyle nodded encouragingly at him and steeling himself, he continued.

  "By Miss Marilyn's table, and I remember feeling annoyed by him at the time.”

  “Why were you annoyed?” Doyle looked enquiringly at him.

  “Because he was monopolising her, buying champagne, and paying for dance after dance with her. I couldn’t get a look in.”

  “Still that’s not unusual in such an establishment is it Mr Kemp,” he interjected, his expression incredulous. A man in a strip club keen on watching a semi-naked girl, that wasn’t exactly revolutionary stuff was it?

  The man continued, undeterred.

  “No, but what did strike me as a little unusual is that I saw him again, the very next week when I returned to the club.”

  “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow, this had better be good.

  “Yes, only this time he was standing at the back, just watching Miss Marilyn dance. He must have stayed there for quite some time because I noticed him as I was coming in and he was still there when I left, a couple of hours later. It was as if he didn’t want to be seen." Doyle's leant forward; her interest was obviously piqued, as was his now.

  "Mr Kemp do you remember what this man looked like?" she probed him.

  Kemp nodded.

  "He was not too unusual, at least not in the way he appeared. He had quite short, dark hair, I think it was curly, he looked young, no older than 25 I’d say.”

  “How was he dressed?” she said, frantically scribbling notes.

  “He was dressed fairly smartly, both times, I remember that, I thought he looked like someone who worked in finance, I mean, he was dressed like most of the people I work with.” Kemp paused, giving a hollow little laugh, as if he found something rather amusing.

  “Go on Mr Kemp,” he urged the man, they were going to need a lot more than that if they were going to be able to have a hope of identifying this mystery man.

  “I think he wore glasses, yes, he was wearing glasses the first time at least. And he was around my height which pleased me because a lot of men are taller than me, so I always notice it when they aren't."

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Doyle was still scribbling notes down. Was Kemp making this up or could the man he was telling them about possibly turn out to be something to do with the case? He sat forward.

  “Mr Kemp, was there anything else you noticed about this man,” he pressed. Kemp shrugged, shaking his head.

  "No, I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing at all?” He tired the man again.

  “No, if I had known this might have been of help to you then I would have tried to remember more at the time." Doyle nodded, looking up from her notes.

  "It's alright. You've been quite helpful. I think we’ve got all the information we need from you today. Now I just need to take down the names and contact details of your guests and the exact dates you visited the club, if you can recall them, and then you can go on your way. We won't keep you any longer and we'll be in touch if we have any further questions for you."

  Kemp nodded, smiling briefly at Doyle.

  “Thank you Detective,” he said, giving her a
funny little awkward bow. The man turned to him and gave a brief bob of his head, “and you Sir,” he said politely. After Kemp had left the room, the heels of his brogues clicking across the tile, Doyle looked at him, her blue eyes flashing with intrigue.

  "What do you think? Could Kemp be our guy?” He nodded slowly at her, thinking.

  "He seemed suss yeah, it's definitely worth checking him out some more. Pull up what you can on him, see if you can find a link to any of the other victims.” She nodded and he continued.

  “I’ll check out the other guy who Kemp claims was watching Marilyn at the strip club. I'll go down there this evening and ask around.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  “Nah I’ll be alright on my own. You concentrate on Kemp.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “Yeah, I’ll try and find out who was working on the nights Kemp visited and see if they remember this guy.”

  “Do you think Kemp could be making it up to deflect the heat?” She looked at him quizzically.

  “Could be. But maybe we'll be able to get an ID on this one from a credit card he used, just like we did with Kemp." Kemp was guilty of something, of that he was sure. But was he capable of murder?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - BIRTHSTONE

  She was the last one. The final piece of the puzzle. The sleek burgundy laptop positioned in front of him on the bedspread whirred into action as he hit the power button. Uncapping his silver fountain pen he began to write on a fresh blank page of the black leather bound journal that was spread out on the coverlet in front of him. An expression of satisfaction spread over his face as the pen scratched at the luxurious paper for a while, then, pausing, he re-read his handiwork, allowing the ink to dry.

  Name: Jenny Doyle.

  Hair: Blonde, wavy, long

  Age: 33

  Height: Approximately 5ft 8”

  Eyes: Blue

  Birthstone: Pearl

  Birthdate: 22/06/1979

  Occupation: Deputy Chief Inspector Metropolitan Police Serious Crimes Squad

  This was how it always started, his obsession, the way it had done ever since Sally, the cataloguing of all the minutiae of their lives, the stalking, and the watching unseen. There was a certain methodical structure to the process. First he’d select a victim, or perhaps she’d select him, like Caroline Meagan had done, stumbling into his life quite unexpectedly when he hadn’t even been looking, hadn’t even been hunting. Then, he'd try to initiate some form of contact, perhaps pretending he had need of some service they were providing, or making an excuse to bump into them, while all the time he harvested every useful detail he could gather about them.

  But the shadows were his natural domain, where he lurked, cloaked in darkness unseen by them and unknown until that last glorious moment, when he chose to make himself known. In the shadows with the lists and anecdotes he gathered, where he would sit and simmer, his excitement building until finally he could stand it no more and he had to act, had to do something.

  He remembered the very first time he'd started the stalking. It had been before Sally, golden haired Marietta in the year above him, the very first object of his affection and he had listed everything he could learn about her in the little blue cardboard covered journal he had owned back then. Then Marietta's father had got a new job up north and she had left the school. He remembered the dismay he had felt when he found out that she had moved away.

  He’d written that down in the journal too, the emptiness he felt, like he was all alone again. Even though Marietta had never said more than two words to him, the sheer amount of detail he had managed to find out about her had made him feel close to her. He'd made the mistake though, of leaving the diary under his pillow one day and going to school, and on his return he'd walked into the kitchen to find his mother sitting stony faced at the small oak dining table, the book open in front of her. He remembered how her words had dripped hate at him.

  “What is this filth?” she enquired icily, her stare unforgiving. Snatching the book he’d torn up the stairs to his bedroom, where he proceeded to rip out the pages one by one, burning them with a cigarette lighter until they were no more than ash.

  He never wrote down his feelings after that but he wrote about them; his obsessions, lovingly noted and recorded, every last detail cherished. There were several volumes now, notebooks all filled with observations and details that he’d managed to gather, and he kept them all in a drawer of the little mahogany dresser he kept in his bedroom.

  Whenever he had occasion to record a new observation, he would open up the drawer and enter it into one of the notebooks, starting a fresh book when he discovered a new, delicious obsession. And today he certainly had an extremely good reason to start a new volume. She would be the final one, she was the prize. His pearl. He’d thought she was Sally at first, the first time he ever saw her. It was her face and that hair, those long pale golden waves.

  Jenny Doyle; blonde, beautiful, and born in June. It was almost too perfect. He capped the pen and turned his attention to the laptop, pulling up Google. He already knew so much about her but thank god for the internet, it made a stalkers job even easier. There was almost nothing you couldn't find out about someone if you knew where to look. In this age of technology and social networking almost everyone left a trace. Unless you really didn’t want to be found.

  Typing in “Vauxhall Resident’s Association Basketball Team,” he hit the enter key. The results flashed up almost instantly. Let’s see. His eyes searched the page. Wait, what was that, a picture of Jenny alongside the rest of the team, holding a trophy and beaming. He clicked on the Join Us tab at the top of the team’s web page and reached for his pen again, noting down the location and times they met in the journal before adding some more to the short list of details in the book. He knew he had to tread carefully with this one.

  Gaine might prove to be a problem he thought. He didn’t like him, didn’t liked the curious, searching way he looked at people, almost as if he were reading your thoughts. But he wouldn’t let Gaine stop him now, he wouldn’t let anyone get in the way. Not when he was so close.

  He’d been waiting a long time for this. She would be the final one, she could be the one. Then it would stop, it would all stop and the rage would finally disappear. He shut his eyes, remembering his very first after Sally, the urge that had grown until it had become uncontrollable, the voices in his head unbearable. How the compulsion to simply follow and spy had mutated into a frustrated excitement and anger all mixed into one, his mother’s voice nagging away in his head, mocking and shaming him until finally he could bear it no longer.

  He followed her home from university that evening, on her way to the leisure centre. He’d been staying in the youth hostel nearby, watching her for a couple of weeks. Taking her usual route home she crossed through the back alley towards the main road, as he'd stepped out silently from the shadows, grabbing her and holding his hand over her mouth to silence her swiftly.

  He remembered the feel of her warm body struggling against his grip, as he held her to him, recalled the curious mixture of arousal and anger he felt at the proximity of her body, the sensation making his hands tremble as he sliced at her throat savagely with the knife. He recalled too the rush, a great exhale of energy that left him feeling only a sudden calm. A wave of serenity that washed over him; his mother’s voice finally silenced. It had been the same every time since then, each kill bringing him such a feeling of peace, an elation better than anything he had ever experienced in his life.

  If he was caught they would lock him up, call him a monster. But after he had them all it would be over. He would have her again and he could be at peace. She was the answer. It was fate, what did they call it, kismet? They had been destined to meet like this. Destiny, oh it had all worked out so neatly. Yes, she would be the last one but not yet. Not quite yet. There was more to do first.

  Flipping to the back of the diary, he retrieved the crumpled piece of paper that lay p
reserved between the pristine pages. Picking up the scrap, he reached into his trouser pocket for his mobile phone, and punched in the digits that had been roughly scrawled on its surface. It was time to contact Mother again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - DEACON

  He looked up as Chief Superintendent John Beeton stood glowering menacingly over his desk.

  “Gaine. I hear reports that have caused me some concern,” the Super said, stroking his chin, prolonging the moment for dramatic effect.

  Beeton did like to be dramatic sometimes, especially when he was hauling someone over the coals, and many a copper had felt the fiery wrath of the stocky ex-northerner. He surmised from the dark glower on Beeton's face that he was likely to be the next target of the Chief's temper and internally braced himself for the inevitable fallout.

  “What reports Sir?”

  “You've been working on this, this debacle of a case for what, eight months now?” Beeton thundered, his jowls wobbling as he gesticulated over to the whiteboard where photos of the victims were tacked up with drawing pins. There was no stopping the Chief now he was on a roll, the best he could hope for was that the roasting would be over relatively quickly.

  Beeton had spent four decades in the force, and his battle hardened face looked every one of its 60 years. Stocky and broad shouldered, he could never have been described as trim, but now he was surely in danger of nearing obesity. His enormous stomach loomed dangerously over the tops of his trousers and his jumper always seemed to be having a permanent argument with the waistband of his trousers.