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  “I didn’t call them, Mark, but I did know they would want to question you. That’s why I came to speak to you. To help you.” Her words seemed to have a calming effect on the boy and he stopped struggling, whilst he tried to think about what she was saying.

  “Why don’t we go inside and get this cleared up?” She turned to Miller. “He didn’t even know there had been another car fire,” she explained. “He got frightened when he heard, that’s why he was running away.”

  Miller decided to follow Callie’s quiet reassuring lead.

  “We just want to ask where you were so that we can rule you out, Mark.” He gestured to Jeffries to let the boy go, and, reluctantly, he did.

  “Like Dr Hughes said, why don’t we go inside?”

  * * *

  Miller and Jeffries quickly established that Mark had been with his girlfriend staying at her nan’s overnight and that he had only just got back to his home when Callie arrived. Jeffries went outside to get the alibi confirmed and Miller continued to question Mark, with Callie there as his appropriate adult.

  “You know what we talked about? That we found a can at each scene?” Miller asked Mark gently.

  Mark shrugged.

  “A brand of drink that we know you like.”

  “Lots of people drink it. Gives you energy,” Mark said, anxious to make sure Miller wasn’t trying to put the blame back on him.

  “Of course. But your prints were on the cans at the previous sites, and we will find out soon enough if that’s the case with a can we discovered near the car this morning.”

  Callie registered this new fact. The killer obviously didn’t know that Mark had been eliminated as a suspect if he left it there to implicate him.

  “But I didn’t put the cans there.” Mark was beginning to get agitated and Miller hastened to calm him.

  “We know that, but whoever is planting them is trying to get you into trouble. Do you understand what I am saying, Mark?”

  Mark nodded.

  “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to do that?”

  Mark shook his head.

  “It seems mad,” he said, clearly not having any idea why anyone who wasn’t mad would do this to him.

  Miller reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it and showed Mark what was on it. It had three pictures on it.

  “Do you recognise these?” Miller asked Mark gently.

  Mark nodded.

  “They’re match book covers,” he leaned forward. “Nice ones.” He looked closely and then nodded to Callie. “They’re pretty, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Callie agreed.

  “I’ve got that one, and that one.” He pointed to two of the pictures, and then the third. “But not that one.” He looked at Miller. “Will I get them back?”

  “I don’t know, Mark, probably not,” the detective said, actually thinking that there was absolutely no chance of him getting them back.

  Mark looked saddened as he realised his collection had finally gone.

  Miller pointed back at the paper.

  “These are the match books used in the three murders. The lab has managed to bring up enough detail with infra-red photography to identify them.”

  Mark looked at the pictures and shook his head in dismay.

  “I never used nice ones,” he told them. “I used the boring ones and the ones I had more than one of. I would never have used ones as nice as these. That’s mental, that is. And I never had that last one. I’ve never seen one like that, I would’ve kept it if I had.”

  Miller changed tack.

  “When you set cars alight before, did you leave drink cans at the site, as, you know, a sort of calling card?”

  Mark looked at Miller as if he was now the madman in their midst.

  “No!”

  Miller just looked at him.

  “I mean, I might have left one, you know, by mistake, but I wouldn’t do it deliberate, like. I didn’t want to get caught.”

  “So,” Miller persisted, “where do you think he gets these cans with your prints on?”

  “I don’t know,” Mark seemed genuinely perplexed. “I mean, I drink them all the time, but I always bin them, I don’t litter.” Once again confirming to Callie that at heart he was a good boy.

  Jeffries came back into the room and nodded to Miller. The alibi was solid. Mark couldn’t have torched the car.

  * * *

  As they walked out to their cars, leaving Mark to himself for the rest of his Sunday, Callie turned to Miller.

  “Why were you asking about the cans when he set fires previously? Is it because you think someone has got hold of them from those events and is leaving them at the current sites?”

  “Are you suggesting a copper nicked them from the evidence store and planted them at the scene?” Jeffries came back aggressively.

  “No, but–” Callie retorted angrily but Miller stopped her before it escalated into a full-scale row between the two of them.

  “Even if he had left them in the past, which he says he didn’t, these cans couldn’t be from then, because they are the new design and the batch numbers on the cans narrow them down to a recent purchase.”

  Jeffries and Callie both glared at each other, neither willing to apologise.

  “Can you narrow it down to where they were bought?” Callie asked Miller.

  “Only to a local cash and carry who supplied them to about forty different shops in the area.”

  “Pretty much every corner shop in Hastings,” Jeffries added grumpily, and Callie could relate to his unhappiness this time. They had obviously tried hard to find the source.

  “If it’s not something Mark used to do when he set fires, then the killer has simply invented a new calling card and he must be someone close to Mark, because he seems to be able to get drink cans with his prints on them without any trouble,” Miller continued. “We need to check who has access to his rubbish bags both here and at places he frequents like the youth centre.”

  “What about the match books? As Mark said, they aren’t common or garden ones. Can you trace who bought them?” Callie added.

  “It’s hard because of the number of collectors out there. Jayne was checking them out, but we will need to escalate that search, check if anyone even remotely connected to Mark has bought any on any of the online sites or from a dealer.”

  “Don’t tell me, and cross check with the lists of people who know the MO, have access to the rubbish and are divorced?” Jeffries looked dismayed at the thought of yet more lists. “That could take a sodding lifetime.”

  Miller nodded and added with a slightly malicious smile, “Modern policing, Bob. It’s all about endless boring data searches.”

  Callie was pleased that they were checking names against so many criteria, searching for connections. Surely one name would come to the fore soon? The trouble was, as Sergeant Jeffries had pointed out with the unnecessary expletive, it could take a very long time, a very long time indeed.

  “The killer must realise by now that you no longer suspect Mark, so why continue to leave the cans?” It seemed peculiarly vindictive to Callie.

  “That’s a good question,” Miller responded.

  “Just to fuck with us,” Jeffries added.

  “And to let us know he’s still out there; that he hasn’t stopped.”

  Callie couldn’t suppress a slight shiver down her spine at Miller’s words and the thought that more women could, and probably would, die before they caught this man. She gave herself a mental shake. There was nothing she could do about that.

  “Right,” she said, “I’m off to enjoy the rest of my Sunday in relative peace, I hope. Goodbye.” She walked back to where she had parked her car, leaving them both; Jeffries still looking daggers at her retreating back, and Miller looking at her with an altogether different expression on his face.

  Chapter 19

  Having spent what was left of her Sunday cathartically cleaning her home in an effort to ge
t the murders out of her mind, Callie had made a decision, about the murders, at least. She needed to find out if Gerry was involved, if only to put her mind at rest. She couldn’t very well voice her suspicions to the police because she had no real grounds for them. She could imagine Miller’s reaction if she told him that she suspected Gerry to be a serial killer because he was a creep or that he was not a very good doctor, let alone because he parked his car at the surgery every Wednesday and Saturday nights. No, she had to find out if there was any basis to her suspicion first.

  It seemed pretty hopeless trying to prove or disprove Gerry Brown’s involvement through the website. Especially since she couldn’t even rule out the ones who had responded on Saturday as no murder had taken place. How could she ever know if any of the men she had been talking to were him? Unless she agreed to meet them and there was no way she was going that far. It had been whilst cleaning her little-used oven, that she had decided to stop trying to talk to him through the website and to take the radical step of speaking to him in person. She wasn’t going to ask him outright if he was a serial killer, of course, but just get to know him better and see if she could find any other indications that he was the murderer. Something concrete she could take to Miller without him laughing at her.

  Once she got to the surgery on Monday morning, Callie checked Gerry’s morning list and worked out when he would be finishing. There was no point trying to speak to him before he started surgery as he wouldn’t want to begin late any more than she would, but if she could catch him once he had finished and before he rushed off to wherever it was he disappeared to between clinics, she might just get to speak to him. Of course, that meant she would have to take a break from her own patients as her surgery was longer, but if she could just try and get a bit ahead and then nip up at the relevant time for a cup of coffee, it could work.

  Her plan started well, her first three patients were all on time and only had one problem each for her to deal with: a blood pressure check, a medication review and a patient needing referral, but then the fourth patient came in armed with a list and Callie’s heart sank. There was no way she was going to get through a list of problems in the allotted ten minutes. And she didn’t, so she missed Gerry. He had disappeared for his lunch break long before she made it up to the office.

  “Why did you want to see Gerry?” Linda asked when Callie checked if he was still there.

  “Oh, you know, I just thought I’d try and get to know him better.”

  Linda raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying that explanation.

  “It’s this thing about leaving his car here twice a week, my curiosity is getting the better of me and I really want to know why he does it. So, I thought I’d try asking him, in a roundabout way, of course.”

  Linda laughed. Curiosity was something she could understand.

  “I don’t suppose you know, do you?” Callie asked, hoping Linda had managed to find out, but she shook her head, disappointed not to be able to shed any light on the reason. “I mean, you’d think his wife would object.”

  “Ah, well. I might not know why he leaves his car here, but I have found out that he and his wife have split up and that’s why he’s doing locum work. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.”

  “The other being?”

  “The cause of his marital split.” Linda leaned in confidentially and checked no one else was listening before whispering, “He had an affair with a patient.”

  Callie was genuinely shocked. That was an absolute no-no for doctors.

  “That explains a lot,” Callie told Linda. “He’s probably still seeing the woman, too.”

  “Not sure about that,” Linda said. “According to the practice manager at his old surgery, the affair only came to light when the patient complained to the surgery that she had chucked him but he wouldn’t leave her alone.”

  That fitted in well with how he had reacted when Kate had tried to break free. He was not one to take rejection lightly.

  “And then his wife threw him out, unsurprisingly,” Linda continued. “She’s some high-powered internet millionaire, with a very good legal team, not to mention something that she can hold over him and threaten to get him struck off for if he didn’t do as she wanted. So, he lost his wife, his girlfriend and his home – everything in one fell swoop. He’s probably ended up having to pay her alimony as well.”

  Linda seemed to take great delight from this, and Callie did too if she was honest – it was nice to hear of someone getting their comeuppance like that, but had it tipped him over the edge? Turned him into a killer? It seemed a possibility that she couldn’t discount.

  “And I’ll tell you the final irony.” Linda had really got into her stride and Callie certainly wasn’t about to stop this useful flow of gossip. “His ex-wife made her money out of one of those dating websites, and not just a find-your-perfect-match sort of one, but a no-strings-attached one that actively encourages married people to use it for affairs. It’s got a name that says it all, now what was it?” Linda thought for a second, struggling to remember.

  “SusSEXtra?” Callie asked helpfully.

  “Yes, that’s it!” Linda agreed. “How on earth did you know what it was called?” she added, suddenly suspicious.

  “Oh, it cropped up in another conversation.” Callie tried to sound innocent, but she wasn’t sure she had convinced Linda, who looked as if she was about to question her more closely.

  “Anyway, must get on.” Callie grabbed her basket of paperwork and hurried into the doctors’ office.

  * * *

  Once sure she was alone in the office, Callie logged onto a computer and opened up a web browser. She needed to find out more about SusSEXtra, or SSE as some of the users seemed to call it, probably because they got fewer funny looks if they mentioned it in public. Others referred to it as SSex but she didn’t feel as comfortable with that abbreviation. Companies House gave her the information on the chief executive officer and board that she needed. The person in charge and owner of the company was listed as a Ms Amelia Hepton-Lacey, and, if she was indeed Gerry’s ex, Callie wasn’t in the least surprised that she hadn’t changed her name to Brown when she married him. Hepton-Lacey sounded very classy, although it was hard to be sure if Amelia was actually posh, she might have changed her name by deed poll for all Callie knew. Companies House also gave Callie the registered address for the company and from there Callie had little difficulty getting a contact number. Grabbing her list of visits, she hurried out.

  * * *

  Callie sat at her dining table holding her phone, with the note of the SuSEXtra company contact number and an untouched sandwich in front of her. For once she was not distracted by the spectacular view out of her window.

  She took a deep breath and dialled.

  “Hello, SSE, can I help you?” a woman’s voice answered after only two rings.

  “Oh, hello. Could I speak to Amelia Hepton-Lacey, please?” Callie replied.

  “I’m afraid she’s not in the office at the moment. Can I take a message?”

  For a moment Callie was floored. She hadn’t really thought through what she was going to say next.

  “Um, my name is Dr Hughes and I’m with the police,” she finally said, crossing her fingers. It wasn’t actually a lie, she was, after all, a police FME, but there was no way her role covered what she was currently doing. “Can I ask who I’m talking to?”

  “Jenny Harris. I’m the office manager. Who did you say you were?” Jenny countered.

  “Dr Callie Hughes. I work as a consultant with the police, I can give you a number to contact to check my credentials if you would like?” Callie hoped Jenny wouldn’t want to do that, because she wasn’t quite sure who she could ask to do that for her.

  “No, that’s okay, Dr Hughes, I can see you listed on the police website.”

  “Of course,” Callie had to stop herself from sounding surprised. She had had no idea that she was listed on the Hastings Police website. Jenny was clearly very effici
ent if she had found this out so quickly. That was probably bad news for Callie, but she pressed on regardless. “As you know, we are looking into the possibility that the murdered women were accessed through the website. It’s obviously vital that we are sure if this is a real possibility or if it’s a dead end, so to speak, and I wonder if you could help me?”

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it? To think of what happened to them?” Jenny seemed genuinely distressed.

  “Which is why it’s so important we know how he is contacting these women. Of course, it may not be through your website, but we absolutely have to eliminate it.”

  “Of course, and I’m honestly happy to do what I can,” Jenny said helpfully. “But Ms Hepton-Lacey has left clear instructions that we are not to divulge the names or details of any of our clients to the police without a warrant. We could be liable if we did.” She sounded quite upset at not being able to help more.

  “I quite understand and I wouldn’t want to put you in a difficult position,” Callie agreed, and decided to push that little bit more as the woman at the end of the phone seemed to want to help, if she could. “But I am sure that since you knew of our interest, you will have done a bit of digging and checked the victims’ names against your client list, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, the client list is usually a lot of silly made up names, but the payment details are more accurate,” Jenny admitted, so she clearly had been checking out the victims. “And I can quite understand how important it is for you to know, and I’d really like to help,” Jenny left that hanging slightly in the air as a hint to Callie that she was willing to co-operate.

  “So, would it be possible for me to say the names one at a time, and if that person is a client you cough or something?” Callie suggested.

  “How about I cough if they aren’t?” Jenny countered.

  “Okay, Sarah Dunsmore.” Callie waited, there was no cough. “Carol Johnson.” As expected, there was no cough after Carol’s name. “Teresa Hardwick.” Callie held her breath – this was the crunch moment. No cough again. Callie waited, in case, but the silence lengthened and there was no doubt in her mind.