Whilst lifting himself to his feet, Ben grabbed a half-brick that lay on the ground beside him, then turned and quickly marched in Ricky’s direction, determination and anger written all over his face.
‘Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do?’ said Ricky, sticking out his chest and dropping his shoulders as he stepped forward, looking brave in front of his girlfriend.
He should have run away.
Ben didn’t say a word. He just swung his straight arm around and crashed the corner of the brick into the side of Ricky’s skull.
Ricky’s eyes froze, then glazed, then rolled in their sockets. Two seconds later, blood was shooting out from the wound at the side of Ricky’s head as he fell, lifeless, into the canal. The air trapped in his puffer jacket, and the reeds at the edge of the water under his feet, kept him afloat.
Ben watched, emotionless, until the screams and cries for help from Alexia snapped him out of his trance. He tossed the brick into the canal.
Alexia was frozen to the spot where she stood, fear and panic rooting her feet to the ground. Urine began to drip from the bottom of her school skirt.
She fell silent as Ben covered her mouth with one hand and then grabbed the hair on the back of her head with the other. He yanked her head backwards and forced her to the ground.
Ben sat on her chest with his knees pinning down her shoulders and grabbed fistfuls of her hair, either side of her head. She managed to scream one more word, ‘Please,’ before Ben violently lifted her head then smashed it down onto the concrete floor, as hard as he possibly could.
She didn’t scream anymore, but Ben didn’t stop cracking her head until blood, hair and bits of skull formed a lumpy puddle beneath her.
Ben sat, looking down on his victim and laughed. He laughed at the blood on his hands and the stains on his jacket before snapping back to reality.
He was a killer, now suddenly in survival mode. He stood and looked both directions along the canal. Nobody was in sight.
Ben dragged Alexia’s corpse to the edge of the water and rolled her in. Again, the reeds played a big part in keeping the corpse from sinking, so he pushed down on her body with his foot until she was submerged, but as soon as he lifted it again, the reeds forced her back to the surface.
He stepped to the side and lowered himself back down on his knees and washed the blood from his hands and face in the filthy water then stood and again checked for witnesses. He took off his jacket and folded it over his arm, planning to ditch it in some random rubbish bin, far from here.
He took one more look at the bodies floating on the surface of the cold, canal water.
‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you fucking kids had to push me.’
He walked away from the ugly scene, guilt and joy wrestling for prominence in his mind.
12
Summers stood in front of a large whiteboard. The photos of her twelve selected victims along with their names and basic information and details of death were written up and taped to the board, in chronological order, earliest death on the left, numbered one.
Summers gently touched the photo of victim five, Dr Andrew Summers, then stood back and took her hip- flask from her desk drawer, gulped from it and put it back just as Kite walked back into the office with more coffee. Summers acknowledged him as he placed one coffee in front of her and took a sip of his own.
‘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.
