Know No Evil Read online

  Know No Evil

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  A Letter From Graeme

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Know No Evil

  Graeme Hampton

  In memory of my mother, Margaret, who loved to read.

  Prologue

  Then

  It’s gone midnight when we leave the club. The muffled thuds of a techno beat echo down the street. It begins to drizzle. We’re wearing our best party gear: short skirts and high heels. We’re not dressed for rain.

  I hurriedly scan the street for a taxi. Bex looks like she’s going to throw up.

  I didn’t want the night to end like this.

  It had started off well enough: both of us celebrating the end of school and our new-found freedom. It had ended with a couple of shaven-headed bouncers asking us, politely, to leave one of Brixton’s dodgier nightclubs. Bex had started a fight with another girl. Inevitably it had been about something and nothing, but it was enough to get us chucked out the club.

  ‘I want another drink,’ Bex says. She sways unsteadily in her stiletto heels and tries to pull the collar of her expensive new leather jacket up around her neck. It’s almost cute, and I have to suppress an urge to giggle.

  ‘I think we should get you home,’ I say.

  But Bex is too pissed to listen to reason. ‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ she says. ‘There’s a new club just opened near the tube station.’

  ‘It’s miles away,’ I argue.

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t care!’ Bex shouts, attracting disapproving looks from a passing couple. But she revels in the attention. ‘Who’s going to buy me a drink? I want a drink.’

  There’s a group of teenage lads standing outside the KFC on the corner by the church. They watch us, and eat their takeaways with their eyes narrowed and their voices low.

  A taxi rounds the corner and I wave it down.

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ Bex says, tears smearing her mascara. ‘Why do you always behave like you’re my mother?’

  The taxi pulls up beside us. I push Bex towards it with one hand and open the door with the other.

  ‘She isn’t going to chuck her guts up?’ the driver asks, nodding at Bex. He looks pissed off, as though it’s already been a long and trying night.

  ‘No,’ I lie. ‘She’ll be fine. I just need to get her home.’

  Another argument ensues. ‘I’m not going home! I want another drink.’

  Bex pushes me away and ambles down the street in the direction of the watching lads, stumbling in her too-high heels, trying to pull her new denim skirt over her bare thighs. She passes the lads amid a cacophony of cat calls and jeering. One of them says something and his mates laugh.

  Bex pulls a face at them and staggers onwards. A piece of deep-fried chicken hits her on the shoulder, leaving a greasy smear down the back of her cream leather jacket.

  With my hand still on the taxi door, I have to make a quick decision. I shout ‘Bex!’ but she ignores me.

  The rain is heavy now: icy daggers stinging my face and neck.

  The taxi driver grumbles, ‘Are you going to get in? If not, close the fucking door and piss off!’

  I climb into the back of the taxi and ask the driver to take me home.

  As the taxi pulls away, I glance out the rear window, watching as Bex totters into the night.

  Then the taxi turns into a side street and my best friend disappears from view.

  * * *

  The next day, the following article appeared in the London Echo:

  BERMONDSEY RIPPER’S LATEST VICTIM?

  The body of an eighteen-year-old woman was discovered by a dog-walker in undergrowth in a park near East Dulwich station earlier this morning. She’d been beaten and strangled.

  Police are so far refusing to comment on whether the young woman could be the latest victim of the so-called ‘Bermondsey Ripper’, who has been terrorising women in and around south London for the past year. Detective Inspector Ken Walters, who is leading the investigation into the murders, said it was ‘unhelpful to speculate at this early stage’. He denied the police were struggling to make progress with the investigation, insisting there had been a number of breakthroughs in recent days.

  The police have come in for continued criticism over their handling of the ‘Bermondsey Ripper’ case, which has so far seen six women viciously murdered in and around south London.

  Chapter One

  Now

  Matt Denning reversed his Ford Focus into the narrow space between a Volvo estate and a concrete bollard. He shut the door and locked the car with a double bleep. In front of him, Haggerston Park shimmered in the sticky heat of an unusually hot London summer.

  Denning slipped on his Ray-Bans, trying his best to look cool and unflustered.

  Inside the park, a group of children hovered near some swings, looking bored and fractious. They eyed Denning with a mix of curiosity and suspicion as he passed. A couple of dog-walkers were engaged in an animated conversation as they watched the events unfolding in front of them.

  Beyond the children’s playground, a wooded section of the park had been cordoned off with a thin band of blue and white police tape, which hung limply
in the stilted air. A couple of uniformed officers were talking to another group of children, some of whom looked like they were crying. A young officer, with dark, damp circles showing through his crisp white shirt, stood beside the path that led into the wood. Behind him Denning spotted half a dozen white-suited figures weaving between the trees and shrubbery, their faces obscured by masks. He could just about make out the distinctive shape of a forensic tent poking through the greenery.

  Denning flashed his ID and the young constable nodded him past the temporary barrier.

  It was slightly cooler inside the wooded area, but not much. Tall trees and their wide branches offered a modicum of protection from the sun’s searing heat. Shards of daylight filtered through the foliage, dotting the ground with speckles of white.

  As Denning approached the forensic tent, the smell hit him like a fist in the face. It made him think of curdled milk and rotting meat. He felt his stomach tighten.

  A white-clad figure emerged from inside the tent. She walked over to him, dropped her mask and proffered a gloved hand. ‘Sheila Gorton. I’m the crime scene manager. You must be DI Denning.’ Her voice had a faint trace of a Canadian accent.

  Denning shook her hand. ‘Guilty as charged.’

  ‘The boy wonder, so I hear.’

  Ignoring her, he jerked his head in the direction of the tent. ‘What’s the story?’

  Gorton was in her late forties and filled her forensic suit. ‘Young woman. Late teens or early twenties. Beaten and strangled.’ A couple of flies buzzed around her face as she spoke. She batted away them with a flick of her right hand. ‘The bruising to the face is sufficiently extensive to suggest the beating was both sustained and brutal.’

  ‘Has the pathologist had a look at her?’

  She gave a light snort. ‘The Home Office still haven’t allocated one after Dr Chambers left, so we’re waiting for UCL to send someone over from their pathology department. Should be here sometime today.’

  One of the CSIs appeared and handed Denning a forensic suit. ‘Any sign of sexual assault?’

  ‘Possibly. The pathologist will be able to say for certain when he gets her on the table.’

  Denning slipped a leg into the white suit. He looked at the near Elysian scene around him: a park in the middle of Hackney had initially struck him as somewhat incongruous; he’d always thought of east London as one vast urban conurbation, with nothing to break up the hard edges. ‘Who found her?’ he asked.

  ‘Some kids,’ she said. ‘It’s the start of the school holidays and I expect they were looking for something to do. They wanted to build a den, apparently. Poor little sods. Not exactly the best of starts to the holidays.’ She looked at Denning. ‘I’d better warn you; it isn’t pleasant.’

  ‘Is it ever?’

  Stuffing his Ray-Bans into his top pocket, Denning zipped up the forensic suit, slipped the elasticated booties over his designer shoes and covered his face with a protective mask. Then he followed Gorton into the tent.

  Amid the foliage, the body of a young woman lay on her back in a shallow grave. Her face was an abstract mask of red and purple, and there were marks around her throat. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was matted with dried blood. Sightless eyes stared back at him. Her mouth was half open, as though she was about to speak.

  Denning knelt on the bone-dry earth to examine the body more closely. She was wearing a strapless grey sleeveless dress, which had been ripped from the shoulder to the hem. There were lacerations scored into her right hand and lower arms, as well as her forehead, along with what looked to Denning like teeth marks.

  The grave was actually a natural hollow in the land. It had been partially camouflaged with twigs and leaves in an attempt to conceal the body.

  Denning looked at Gorton and nodded. He headed out of the tent, Gorton following behind.

  ‘Has the forensic photographer been?’ he asked, removing his mask.

  ‘Left about ten minutes ago.’

  Denning climbed out of the forensic suit. ‘Was there any ID on the victim?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No phone? Bag?’

  ‘Like I said – nada, zilch. Nothing.’ She cocked her head to one side as she spoke. ‘Sorry, I realise I’m not being very helpful.’

  Denning shot her a reassuring smile. ‘Not your bad.’ He looked over his shoulder at the wooded copse; the corpse in the copse, he thought to himself, and had to bite back a wry smile at a naff pun. ‘I’m guessing she wasn’t killed here?’ he said.

  ‘The lack of blood surrounding the body would suggest she was killed elsewhere and the body dumped here. The pathologist should be able to confirm it, but I’d say she’s been here less than twenty-four hours. In this heat, any longer and she’d have started going putrid.’

  Denning suspected putrefaction may have already begun, but he wasn’t going to question Sheila Gorton’s professional opinion.

  ‘What were those marks on her body? They look like lacerations, or bites?’ He handed her his forensic suit.

  ‘Foxes, I’d say. The area is home to a lot of wildlife. And there’s the city farm on the other side of the park.’

  Denning winced at the thought. ‘The big question,’ he said, as they walked back towards the main part of the park, ‘is: how did she get here?’

  ‘I would have thought the “big question” was who killed her, but I get your point.’

  ‘Any idea about time of death?’

  ‘Not really my area of expertise. You should really be aiming that one at the pathologist.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘But I guess you don’t want to hang around until we get one, so I can take a professional punt and estimate sometime yesterday evening.’

  ‘Any chance you could be a bit more specific?’ He offered her his best impression of a warm smile. ‘I would appreciate it.’

  ‘Judging by the early state of decomposition and rate of rigour mortis, I’d say twelve hours ago, give or take.’

  Denning nodded his acknowledgment. ‘So, we’re saying sometime between midnight and 1 a.m.?’

  Gorton nodded. ‘Obviously the PM will be able to give you a more accurate timescale, but that would be my best guess.’

  The cool shade of the wooded area had now given way to the blinding sunlight of the main park. Denning hurriedly slipped his sunglasses back on and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  He spotted a casually dressed young man approaching from the direction of the police incident van, which was now parked just beyond the main gate leading into the park.

  As soon as the man saw Denning and Gorton, he sauntered over to join them.

  Denning greeted him with a curt smile. ‘Sheila Gorton, DS Neeraj. I’m guessing you two know each other?’

  DS Deepak Neeraj was a year or two older than Denning. He was dressed in a pair of beige chinos and a chocolate brown and black checked shirt. His thick, jet-black hair was gelled into a neat quiff. Neeraj and Gorton nodded professionally at one another.

  ‘Deep, what’s happening?’

  ‘A couple of the PCs have spoken to them kids what found the body,’ he said. ‘They can’t tell us much though.’ He kept his hands in his pockets as he spoke. ‘We’re going to get someone to take them home. They’re pretty shook up.’

  His focus was on Denning when he spoke, as though Gorton wasn’t there. If he smiled more, Denning thought, he could have passed for attractive.

  ‘Understandable,’ offered Gorton. She aimed her words at Neeraj. ‘Can’t be every day you chance upon a dead body in your local playground.’

  ‘Round here,’ Neeraj replied, his hands still in his pockets, ‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’

  They both looked at Denning. He was gazing around the park, taking in the scene: people stood around observing the proceedings, while others sunbathed on the yellowing grass trying to affect a lack of interest. A couple of pensioners sat on a bench immediately beyond the cordon, eating ice cream and watching the police activity as thou
gh it were live telly unfolding before them. A wiry terrier frolicked in a flower bed.

  After a moment Denning became aware that a silence had fallen. Gorton and Neeraj were looking at him, expecting a reply. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Get someone to take them home. We’ll take a formal statement from them later, once family liaison have been in touch.’

  Gorton said, ‘I’ll email you the PM results as soon as I can.’ She touched his elbow gently, offered him a half smile, then returned to join the other CSIs in the wooded area.

  Denning turned to Neeraj. ‘Any other witnesses?’

  Neeraj shook his head. ‘The plods have spoken to everyone who was in the park this morning, but there’s nothing useful.’

  They walked in the direction of the mobile police unit.

  ‘Has anyone checked the CCTV?’

  ‘Sorry…?’

  They stopped. Denning pointed at the park’s main gate. ‘There must be CCTV at the various entrances to the park. Has anyone checked them?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, can you do that? The CSM believes she was killed sometime after midnight, then dumped here. So check times from around 12 a.m. onwards.’

  Neeraj seemed to give the matter some thought before replying. ‘OK. I’ll get someone on to that.’ He walked towards the mobile unit, hands still in his pockets.

  Chapter Two

  Standing in the car park at the back of Dalston police station, Detective Sergeant Molly Fisher lit her second guilty Silk Cut of the day.

  She turned her face towards the sun, feeling the warm rays prickle her pale skin. Distracted by the sound of a door closing behind her, she glanced over towards the entrance to the custody suite and saw DC Trudi Bell weaving her way across the car park, packet of B&H in one hand, mobile phone in the other; her tight-fitting black top and grey pencil skirt emphasising her curves.

  ‘All right, babe? How’s things?’ Trudi asked, removing a cigarette from the packet.

  Molly offered Trudi a light. ‘You know: same old, same old.’

  Trudi took the lighter and lit her cigarette. She inhaled deeply, before blowing out a long plume of smoke and letting her shoulders drop. ‘Christ, I needed that.’ She handed Molly back the lighter. ‘I thought you’d given up?’