Only Darkness. Danuta Reah

the time. Finally, Berryman had advised him to go on sick leave and get some help, even though that would put a blight on his promotion prospects. But Neave wasn’t interested.

      ‘The fact is,’ he’d told Berryman, ‘I just don’t give a bugger about any of it any more. I just want out.’ Berryman was beginning to understand that feeling now, though he hadn’t been able to understand it then, the same way he’d never been able to understand Neave’s obsession with Angie – oh, pretty, he’d give you that, but weird. He couldn’t have stood it for a week.

      He hadn’t seen Neave for nearly six months. Claire had had a go at him – ‘Why don’t you ask Rob round for an evening? We’ll feed him up, have a few beers, it might cheer him up.’ Claire had developed a soft spot for his ex-colleague. He’d phoned, but the offer had been declined, as Berryman had known it would be. Without the job, they had lost their common ground. He went up to the bar. ‘Want another one in there?’

      Then he couldn’t think of anything to say. Berryman had been with Neave when he and Angie first met, and it had been Berryman who had seen him at the end. She stood between them like an unspoken ghost.

      Neave looked pleased to see him, but turned down the offer of a drink. He still had almost a pint in his glass and it looked as if he had been spinning it out for a while. They exchanged bits and pieces of news, the talk halting and awkward. Looking around for topics, Berryman glanced at the paper Neave had been reading when he came into the pub. It was the Moreham Standard. It was open at the two-page spread about the Strangler.

      Berryman groaned. It had got in the way of his thoughts all afternoon. The police should be doing this, the police aren’t doing this, Christ, what did they expect? Magic? Neave glanced at him, saw what he was looking at and gave him a sympathetic grin. ‘Giving you a hard time,’ he said, rather than asked.

      ‘They want my balls on a plate,’ Berryman said gloomily.

      ‘Yeah. Then Mystic Meg could gaze into them and give you the answers.’ Neave looked at the paper again. ‘Is it right? You’ve got nothing?’

      Berryman decided to talk. He knew he could trust Neave to keep his mouth shut. ‘This bastard really knows what he’s doing,’ he said, after a moment. ‘He’s not made many mistakes. We’re getting nowhere. Four of them now, and we’ve got nothing.’

      ‘Nothing? You must have something. He’s got to leave something behind.’

      ‘Oh, we’ve got stuff that’ll help when we catch him. If we catch him. We’ve got lines of enquiry we haven’t used up yet, but we’ve got nothing to tell us who he is. It’ll be a Yorkshire Ripper thing again. He’ll do it once too often and we’ll have him. This kind of thing doesn’t help. It just gets people panicked, and it puts out information I don’t want putting out.’ He tapped the article headlined, I saw the face of the Strangler. ‘That’s rubbish. It’s just speculation. Stupid bitch.’

      Neave looked at the article. ‘He works at the college,’ he said, indicating the name of the writer. ‘She probably forgot he was a journalist when she talked to him. She was worried about it. She asked me what she should do.’ He intercepted Berryman’s look and grinned again. ‘I told her to talk to you lot. I didn’t tell her to sell her story.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘You’re worried about it though. Was it him she saw?’

      ‘I don’t fucking know. Whole of South fucking Yorkshire knows, but I don’t.’

      But the fact was, Berryman was worried by Debbie’s story. ‘One thing we’ve got is that we know where he picked up the first one, Lisa Griffin. He left her by the track just outside Mexborough station. That’s where she was headed for, and we had witnesses who put her there. He’s learned something since then. We don’t know where he killed the others. They were dumped on the line away from any stations. There were two things we found – fingerprints we can’t account for, on her bag. I’m not saying they’re the killer’s, but they’re there. Also, broken glass. We don’t know why. He’d taken the lights out on the platform near where we found Lisa. We found broken glass on the others as well. Kate, Kate Claremont, there was glass in her hair. And there were bits of glass caught in Mandy’s dress.’

      Neave looked off into space, his eyes half closed. ‘Is it lights he doesn’t like, or is it glass? Reflections? Does he need the glass? Does he use it on them?’

      Berryman went over the old ground again. They didn’t know, they could only guess. ‘The glass isn’t the kind that breaks into shards. It doesn’t look like a weapon. He seems to be funny about lights. He smashes them, but he isn’t consistent.’ He saw Neave’s question forming. ‘We don’t know. It could be a convenience thing, pure and simple, but it’s there.’ He sighed and emptied his glass. Neave signalled to the barman.

      ‘How does he pick them up?’ he asked.

      ‘Good question,’ Berryman said. ‘And one we’d like the answer to.’ They didn’t know where he’d picked them up, where he’d taken them or where he’d killed them. They knew what he’d done to them though. ‘This last one, for instance, Julie, she was last seen leaving work on Broomegate. She never got home. He must have got her shortly after she was last seen, but the time of death was probably around midnight. If he picked her up on the street, someone should have seen it. There were enough cars around. If he picked her up in the station, how did he get her to bloody Rawmarsh? If he’s using a car, he’s got to get her out of the station and then he’s still got to get her down to the line – no road where we found her. Someone must have seen something, but no one’s come forward.’

      ‘Apart from.’ Neave indicated the photo in the paper.

      Berryman scowled. ‘We need to talk to her again. We need to be sure that Julie wasn’t at the station. We need to find this man, whoever he is. He might have seen something.’

      ‘But it could be your man?’ Neave didn’t wait for an answer. ‘So how does he find them?’ His glass was now empty. He shook his head as the other man gestured to ask if he wanted another. He had that narrow-eyed intent look that Berryman remembered from earlier days.

      ‘We’re working on it,’ he said. The general feeling of the men working the investigation was that the killer chose his victims at random – waited till he saw a likely-looking one, then struck. Berryman wasn’t so sure. ‘I’ve got a bit of a feeling about it. Lisa’s little girl, she’s only five, she kept talking about the ugly man – and Mandy’s mum said that Mandy had been getting some funny phone calls. Mind you, she said that was down to Mandy’s boyfriend. I don’t know. It doesn’t add up to much. We’ve looked into it, and there’s nothing there you can put your finger on. I’ve got Lynne Jordan’s team working on it now. You know Lynne?’ Neave made a noncommittal noise. ‘The boyfriend admits he made “one or two” calls. It’s not just that, though. It’s too neat the way he lifts them. He always manages to do it without a witness. He’s got to know about them to do that. No, my money says he plans it well ahead.’

      It was gone ten when they left the pub. Berryman headed for his car and Neave turned towards the river and his flat. Outside the pub, he zipped up his jacket and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Winter had the town in its grip now. The air was icy and the pavement sparkled with frost. The centre was deserted as usual – just a few kids rode their skateboards around the pedestrianized shopping area, a small group of adolescents huddled together outside the local burger joint. His footsteps echoed as he walked through the pedestrian precinct towards the river. The wind cut between the buildings and blew bits of rubbish around on the ground and up into the air. An empty can rattled its way down the street as if in pursuit of the lighter burger cartons and chip wrappings. A twenty-minute walk and he’d be home. He was glad he didn’t have to watch over his shoulder, to be wary of every empty alleyway. He thought of Deborah walking through the town centre alone.

      Berryman’s mind drifted back to the past. Angie. He and Neave had been working over in Sheffield at the time. There had been some attacks on women in the university district. A young