He was absolutely correct on that score. She didn’t trust him. Not fully. She glanced at the armed policeman cradling his automatic weapon. He returned a wary smile of confirmation. Next to the monument, Sinbad was covering the ground quickly, tail up, nose down.
Anna considered Shaw’s statement. Trust was an odd word to use, but he’d used it before. He’d shown no remorse for his crimes and had cultivated their relationship because he wanted her to trust him. At least when it came to revealing his ‘treasures’. Yet she still wasn’t sure exactly why. Outside the confines of the prison, he was more open, more willing to talk to her. And he wanted her to know that. Apart from Tanya Cromer, whom, she was now convinced, he tried to save, the ‘buried treasure’ Shaw was revealing to them was linked to Black Squid. All victims in some shape or form of the nameless, faceless murderous puppeteer who tricked and manipulated his victims into horrible deaths, aided and abetted by Krastev.
Shaw’s motivation was vendetta-fuelled and, she suspected, had a lot more mileage left.
Sinbad had covered a 20-metre-square area when he suddenly started pawing at the ground. He ran from left to right but came back to a spot adjacent to a fence bordering a residential property and barked. His handler came over and threw him a ball. His reward for finding the treasure. Anna’d read that a cadaver dog could find a human tooth buried 12 feet under the earth.
The GPR team came in with their mobile detector. Ten minutes later, Anna got the nod to say they’d found something.
Anna spoke to a DI Becker from Sussex Police, a rangy murder squad veteran with cheekbones pocked from old acne scars. This was his case now. She brought him over to speak to Shaw, who, once the presence of a body was confirmed, had been taken back to the transport vehicle where he stood, flanked by the uniforms.
Becker asked, ‘DI Gwynne tells me you know who did this?’
Shaw, eyes down, looked slowly up into Becker’s face. ‘It’s a drainage ditch. The man who buried the boy knew they were doing ground works. He didn’t even need to dig the hole himself.’
‘You seem to know a lot,’ Becker said.
Shaw gave him one of his slow blinks. Anna was suddenly glad of the handcuffs and the armed escort.
‘I’ve given the details to Inspector Gwynne,’ Shaw said.
‘Would you be prepared to give us a statement?’
‘Only to Inspector Gwynne.’
Becker sighed and turned to Anna. ‘Looks like we’ll both be visiting Hector at his, then.’
‘No,’ Shaw said. ‘Don’t bother. I will only speak to her. You ask me through her. But she will be busy. Inspector Gwynne is going to have her own case to investigate.’
Both police officers exchanged glances before turning to Shaw.
‘What do you mean, Hector?’ Anna asked.
‘I think it’s time I showed you one closer to home. Krastev was reluctant to tell me about it. He needed a lot of, how should I put it, persuading. And there’s something about it that smells bad. He kept saying ‘chudovishtna kushta’. I had to look it up. It means monster house.’
‘That doesn’t help.’
‘No?’ Shaw tilted his head. ‘Somewhere you keep the mad and the very, very bad, I’d guess.’ He breathed in slowly through his nose, eyes shut. Anna hoped he was taking in the country air, but she suspected it was mainly her that he was attempting to ingest.
His veiled references were beginning to irritate her. He’d already dragged her off to an abandoned asylum where Krastev had been buried. And a small but cynical part of her still wondered if this was merely some kind of sick and elaborate game he was playing.
The monster house.
Had Krastev really said that or was this another bigoted reference to the mentally ill from Shaw himself? His smugness was beginning to annoy her.
‘What if I said no, Hector. What if I said I wasn’t interested in any more liaisons. Either tell me now what you know or go back to your cell and rot.’
The silence that followed seemed to have its own heartbeat. Finally, Shaw looked up and spoke, his tone even and soft.
‘Now why would you want to take that attitude, Inspector? I thought we had an understanding.’
‘The only thing I understand is that you’re feeding us tidbits instead of letting us have the whole takeaway.’
‘Quid Pro Quo, Anna.’
‘Days out, you mean?’ Anna shook her head. ‘Come on Hector.’
‘I’m giving you a chance to progress your career, Anna. You should be grateful.’
‘Grateful.’ Anna nodded. ‘I see. Well, dealing with the aftermath of another body should see us through another few months, so I’ll be tied up for a while.’
‘Time is not on my side, you know that.’
She paused then, assimilating his words. It was a strange thing to say. Shaw was only in his fifties. ‘I’m not going to try and understand what that means. But I’ve got lots of time. So how about I find someone else to walk in Abbie’s shoes for you instead of me.’ She knew she was goading. Any mention of Abbie Shaw was like lighting blue touchpaper.
‘You aren’t Abbie and I would be grateful if you did not use her name in an attempt at scoring points off me.’
‘But isn’t that exactly what you’re trying to do every single time you take us out to a body? I’m sure she’d be very proud.’
Becker, who’d watched the exchange, said, ‘And there is a lot to be proud of, isn’t there, Hector?’
Shaw had been cooperation epitomised. Quiet, wary almost. That went some way to explain why they were all so unprepared for what happened next. Shaw let his eyes drop and, in one lunge, charged at Becker. The detective was caught totally off balance. He fell. Shaw, hands cuffed behind him, fell too. But there was nothing accidental about the way he collapsed on top of Becker, his face reaching up towards the detective’s throat. If it hadn’t been for the escort’s quick reactions, Anna had no doubt that Shaw would have bitten. She’d seen him bite before. Seen a trainee psychiatrist lose an ear in the process.
They bundled Shaw into the cage in the rear of the van. Once he was up he offered very little resistance. All he did in the time it took to put him in and slam the doors shut was glare at Anna. And in that look there was warning.
They drove Shaw away. Becker, though unharmed, looked very shaken as he patted dirt from his suit. Anna took the opportunity to apologise again.
‘Don’t,’ Becker said. ‘You should never try and make pets of wild animals, my old gran used to say. But it’s a result, isn’t it? The body I mean. What I still don’t get is why Shaw’s being so cooperative after all these years.’
‘Who knows,’ Khosa said.
Anna kept her head down, massaging the stresses of the day out of her neck with one hand. It hid her face and, she hoped, the guilty expression she wore. She had her own theories but they weren’t for sharing here.
She studied her colleagues. Becker had been in the game a long time, but, like most other police officers she knew, had never come across something like Shaw before. Khosa was still sharp and keen, but Anna noticed how she’d kept her distance. She wouldn’t blame her for that because it was a shared wariness. The type of fascination you had with a caged animal that, though it was confined, instinct told you not to get too close to.
They talked through the case. Jurisdiction here devolved to Sussex, but Krastev was a link not be ignored and Anna had already briefed them about Shaw’s daughter and her tragic suicide.
‘What else do you think he has to show you, Anna? And where?’ Becker asked. If the bodies Shaw had revealed so far were anything to go by, they could be spread far and wide.
Anna found no answer to give.
* * *