Chapter Nineteen

Ben

With fewer officers on duty, the station was always different enough at night to give me pause. Tonight was no exception, the news that a suspect claiming to be Satanic Romeo had been apprehended not having reached most officer's ears unless they were already on duty. In a few hours, the rooms would fill, and no matter what other cases were ongoing, it would be all anyone talked about. Speculation would be rife. Is it really him? Is it over? How did someone as innocent-looking as Dougie Elrod get all those men to take him home? Although, that was probably an answer in itself. Who would ever suspect Dougie of pulling a knife and being able to overpower them? And that was one of many reasons that made it difficult to believe it could be that easy.

"It's quiet," Griffin said as I took him into the almost empty office, his voice almost a whisper. Oliver Barell raised his head from one of three occupied desks when he heard our approach. "Bennett," he said with a nod .

The man should get a prize for keeping up the guess the name banter at… I checked my watch. Jesus! It was nearly three in the morning and I'd been up since five. Almost twenty-four hours. No wonder it felt like my thoughts were taking far too long to sort themselves into something approaching sense. I took a detour to the vending machine just outside the door in the corridor, feeding a bunch of coins into it with little regard for their denomination and slamming my hand down on the button. I had one goal and one goal only: to get hold of enough caffeine to see me through the next few hours.

"Bennett?" Griffin queried in the background. "His name's not Bennett. It's—"

I whipped around so fast that steaming hot coffee splashed on my hand, the paper cup containing it no match for the velocity of the movement. "Don't you dare!"

Oliver had a smug look on his face as I made my way back over to them. "Interesting," he said, his gaze darting between the two of us. "First person we've met that actually knows what it is."

Shoving a cup of coffee Griffin's way, I rolled my eyes. "Last thing I want to talk about tonight is my name."

Oliver sat up straighter, his expression altering to something more professional. "Yeah, I heard you just happened to be in Eclipse when it all kicked off tonight. What are the chances?"

Not high. That was another thing that didn't sit right with me. Maybe I just needed to learn to not look a gift horse in the mouth and appreciate that we'd deserved a break. "Yeah, we were lucky. Did you see him brought in?"

Oliver shook his head. "Do you think it really is him?"

My only response was a shrug.

"I'll cross my fingers. "

Not wanting to get stuck talking to Oliver while there were more important things at play, I led Griffin away. He waited until we were out of earshot to ask the question I'd known was coming. "What's with the name thing? Why doesn't anyone know what Ben is short for?"

I drained the last of my coffee and tossed the paper cup into a bin as we passed. "Because if I admitted to it being Bendigeidfran, I'd get more flak, not less. I already get all the Welsh sheep shagging jokes. I don't need them to find out that my parents saddled me with a name no one's ever heard of, and that they can't spell or pronounce. So I'll stick to being called whatever name of the day they've chosen instead, thank you very much."

Griffin's lips twitched, but he didn't make any further comment. I inclined my head to the coffee he'd barely touched. "Are you going to drink that?"

He pulled a face. "It tastes like something died in the vending machine."

I pried it out of his fingers. "Something probably did. I don't drink it for the taste." I'd just finished Griffin's coffee and gotten rid of the second cup when Baros' office door opened, the DCS stepping out. A rare smile settled on his lips when he saw me. "Good work tonight, Weaver."

I tamped down on that same niggle of doubt to accept the rare praise. "Thank you, sir."

Baros' gaze flicked Griffin's way. "And we didn't even need a necromancer to catch the bastard in the end. Just goes to show that sometimes the old-fashioned methods of policing are the best."

I might have been against Griffin's involvement in the case—although obviously most of that had nothing to do with him being a necromancer and everything to do with him being my ex—but I wasn't about to let Baros rewrite history. "Actually, we were only there tonight because Rupert Shaw told us he'd moved on from The Jigsaw Bar to a club. Had Griffin not brought him back, Rupert couldn't have told us anything."

Baros didn't comment, brushing over what I'd said like he hadn't even heard it. "Douglas Elrod is in interview room one. Do you want in?"

My immediate reaction was to say hell, yes. If I led the interview, I could control the way it went. I forced myself to think it through, to weigh up the pros and cons. Despite the two cups of coffee I'd just drunk, I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. And then there was the fact that I'd lied through my teeth to get Dougie to let go of the knife. Standard practice, but not the best lead-in to getting that person to open up to you. I sighed. "No. It would be better if someone else did it. I want to watch, though." Baros nodded his head in assent, already bringing his phone to his ear.

There were three other officers present in the observation room when we stepped inside. I offered them a nod, but didn't engage any of them in conversation. Despite the curious stares aimed his way, no one questioned Griffin's presence as we positioned ourselves in front of the one-way mirror that allowed an unobstructed view into the interview room next door.

The room was currently empty of anyone save for Dougie Elrod, giving me the opportunity to study him that I hadn't had earlier when there'd been too much going on and people's safety had been paramount. A dark stubble covered his cheeks, showing he hadn't bothered to shave before going out. My analytical brain examined that fact before moving on, trying to come up with a reason. An attempt to look older? To look more rugged? Or nothing more than a lack of time or care? Maybe he was growing a beard.

He looked tired, but then it was three in the morning. Nobody was going to look that fresh-faced, even without being arrested and thrown in the back of a squad car. I moved on to what he was wearing. Standard club wear of jeans and a T-shirt. Just like me. Just like Griffin. "Where's his jacket?" I said to no one in particular. "He might have handed it in at the cloakroom. If he did, we need it. I want to know what he had in his pockets. And make sure someone gets hold of the CCTV footage. I want to know what time he arrived, whether he was on his own, and what he did in the club before he pulled a knife in the middle of the dance floor."

Someone left the room, presumably to chase up the things I'd mentioned. Griffin had his head cocked to one side and was studying Dougie as closely as I had. I moved slightly so that our shoulders touched. It was an innocent enough gesture that nobody would think twice about, but that still offered a measure of reassurance—a reminder that he was back in my life and I was no longer alone. "What are you thinking?"

Griffin's gaze didn't shift from the slumped figure picking at his nails. "I'm trying to imagine him murdering six men."

"And?"

Griffin heaved out a breath. "It's difficult… It's a lot easier when I remember how he was at the club, though. He was like a feral cat. Only instead of claws and teeth, he had a knife."

"Yeah." It was a pretty apt description.

The door to the interview room opened, and a man and a woman stepped inside. Lou Fowler, my partner, I knew well. DI Emma Birdwhistle I didn't know as well. And yes, she got flak for her surname, people perfecting their bird calls as she passed, which only firmed my resolve to keep my rather unusual first name under wraps. She had a reputation for being thorough, my shoulders relaxing slightly at the knowledge there would be no half-assing this interview.

Dougie turned his head as they came through the door, but said nothing. They spent the next few minutes satisfying the basic requirements for the recording, Lou and Emma introducing themselves and stating the date, time, and location, as well as getting Dougie to confirm his identity. Once they'd cautioned him again, the interview proper could start. Although I might not be conducting it, I still wanted a say in what questions got asked. It was, after all, my case.

"Paper and pen," I demanded, Griffin rolling his eyes when my instruction resulted in a notepad being pushed into my hands within seconds. The first few questions were perfunctory, more about lulling Dougie into a false sense of security than anything else, the young man seeming quite eager to answer them when they involved nothing more taxing than confirming that he was a frequent visitor to Eclipse. Next, came a discussion of Dougie's past relationship with Rupert, Dougie repeating a lot of the same information he'd already told Griffin and me in his mother's living room.

It was Lou who finally got down to business, fixing Dougie with a firm stare and leaning forward slightly. "You told one of our officers that you were responsible for the murder of Rupert Shaw."

Dougie blinked furiously, and I held my breath, my fingers tightening around the pen. If he recanted his confession at this stage, it would leave us with nothing. We could dig into his alibi and try to get his mother to say she'd lied, but how likely was that? She was just as likely to carry on lying. Most people did, if only to save their own skin.

Silence descended on both rooms. It was Emma who finally broke it. "For the purposes of the tape, Mr. Elrod has neither confirmed nor denied whether he was telling the truth when he informed DCI Weaver that he was responsible for the murder of Mr. Shaw." She shifted slightly in her seat, strands of reddish-gold hair coming free from the tight bun she always wore her hair in.

"I loved Rupert," Dougie finally said.

"We're not disputing that," Lou said smoothly. "People have been known to kill those they love. We usually call them crimes of passion. Is that what happened? You told DCI Weaver in the club…" He glanced down at his notes. "You told him that Rupert should have listened to you, that you warned him what would happen if he broke up with you."

"Did you kill him?" Emma asked.

Dougie studied the surface of the table for what felt like hours before finally raising his head to meet her gaze. "Yes, I killed him. Are you happy now?"

"How did you do it?" Emma asked, her voice quiet and lacking any accusation. "Why don't you tell us what happened that night?"

Dougie sighed, the question seeming to irritate him. "Why?"

It was Lou that answered, the two of them working well together. "So we can know for sure it was you."

Dougie laughed. "You don't believe me? Why would I claim to murder someone if it wasn't true? What would I get out of it?"

Lou cleared his throat. "If you don't want to talk about what happened with Rupert, you could tell us about the rest instead. "

"'The rest," Dougie echoed in a slightly mocking tone. He stared at the two detectives before letting out another sigh. "Fine. What do you want to know?"

"Who was the first?" Emma asked.

"Duncan Whitaker," Dougie said without missing a beat. He held up his hands and ticked them off on his fingers as he spat the names out like bullets. "Then Murray Clegg. Callum Summer. Baris Demir. My darling Rupert. Adam Freeman." He sat back in a way that said "there."

"The newspapers printed the names of all the victims," I said. "That proves nothing apart from that he can read and retain information." Griffin nodded, his shoulder moving against mine, but didn't comment. "We need him to say something that nobody but the murderer would know."

I scribbled a couple of questions down on the notepad, ready to hand them to Emma and Lou if they didn't ask them. Had I made the right decision by stepping back and letting someone else do the interview? I guess only time would tell. It was the worst sort of torture to be consigned to watching without having control over the situation.

"Tell us about Duncan," Emma urged. "Where did you meet him? What happened that night?"

"I met him in Eclipse. I met them all in Eclipse. Well, apart from Rupert, obviously. I'd already met him."

"How did you get Duncan to take you home?"

Dougie cocked his head to one side, the look he leveled her way distinctly coquettish. "How do you think? The usual way."

"Maybe you could tell us," Lou suggested. "We're trying to get as complete a picture of what happened as we can."

Dougie raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were trying to work out if I'd done it. Have you decided yet? "

Lou held his gaze. "No, we haven't. Everything you've told us so far is in the public domain. You need to give us more if you want us to believe you."

Dougie's answering sigh said that this whole thing was becoming tiresome. He shifted his gaze from the two detectives to scan the room, staring around it like he was seeing it for the first time. "I should probably have a lawyer before I say more, shouldn't I?"

I let out a sigh at the same time as Lou and Emma sat back in their seats, their body language giving away the frustration they refused to let show on their faces.

"What?" Griffin asked.

Sometimes I forgot that this was all new to him, that it wasn't his world. "If he insists on a lawyer, the interview has to stop. It won't reconvene for a few hours. At which point, his lawyer will advise him to take back everything he's said."

Griffin's brow furrowed. "Even if he did it?"

I laughed. "You haven't met many lawyers, have you?" I waited for Griffin's headshake before continuing. "A good defense lawyer doesn't care if their client is guilty." I grimaced. "Actually, that's a bit harsh. They might care, but you wouldn't know it from looking at them. Their job is to defend their client to the best of their abilities, even if they're guilty. So for that reason, they're not big on confessions. In short, if he lawyers up, we can kiss goodbye to our nice, tidy confession."

"Do you want a lawyer?" Lou asked, his voice carefully modulated when I knew that what he really wanted to do was shake the truth out of Dougie.

A long pause, both rooms so quiet I could hear the electric hum of the strip light above our heads.

Dougie suddenly sat forward and put his head in his hands. It was like he kept switching between different versions of the same person. One that cried. One that flirted. One that didn't seem to care that he was confessing to incredibly heinous crimes. "What's my mum going to say?" he said, his voice muffled by his hands. "She's going to be so disappointed when she finds out what I've done."

Griffin and I exchanged a look, both of us thinking the same thing. That disappointed was a strange word to use when you were talking about the murder of six men in a matter of weeks. Horrified, maybe. Appalled? But disappointed? No, that didn't really cut it.

Only a few seconds passed before Dougie jerked his head up to reveal that his cheeks were dry. His behavior was certainly erratic. He was nothing like the young man Griffin and I had interviewed a week ago, which begged the question, why not? What had happened between then and now?

"Medication," I said out loud. "We need to find out if he's taking any and if so, for what? If he is on medication, find out if he's stopped taking it."

Dougie seemed to have forgotten his quandary about needing a lawyer, the next words out of his mouth nothing to do with it. "Duncan took me home because I told him he could do anything he wanted to me. We had sex."

Lou sat up straighter. "And then?"

Dougie's lips curled into a smile I would have described as chilling, even without the words that accompanied it. "Then I cut off all his fingers."

I rocked back, the words hitting me like a punch to the gut. And there it was. The piece of evidence not in the public domain .

Lou leaned forward, doing well to keep his expression carefully blank. No excitement that he'd finally extracted something useful from Dougie. No disgust that someone had confessed to something most of the human race would find repugnant. Just a slight professional interest.

"I see. And what did you do with those fingers?"

Dougie sat back in his seat looking like the cat that had got the cream. "Oh, you want me to tell you about drawing the symbols on the wall with them?"

Strike two.

"It had to be him," Griffin said.

"Yeah," I agreed. Knowing one of those things would have been convincing evidence, but knowing both of them… There was no arguing with that. I waited for the elation to hit, but it was strangely absent. Exhaustion could do that to you. It would sink in tomorrow when all that remained was getting the details out of Dougie to use in court, hopefully to send him down for the rest of his life, which, given his young age, would be a very long time indeed.

Lou hid the question having been designed to root out what Dougie had done with the fingers with a nod. "Yeah, the symbols." He scratched his head. "What was that about?"

Dougie shrugged. "I saw them somewhere, in a film or something, and they looked cool."

So no demon summoning? Had all of that just been a wild goose chase? If so, I couldn't say I regretted it. Not when our trip to Manchester had been the catalyst for Griffin and I sorting our shit out. It demonstrated how easy it was to be led astray in a case, though, to get hung up on a lead that had never been one. I'd believed that the symbols were important, that they served a greater purpose than just someone not being in their right mind—which it was becoming increasingly clear described Dougie to a T.

"Where are the fingers now?" Emma asked. "If we search your home, will we find them?"

A furrow appeared on Dougie's brow. "I didn't keep them. What kind of sicko do you think I am?"

Lou frowned. "If you didn't keep them, why take them from the murder scene? In fact, why cut them off at all? What did you want with them?"

"I didn't want them. I…" Dougie blinked a few times, averting his gaze from both Lou and Emma and staring at the wall like he expected to find the answers written there. When he finally spoke, his words were slow. "I think I'd like that lawyer now."