Strangers by Paul Finch Read Free Book Online

it, colour photographs depicted two side-by-side images. One was of a rural lay-by with a silver-black Lexus LS 430 parked in the middle, CSIs in Tyvek unspooling incident tape around it. The second one, clearly shot from a helicopter, displayed woodland from a high angle, with a red circle indicating an only partly visible forensics tent erected beneath the cover of the trees, and more diminutive Tyvek-clad figures.
    An equally eye-catching sub-header read:
Police bosses admit Lay-by Murders could be work of female serial killer

    Beneath that, a tower of grainy, black-and-white headshots portrayed mass murderesses from former decades: Myra Hindley on top, with Beverley Allitt and Joanna Dennehy underneath. The opening paragraph to the sensationalist lead read:
In a stunning turnabout, senior detectives investigating the brutal sex-murders of four men are considering what might at one time have been unthinkable – that the perpetrator could be a woman!
The recent Lay-by Murders have been occurring across the north-west of England at a rate of one a month, with the latest victim, Ronald Ford (48), a garage owner from Warrington, found dead last week off a secluded road near Abram in Greater Manchester. All had been brutally beaten and repeatedly stabbed …
    Lucy glanced up. ‘So you’re not looking for a gay suspect anymore?’
    Nehwal shrugged as she fiddled with her iPad. ‘I never thought we were, if I’m honest. None of the victims were known or even suspected to be homosexuals. I know some men lead double lives, but four of them one after another without a hint of it in their background? Seemed progressively less likely the more we were able to put names to their emasculated corpses.’
    ‘So you’re now looking for a woman? Seriously?’
    ‘Shocking thought, eh? That there are girls out there as badly behaved as the boys.’
    ‘But this is correct, ma’am? You’re hunting a female sex murderer?’
    ‘We’re hunting a lunatic, PC Clayburn. The fact it’s a woman is no more a problem for me that if it was a man. Evil knows no gender.’

    ‘I get that, but it’d be a rarity … surely?’
    ‘First time for everything.’ Nehwal turned the iPad around. A grainy video was playing. ‘Couple of days ago, we recovered this CCTV footage from the slip road connecting a filling station outside Atherton to the A579.’
    At first, the moving picture wasn’t easily distinguishable. The camera was clearly located some distance from the slip-lane, but the image had been enhanced sufficiently to display a vehicle cruising down it, and slowing and stopping just before it reached the main drag. Here, a female figure – female because it had longish, fair hair under a beret-like hat, an hourglass shape and, by the looks of it, was wearing a tight skirt or dress, and high heels – approached from the verge, spoke to the driver through an open passenger window, and then climbed in. After that, the car sped away.
    ‘Lexus 430,’ Lucy observed.
    ‘Correct,’ Nehwal said. ‘Belonged to Ronald Ford, the last victim – the next time anyone saw him, apart from the murderer, he was lying dead with his skull bashed in and his dick and balls severed.’
    Lucy pondered that. It certainly matched the MO. So far, the APs had all been found in isolated locations but close to busy roads. In each case they had been beaten with a blunt instrument like a hammer, which was thought to have rendered them semi-conscious. They had then had their genitals cut away. Most had died from the subsequent blood loss, though one had also suffered a severely fractured skull, and might already have been dead when he was mutilated.
    Though these horrible eviscerations were widely known about inside the police, the taskforce had deliberately been vague with the press, publicising that in all cases death was caused in the same way: first, blows to the head to weaken the subject, and then knife-wounds to the lower abdomen to finish him off. That