Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

bloke’s chest to see if it had stopped altogether. A faint blue tinge had taken over The Man’s skin, which seemed clammy, but Gordon wasn’t going to touch him and find out for sure. Then, chest refusing to rise and fall any longer, The Man was gone for the third time.

Gordon crouched. Opened The Man’s mouth, hating the fact it was filled with frothy saliva. Then he took out his Tupperware tub, put the moth into the foamy chasm, and closed the lips.

Job done, he spun for home, a spring in his step.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Burgess had filled in the whiteboard with the most recent information—the birthdate, name and address of Gordon Varley, the data about the first two murders, and question marks beside the use of insects in the mouths. He’d imagined the fact that he had a relative he’d known nothing about—or had shoved to the back of his mind as a child—would be paramount in his thoughts, but the insects were what intrigued him the most. What the fuck were they all about?

While waiting for Shaw to find Varley’s address, he sat alone in the front row of seats in the incident room, getting his thoughts together. Everything else apart from the insects seemed obvious to him. He’d said as much to Shaw, hadn’t he? Their killer had clearly—to Burgess, anyway—chosen to recreate the death of his mother and stepfather, for reasons known only to the killer. Whether they’d find the answers they sought remained to be seen. Rarely, in Burgess’ experience, did a killer give up all the information when caught then questioned. Maybe the team would get lucky on that aspect, too, but Burgess doubted it. Some people enjoyed holding back, in knowing all the details, dangling carrots to the officers who so desperately wanted to understand so they could close the case with all the threads tied up nicely, none left dangling to torment them throughout their careers.

There were so many threads in this case that Burgess was sure to be tormented beyond the grave, too.

If he let himself.

Was my father’s death connected to those of Emily and Thomas Hornton?

Or had Burgess’ dad’s departure from the earth been just ‘one of those things’ that couldn’t be fully explained? A random attack? Wrong time, wrong place? He’d been bludgeoned with a flat instrument—possibly, the file had stated, with a wooden plank from the nearby construction site, as a couple of splinters had been found in the wounds. A dredge of the canal back then had found no such instrument, and it had been surmised that the plank, if it had been thrown into the water, had floated in the current and could have ended up anywhere.

What Burgess had never understood was that his father had left his office building to go and eat his lunch in his car—left his place of work with a stream of others—and no one had come forward or stated when interviewed that they’d seen anyone sinister-looking in the area at that time.

Was that the issue? Sinister-looking? Shouldn’t the question have been ‘Was anyone other than fellow office workers in the area?’

Something that needs revisiting. A check to see if the employees are still around, giving them a ring and rephrasing the original question.

He imagined everyone leaving the office that day, heads bent low, intent on having an hour away from work, not admiring their surroundings. That was the problem, not only these days but years ago. No one took any notice of anything except for what they were doing. Well, it seemed so in his father’s case.

So, no leads, just a suited, middle-aged man who’d ended up dead on the dusty ground, the sun baking the blood and matter on his head and face, flies swooping down to lay eggs on him the moment they’d scented William Varley’s blood.

William Varley. Easier to think of him that way.

Someone tapped on the door, and Burgess turned his head to glance over his shoulder. Shaw stood on the other side of the window beside the door, his face sliced into sections by the grey venetian blind slats. Burgess stood, shook the thoughts of his father from his mind, and approached the door.

Gordon Varley is not my brother in the usual sense of brothers.

He’s to receive no empathy from me.

He’s what I believe to be a killer.

With those thoughts firmly cemented in his head, he left the incident room, Shaw by his side, and checked with Denton for the latest information.

“Witness from twenty-two Wingman Street, opposite the canal, has phoned in, sir.” Denton held up a printout. “He’s only just managed to call us as he left for work in the early hours, about twelve-fifteen, to go to work. After his shift had ended, he went straight home to bed, then a while later got up for a wee, looked out of his window, and saw the forensic tent. He got hold of his neighbour for details on what’s going on.”

“Right.” Get on with it, will you?

Denton jabbed a finger at the printout. “He saw two men on the canal path while he was getting ready for work. Glanced out of his window about midnight, he says. It was too dark for him to see any features at that time, but he knew they were blokes by the shape of them. Anyway, he walks to work along the canal, and he went past them, although they didn’t appear to notice him. They were talking about brown, then our victim said, ‘Will we watch Star Wars soon?’” Denton glanced at the printout. “Then the other bloke said, ‘We’ll be seeing our own stars in a minute, and I’ll have won my war.’ Witness says he remembers it clearly because it was such a weird conversation to be having. Anyway, he took them to be two tramps and