‘It’s Parker.’

Part Two

Chapter Nineteen

Adrian’s hands stuck to the paper as he read through the short note inside the envelope. He was sweating. He had always suspected he might hear from Parker again, but had hoped he wouldn’t. Although in truth Adrian couldn’t help but admire the man a little, despite the fact that Parker was an undocumented serial killer. Some of the most horrific crime scenes Adrian had ever been to were the result of Parker’s handiwork.

Adrian realised now where he knew the girl in front of him from: she was Abbey Lucas, and they had met a couple of years ago when she handed him a photo album that documented the systematic and relentless abuse Parker had endured as a child. It had reports and images of torture inflicted on Parker that included electrocution, suspension, cutting, branding and much more. After looking through it, neither Imogen nor Adrian could pass judgement on the man he had become. When faced with the opportunity to arrest Parker, Adrian just couldn’t do it. He let him go. Parker was crafted into a killer; he wasn’t born one.

They deserved it. Three down, one to go.

P.

Adrian wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with this information. If he handed it in, there would be a lot of questions. Questions whose answers would get both Adrian and Imogen fired. The murders that Parker had committed the first time they encountered him were attributed to a couple of different people and so no one was particularly looking for Parker, but that wasn’t to say that the scrutiny of DCI Kapoor might not blow the case wide open again.

‘And you can’t get in contact with him?’ Adrian said to Parker’s wife.

‘No. He knows how to disappear.’

‘Fair enough. Did you know about this?’

‘I figured it out, when I heard about the first murder I knew that it was him. I didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Where have you been since I saw you in the museum two years ago?’

‘We moved to Bristol.’

The pieces started to fall into place. The spineless man. ‘Of course you did. Professor Coley?’

‘I went back to university. I used to go to Exeter, but I left several years ago, for one reason or another, I never finished my course. I started working in the museum, where I met Parker …’

‘Did you know what Parker was when you met him?’

‘I knew he was special.’

‘That’s one word for it.’

‘You saw what they did to him. The fact that he even survived is a miracle. Those men he killed tortured him physically and mentally. Can you honestly tell me that you would have turned out any different?’

‘You haven’t seen the bodies he left behind. I did, and they still haunt me,’ Adrian said. He should have put Parker away but he just couldn’t. Parker had saved Imogen, saved his son, Tom. Adrian owed him.

‘You know, sometimes, when he thinks I’m not looking, I see him cry. He tried to hide it from me because he doesn’t want me to worry, but I do worry about him.’