‘That was her,’ he finally said. He was breathless. Was this what a panic attack felt like?

‘I’m going to need more than that.’ Imogen seemed both annoyed and concerned at the same time.

‘Her. From the museum.’

‘Again, no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘That was the girl from the museum. Abbey Lucas, the one I spoke to that time … It’s him, he’s back.’

‘What do you mean he’s back?’ Imogen said, although Adrian could tell she was starting to understand.

‘Parker,’ Adrian whispered. ‘It’s him, he’s been doing this.’

She had finally got it.

‘How? Why?’

‘It seems he killed Robert Coley and I would guess Gillian Mitchell. They both match his MO. It also explains why those crime scenes felt so familiar. I don’t know about the others.’ Adrian handed Imogen the note.

She looked at it and sighed a deep and heavy sigh.

‘What are we going to do? How the hell do we explain this to the DCI?’ she whispered.

‘I’m not sure we can explain it without losing our jobs.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Imogen blew her cheeks out.

‘If it comes to that, you need to let me take the heat,’ Adrian said. ‘I should have brought him in and I didn’t. I won’t let you get in the shit because of a decision I made.’

‘I’m not agreeing to that right now. I would have made the same decision if it was mine to make, he saved my life. Let’s think.’

‘There is one good thing, I suppose.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We know Parker is involved, now we just have to figure out why. If we can figure out his motivation, then the case should open up.’

‘Then I guess we need to find out more about Robert Coley. He must have been up to something. Parker didn’t pick these people at random, did he? There is a reason, we just need to find out what it is.’

Chapter Twenty

Imogen and Adrian huddled together over Imogen’s desk. She had been feeling sick since she had heard that the most violent and undocumented serial killer they had met was killing again. Although thinking about it now, she wasn’t sure what she had expected him to do with the rest of his life. She had hoped he would finally find some peace. Can you really go on to live in a normal way after you have exsanguinated and dismembered someone? Obviously not.

Now that they knew, it seemed so obvious. The parallels between Robert Coley and Gillian Mitchell’s crime scenes were there. Parker’s style was very much all over it, a mixture of primal rage and precision. He had confessed in the note to killing three people. In terms of timing, it seemed likely that it was Helen Lassiter who was the third victim. Although they still had no way to connect her to whatever the motive was, she was connected to Parker’s wife Abbey Lucas. Carbon monoxide poisoning was more subdued than his normal blood driven murders, though. One to go? Why was he targeting four people specifically? How were those four people connected?