ON TODAY'S BLOG WE ARE THRILLED TO WELCOME OUR GUEST AUTHOR, CATHERINE YAFFE, WHO IS SHARING HER PROLOGUE, AND CHAPTERS 1 AND 2 OF HER NOVEL, 'THE SHADOW KILLER' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat

Prologue

Saturday, 4 October 2003

As shadows threw obscure shapes over the ground, he looked at her sweet face. Innocent, beautiful, peaceful in repose. He wasn’t religious, but if a higher power did exist, he was envious. This exquisite creation was now in the arms of someone, or something, else.

He’d followed her, studied her day and night, tracking her movements. She was so predictable. It had made his job easy; he’d been doing it long enough to know when someone was gullible, and boy, was she. He’d kept it simple in the end, used the oldest trick in the book – dark alley just a stone’s throw from Leeds Central Library, a broken shopping bag spewing its contents across the damp road, faking the need for help. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

He enjoyed this part of the process as much as the planning and preparation. The creativity that went into the execution. He laughed at his own joke. He never knew beforehand what he was going to be left with, but he was never disappointed.

By now it was a well-rehearsed routine, and a well-practised routine at that. He’d taken a risk with this one, changed his MO slightly and moved the body from its original place, simply for the thrill of it. From the outside, no one would guess what was taking place right there in his living room. The elevation helped. Being on the third floor of the plush apartment block meant there were very few lines of sight. It had been advertised as being a prime location for the city-living lifestyle, and how right they had been. And he should know – his architectural plans had won the contract. His firm, or rather the architectural firm he worked for, had resurrected most of Leeds city centre. As these thoughts ran through his head, he removed his knife from its sheath and watched as the blade glistened in the moonlight that reflected through the window.

He started to carve into the soft, delicate flesh of the eyelids. What was he going to do? This was the last one, he knew that. He knew he couldn’t keep pushing his luck, getting away with it. There were too many moving parts these days. That heightened the risk, which he did enjoy but couldn’t always control.

As he collected his mason jar from the bench, he jiggled it slightly and watched as the severed eyeballs glooped around in the formalin.

At least she hadn’t seen what he had done. None of them had.

* * *

The tension in the control room was the most palpable that DI Ziggy Thornes had ever experienced. Alongside his boss, Chief Superintendent Hastings, and his colleague DS Sadie Bates, they waited and watched remotely through a mounted screen as the armed unit broke into their target’s premises. For the last twelve months, women had been disappearing across the country, and in recent months the situation had escalated, with six missing women from within the Yorkshire region alone, all feared to have fallen into the clutches of a serial killer. Ziggy and his team, along with a dedicated nationwide task force, had tracked and traced every single lead. Frustrated, and facing pressure from above, Ziggy had dedicated the last eight months to covert operations and led from the front as they had painstakingly edged closer to finding the killer.

All that work had culminated in this moment.

‘Go, go, go,’ Ziggy gave the command and watched as the Armed Response team broke down the door of the flat and called out their warnings. They lost visuals, as the CCTV of the apartment building didn’t cover the interior. Ziggy had to wait an agonising three minutes, which felt like three hours, until he heard the words, ‘One male detained.’

‘Is it Hawthorne?’ he asked.

‘We believe so,’ said the unit commander. ‘Cuffed and being transferred.’

Ziggy kept the line open on the radio and could hear in the background until a laugh that could cut through glass echoed down the radio channel. Sickened, he turned off the line and turned to Sadie.

‘Got the bastard,’ he said, leaving the room to head to the custody suite, waiting for evil to enter the building.

Chapter One

Yorkshire Post

Saturday 4th October 2003

THE SHADOW KILLER CAUGHT!

Tonight, the man who has been terrorising the streets of Yorkshire and beyond for the last twelve months is spending his first of many nights behind bars at HMP Wakefield, known locally as Monster Mansion.

James Hawthorne, a 54-year-old architect from North Yorkshire, was finally arrested at his home in Gipton, Leeds after a lengthy police investigation. He is suspected in the disappearance of five women over the past year — and now, with the discovery of Belinda Riley’s body, investigators fear the others met the same fate. The anguished parents of Madeline Wadham, Janine Morley, Julia Newbry, Isobel Harmer and the most recent missing woman, Claire Strickland are still awaiting updates on their loved ones.

At a brief press conference, Detective Inspector Andrew ‘Ziggy’ Thornes, who has been leading the investigation, said that the residents of Yorkshire could sleep easy tonight, knowing that the sadistic killer is safely behind bars. He asked for the public to remain patient as they gathered all the evidence to ensure that James Hawthorne is never allowed to walk the streets again. He reminded the gathered press that there are still missing women, and that all efforts are now focused on the search and that every available resource is being deployed to find them.

Appearing at Leeds Crown Court, Hawthorne, who didn’t speak during a five-minute hearing, has carried out his reign of terror in the alleyways throughout the country, leaving devasted families looking for answers as to the disappearance of their loved one.

Sunday, 5 October 2003

Dr Evelyn Shaw read the news report and placed the newspaper down on her desk. Sitting behind the desk in her office at HMP Leeds, she tapped her pen on the pad next to her and thought through the headline. Along with the rest of the region, she was relieved that she no longer needed to watch her back as she walked from her city-centre office to her canal-side apartment.

When the arrest of the Yorkshire Ripper had been made in 1981, she had been midway through qualifying as a forensic psychologist. She could remember the conversations and speculation between inmates, staff and ancillary workers as to where Peter Sutcliffe would be taken and held. Sutcliffe had declared that he did what he did to satisfy the voice of God and had self-claimed ‘diminished responsibility’. After the confession there was no other facility secure enough or equipped enough to deal with such a sadistic killer than the notorious Broadmoor Psychiatric hospital.

Evelyn wondered whether Hawthorne would take a similar stance. Would he opt for the diminished responsibility route? As she had worked with the Met Police on the recent case of Anthony Hardy – the Camden Ripper – building a profile that had allowed them to narrow down their search, she’d been approached by various media outlets to speculate on the kind of man the Shadow Killer might be, but she’d declined all requests. It wasn't in her nature to speculate without concrete facts behind it. Of course, Evelyn had her own opinions, her own thoughts about the Shadow Killer. His profile was already of ‘celebrity status’, which was exactly what he would want. His trial would become a media circus, and he would gain the notoriety he craved.

She sighed and ran her fingers through her long auburn hair before scooping it up into the hair tie that she kept around her wrist. She had two sessions with long-term prisoners this morning that she had been working with on a long term basis.

Right on cue, there was a tap on the office door, followed by a prison guard leading her first patient in. She stood to greet him, adjusted her pencil skirt as she sat back down and waited for the guard to leave.

After checking on his welfare and making sure he was comfortable, she picked up from where they had left off in their previous session.

‘How old were you when these thoughts started, Thomas?’ She poised her pen to make notes as the prisoner began his journey into the start of the darkness that had ultimately led to the brutal murder of his wife.

Her office at HMP Leeds was small and poky, with two tiny windows. One window faced the courtyard and had bars across it, while the other looked out onto the corridor, where a prisoner officer stood guard. She had a panic button on her desk, should it be necessary though thankfully she'd never had to use it. As she continued to listen, making the appropriate noises and acknowledging the feelings of the killer in front of her, her thoughts returned to the internal conflict she’d been having with herself far too often of late.

She was tired.

She’d been a psychologist for almost thirty years – thirty years of dealing with the worst that society had to offer – and as she entered her late fifties, she felt each one of those years. It was starting to really wear her down. Each case, each person blurring into the next. Was this really what she wanted? Was it where she had wanted to be at this time of her life? Back in her twenties, when she was newly qualified, she had thought she could change the system. That she could make an impact, change people’s lives, stop those she could help from re-offending.

But in recent weeks she found herself asking, had she had enough of the profession she once loved? She had felt disillusioned for a while and working on the Hardy case had drained her.

She was oh so very tired, not just from lack of sleep but physically, emotionally and mentally.

Her focused shifted back to the man sat in front of her. They’d had five consultations so far, where he talked and she listened, and they still hadn’t reached the source of his trauma. The trigger for his behaviour. Hearing voices was something she was told over and over by her patients. Most of them were lying. It was a common defence, and offenders often felt compelled to stick to it in the hopes of a reduced sentence. She estimated it would be around session eight or nine that the truth would reveal itself. Childhood trauma. Abuse. The abused becomes the abuser. She should know. Evelyn shuddered and forced herself to focus on the killer in front of her.

* * *

Evelyn checked her watch, feeling guilty when she realised their time together was about to end. ‘That’s all we have time for today, Thomas. I’d like you to continue with your journal. Bring it with you next week.’ She stood and knocked on the window, alerting the guard to open the door.

‘Thank you, Doc,’ said Thomas as he shuffled forward, hands cuffed.

She closed her office door and sat neatly behind her desk. She’d nudged her desk pad slightly, dislodging the carefully laid out pen, pencil and ruler. She meticulously rearranged everything. Order gave her peace of mind, a sense of composure in the darkness that filled her working life. Despite feeling tired, she still had a glimmer of love for her job. She had always thrived on the unpicking of the mind, peeling back the layers. She felt sure that would never change. It was a part of her psyche.

She collected her leather-bound notebook and pen, dropped them into her briefcase and headed for the door. She checked her watch; she had twenty minutes to get to her next appointment, and she wasn’t looking forward to it at all. Already the familiar knot of dread had formed in her stomach, and she felt the tension creeping into her jaw. Forcing herself to drop her shoulders, she walked out of the prison with leaden footsteps, every ounce of her slight frame wishing that she could just go home.

Chapter Two

MISSING

Claire Strickland

22 years old. Single parent to Sam

Last seen leaving Leeds Central Library

Ziggy crossed out the word Missing on the whiteboard and replaced it with Suspected Murder.

He stood at the front of the conference room and looked around at the weary eyes of his colleagues, who had worked tirelessly to bring James Hawthorne into custody. Whilst Hawthorne was being held on remand, they now had the dual task of preparing for court whilst still searching for Claire and the other missing women. The announcement that they were no longer searching for a missing woman, but her body, had hit the team hard, but they still had a long way to go.

Hours would be spent pouring over the interview transcripts – not that Hawthorne had given anything away. On top of this, Ziggy and his team were still following up on further lines of enquiry and cross-referencing historic cases of missing women against the profile of the Shadow Killer. The fear was that the true total number of deaths that Hawthorne was responsible for would never be known.

As he left the briefing, Ziggy’s team followed him.

‘That was tough, boss,’ DS Sadie Bates said as they all walked back into the MIT office.

'It never gets any easier. It's taking its toll on all of us, but we have to keep pushing. I'm preaching to the converted I know. Look, would you mind making us all a brew and I’ll be along in a minute? I’m busting for the loo.’

Sadie laughed. ‘No problem. Old-man bladder got the better of you?’

‘Cheeky sod,’ he replied, smiling as he pushed open the door to the men’s room.

Sadie wasn’t wrong, though. This case had taken it out of all of them, and the strain was showing in various ways. His old-man bladder was the least of his problems.

Looking in the mirror after relieving himself and washing his hands, he noted that his usually closely shaved head was longer than usual, and he needed a shave. Dark circles under his eyes reflected the very little sleep he’d had these past few months. He’d promised himself a holiday once the case had gone to court and the verdict had been delivered, but Ziggy was well aware that there was still a long way to go between now and that day. He drew himself up to his full six-foot-two height and pulled his shoulders back. He had a job to do.

He joined the team back at their quadrant in the bullpen. DS Nick ‘Wilko’ Wilkinson was fumbling with his computer whilst DC Angela Dove finished a phone call. Sadie arrived from the kitchen and set down four steaming mugs. The four of them had worked together for over five years and they each knew their role in any investigation, and Ziggy had complete confidence in each of them. Wilko was close to retirement and happy to bash the phones or help with door-to-door enquiries. Not a fan of technology, Nick relied on Angela to keep him up to date with the latest online practices, insisting she speak to him like he was a five-year-old, the same age as his twins. In sharp contradiction, Angela loved nothing more than data entry and was a trained exhibits officer, which required the high level of attention to detail that she excelled at.

Sadie was a career detective and had been Ziggy’s right-hand person for the last six years. He had come to rely on her to keep the wider team moving forward as he found himself tied up more and more with meetings and paperwork, something he loathed. But it also gave Ziggy the opportunity to follow his own instincts from time to time without too many questions from his team.

Nick admitted defeat with his keyboard, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his burgeoning stomach. ‘Have you seen the latest “expert profile” in the Sun?’ He used air quotes and gave a disparaging shake of his head. ‘Utter bollocks, all of it.’

‘I haven’t, thankfully. Where are we with forensics from the Hawthorne raid?’ asked Ziggy, looking around the team. It was Angela that answered. ‘Just started to come through. As you would imagine, Hawthorne’s DNA is abundant. There are a few latent prints that aren’t on record, so that’s something of a lead. Maybe another victim?’ She leaned back, folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. ‘It’s all just so desperately sad, isn’t it? I do worry about my girls going to and from college I have to say.’ As a mother of two girls in their early twenties, Angela was feeling it more than any other case they had worked on.

‘But we’ve caught him, Ang. We have to stay focused on that at least,’ Ziggy said. He turned to Sadie. ‘Have you read the interview transcripts?’

‘Yeah, for all that’s worth,’ Sadie replied disparagingly.

Hawthorne had chosen to go ‘no comment’ throughout the initial interviews. His solicitor had read a prepared statement in which he denied all responsibility, despite being caught – literally – in the act. Ziggy had viewed the interviews and was glad that he hadn’t been in the room; patience was not his strongest point.

‘Where next?’ asked Sadie.

Ziggy slurped the last of his coffee. ‘I’m planning on meeting with Doctor Shaw, the psychologist. I’m hoping to convince her to speak with Hawthorne.’

‘Didn’t she work on the Anthony Hardy case?’ Sadie asked. ‘She’s got a formidable reputation.’

‘Yes, that’s the one. I figure if she can’t break him, then no one can. He’s not offered any kind of defence as of yet, though I’m fully expecting diminished responsibility.’

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Author Catherine Yaffe

AUTHOR BIO

Catherine is an Amazon bestselling British crime author whose gripping thrillers have topped the Amazon charts multiple times. Her work is known for its psychological depth, twisty plots, and unforgettable characters.

When she's not plotting fictional murders, she’s passionate about supporting new writers. She runs a local writing group dedicated to helping unpublished authors develop their stories, and delivers workshops on crime writing, storytelling, and overcoming creative blocks.

A regular speaker at festivals including CrimeFest, Bay Tales, and Bloody Scotland, she also gives talks to libraries and community groups where she shares her journey through writing, illness, and resilience. Each year, she co-hosts Murder in the Rhubarb Triangle in partnership with Wakefield Library, a lively crime event that attracts over 200 visitors.

Her stories often draw on her own experiences of growing up in a gritty Northern town, bringing authenticity and emotional Yorkshire grit to her work. When she’s not writing or speaking, she can usually be found with a strong cup of tea, plotting her next murder.

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COMING SOON: On Sunday, 11th January, we are delighted to welcome our guest author, Snjezana Marinkovic, who is sharing an excerpt from her novel, 'Seven Days With Coco'.