Quinn bent close to the face. Her eyes narrowed, she looked up at Maddox and pulled the mask down.
‘I think there’s a mole above the upper lip.’
Maddox nodded, his face tightening minutely. ‘Jackson. That’s Jackson.’
... 38
Malpens Street, just a hundred yards from Lola Velinor’s front garden, is quiet and tree-lined. The haughty Edwardian houses sit back from the road hidden beyond opulent gardens crammed with lime trees, jasmine, hibiscus.
Shortly before 9 p.m. that night, in a basement kitchen, the window open to let a breath of honeysuckle into the room, Susan Lister was preparing a red-wine marinade for the evening meal. She’d been jogging, her usual route, along Trafalgar Road, up past St Dunstan’s, over the park, and was still dressed in grey jogging pants, a black and white Nike sweatshirt over a sports bra; her blond hair, slightly damp, was up in a ponytail. She wouldn’t have time to take her bath before she collected Michael from the station. He was working late, taking the 8.55 from London Bridge. On the scrubbed pine table behind her the portable TV was switched to BBC 1 for the headlines.
She pinched the end of a clove of garlic and peeled away the loose skin. Behind her a strike of the clock and the first headline. ‘Another body found in southeast London. Scotland Yard have not ruled out a link to the Harteveld killings.’
Susan quickly put down the garlic clove, turned up the volume and rested against the counter with her glass of wine. ‘As more details emerge MPs call for a swift evaluation of the PRCU’s proposed Serious Crime Research Project.’ The Home Secretary stood on the green outside the Houses of Parliament, the breeze lifting strands of thin hair off his head. He confirmed his sympathy for the relatives of the victims, and trotted out the drop in crime figures this year. Then the Commissioner, spruce at a press conference table, told the cameras that Greenwich CID and AMIP were perfectly competent, thank you very much, and no, they weren’t ready to confirm or deny that this was a Harteveld victim.
Susan sipped her wine thoughtfully. Harteveld had lived only half a mile away; God, she’d discovered that the distinctive green car she’d got used to seeing parked outside St Dunstan’s on her morning runs had belonged to him. And now—this. Another body.
The scene cut to show a London street, instantly recognizable as Royal Hill, three grey-suited officers arriving carrying a yellow crate. Then a helicopter shot, a fleeting glimpse of the roofs of Malpens Street, and then a cut-back to ghostly figures in white suits meandering among police tape.
‘This brings the unofficial death toll to six, only four of whom have been identified. Tonight Chief Superintendent Days of the south-east London Area Major Incident Pool refused to confirm they were investigating a link to Toby Harteveld.’
In her kitchen Susan, suddenly seized by an irrational fear, reached over and closed the window. A body in Royal Hill. How close had she come? Subdued, she finished chopping the garlic, uncomfortably conscious of her reflection slipping silently across the ghostly honeysuckle in the window. Chinese Five Spice, a dash of soy, and drop the pork in. Quickly she rinsed her hands and took the car keys from the top of the fridge. Michael would be waiting.
Outside it was warm and soft, the evening filled with jasmine from the flowering bush in the neighbour’s garden. She paused for a moment. It was all over. Harteveld was dead, lying in a morgue somewhere, and she could give up this buzzing anxiety. The road looked as it usually did at night, insects swarming under the yellow streetlights, the palms in the neighbour’s garden lending the air a swampy scent, as if you should expect the sound of cicadas. There was nothing unusual. A car she didn’t recognize, something French, a Peugeot maybe, empty.
Maybe tonight she’d suggest to Michael that they fitted an alarm system on the house. With him working these late nights she’d feel safer. Or a dog. She walked the few yards to her Fiesta. That was an idea. A dog.
Inside the car was still hot from a day in the sun and filled with a sharp smell. Her husband had a habit of leaving his used cricket kit in the boot for days on end. ‘I’ll kill you, Michael,’ she murmured, fumbling with the keys. She’d make him take the kit out and wash it before he went to bed tonight, remind him that they both had jobs and that he had to pull his weight around the house.
She chewed the inside of her mouth and fastened her seatbelt. A dog was a good idea. A boxer, or a Doberman. Something big. Something muscular. She could take it jogging with her too, maybe that would make the truck drivers on Trafalgar Road think twice before they yelled at her on the street. By the light from the street lamp she found the ignition key, started the engine and checked the mirror. On the back seat a man sat up and smiled at her.
... 39
The next morning Harteveld’s body was hauled from the river at Wapping and taken to Greenwich for an autopsy. At the same time his solicitors, Schloss-Lawson & Walker, came back to AMIP with their client’s property portfolio. Maddox and Caffery took one look and saw immediately what they wanted.
‘A warrant for Halesowen Road, then?’
Maddox nodded. ‘And when’s the Jackson autopsy?’
‘This afternoon—after Harteveld’s.’
‘OK—you attend Jackson’s. We’ll give Logan Halesowen—get someone from the crime unit to go with him, Quinn if she’s free.’
When Caffery arrived at the Devonshire Street morgue Peace had already come out of X-ray and the external examination was complete—she had been photographed, taped for hair and fibres, and given anal, oral, vaginal swabs. One of the morticians handed Caffery a mask and oil of camphor.
‘Your mobile,’ she murmured, ‘if it’s not already—’
‘Of course. Of course.’ He switched off his phone, took a place on the loading bay ramp, leaned against the railings and looked down into the dissecting room.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Caffery.’ Krishnamurthi, in his green wipe-clean apron, didn’t look up. He was making the coronal mastoid incision—slicing over Peace’s head from ear to ear. ‘I see you’ve drawn the short straw.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I am told that the Mr Harteveld I encountered on my table this morning is the very self-same Mr Harteveld responsible for keeping me in work these last few weeks.’ He gripped Peace’s scalp between thumb and forefinger and slowly peeled it down, drawing away her face, exposing the blood-clotted cranium. ‘Am I right?’
‘You are. Have we got a time of death on Jackson?’
‘I’m not an entomologist—but you’re welcome to look.’ He gestured to a row of stoppered phials on the side bench. ‘I think you’ll find your usual suspects—Diptera and calliphoridae, first or second instar, on the mouth, the nose, the vagina; and then on the wounds, flesh flies still larval. There’s a PMI chart in the scrub room if you’re really interested.’
‘No, it’s OK. It sounds just like the others?’
‘That’s right, Mr Caffery. Identical to the others.’
Less than half a mile away, Susan Lister woke. A bird was singing and a warm light played across the network of veins in her eyelids. Canned laughter from a TV somewhere. She thought she was in bed at home until she smelled urine, and realized the insides of her thighs were wet. Then she remembered.
A drill howling at her temple—a drill or was it an electric saw?
She opened her eyes and tried to sit up—for a moment jolting around uselessly on the floor, banging her head. Something had her restrained. She subsided and lay still, her heart thudding.
Don’t draw attention, Susan. Wait a moment. First think through it.
She licked her sore lips and looked around herself. Assessing.
She was lying on cord carpet in a room lit by a fluorescent strip. About a yard away, under a brown velour sofa, she could see curls of hair and chocolate wrappers. A fine grey dust covered everything—now she could feel it gritty in her mouth, in her eyelashes. He’d arranged her on her side, her hands and feet trussed up behind her, laced together beneath her buttocks by s
omething stout—it felt like nylon rope. But worse, much worse—her heart sank because this detail told her more than she wanted to know about this assault—she was naked.
He was going to rape her.
Jesus! She took a deep breath and tried not to cry out. Come on, Susan, she urged herself, keep calm—think sensibly; Harteveld is dead. This is a rape and you’ve always said you could live through rape if you had to—you’ve read about it—you’ll survive if you don’t fight, comply with everything he tells you and make mental notes of everything you see and hear. Vigorous notes. Everything. OK? Now … ready?
She took four deep breaths and twisted her eyes upwards.
The room was high-ceilinged. Artexed. There were two doors into the room. Panelled doors. Coving on three sides—it must be a conversion—a boarded-up fireplace was flanked in each alcove by wood-effect shelving units displaying hard-spined books, something technical. The distant laughter came from an episode of Bewitched playing quietly on a small TV: that might mean cable, which would limit the number of streets she could be in. Her confidence rose momentarily. But then she saw what was pinned to the walls and a small cry escaped her.
Photographs, torn from pornographic magazines; acts she could never have constructed, even in her darkest imagination. One showed a child being sodomized.
She started to shake.
Susan! Susan. NO—don’t panic. Panic and you could die. Remove yourself. Be impartial—an observer. BE AN OBSERVER.
But her confident survivor’s mind was weakening—by twisting her head up and back she could see, scattered on the floor about two feet away, seven or eight books. Some were open, some closed, their titles embossed in dull gold.
Appleton and Lange’s—she narrowed her eyes—Appleton and Lange’s Review for the Surgical Technology Examination. Next to that The Atlas of Craniofacial Plastic Surgery; Surgical Palliation of Unresectable Carcinoma; Stereostatic Core Breast Biopsy.
Fear put down new long roots in her chest.
She dropped her head and started to sob.
Krishnamurthi was three quarters of the way through the PM. He carefully ladled fluids from Peace’s body cavity into a measuring jug perched on a dissecting table over her legs.
‘Right, team.’ He straightened up and looked round the room. ‘What say we give Virchow a whirl today—just to keep our hands in. Pick-ups, Paula.’ The mortician placed forceps on his palm. He carefully lifted the soaking little form out of Jackson’s body cavity and dropped it onto the scales. Paula chalked up the weight on the board. No-one appeared surprised by the bird. Harteveld’s case was notorious—they all knew what to expect.
‘Good. Now …’ Krishnamurthi peered into the chest cavity. ‘Yes, extensive avulsion under the breast plate just as we saw with the others—someone look up the Read code for avulsion, for heaven’s sake—keep the researchers from snapping at my heels—’
‘Avulsion,’ Jack asked from the ramp. ‘What’s avulsion?’
‘Tissue ripped from the bone, or from its natural connective tissue.’ Krishnamurthi pushed his face shield up and looked at him. ‘And, Mr Caffery—’
‘Yes?’
‘Your SA, Jane Amedure, tells me this victim was recovered at a different site from the others.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And was never taken to the wasteland?’
‘No—surveillance has been sitting on it for the last two weeks. Why?’
‘There’s cement dust in the decedent’s hair—on her face, just like the others. I think with the others we assumed it had come from the wasteland.’
Caffery frowned. ‘OK.’ He pressed his fingers lightly to his temples.
The flat in Halesowen Road.
He looked up. ‘The CSC’s got another residence to search this afternoon—I’ll tell her to look out for it.’
Dear God, what are they going to find there?
Susan heard him come into the room and immediately quietened. She lay quite still. Preparing. She heard him cross to the opposite side of the room and tap, tap, tap on the wall. Agitated.
Reason with him. You can talk your way out of this. Talk—make him think of you as an individual. He wants to objectify you. Don’t let him.
Slowly, every muscle on alert, ready to start talking, ready to fight for her life, she dared to lift her eyes.
He wasn’t even looking at her.
He stood about three feet away, side on. He wore bird-egg blue hospital scrubs and a surgical mask and his hair was hidden in a checked cap, the type worn in operating theatres. At his feet was a red plastic toolbox. He was short, chubby, but he was agile, she knew, from the way he’d almost vaulted over the car seats last night. And he was strong. He was stronger than she would have believed.
He was staring intently at a photograph of a woman’s face, tapping it with his finger. She had the small, smooth face of a doll. White-blond hair. Over made-up. Blue eyeshadow and plum-shined lips. He pressed his hands on the photo, covering her features, his two big thumbs neatly over the mouth as if he’d like to get them past her teeth, her tongue, her tonsils.
Then suddenly he turned. ‘Well?’
Susan flinched. He’d known she was watching. Without even looking at her he could tell she was watching.
‘Well?’ He stepped towards her. Above the mask his eyes were round, restless.
‘My name’s Susan.’ She spoke quickly, not a stammer. Don’t show you’re scared. ‘My father is a magistrate. He’s very powerful.’
‘A magistrate!’ The voice was light, amused. ‘Is that meant to worry me?’
‘No—I—oh God, what do you want from me?’
‘What do you think? What do you think I want?’
Pray that he only rapes you, Susan, pray it won’t be more.
‘Please don’t hurt me.’ She curled up, sobbing, trying in vain to fold her tethered arms around her breasts, like a trussed, delimbed turkey. ‘Please don’t.’
‘Isn’t it uncomfortable with paps that big?’ Damp hands reached over and gripped her breasts, trying to contain the struggling. ‘How do you sit at a table with those in front of you? Don’t they get in the way?’
Susan recoiled. She had felt the touch reach down into her stomach. Her groin. A betrayal. ‘Please no, please—’
He stood and a gobbet of granular brown phlegm landed inches from her face. ‘You know what I have to do. Don’t you?’
She shook her head, tears falling into her hair.
‘Answer me.’
‘Don’t hurt me—’
‘I SAID YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE TO DO, DON’T YOU, WITH YOUR BIG FUCKING TITS!’ He kicked her in the side and suddenly his voice became calm. ‘And shut up that crying. You’ll upset Mrs Frobisher.’
Susan gasped and rolled onto her front, still sobbing. He straddled her, her shoulders gripped tightly between his fat knees and yanked her head back by the hair. ‘Now look.’
He leaned over and opened the toolbox.
She could see Wilkinson’s scissors, tweezers, a tapering sable-tipped brush, curved palettes of iridescent make-up, turquoise, peach, fuchsia, red.
‘This one, I think.’ The click of metal, the snap of latex gloves being pulled on, something being removed from the toolbox—my God, what’s that? A scalpel? He reached down and held her right breast. ‘Now.’ A drop of sweat fell from his forehead into her hair. ‘Are we ready?’
At 3 p.m. DS Logan and DS Fiona Quinn arrived at the small flat on the Lewisham-Greenwich border. Accompanied by a uniformed officer they approached with serious expressions and warrant cards at the ready. They didn’t expect an answer. Quinn spoke into her Sony Professional:
‘It is three-fourteen p.m., seven Halesowen Road, note for the search register that the flat is unoccupied, no-one here to allow us entry, no neighbours, so under the Premises Code—’ She held the pause button down and stepped back to allow the officer to step forward. ‘We are using force to enter in pursuance of a section eight search warrant H/00?
?? Bugger. Hold it.’ In her pocket her mobile was ringing. She switched off the Professional, dug inside her overalls for the phone. It was Caffery—asking her to landline him. She did, from a phone box.
‘How does it look?’
‘If you’d let me get in I could tell you.’
‘Look out for cement dust—maybe an outbuilding—a garage. That’s where he’s kept the bodies.’
‘Will do. Now can I get on with it?’
‘Of course, of course. I’m sorry.’
... 40
At Shrivemoor the investigating teams didn’t care that the search—the last formality—wasn’t complete. They sensed they were near the end. Maddox gave them a speech warning them not to relax, reminding them they still needed air-tight matching of samples, but he had to raise his voice to be heard. Kryotos had opened the blinds and the afternoon sun streamed into the room for the first time in days. The photos of the dead girls were turned to face the whiteboards and Betts and Essex slipped out to pick up beers while seats were pulled up to the windows, shoes kicked off, corkscrews retrieved from the bottom of desk drawers. Maddox shook his head, bemused. ‘All right, but don’t forget we’re back to normal tomorrow.’
F team rinsed coffee cups, bringing them in for the beer. The indexers, seeing there was to be no more work today, pushed their chairs back from the desks and allowed Betts to slosh wine into paper cups. Caffery, just back from the mortuary, loosened his tie and opened a Pils while Essex, happy as a puppy, stripped off his shirt, knotted his tie around his naked neck, and found a spot where the late sun came into the room to recline with his feet on the desk. He swivelled round to look at F team, who had gathered at the top of the T-shaped desk, a beer can in front of each man. ‘We’ll get shot of you lot; on your shanks’s back to Eltham.’