The Mermaids Singing (11 page)

‘The weather?’ he asked.

‘Dry night, though the ground was pretty damp.’

Tony returned to the photographs. The body was shot from various angles. Then, following the removal of the body, the dumping ground was pictured in close-up sections. There were no visible footprints, but some scraps of black plastic were lying under the body. He pointed at them with the tip of his pen. ‘Do we know what these are?’

‘Bradfield Metropolitan Council bin bags. Standard issue to businesses, blocks of flats… anywhere wheelie bins are inappropriate. That grade of bag has been in use now for the last two years. There’s apparently nothing to indicate whether they were already there or if they were dumped at the same time as the body,’ Carol said.

Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘You seem to have assimilated a helluva lot of detail since yesterday afternoon.’

Carol grinned. ‘It’s tempting to pretend I’m Super-woman, but I have to confess that I’d already made a point of finding out what I could about the other two enquiries. I was convinced they were linked, even if my boss wasn’t. And in fairness to my colleagues, the inspectors leading the other two enquiries had an open mind. They didn’t object to me making the occasional trawl through their stuff. Ploughing through it all overnight just refreshed my memory, that’s all.’

‘You’ve been up all night?’

‘Like you said, it goes with the territory. I’ll be fine till about four this afternoon. Then it’ll hit me like a sledgehammer,’ Carol admitted.

‘Message received and understood,’ Tony replied, turning back to the photographs. He moved on to the series of shots from the postmortem. The body lay on its back on the white slab, the hideous wounds visible for the first time. Tony went slowly through the whole sequence of pictures, sometimes flicking back to previous shots. When he closed his eyes, he could picture Adam Scott’s intact body, slowly breaking out in wounds and bruises like alien blooms. He could almost conjure up the slo-mo vision of the hands that brought flesh to such a pass. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and spoke again. ‘These bruises on the neck and chest — what did the pathologist say?’

‘Suck marks. Like love bites.’

A head descending, predatory, a bizarre parody of love. ‘And these sections of the neck and chest. Three places where the flesh has been cut away?’ Tony asked distantly.

‘They were removed postmortem. Maybe he likes to eat them?’

‘Maybe,’ Tony said doubtfully. ‘Was there any trace of bruising in the remaining tissues, can you remember?’

‘I think there was.’ Carol’s surprise showed in her voice.

Tony nodded. ‘I’ll check the pathologist’s report. He’s a clever lad, our Handy Andy. My first reaction is that these aren’t souvenirs, or indications of cannibalism. I think they might have been bite marks. But Handy Andy knows enough about forensic dentistry to realize that identifiable bite marks would be enough to put him away. So once the frenzy’s spent, he’s cooled down and removed the evidence. These cuts to the genitals — pre or postmortem?’

‘Post. The pathologist remarked that they seemed quite tentative.’

Tony gave a small smile of satisfaction. ‘Did the pathologist say what has caused the trauma to the limbs? The shots at the site look like a rag doll.’

Carol sighed. ‘He didn’t want to be pushed to an official conclusion. All four limbs were dislocated, and some of his vertebrae were out of alignment. He said…’ She paused and imitated the pathologist’s portentous delivery, ‘“Don’t quote me, but I’d expect to see injuries like this after the Spanish Inquisition had put someone on the rack.”’

‘The rack? Shit, we’re really dealing with a messy mind here. OK. Next set. Paul Gibbs. This one’s yours, I think?’ Tony asked as he replaced Adam Scott’s photographs and took out the contents of the second folder. He repeated the process he’d gone through before. ‘So where is this scene in relation to the first one?’ Tony asked.

‘Hang on a minute. I’ll show you.’ Carol opened one of the boxes and picked out the large-scale map she’d thought to bring with her. She unfolded it and spread it out on the floor. Tony got up from his desk and crouched down beside her. She was instantly aware of the smell of him, a mixture of shampoo and his own faint, animal scent. No macho aftershave, no cologne. She watched his pale, square hands on the map, the short, almost stubby fingers, with their neatly trimmed nails and a sparse scattering of fine black hairs on the bottom section of each finger. Appalled, she felt a stirring of desire. You’re pathetic as an adolescent, she savagely chided herself. Like a teenager who fancies the first teacher who says anything nice about your work. Grow up, Jordan!

Under the guise of pointing out the sites on the map, Carol inched away. ‘Crompton Gardens is here,’ she said. ‘Canal Street is about half a mile away, over here. And the Queen of Hearts pub is just along here, about midway between the two.’

‘Is it safe to assume he knows the area well?’ Tony asked, making his own mental map of the murder sites.

‘I think so. Crompton Gardens is a pretty obvious dumping ground, but the other two imply quite a high degree of familiarity with Temple Fields.’ Carol sat back on her haunches, trying to work out if the pattern of sites implied an approach from one specific direction.

‘I need to take a look at the scenes. Preferably around the time the bodies were dumped. Do we know when that was?’ Tony said.

‘We don’t know about Adam. Estimated time of death is an hour either side of midnight, so not before then. With Paul, we know the doorway was clear just after three a.m. Gareth’s time of death is estimated at between seven and ten p.m. the evening before his body was found. And with Damien, the yard was clear at half past eleven,’ Carol recited, closing her eyes to recall the information.

Tony found himself staring at her face, glad of the freedom her shuttered eyelids gave him. Even without the animation of her blue eyes, he could see that she’d be classified beautiful. Oval face, broad forehead, clear pale skin, and that thick blonde hair, cut slightly shaggy. A strong, determined mouth. A furrow that appeared between her brows when she concentrated. And his appreciation was as clinical as if she were a photograph in a casebook. Why was it that, faced with a woman any normal man would regard as attractive, something in him closed down? Was it because he refused to allow himself to feel the first stirrings that might lead him to a place where he was no longer in control, where humiliation lurked? Carol’s eyes opened, registering surprise when she saw him watching her.

He felt his ears tingle with a blush and turned back to the map. ‘So he’s a night owl,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’d like to take a look at the area tonight, if I can. Maybe you can get someone else to show me round so you can catch up on your sleep.’

Carol shook her head. ‘No. If we can get through here by five, I’ll go home and grab a few hours’ shut-eye. I’ll pick you up around midnight and we can go then. Is that OK?’ she asked, belatedly.

‘Perfect,’ Tony said, getting to his feet and retreating behind his desk. ‘As long as you don’t mind.’ He picked up the photographs and forced himself back behind Handy Andy’s eyes. ‘He’s made a real mess of this one, hasn’t he?’

‘Paul’s the only one who’s been beaten up like this. Gareth has cuts to his face, but nothing as extreme. Paul’s face has been smashed to a pulp — broken nose, broken teeth, broken cheekbone, dislocated jaw. The anal injuries are horrendous as well; he’s been partially disembowelled. The degree of violence is one of the reasons why the Super felt we were looking at a different perpetrator. Also, none of his limbs are dislocated, unlike the other three.’

‘This is the one the papers said was covered up with bin bags?’

Carol nodded. ‘Same variety as the scraps found under Adam’s body.’

They moved on to Gareth Finnegan. ‘I’m going to have to give some serious thought to this one,’ he said. ‘He’s changed his pattern in at least two significant ways. First, the dumping ground moves from Temple Fields to Carlton Park. It’s still a gay cruising area, but it’s an aberration.’ He stopped himself short and gave a hollow laugh. ‘Listen to me. As if his whole behaviour isn’t wildly aberrant. The second thing is his letter and video to the
Sentinel Times
. Why did he decide to announce this body and none of the others?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Carol said. ‘And I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that it could have lain there for days, even weeks, otherwise.’

Tony made a note on his pad and gave her the thumbs-up sign with the other hand. ‘These wounds to the hands and feet. I know it sounds off the wall, but it almost looks like he was crucified.’

‘The pathologist wasn’t crazy about going on the record with that one either. But the hand wounds, coupled with the dislocation of both shoulders, makes crucifixion a conclusion that’s hard to resist, especially when you remember this probably happened on Christmas Day.’ Carol got to her feet, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She couldn’t manage to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn. She paced round the small office, shrugging her shoulders to loosen the taut muscles. ‘Sick bastard,’ she muttered.

‘The genital mutilations are getting more severe,’ Tony observed. ‘He’s virtually castrated this one. And the fatal wounds, the cutting of the throat. That’s getting deeper too.’

‘Does that tell us anything?’ Carol asked, almost unintelligible through another yawn.

‘Like your pathologist, I’m reluctant to speculate just yet,’ Tony said. He moved on to the final set of pictures. For the first time, Carol saw his professional mask slip. Horror swept across Tony’s face, widening his eyes, drawing his lips back in a hissed intake of breath. She wasn’t surprised. When they’d turned Damien Connolly over, a six-foot rugby-playing detective had keeled over in a dead faint. Even the experienced police pathologist had turned away momentarily, visibly struggling not to be sick.

Rigor mortis had frozen Damien Connolly’s limbs in a parody of human gesture. The dislocated joints stuck out at crazy angles. But there was more, and worse. His penis had been severed and thrust into his mouth. His torso was branded from chest to groin in a bizarre, random pattering of starburst burns, none more than half an inch across.

‘Dear God,’ Tony breathed.

‘He’s really getting the hang of this, isn’t he?’ Carol said bitterly. ‘Takes a pride in his work, doesn’t he?’

Tony said nothing, forcing himself to study the appalling photographs as closely as he’d done with the previous sets. ‘Carol,’ he eventually said. ‘Has anybody come up with any theories as to what he’s used to make these burn marks?’

‘Not a one,’ she said.

‘They’re odd,’ he said. ‘The patterns vary. It’s not like he’s used some random object and kept on using it. There are at least five different shapes. Have you got anybody who can do computer pattern analysis? To see if there’s any hidden message here? There must be dozens of these bloody burns!’

Carol rubbed her eyes again. ‘I don’t know. Me and computers are about as compatible as the Prince and Princess of Wales. I’ll ask when I go back to the office. And if we don’t have someone, I’ll ask my brother.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Michael’s a computer genius. He works in games software development. You want a pattern analysed, manipulated, turned into a shoot-’em-up arcade game, he’s your man.’

‘And he can keep his mouth shut?’

‘If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be doing the job he does. Millions of pounds depend on his company getting on the next rung of the ladder before anybody else. Believe me, he knows when to button his lip.’

Tony smiled. ‘I didn’t mean to sound offensive.’

‘You didn’t.’

Tony sighed. ‘I wish to God I’d been brought in sooner on this. Handy Andy’s not going to stop here. He’s too much in love with his work. Look at these pictures. This bastard’s going to carry on capturing and torturing and killing until you catch him. Carol, this guy’s a career killer.’

F
ROM
3½″
DISK LABELLED
: B
ACKUP
.007;
FILE
L
OVE
.005

I walked boldly up the path and pressed Adam’s doorbell. In the seconds before he answered the chime, I composed my face into what I believed was an apologetic smile. I could see the fuzzy outline of his head and shoulders as he walked down the hall. Then the door opened and we were face to face. He half smiled quizzically. As if he’d never noticed me before in his life.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘Only my car’s broken down, and I don’t know where there’s a pay phone, so I wondered if I might use your phone to call the AA? I’ll pay for the call, of course…’ I let my voice trail away.

His smile broadened and relaxed, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘No problem. Come in.’ He stepped back and I moved inside the door. He gestured down the hall. ‘There’s a phone in the study. Just on the right there.’

I moved slowly down the hall, ears alert for the sound of the front door closing behind me. As the lock snapped back into place, he added, ‘There’s nothing worse, is there?’

‘I’ll just look up the number,’ I said, pausing in the doorway to reach in my backpack. Adam kept on walking, so that when I pulled out the Mace spray, he was only a couple of feet away from me. It couldn’t have been more perfect. I let him have it full in the face.

He roared in pain and stumbled back against the wall, hands clawing at his face. I moved in swiftly. One foot between his ankles, hands on his shoulders, a quick twist and down he went, face crushed into the carpet, gasping for breath. I was down on top of him in seconds, gripping one wrist and twisting his arm up his back while I snapped the handcuff over it. He was struggling against me by now, tears streaming down his face, but I managed to grab his other flailing arm and snap the other half of the cuffs on it.

His legs were thrashing under me, but my weight was enough to keep him pinned to the floor while I took a ziplock plastic bag from my backpack. I opened it, extracted a pad soaked in chloroform and clamped it over his nose and mouth. The sickly odour drifted upwards into my nostrils, making me feel slightly light-headed and queasy. I hoped the chloroform hadn’t gone off; I’d had the bottle for a couple of years, ever since I’d stolen it from the dispensary on a Soviet ship where I’d spent the night with the first officer.