Carnal Acts (24 page)

Moonbeam Pax was sitting on her kitchen floor, head in her hands. She felt sick, but all she’d brought up in the bowl were strings of spit. What she had been told was terrible. Every human soul was precious, no matter what actions were committed by its bodily form.

She pulled herself to her feet, legs tangling in her robes. When she heard the news, she had been casting sage into the pot, her nostrils twitching as the combination of odours came right. She had been going to use the potion on her eczema, but now she didn’t care. There would be no supper tonight either. Who could eat after such a vile act?

Gradually Moonbeam felt her troubled spirit slip back into the envelope of her flesh. Perhaps she would steam kale and boil potatoes. There was still some hot sauce in the larder.

No, what was she thinking? She had to call Joni – she would know what to do, things like this were her job. But Moonbeam stopped before she reached the phone on the wall. There was no need. Joni would be involved anyway. Despite the tragedy, her plan to bring her daughter on was progressing – if anything, it was now further ahead than she could have hoped. No, leave Joni alone. She would be more likely to accept advice later.

Moonbeam Pax leaned by the dirty chopping board, ignoring the ram’s head that she’d bought at considerable expense – after the outbreaks of mad cow disease, heads and spinal columns were hard to obtain. The story of the headless man in the river had made her look through her grimoires. Previously she wouldn’t have used such a thing in her spells, but it seemed she wasn’t the only wielder of hidden powers in the vicinity now.

Looking out of the kitchen window across her garden, Moonbeam watched the bats flitting around. Innocent creatures, their spirits free and unspoiled. Why did man think he was superior to the animals, why did man harm the earth? The first of the wind turbine shafts had been erected on the hills. Soon there would
be lines of metal giants along the ridges, their cross-shaped propellers trying to harness the wind. As if the wind could be tamed by man. She knew the landowners were despoiling the land to obtain government subsidies. That was one of many reasons to put pressure on them.

Moonbeam’s face was still damp with tears. The struggle would be bitter and people were already paying the price.

Joni was sure she wouldn’t sleep, but she’d gone to bed after having a shower on returning from the scene. It was too hot in her flat, even though she turned down the heating and opened the windows in the bedroom before lying naked on top of the duvet. She knew the ambient temperature wasn’t high. The heat was coming from inside her, as if guilt and responsibility had become lava coursing through her veins. She knew Nick Etherington had been lying, she knew he’d seen someone significant in Burwell Street, but she hadn’t been able to break down the barriers – those of an eighteen-year-old schoolboy, for God’s sake. It hadn’t helped that Morrie Sutton had acted like a pig at the beginning of the first interview, or that both Major General Etherington and his mother had been present at the second, but she was an experienced detective. She should have got him to crack. Now the poor boy was in the morgue, his fine features destroyed and his head smashed open. His killer was armed with a prodigious hatred, whatever other motivation there had been to kill him.

She heard the start of the dawn chorus and was about to get up and watch the light spread over the garden, when exhaustion hit her like a church bell and she dropped into profound sleep. Not for long. She remained unconscious but her senses, operating at a deeper level, were accessible to her. She could
smell the sweat and semen of the brothel, she could hear the whispers of the figures ahead of her and, when they turned, she could see who they were. There was a bittersweet taste on her tongue like burnt sugar. It was cloying and she tried to lick it away. Then, aware that her heart was no longer beating fast, she reached out to touch the first figure. She made out her blanched grandfather, Ted, a steelworker who had spent the last five years of his life on oxygen – the tank on a trolley beside him. Julien, the bald Frenchman whom she had loved in Marseilles, strode ahead, never looking back, his head and upper body drenched in blood. Then Joni saw Aubrey Stein, one of her Oxford lovers as he was when they were together, curly hair on his shoulders. When he turned she saw the gaping wound in his throat – he committed suicide a couple of years into his career as an investment banker. She didn’t have the nerve to attend the funeral in Golders Green. Others she didn’t know crowded around. She understood they were the early and unjustly dead.

The last figure to appear was Nick Etherington. Unlike the rest, he was as he’d been before he’d left the surface of the earth. He stopped and let the others move on to a destination Joni did not know; perhaps there was none and the endless tramping was their fate.

Facing her, the young man spoke in a soft voice. ‘You were right. I did see someone at the brothel.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll find out who. You know, I don’t think I’d have got the grades for Cambridge. It was all for nothing.’ He turned and moved away, fading into a curtain of dust or ash, and Joni was alone.

She woke with a start and put a hand on her heart. It was beating slowly, as if her body had been in some kind of suspended animation, and she felt the chill of dawn on her naked body. She pulled on her dressing gown, then closed the windows and got under the duvet. She knew she wouldn’t sleep again, but she wanted to cling to the remnants of the spirits.

When the birds were in full voice and the traffic below the
Abbey was building up, Joni got ready for work with studied concentration. It wasn’t all for nothing, whatever Nick might have thought. She would find out who killed him no matter what it took.

Kyle Laggan was driven to Corham first thing in the morning. His face was grey before he reached the mortuary. He’d tried to fob the job off on Pumpkinhead, but the sod had kept his head down. Ha-ha. No, not funny. They hadn’t found Gaz’s head or hands yet. He hoped he could identify him from the scars on the knees. Mrs Frizzell had been told about the police’s suspicions and refused to have anything to do with her son. She was a hard cow. No wonder Gaz had turned out the way he was.

Kyle, dressed in a blue jumpsuit and shoes without laces, was cuffed to a cop in the back seat. He couldn’t understand why he and his mates were still locked up. The fucking Albanian was pressing charges and the useless lawyer they’d been assigned said they were in shit because the club’s security cameras had recorded them when they’d gone in with the bats. Fuck. Maybe if he played ball with the cops now, they’d put in a good word for him. They’d been told Hot Rod was OK and would be joining them soon – in Durham Prison, not just the police cells.

What could he say to get them off the hook? The truth was, Gaz had been going off the rails. He hadn’t showed up at the Grapes as often as he should in the last few weeks. Had he been working for the Albanians? It couldn’t be dope. The first people Gaz would have tried to sell to were him and the boys. So what then? Gaz had always been a lady’s man. He was a handsome fucker and he pulled more or less anyone he fancied. Was that what this was about? Had he been playing the fucking gigolo?

Kyle shivered, oblivious to the verdant countryside. Maybe
that’s why his head and hands had been cut off. Had the jackass been knobbing some Albanian boss man’s woman? Had his head and hands been chopped as a warning? He could see the headbangers doing something like that. They had nailed a couple of local hard men’s hands and feet to the door of an old warehouse to make a point not long ago.

A surge of vomit almost escaped his mouth.

‘Don’t you dare, sunshine,’ the cop growled.

Kyle Laggan swallowed the foul liquid. If Gaz had been led by his dick, maybe the bastards had cut that off too. He’d have given anything not to be the one to identify his mate now.

‘All right,’ Heck said. ‘Pay attention, all of you. What DI Pax is about to say applies to both Corham and rural MCUs.’

Joni took a deep breath and gave a run-through of the Etherington case, rarely referring to her notes. The post-mortem would begin shortly. Traffic Division had so far found no large dark vehicle in the vicinity, though they were compiling a list of local owners and would be following them up, checking for scrapes or other damage. SOCOs were still on scene, but initial evidence suggested that a single person had clambered down the slope after the victim had been knocked off the road, the size ten and wide-fitting trainer print suggesting a male. The victim’s helmet had either come off in the fall or, more likely, had been removed by the killer; but the only fingerprints on it were Nick Etherington’s. Inspection of the extensive head and facial wounds had revealed fragments of stone, but no bloodstained rock had been found in the area. Further searches in daylight were underway. The likelihood was that the murder weapon had been removed by the killer.

Joni paused and looked around the faces of her colleagues
– all were serious, even the usually relaxed Morrie Sutton and Nathan Gray. ‘Now I come to the issue of phones. First, the victim’s mobile has not been found. According to his grandfather, he always had it with him so the likelihood is the killer took it too.’

‘Unless it turns up in the search,’ Pete Rokeby put in.

Joni nodded. ‘We’ll be contacting his service provider to find out who he was in touch with recently. We’ll also be initiating tracking – apparently it was a recent model iPhone, which increases the chances of it being pinpointed. The second phone that interests us is the one used by the anonymous caller to report the incident – that is to report that a man had been knocked off his bike. It came in at 7.33 p.m.’ She leaned forward and pressed a key on her laptop.

‘Police Force of North East England emergency service. What is your name, please?’

‘Never mind that, I want to report a hit and run.’

Joni watched as people’s eyes narrowed and foreheads wrinkled. Not only was the voice neutral, the speaker holding some kind of filter over the device, but it was genuinely creepy. It seemed to be male, but was relatively high-pitched and almost sounded like a digitally produced sound.

‘The location, please, caller,’ said the duty officer.

‘B5477, bottom of the east slope of High Edge. Guy on a bike was knocked off the road by a large black 4×4.’

‘Caller, what is your name? Please stay on the scene until—’ The officer broke off when she realised the call had been terminated.

‘Any thoughts?’ ACC Dickie asked.

‘Could be the killer,’ Nathan Gray said. ‘Certainly sounds like a psychopath.’

‘Why would the killer be alerting us?’ Joni asked.

Gray shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time a nutter has taken on law enforcement agencies.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Heck said. ‘But let’s not stray too far from
the facts at this time. The caller identified the location of the incident. The victim’s bike is in the lab now and I’m hoping the techies will find traces of paint.’

‘No other witnesses, I suppose?’ DI Sutton asked.

Joni shook her head. ‘Not so far. Obviously we’ll be trying to locate this phone and its user details as well. The caller hadn’t engaged the number withhold facility, which might suggest this is a genuine witness who was flustered.’

‘Could it be a woman?’ DC Andrews asked. Her face was puffy. She had stayed with Rosie Etherington until a family liaison officer took over in the early hours.

‘Wouldn’t like to meet her in a dark alleyway if she is,’ Nathan Gray said, earning himself sharp looks from the ACC and Joni.

‘We’re sending the tape to a linguistics professor at Durham University,’ Heck said. ‘We used him when I was in Newcastle.’

‘I reckon it’s a man,’ Morrie Sutton said, ‘but I’m not sure he’s a Brit. He could be speaking like a robot to hide an accent.’

‘Good point,’ Joni said, impressed despite her dislike of the DI. ‘Anyway, we’ll need to work out rosters for interviewing the victim’s friends and relatives. Most of the former are at the Abbey School, so the Corham squad will take part.’

Heck nodded his agreement. Sutton and Gray didn’t look unhappy to be involved in such a high profile case.

‘Also,’ Joni continued, ‘there may be a connection between last night’s murder and the incidents at the Burwell Street brothel. The victim was there; some of you may remember he was dressed as a traffic light. He claimed he saw no one he knew apart from his friends, but I’m not convinced he was telling the truth. He may have been killed to stop him revealing who it was.’

There was silence as people took that in.

‘This Nick Etherington,’ said Nathan Gray. ‘He’s related to the general.’

Ruth Dickie took a step forward. ‘This is where things become problematic. As you all know, Michael Etherington is a big figure in the area, especially now he’s retired and in full-time
residence.’ She glanced at Joni. ‘DI Pax tells me she thinks he may be keeping information to himself and intending to act on it. That means it’s even more important that interviews of the victim’s friends are as in-depth as possible, but bear in mind that many are still at school and may be under eighteen. We need to follow protocol to the letter.’

‘Especially since their parents are the local great and good,’ Morrie said sourly. He had grown up on a council estate in Gateshead and wasn’t good with the well-off.

‘DI Sutton,’ the ACC said, ‘I sincerely hope I won’t receive even a breath of complaint about your or any of your officers’ conduct. Am I clear?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Morrie said meekly.

‘Thank you.’ Ruth Dickie glanced at Joni and Heck. ‘From now on I’ll handle relations with Michael Etherington.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘As it happens, I know him socially.’

Joni didn’t feel particularly reassured by that admission. She saw Pete Rokeby raise his hand and nodded to him.

‘We’ve just got confirmation, as far as that’s possible, of the headless man’s identity. A friend recognised the scars on his knees. He’s one Gary Frizzell from Benwell.’ He glanced at Heck. ‘I understand DCI Young at Newcastle MCU is checking his background.’

Joni looked at her boss.

‘That’s right. I’ll let you know if there’s any link to our cases,’ Heck said. ‘One other thing. As some of you know, a farmer by the name of Oliver Forrest went missing on the moors yesterday, in the area where the missing Albanian girl Suzana…’ He paused, looking helpless.

‘Noli,’ Joni supplied.

‘Aye … in the area where she was last presumed to be.’

‘More on the headless man,’ Joni said, glancing at her file. ‘Dr Volpert’s report says the victim had a bite on his lower neck, but she’s unable to confirm whether it’s human or animal because of the small amount of remaining tissue.’

‘Oh great,’ muttered Morrie Simmons. ‘Cannibalism an’ all.’

Ruth Dickie ignored that and took a step forward. ‘I’m not ruling out the possibility that the brothel murder, the headless man, the disappearance of the farmer and the killing of Nick Etherington are connected, but we have to concentrate on the latter now.’ She looked back at Heck. ‘Assign some uniformed officers to keep up the searches for the Albanian woman and Mr Forrest, but concentrate on Nick Etherington.’ She moved her eyes across the MCU personnel. ‘He’s the key, I’m convinced of that. DI Pax, after the post-mortem, you and I will interview the dead boy’s mother and his grandfather.’

‘Lucky you,’ Heck whispered to Joni.

She looked unconcerned.