Cold Killing: A Novel (4 page)
Thursday, late afternoon
S
ean and Donnelly walked along the corridors of Guy’s Hospital, heading for the mortuary. They were accompanied by Detective Constable Sam Muir, who would be acting as exhibits officer—taking responsibility for any objects the pathologist found on or in the body during the postmortem. Sean wondered if he would bump into his wife, Kate, one of the all too few doctors attending to the never-ending flow of patients through the Accident and Emergency Department—the sick and injured from the surrounding areas of Southwark, Bermondsey, and beyond. Some of London’s poorest and most forgotten, living in public housing projects where violence and crime were seldom far away, all of their degradation and suffering going unnoticed and unseen by the swarms of tourists wandering around Tower Bridge and Tooley Street. If only they knew how close they were to some of London’s most dangerous territory.
His mind returned to the victim’s parents. He and Sally had called at the small town house in Putney. A desirable neighborhood on the whole, but boisterous on weekend evenings. Sally had done most of the talking.
Daniel had been their only child. The mother was devastated and didn’t care who saw her fall to the floor screaming. Her despair was a physical pain. When she could speak, all she could say was the name of her son.
The father was stunned. He didn’t know whether to help his wife or collapse himself. He ended up doing neither. Sean took him into the living room. Sally stayed with the mother.
They knew their son was gay. It had bothered the father at first, but he had grown to accept it. What else could he do other than push the boy away? And he would never do that. He said his son worked as a nightclub manager. He wasn’t sure where, but Daniel had been doing well for himself and had no money problems, unlike other young people.
He hadn’t met any of his son’s friends. Daniel hadn’t kept in touch with his old school friends. He came home quite often, almost every Sunday, for lunch. If he had a boyfriend then neither he nor his wife knew about it. Their son had said he wasn’t interested in anything like that. They hadn’t pressed him.
The father had asked what they were to do now. His wife would be finished. She lived for the boy, not him. He knew it and didn’t mind—but with the boy gone?
He wanted to know who would do this to his boy—who would do this to them? Why? Sean had no answers.
As the three detectives entered the mortuary they could see Dr. Simon Canning preparing for the postmortem. A body lay covered with a green sheet on what Sean knew would be a cold, metal operating table. Water continually ran under the body to an exit drain as the pathologist did his work, so that the whole thing resembled a large, shallow stainless-steel bathtub.
Some detectives could detach themselves from the ugly reality of postmortems, bury themselves in the science and art of the procedure. Unfortunately, Sean was not one of those detectives. For days to come images of his own postmortem would blend with the memories of his shattered childhood. Meanwhile Dr. Simon Canning was busy arranging his tools—bright, shiny metal instruments for torturing the dead.
“Afternoon, Detectives.”
“Doctor. Good to see you again,” Sean replied.
“I doubt that,” said the pathologist. Canning was pleasant enough, but businesslike and succinct. “I hope you don’t mind, Inspector. I’ve started without you. I was just having a bit of a cleanup before continuing. Right then, shall we get on with it?”
The doctor pulled back the sheet covering the body with one quick movement of his arm. Sean almost expected him to say, “
Voilà!
” like a waiter lifting the lid off a silver platter.
The hair on the back and side of the head was matted with blood—it looked sticky. Sean could clearly see the gashes in the side of the head and the small stab marks all over the naked body.
“Seventy-seven,” Canning told him.
Sean realized he was being spoken to. He glanced up at the doctor. “Sorry?”
“Separate stab wounds. Seventy-seven in total. None in the back of the body. All in the front. Made by some form of stiletto knife, or an ice pick, but it’s the first blow to the head that killed him. Eventually.”
Dr. Canning pointed to the head wound. Sean forced himself to lean closer to the body. “One can see the ear is missing. Not cut off, but more a case of the victim being hit so hard that whatever he was hit with crushed the skull and still had enough energy to tear the ear away as the swing of the object carried through.”
“Nice” was all Sean said.
“And the victim was on his knees when the first blow was struck,” the doctor continued. “We can see the cut to the scalp is angled downward, not upward. The killer swung low, not high.”
“Or he was hit from behind?” Sean offered.
“No,” Canning told him. “He fell backward, not forward. Look at the stains from the flow of blood. They run to the back of the head, not toward the face.”
He looked at the detectives, making sure they were concentrating on what he was saying and not what they were seeing. He had their attention.
“But that’s all straightforward. The interesting thing is the angle of the stab wounds. Bearing in mind of course that our friend here has wounds from his ankles to his throat, I can be almost positive the victim was already prostrate on the floor when he was stabbed. That in itself isn’t unusual.” The doctor paused to catch his breath before continuing his lecture. “The interesting bit is this—most of the stab wounds are at the wrong angle of entry. You see?”
“I’m not quite with you, Doctor.”
“It’s like this.” Canning looked around for a prop. He found a pair of scissors. “First, I know the killer is probably right-handed. The angle of the stab wounds tells me that, as does the fact the victim was hit on the left side of his head. Now, imagine I’m the killer. The victim can play himself. In order to stab somebody from head to toe, the killer would have to be at the side of the body. Not on top, as you would first imagine. If he sat astride the body then it would have been difficult to reach around and stab the thighs, the shins.” The doctor twisted his body back toward the victim’s feet so as to give a practical demonstration. His point was well made.
“Also, the entire body has puncture wounds. There isn’t a large enough unmolested area to suggest the killer was sitting astride the victim.”
“So the killer was kneeling on the side of the victim when he stabbed him. That doesn’t help me,” Sean told him.
Canning continued. “What I’m saying is that the killer didn’t crouch down next to the victim and stab away as we would expect in most frenzied crimes of passion. This killer moved around the body stabbing at different areas. There’s no doubt about it. It’s as if the killer didn’t want to be uncomfortable. He didn’t want to overstretch, almost as if he was placing ritual stab wounds, or something of that nature. It’s a strange one.
“If you ask me, I’d say this was probably not a frenzied attack. These stab wounds are deliberately placed. Controlled. The killer took his time.”
Sean felt a coldness grip his body and mind as he flashed back to the image he’d had of the killer’s careful, machinelike actions as he stabbed the victim to death. He ran a hand slowly through his short brown hair. He could deny many things, but he couldn’t deny his instincts. His gut told him things were going to become difficult. Complicated. The domestic theory was beginning to leak, and in all likelihood they weren’t looking for a scared lover anymore. There would be no tearful suspect surrendering to custody because he couldn’t deal with the guilt. They were now after something else. Sean was sure of it. He exhaled deeply, his mind swirling with questions.
“We need to get back to the office. Are you finished here, Doctor?”
“Almost. One last thing.” He pointed to the victim’s wrists. “It’s very faint, but it’s there. On both wrists.”
Sean looked closely. He could see some discoloration of the victim’s skin. Thin bands of slightly darker tissue. Canning continued his analysis.
“They’re old bruises. Probably caused by ligatures. He was tied with something. I’ll have a look under ultraviolet; that’ll show up any other old injuries. I’ll check the entire body. All my findings will be in the final report.”
“Fine,” Sean said, the sense of urgency clear in his voice.
“Please, Inspector. Don’t let me hold you up. I’ll keep you informed.”
Donnelly spoke. “D’you want me to sack looking for a boyfriend, boss?”
Sean shook his head. “No. Let’s check it out as a matter of course. The boyfriend could still be the killer. Young Daniel here may have hooked up with some freak and not even known it. No forced entry to the flat, remember?” Sean said it, but he didn’t believe it. Besides, if there was a boyfriend around, he had a right to know about Daniel. They needed to find him anyway.
“We’d better get back and break the good news.”
“You gonna tell the superintendent about this, boss?” asked Donnelly.
“I don’t have much choice.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late. I wouldn’t want to spoil his night. Better to tell him tomorrow—after that it looks like the circus will be coming to town. Just don’t be one of the clowns.”
“And the rest of the team?”
“They’ve got more than enough to be getting on with for tonight. Sort out a briefing for tomorrow morning. I’ll put them in the picture then.”
Sean and Donnelly made for the exit. Sean needed the fresh air. They walked through the swing doors and were gone.
I
f only you were capable of understanding the beauty and clarity of what I am doing. You see, my very being is testament to Nature. To her mercilessness. Her complete lack of compassion. Her violence. You have cast aside Nature’s rules and chosen to live by other laws. Morality. Restraint. Tolerance. I have not.
So here we stand, packed into this mechanical coffin, trundling under the streets of London. They humorously call this one the misery line. Look at you. None of you has the faintest idea of what I am. You look at me and see a reflection of yourselves. That is my necessary disguise.
Come closer and I’ll show you who I really am.
Damn, these trains can be unbearable in summer. All of us forced to breathe in each other’s filth. Six thirty in the afternoon—everybody trying to get home to anesthetize their brains with alcohol, cocaine, television, whatever. Anything to black out the awfulness of their miserable, pointless lives. But before they can indulge in those little pleasures they have to suffer this final torture.
I usually distract myself by picking a passenger at random and imagining what it would be like to cut their eyes out and then slit their throat. The stench of all these potential subjects is very stimulating to my imagination. Maybe I could introduce myself to someone before going home to my dutiful wife and well-behaved children? One day, when I work out how to get away with it, I’ll slit their throats too.
What about that passenger there? A nice-looking young lady. Well dressed, attractive haircut, good figure. No engagement or wedding ring. Interesting. Telltale signs like that give me all the information I need. The lack of rings could mean she lives alone or with some girlfriends. I could follow her back to her flat. Yes, I’m almost certain she lives in a flat. I’d pretend to be a neighbor who has just moved in. We would walk through the building entrance together. I would be sure to jangle some keys so she wouldn’t suspect foul play. Then she might invite me in for coffee: it’s happened before. A quick check to see if anyone else was in or expected soon, and, if not, well then I could have some fun with the pretty girl with the nice haircut.
Not tonight though. I must get home on time and be the good husband. Disguises as successful as mine need a lot of maintaining. But I can’t wait much longer. Before the little queer it had been more than a week since I visited anyone properly. The one before that was nothing but a quickie. A mere sketch. Some lawyer type with a briefcase. I made that one look like a robbery. Stabbed him twice through the heart and remembered to take the cash from his wallet.
He looked surprised. I asked him the time and as his lips parted to speak, I stabbed him. I pulled the knife out of his chest, then stabbed him again. This time I left the blade in and held on to it as he slumped to the ground. He had the same look in his eyes as the others. More quizzical than afraid. He was trying to speak. As if he wanted to ask me, “Why?” Always people want to know why. For money? For hate? For love? For sexual pleasure? No, not for any of these petty motivations.
So I whispered the true reason why in his ear. It was the last thing he would have heard. “Because I have to.”
Friday morning
I
t was hot in the way only a giant metropolis can get. The heat mixed with the fumes of four million cars, taxis, and buses. It made the road warp.
Sean was late. He had a briefing to give at ten and had wanted to be at work at least an hour and a half before that to prepare his thoughts. Thanks to the traffic along the Old Kent Road and his three-year-old daughter, Mandy, who’d decided to throw a tantrum because of Sean’s broken promise to take her to Legoland, he would barely have time to read through his incoming e-mails. He’d tried to read them on his iPhone as the traffic staggered forward, but after almost driving into the back of the car in front of him for the third time he’d thought better of it.
His team had been assigned initial tasks the previous day—now he hoped those tasks had moved the investigation forward. The briefing he would soon be chairing was an opportunity for the team to tell him what they had discovered so far. DS Roddis and his forensics crew had finished at the scene and Roddis would be present to detail their findings. Findings that could be critical to the investigation.
He rang Sally to let her know he was running late.
“I’ll be there within half an hour if this traffic starts moving. Briefing is still at ten unless I call again.”
“Do you want everyone in the briefing room?” Sally asked.
“Er . . . no,” Sean answered after a second’s thought. “We’ll do it in our incident room, there’s more space.”
“No problem.” Sally had more to say and knew she would have to speak quickly or Sean would already have hung up. “Guv’nor . . .”
He heard her just in time. “What?”
“I thought you should know some wit’s come up with a name for our killer.”
Sean knew he wasn’t going to like this. “Go on.”
“Some of the guys have christened him the ‘Fairy Liquidator.’ ”
There was silence from Sean. He sat stony-faced, thinking about what the family would say if they knew the police investigating their son’s death were calling the killer the Fairy Liquidator.
After five seconds he spoke. “Let them know in advance that from this second onward anyone using that name will be off the team, back in uniform, and directing traffic in Soho just as soon as they can get measured up for a new helmet. Take this as a first and final warning, Sally.”
“I understand. I’ll make sure it’s not used again.”
“Good.” He hung up and continued his tortuous journey through the unbreathable air. Before the murder of Daniel Graydon he’d planned to take the day off and make it a long weekend with his family, doing normal things that a normal family would do—the sort of things he never did as a child. More promises made to his wife and children broken. His stomach tightened with the sense of sadness that suddenly engulfed him—an almost panicked longing to be with his family. He shook the feelings away as best he could, chasing them from body and mind as if they were a weakness he couldn’t afford to carry with him to his work. Besides, there was nothing he could do about it. It was the nature of the beast. It was his job.
S
ean and his team were back in the open-plan office that was their incident room and second home. Desks were scattered about, mainly in groups of four, and most were adorned with old oversize computer monitors and, if the owner was lucky, a corded telephone. Murders in London were still being solved in spite of the equipment available rather than because of it. Sean stared through the Plexiglas into the room on the other side, watching the detectives, most preferring to sit on the edges of their desks talking in groups, while others moved with purpose, gathering last-minute stationery or squeezing in one final phone call ahead of Sean’s arrival.
The incident room was already changing as the investigation developed. Where there had been blank whiteboards and bare walls the night before, now, pinned up in no particular order, there were photographs of the scene, the victim, and the initial postmortem results. The name of the victim had been confirmed: Daniel Graydon. It adorned a piece of white card and was stuck above the photographs of his mutilated body and violated home. Sean noted they’d been put up in one corner of a wall only. The rest of the wall had been left empty. Clearly someone on his team believed there could be more photographs. More victims.
The whiteboard listed tasks to be undertaken and which detective was allocated to each. All were numbered, and when one was complete a line would be drawn through it, so if the investigation was failing, the board would tell the tale. It never lied. No progression meant fewer and fewer tasks to be placed on the board, causing Sean’s seniors to grow ever more anxious, more desperate, and more likely to interfere; but such concerns were for later. The first couple of days would be busy enough just collecting and preserving evidence. The early days were crucial. Evidence missed now could be lost forever.
Sean walked the few steps from his office into the main body of the incident room and waited for the detectives to become still and quiet—the noise level fading as surely as if he’d turned the volume down on an amplifier. He spoke: “Right, people, before we get into this, let’s be clear that if anyone uses the term ‘Fairy Liquidator’ on this inquiry they’re gone. Understood?” Silent nods of agreement all around the room. “Good. Now that that nonsense is out of the way, we can get down to business.
“First, you all need to know that in light of the autopsy, I no longer believe this is a domestic murder. Dr. Canning tells me that the victim would have been incapacitated with the first blow to the head, meaning there was no violent struggle.”
“What about the broken furniture and the blood spray patterns suggesting a fight?” Sally asked.
“Staged,” Sean told her. “Cleverly staged, but staged all the same. He’s trying to throw us off the scent. The stab wounds have the appearance of some sort of ritual killing, not a frenzied attack.
“Most of you know DS Andy Roddis here, the forensics team leader. Andy’s kindly given up his time to bring us all up to date on any findings from the scene.”
“That’s very fucking nice of you, Andy,” Donnelly interjected, to the amusement of his audience.
“All right, all right,” Sean hushed the room. “I strongly suggest you pay attention to what he’s about to tell you.” He turned to DS Roddis, gesturing with an open hand for him to begin. “Andy.”
DS Roddis walked to the photographs of the scene pinned to the wall behind him. “Thank you, sir.” He paced back and forth as he took up the story. “Most of the exhibits from the scene have been taken up to the forensics lab, so we won’t know the full picture until they’ve been examined. That’ll take another few days. Scientists don’t work weekends, so we won’t know much until Tuesday at the earliest.” There was a small ripple of laughter in the room.
“In addition to staging the scene, we believe the suspect is forensically aware. There were no obvious signs of semen, saliva, or anything else that could have come from the suspect.”
The team listened intently without interrupting. Roddis knew everything about the scene there was to know and they knew nothing. This was the time to listen and learn, not to question and disagree. That would come later, once they knew what Roddis knew, but until then, time to honor the ancient detective code: keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open.
“There’s a lot of blood, but I’m betting it all belongs to the victim. Initial tests show it’s the same blood type as the victim’s. DNA confirmation will take a few more days. We found several head hairs about the place, but they also look like they came from the victim. The body was swabbed before removal from the scene, so you never know your luck—we may yet, under lab examination, find some body fluids belonging to the suspect. That’s our best bet for getting the suspect’s DNA.
“No murder weapons found yet, but it’s possible the suspect cleaned them after use and placed them somewhere in the flat. All possible weapons have been sent to the lab to see if they match the victim’s wounds.
“The fingerprint search was completed using chemical treatment. We sealed the flat and pumped it full of gas. For the uninformed, we use a chemical that causes any fingerprints to reveal themselves. Much easier than crawling around the place with a brush and aluminum powder. We expected quite a lot of people’s prints to flash up, which is usual for this kind of search, but we were surprised to find only a few different marks. I’m pretty sure the scene wasn’t cleared of prints by the killer. I base that on the fact that we found a lot of prints about, but they were predominantly the victim’s.”
Sean intervened. “But there were prints at the scene other than the victim’s?”
“Yes,” replied Roddis. “Unless the victim was a total recluse, you would expect to find alien prints at the scene.” He paused for a second and began again. “Could these alien prints belong to our killer? Well, yes they could, but somehow I doubt it. The killer has gone to great trouble to avoid leaving evidence at the scene, so I think it unlikely he would be so kind as to leave us a nice, clear fingerprint.”
He could see Sean was about to jump in again, but he wasn’t ready to surrender the floor just yet.
“However, the prints we have recovered have already been sent to Fingerprint Branch for searching. At the very least it may tell us something about who the victim associated with. Always useful.”
Sean nodded his appreciation.
“And last, but not least, we are lucky the carpet in the hallway is new and of good quality. It was nice and deep and we found the scene quickly enough to recover some interesting shoe marks that hadn’t yet degraded.” Roddis took a series of photographs from his file and attached them to the board like a doctor preparing X-rays for viewing. The shoe marks looked like negatives.
“This set”—he pointed to two photographs—“belonged to the victim. We matched them easily enough. They belong to a rare type of Converse running shoe and the unique marks on the soles, the scars, if you like, matched the individual cuts and marks on the victim’s shoes.”
Roddis took a step to his left and pointed at another footprint photograph. “This size ten Dr. Marten belongs to the PC who first entered the scene. Fortunately he remembered his training and walked along the side of the corridor the door closes on, so he didn’t destroy what I’m about to show you.” Again Roddis took a step to his left and pointed to the board.
“This mark,” Roddis continued while tapping the next photograph, “was made by someone else entering the scene. It was made by a flat-soled leather shoe that was bought recently. We can see by the almost total lack of scars that these shoes have hardly been used at all. Even if we recovered the shoe that made this indentation, there wouldn’t be enough unique marks on the sole to be of much evidential value. We would need approximately fifteen unique scars before we could prove evidentially they were one and the same.”
“Are you suggesting this guy deliberately wore new shoes to avoid leaving a distinctive footprint?” Sally asked.
“I’m not here to suggest anything, DS Jones. I’m just here to tell you what we found. Suggestions are your field, I believe.”
Roddis moved to the final set of images. They looked strange even in the photographs. Long scars ran across the sole in all directions and appeared too thick. Roddis touched the photographs, tracing the scars with his finger.
“We puzzled over this for quite a while,” he told them. “We ran a lot of tests to try and replicate the marks. Nothing. Then, in the absence of any other bright ideas, we tried something. We put normal plastic shopping bags around the soles of a pair of shoes and bingo, exactly the same sort of marks. I’m no betting man, but I’d put my pension on the fact that this mark was made by the same shoe as here—” He pointed at the previous photograph he’d discussed. “Only now the shoe has a plastic bag over the sole. You can still see the shape of the shoe sole, and it certainly matches the other sole for size as well.”
Sally spoke again. “Why put bags over his shoes? He’s already walked the scene without bags, so why bother to try and hide his prints with plastic bags on the way out?” The room was silent in thought.
Think simply, Sean reminded himself, break it down. They were jumping ahead—trying to guess the killer in a game of Clue before one throw of the dice. Concentrate on the basics. It made no sense to walk into the scene without covering his feet and then cover them to leave. So if he didn’t do it to hide his shoe prints, why did he? Sean’s imagination came to his rescue, taking him back to the murder scene, looking through the killer’s eyes, seeing his hands as he bent over and carefully pulled the plastic bags over his shoes and secured them. Seeing what he saw. Feeling what he felt. The answer leaped into his mind.
“We’re trying to be too clever,” Sean said. “He didn’t do it to hide his shoe marks. He had the bags over his feet to make sure he wouldn’t get blood on his nice new shoes.”
Sally picked up the train of thought. “And if he went to the length of protecting his shoes, then it’s probable he protected everything. His whole body.”
She and Sean stared at each other. Everybody in the room was thinking the same thing. The killer was a careful bastard. The killer knew about forensic evidence. The killer knew what the police would be looking for. The killer could think like a cop? Sean broke the silence.
“Okay. So he’s careful. Very careful. But he will have made a mistake somewhere. We haven’t had the lab results yet, so it’s too early to assume the killer’s left a clean scene. Let’s not give this man too much credit. The odds are he’ll turn out to be another freak living at home with his mum, trainspotting and masturbating when he’s not out stalking celebrities—probably watched too many cop shows on the Discovery Channel and now he wants to put all his newfound knowledge to the test.”
The atmosphere in the room lightened. Sean was relieved. He didn’t want a tense team. They mustn’t already fear that the investigation could be a sticker, an investigation that dragged on and on without getting anywhere. Failed investigations felt like a contagious disease, infecting all those involved for years, limiting future career options, moves to the more glamorous Metropolitan Police units such as the Flying Squad or the Antiterrorist Teams.
