Fifty Two Weeks of Murder (27 page)

Making one last sweep, something in the hallway caught her attention. Barry switched off his phone and caught Anders muttering under her breath. She walked back into one room, came out and went into the next.

“Other properties were occupied by families. Had a fair old shock when the Police turned up. What are you doing?” he asked as she kept pacing back and forth. She curled a finger at him and he followed her into a study, every wall lined with bookcases housing hundreds of hardback books on law. Anders pointed to the wall behind a large desk. It was the only one that wasn’t occupied by shelving.

“That wall is new,” she said. “There’s a ten foot space between the two rooms that doesn’t match.” She gave him an appraising look, taking in his massive height and build. “Fancy doing some home wrecking?” He chuckled.

“We don’t got a warrant for that.” A twinkle in his eye suggested he didn’t care so much about that.

“You show me what’s behind the wall and I’ll show you all the warrants you could need.” Grinning, he reached over and pulled the desk backwards. It was heavy and old, but he moved it as if it were made of cotton. He flung it onto its back, scattering pens and paper everywhere and kicked out a leg, the wood splintering under his assault.

“Mind yourself,” he said as he peered closely at the wall before stepping back and swinging the table leg at it. The force of his blow cut through the plasterboard and he almost lost balance as the unexpectedly thin panelling gave way easily. A few more swings and he’d cleared a large section of wall, his hands grabbing chunks from the plaster and tossing it behind him. Covered in soot and dust, he whistled as he saw what was inside the opening. It was a large safe that seemed to glower at them menacingly as they shone their torches on it.

“That’s a TXTL60. You’re not getting in there anytime this century.” The safe was roughly six feet high with a control panel on the front and a large metal wheel. Anders studied the panel and phoned Jesse.

“Hey boss,” he said. “I’m sure you’re not phoning me to ask me out on a date. It’s ok, I’ve moved on.”

“TXTL60,” she said, ignoring his lame joke and staring at the panel. “Can you hack in?” She waited as he tapped quickly on his keyboard, whistling as he worked.

“Nope. Not from here anyway. It’s one of the best on the market and entirely self-contained. You’d need someone there and I’m not sure anyone could do it, not even me. I’ll contact the company that makes them and see if they can help us out.”

He hung up, Anders and Barry waiting in an easy silence. They were used to long waits. It was part of the job. Eventually, Jesse called back.

“Okay, you’re gonna need to find a bed for the night. They won’t send someone round until the morning.” Anders rolled her eyes in frustration.

“Give me their number,” she said. Barry chuckled. He wouldn’t want to be the poor sap who answered this call.

Thirty minutes later, a nervous employee turned up. He wore dark blue overalls and thick glasses that he constantly squinted through. He spoke with a stammer and Anders showed more patience with him that Barry would have. He prowled behind the poor man who knelt in front of the safe and applied a cable to the control panel, his hands shaking with nerves and glancing at the damaged wall that Barry had smashed through.

“Easy there Mike,” said Anders gently. “Barry’s just a big softie, all wrapped up in a mean looking package.” She winked at Barry as she spoke and he stopped his pacing. Mike found his stillness more intimidating and, with trembling fingers, tapped in a twenty digit code to give him access to the safe. Eventually, he was done and looked up at Anders with a nervous smile.

“All done Miss. Just turn the handle and you’re in.” Anders straightened up from where she had been leaning against a wall, reading a book, and thanked him.

“Remember, Mike, that you have agreed to confidentiality. You cannot say to anyone what you have done here until we ask you to present evidence in a court of law. Are we clear?” He gulped and nodded, stammering his understanding. Barry led him out as Anders stood in front of the safe. Reaching forward, she turned the wheel and was surprised at how easily the door slid open.

What was more surprising was the putrid smell as a brown pungent liquid seeped from the safe, sloshing over her shoes and oozing onto the floor. The door suddenly swung open further as a semi decayed corpse slid from the safe, its flesh half rotted, chunks sloughing from the skeleton as the movement disturbed its metal tomb. Its fingers were mashed to a pulp and someone had taken a mallet to the skull, shattering it into a hundred shards.

Barry arrived just as the skeleton gushed from the safe and recoiled at the smell, holding his hand to his mouth and nose. He saw the mess congealing around Anders’ feet and she gave him a frustrated look.

“Dammit. I really liked these shoes.”

Chapter 8

Anders gave her shoes a rueful look as Helen bagged them for evidence. Sealing the bag shut, Helen gave her a sympathetic look.

“Good excuse to go shopping,” she said and looked pointedly at Anders’ feet. She wore some running shoes that she’d found in her car and the brightly coloured trainers looked at odds with her dark trousers. Anders had phoned Duncan and told him to get Helen and Ben to Bath as quickly as possible. They’d arrived within a couple of hours and Barry had buzzed them in as soon as he saw their approach.

In the orange glow of the street lamps, they looked like ordinary tourists, newly arrived and carrying large suitcases. Anders had told them to come without making a fuss or alerting the neighbours and was pleased to see them. Though Ben was young and ungainly, his work was unmatched. Helen was equally gifted and knew how to get the best from Ben. They were an excellent team. Helen had even managed to draw Ben out from himself a little over the last month and Anders could see a real difference in him.

He was on his knees peering into the safe and sifting through the congealed sludge that the corpse had festered in while Helen looked at the body itself. Barry had taken pictures before they’d arrived and his face was a mask of distaste at the smell.

“Why’s it all half rotted like that?” he asked. 

“There was enough oxygen in the safe for some decomposition, but that soon ran out. The corpse was then left with anaerobes,” replied Helen absently as she moved the corpse a fraction only for more skin to sluice off, taking flesh with it and revealing bone underneath.

“Time of death is going to be difficult,” muttered Ben, his head still stuck in the safe, the light from his torch sucked up by the dark gloop he had one hand in. “No insects were able to get to him, so I can’t use succession. I can work out how much oxygen would have been in the safe and perhaps link that to the level of decay.” His voice echoed from the safe as he spoke.

“You’re looking at stage one decay easily, but parts of stage two and three as well,” said Helen, pointing to the internal organs that were now mush, the liver and kidneys no longer identifiable.

“So at least three weeks,” said Anders. “Even if we can’t pinpoint the exact time, we’re looking at a minimum of three weeks.”

“Easily,” answered Helen. “Longer with the lack of oxygen in the safe.”

“It’s disgusting is what it is,” said Barry succinctly. “You got his brains leaking out of his skull and his manhood all swollen up in three different parts. When I die, just cremate me, ok?” Anders patted his arm reassuringly.

“Don’t worry hon, I’ll burn you to a crisp. But first, you gotta help me get all those pieces of skull into that box there.” He gave her a long suffering look and pulled on his extra-large coveralls that needed to be specially made for him and got down on his hands and knees to help. There were only the four of them on the scene, but Anders had contacted Cooper and used FaceTime to film the scene for him. He’d paled visibly in the bottom corner of the screen but agreed to have just the four of them assess the scene initially before using a full SCO team. Though he had no authority to allow such things, any review would go through him. Anders wanted to be certain that anything they did would hold up in court.

Anders was keen that as few people knew about this as possible. Though she trusted her core team, there were far too many people leaving and joining the task force every day that she couldn’t be certain one of them would leak the news to the press. If this house was linked with Buckland and this murder to him, then she didn’t want anyone to know that they had found it, though she was sure Buckland would find out sooner rather than later. The fact that this corpse had been hidden intrigued her. It hadn’t been posted on the Fifty Two Weeks of Murder site, so she was sure it was something that he didn’t want found. If it really was him of course. It could just be some horrifying coincidence.

The teeth of the corpse were shattered and the flesh from the fingers too putrescent to get fingerprints. She and Helen had agreed that the best way was to reconstruct the skull and then hope that the face was known to their data bases. As they worked to gather evidence, Barry grunted irritably.

“I joined the police force to catch criminals, not spend time on my hands and knees looking for bits of skull. Ah, found something.” Anders looked over and shook her head.

“That’s a piece of dirt.” He tossed the grit back into the slop and searched again. Though he grumbled, he was diligent and helped Anders recover more fragments. When they could find no more, he stood up and started to remove his coveralls.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Helen. “You’re going to need to help me move this body, reseal the safe and clear up this mess. Maybe Buckland, if it was him, won’t notice the body was found.” Anders smiled as Barry gave her an evil look and zipped his coverall back up.

“You owe me,” he said and Helen gave a cheeky smile.

“I’m sure I’ll think of some way to pay you back,” she said, her eyes roving his broad chest and narrow waist. He blushed and set about helping her, muttering darkly under his breath. Helen helped Anders remove the main portion of the skull, cutting the spine just below the third vertebra. Her work done, Anders took off her coverall and picked up the dark case that held the fragments.

“When you guys are done, get some rest and I’ll see you back at the Hub.” They all gave varying forms of acknowledgement and she stepped out into the street, grateful for the cool air and dark night. As Anders made her way to the truck, she gained the odd look of recognition, but no one approached her, preferring to scurry off instead. She hoped word wouldn’t get out that she was in Bath and tip off whoever owned the house, but had little choice.

She made it to her truck quickly and gunned the engine, letting it turn miserably before starting. Putting her bag on the passenger seat, a battered old Stetson in the foot well caught her eye. She’d worn it a great deal in America and had become something of a trademark, her fiancé ribbing her mercilessly that she belonged in some old Western. She’d not worn it since that night in Washington and Aaron had claimed it as his own, running round the flat with a sheriff badge and plastic pistols in a holster. He must have left it in the car when Cassie had taken the truck a couple of weeks ago. She held it for a few moments, an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation, before sliding it onto her head. It still fit pretty good.

She switched on her CD player and put in a Tom Petty CD, chuckling at the cliché she must have looked in her truck as she turned the volume up until it was loud enough to keep her awake. Pushing the truck beyond its limits, she then sped down the motorway to London, her mind focused on the task at hand. She couldn’t let it wander, for it would take her, inevitably, to Mal and then to Lucy. She couldn’t afford to grieve. She would though. When this was over with, she would grieve as she always did. Fully and painfully. She’d suffered so much loss in her life, she was accustomed to its icy grip, a permanent companion to her. Anders would let her emotions crash over her defences and knew that it would ebb and flow, pummel her with guilt and hurt and then let her rest, rushing in when she least expected it, wreaking more devastating pain. Eventually it would fade like the tide on a beach to leave smooth sand behind that would be rewritten with a new story, though the dull ache of loss would always remain. 

Arriving back at Scotland Yard, Anders grabbed the box from the passenger seat and made her way to the Hub. The space was empty, the late hour having chased away anyone working overtime. She’d also given Jesse the task of taking everyone to the pub to toast Mal and he’d done his job well, knowing why she needed to have the area to herself.

She checked her office quickly, scanning her emails and messages for anything urgent and then made her way to the forensics lab. She set the bag to one side for a moment and took out a sterile needle and some yellow collection tubes from the equipment store. Sitting on the stool, she rolled up her sleeve and tied a band around her arm, just above the elbow. Tapping the Basilic vein until it pulsed visible, she pushed the needle in and collected a sample of blood. Her movements were swift and well-practised. Once the bottle was full, she swapped it over and collected another sample. Finally, she removed the needle, swabbed the area and held some cotton wool over the puncture wound until the bleeding stopped.

Whilst she did this, she perused Helen’s shelves of equipment and gathered what she needed. She’d arranged an appointment with Charing Cross Hospital upon her arrival in the UK, but they’d been slow to respond, so she was happy to do this herself for the time being. As a transgender woman, her liver and renal function had to be tested as well as her haemoglobin, lipid and hormone levels to make sure that they were all within range. Helen had been happy for Anders to do it in her lab and had even offered to do the tests for her. Doing them now helped to calm her mind and focus on something other than Mal and Lucy. It would make her work more quickly on the skull fragments.

Anders’ potassium was a little high and her liver function was at the lower end of the range, but she attributed that to stress. She’d check again in a week. Tidying up after herself, she put the waste into a biohazard box and the reagents back into the neat and orderly rows Helen liked.  

Putting on a fresh set of coveralls and surgical gloves, she took the bones from her bag and laid them on the metallic surface. Helen was exceptionally fussy about how her lab was managed and the table gleamed with cleanliness. The bones, chunks of dried flesh and brown, rotting viscera looked like a macabre jigsaw puzzle as she laid them out, counting them as she did so.

“One hundred and four pieces,” she said with a grimace. Whatever had crushed the skull had been heavy and whoever had done it had used that weapon repeatedly in their rage. She knew that they would have missed many fragments in their haste and guessed that several pieces wouldn’t fit as well as she would have liked due to the savage nature of the killing. The brutality would have crushed some bone to microscopic shards and the teeth were too fractured to piece together accurately enough for dental records.

Her first job was to clean the fragments and she took photographs of the bone before cleaning them, keeping all the collected gore for evidence. Eventually, she laid the pieces in order of size and put in her headphones. When working on puzzles, she liked to stand and be able to move, preferably to some beat. It was the opposite technique to her meditation of a crime scene, but for her, equally as useful in focusing the mind. She picked up the largest piece of skull, essentially the lower half with the jawbone smashed off and scanned it closely as “Uptown Funk” sounded through her headphones. Looking at the pieces around her, she picked one up and found a match.

Singing to herself, she started piecing together the skull, dancing and singing softly as “Happy” followed the previous song. Lost in her own world, the skull started to take form. Hours passed and she didn’t notice, trapped as she was in an underground room with no windows and nothing but the glare of neon lamps above. She had her back to the clock above the doorway and didn’t notice as Barry entered and put the corpse from Bath onto a steel gurney, the body bag squelching as he dumped the bag. He grinned as Anders, her back to him, shuffled to the music and sang to herself.

“Not perfect after all,” he said, taking his phone out to film Anders, her singing off key and displeasing to the ear. Thinking he’d get Jesse to play that during the next briefing, he sauntered out of the lab with a whistle and a skip to his step.

Many hours later, Helen entered the lab to find Anders asleep, perched on a metal stool and head resting on her arms as she leaned onto the desk. By her side stood the reconstructed skull. There were several gaps in the bone and many teeth were missing, but she had done an outstanding job. Helen glanced at the gently snoring Anders with a new level of respect. Reaching out so as not to disturb her, she took the skull and placed it onto a Cyberware laser scanner connected to a Silicon Graphics Indy computer. On the screen, the computer placed a wire mesh over the skull and started overlaying tissue depth based upon Helen’s findings on approximate age, gender and build. It was a more accurate method than the traditional one of adding clay to give depth on landmark sites, but still not perfect. She then passed the data to HOLMES and ran it through the police data bases. As she was doing that, she finally took a look at the reconstructed face on the screen and gasped in horror. The computer had the hair colour a shade lighter and the features were slightly off kilter, but there was no mistaking who it was.

Anders woke with a start at Helen’s curse and gave a deep stretch, arching her back deeply as she chased sleep from her body.

“Everything ok?” she asked as she slid from the stool to see what had startled Helen.

“Come look at this,” replied Helen, shock in her voice. “I think we have a new problem.”

Anders stood behind Helen and looked at the monitor. The face was instantly recognisable. It had been plastered on every paper in the world in what had become the largest manhunt since Osama Bin Laden. Barely a day had passed without his face appearing on TV from news programmes to debates to daily shows.

The skull was that of Lord Michael Buckland, the very man they’d been hunting these last few weeks.