The Burning (6 page)

The stun gun was part of the Burning Man’s signature; we had allowed that detail to be released just to warn potential victims. A jolt from a stun gun would be incapacitating, paralysing, and it was terrifyingly easy to do to someone. Easy, too, to get hold of one, even though they were illegal. We had circulated images of them, hoping that someone would recall seeing a man with a similar device.

We hadn’t, however, mentioned in the press that the serial killer we were hunting had a distinctive way of tying his victims’ hands, palms outward, thumb to thumb in front of their chests, using generic gardening twine that cut into their flesh. He took no chances that they might fight back. But this woman’s hands were loose. He had been able to control this woman, whoever she was. He should have been finding it harder, not easier. He should have been coping with a terrified victim who knew what to expect, a woman desperate to escape certain death. The element of surprise – the hope of survival – should have been gone by now.

‘Other things we might note: the position of the body. This is a much more organised disposal. The others gave the impression of being thrown to the ground – the clothing dragged out of position, grazes on the bodies and so forth. I’d guess that this one was laid out with some care. Face up as well – the previous two were prone.’

Images flickered through my mind of splayed limbs, twisted torsos, blackened clothes and trees.

Hanshaw was completing his examination briskly. ‘No ID with the body that I can locate – no bag, nothing in the pockets.’

‘Signs of sexual assault?’

He shook his head. ‘Not at first glance. The underclothing is still in place. I imagine this one will be the same as the others.’

The psychologists told us that the man we were looking for wasn’t a conventional sexual predator. There was a thrill in what he was doing that was entirely titillating for him, but that didn’t mean he wanted to rape the women he killed – the opposite. He despised them, we were told. He hated them and what they stood for. He channelled his rage into violence. None of the victims had shown signs of sexual assault. The appetite of our killer was entirely satisfied by blood, by breaking bones and charring flesh and leaping flames. It made it worse, somehow. It was one step further removed from anything I could understand.

Something else was bothering me. ‘He doesn’t seem to have taken anything. Unless he took her coat.’

‘What?’ Godley turned to look at me, blue eyes sharp.

‘Both earrings are there.’ Gold knots glinted in her ears under the arc lights. ‘And her watch. Her ring.’ An amethyst and diamond eternity ring was on the woman’s right hand.

‘Maybe he took a necklace – a pendant or something,’ Rob suggested.

‘No.’ Ali spoke at the same time as me, sounding sure. ‘She wouldn’t have worn one, not with that neckline.’

‘She wouldn’t have wanted anything else,’ I agreed, and smiled at the pathologist’s assistant, grateful for the backup. I got a cool look in return. She wasn’t easy to get to know, Ali, and I’d never managed any kind of general conversation with her. She was her boss’s creature; her thinly disguised hostility matched his precisely.

Godley, who had been staring at the body as if he wasn’t really seeing it, as if he wasn’t really there, came to life. ‘No chance of fingerprints, I take it.’

The pathologist peered at the withered, contorted hands and shook his head. ‘DNA identification, I’d say. Or we can match dental records if someone takes the time to report her missing.’

But that would take days, he didn’t have to say. The DNA would be quicker if she was on the database. I hoped she was. We deserved a break of some kind. The media would be savagely critical when they realised there was a new victim. It wasn’t fair; we had worked for long days and nights analysing CCTV footage, interviewing sex offenders in the local area, talking to probation officers about people who were of concern to them, stopping and searching lone males on the streets. I had done hours of door-to-door enquiries myself and come up empty-handed. We had leafleted public buildings and local business. There had been roadblocks, appeals for witnesses, press conferences. And we had nothing.

Godley turned to us. ‘Right. Rob, I want you to go and talk to the first officers on scene. Maeve, can you speak to whoever found her? Find out if they saw anything useful. I’ll finish up here.’

‘Right,’ Rob said easily, and turned to go. I paused for a second before following suit, knowing that I wouldn’t get another chance to take in the scene before it was disturbed. Photographs weren’t the same. And there was something off about this one, something that jarred me, even if I couldn’t quite work out what it was.

After one last long look, I gave up, picking my way across the grass in my unsuitable shoes, wary of twisting an ankle. By the time I made it back to the cars, Rob was already deep in conversation with a couple of uniformed officers, taking notes. I recognised one of them; he had worked out of the same station as me in my first year on the street. I couldn’t remember his name and settled for a brisk nod in his direction, glad that Rob had the job of talking to them rather than me.

‘Where’s my witness?’

The two officers jerked their thumbs in the direction of the police car that was behind them. A shadowy figure was sitting in the back with the doors closed so he couldn’t escape.

‘Did you arrest him?’ I was puzzled.

‘Almost,’ the one I knew said, and chuckled.

‘You’re in for a treat,’ the other officer said. ‘Never met anyone with less to say for themselves.’

‘How come?’ I was interested.

‘You’ll see. Not the most forthcoming witness.’ He was old enough and experienced enough to have seen plenty.

‘Deliberately obstructive?’

‘You might have more luck than we did.’

I frowned, not understanding why he thought that. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Michael Joseph Fallon, Micky Joe to you. He’s an IC7.’

‘Oh.’ I was starting to understand. There was no official IC7 designation on the police national computer; it was cop slang for a traveller. ‘And you think he’ll talk to me because …’

‘You’re Irish too, aren’t you? Paddies always get on.’

‘Great,’ I said bleakly. My name was the giveaway – that and my wild hair, typically Irish, I’d been told. From the first day I walked through the door at Hendon, I’d been called Spud, or had to listen to jokes about how stupid the Irish were, or even fucking
Riverdance
, for God’s sake. It was all too petty to make a formal complaint, but it bothered me. I’d grown up in England – I had an English accent – but I still didn’t fit in and they made sure I knew it. I had been more than happy to live up to the reputation for having a fiery temper, but it got me in trouble and I was trying to keep it under control, so on this occasion I said nothing else.

Rob gave me a sunny grin that said more clearly than words
I’m glad I’m not you
. I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue and headed for the car.

Micky Joe Fallon was twenty-five, not wanted on any outstanding warrants, recently released from prison after a two-year term for burglary and clearly regretting whatever instinct of social responsibility had made him call 999 when he found a woman’s body smouldering in the grass. I let him out of the back of the police car and leaned against the boot, trying to look friendly.

‘Can you tell me in your own words what happened?’

‘I don’t know what you want with me, I’ve been straight with you,’ he muttered. He had a battered black cap pulled down low over his eyes, and in spite of the cold morning, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that showed off the flickering muscles in his arms.

‘You’ve been very helpful, but I need to get another statement. It’s normal procedure.’ He was edging away from me even as I spoke. ‘You’re not in trouble. Just tell me what you saw and you can go.’ It was almost word-for-word what I’d said to Kelly Staples. This time I was reasonably sure I was speaking the truth.

He had been out early, he told me, because he was looking for his dog, which had gone missing.

‘I saw the smoke first and came over to see what it was.’

‘Did you see anyone?’

He shook his head.

‘What did you do then?’

‘Had a look around. Once I saw what –
it
was.’

‘Had the fire been burning for long?’

‘Don’t know. It was smoking, though. I could smell it from over there.’ He pointed. ‘Thought it was a barbecue at first.’

I wrinkled my nose in disgust, though in fact he was right. There was still the faintest trace of it in the air.

‘And you didn’t see any cars, or anyone else on foot?’

‘Nothing.’ And even if he had, I wasn’t going to get to hear about it.

‘Have we got an address for you?’

He gave it to me again, his voice gruff. ‘Can I go?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ I said, resigned, and watched as he crossed the road and disappeared.

‘Get anywhere?’ It was one of the uniformed officers who had spoken, the one I didn’t know, and I smiled at him though with gritted teeth.

‘Not really. He didn’t have much to say for himself. Even to me.’

‘Turns out a pretty face will only take you so far,’ the other one commented.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. Just that it’s harder for some people to get on to murder squads than it is for others.’

I felt my face flame; it wasn’t the first time I’d had that sort of remark, but it usually wasn’t so brutally put. The other officer laughed, covering it with a cough. There was nothing I could say in response, or at least nothing I wanted to. Ignoring it was the best option. But that didn’t mean I had to be pleased about it, and I swore under my breath as I walked away, quickly.

‘How did that go?’

I turned to glare at Rob, who had caught up with me. ‘Just fine, thanks.’

‘Funny, because you look like you’re absolutely fuming.’

‘In what way?’

He scanned my face. ‘You’re flushed. Your hair is all over the place. And when you get angry, you get this cute little white line across the bridge of your nose.’

He reached out, as if to trace it, and I jerked my head back, out of range. ‘No touching, Langton, or I’ll do to you what I wanted to do to that pair.’

‘And what’s that exactly? You never know, I might enjoy it.’

‘Something that would be guaranteed to get me a reg nine if they made a complaint.’

‘Well, you don’t need another one of those. I’ve never known anyone attract so many bullshit complaints.’

‘Tell me about it. It’s nothing to do with the way I behave.’

‘I wouldn’t dare suggest that it was.’ Rob looked over my shoulder and stopped smiling. ‘Here’s trouble.’

Trouble, in the stocky shape of DC Belcott. Peter Belcott, AKA Peter Belcock, his first name never ever shortened to Pete. Trouble because he had an absolute gift for getting up people’s noses and a congenital inability to say the right thing. I turned to greet him without enthusiasm and was struck anew by how resolutely unattractive he was – small and square, with pouting lips.

‘I hear you two have been having a busy morning. Got everything sorted now, have you? Suspect in custody?’ He had a whiny voice that was even less appealing when it was edged with scorn.

‘Fuck off, Peter,’ Rob said cheerfully.

‘I know you wish I would. But the boss rang me personally.’ He rose up on his toes for a second and thrust his chest out, looking like a fat little pigeon mid-moult. ‘Asked me to come along and lend him my expertise. Apparently he doesn’t have quite as much faith in the two of you as you might think.’

I didn’t believe him – not for a second. The man was a relentless self-promoter; if I took everything he said at face value, I would have been expecting him to be named as the new commissioner any day now.

‘The boss said you would fill me in on this one. What do you know?’

I ran through it briefly. There wasn’t much in the way of facts to tell him, but I had plenty of speculation to share. In spite of myself, I got absorbed in what I was saying. ‘You have to wonder, don’t you, why he changed his MO. I mean, nothing seems to have been taken. Her hands aren’t tied. This place isn’t a park, not like the other ones.’ I looked around and shivered; it was a particularly bleak bit of ground, surrounded by high-walled industrial units and not overlooked. All the CCTV cameras I could see pointed inwards, at their own premises. We wouldn’t get much from them.

Belcott shrugged. ‘His usual thing wasn’t working for him any more. So what? They do escalate, serial killers.’

‘This isn’t an escalation,’ I objected. ‘This is less violent, if anything.’

‘He’s not a machine,’ Rob pointed out. ‘Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Even for killers who seem to have remarkably good luck.’

‘Don’t talk to me about luck.’ Superintendent Godley had joined us, looking uncharacteristically irritable. ‘He has the luck of the devil. We don’t even know who the latest victim is.’

‘And it’s strange he’s changed his MO. We might have expected him to get more violent, not less.’

My words, spoken by Peter Belcott. I could have killed him where he stood. As it was, I was slightly surprised that he didn’t burst into flames from the heat of my glare.

‘Yes. That interests me too.’ The superintendent looked at me vaguely. ‘Can you hang on here until the body is moved?’ Before I could so much as nod, he’d turned away. ‘Rob, I want you to find Tom Judd and give him the full picture. I sent him home to get changed and have some food – give him a call and see if he’s ready to come back to work. If he is, you can pick him up. Peter, I’m heading back to the incident room. Come with me and we can discuss the differences on the way.’

There was an extra spring in Belcott’s stride as he walked off in step with the superintendent. I jumped as Rob’s arm landed on my shoulders.

‘You never learn, do you? Never share your bright ideas with Belcock. Not unless you’re trying to get him a promotion.’

I ducked out from under his arm. ‘What is it about “no touching” that you don’t understand?’

‘Don’t take it out on me,’ he protested, laughing.