Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  The same MO as before; it was the secret of the Embalmer’s success. With a piece of kit the size of a TV remote control, you can make a CCTV hard drive stutter and fail. Any fool can be CCTV-invisible these days.

  Cat continued her rundown of the victim profile. ‘I’ve done a preliminary sort and search, and it doesn’t look as if Matthew knew any of the other victims, not on Facebook or Linked In or Twitter or indeed in actual life.’

  ‘Shared interests?’ said Ronnie Tindale, as if rebuking her.

  Cat checked her screen. ‘No shared interests except “movies”.’

  Ronnie nodded; he was a stickler for the irrelevant detail. Cat scoured him with a glance.

  Ronnie considered himself to be the brains and linchpin of the entire team. Cat, however, thought he was a wanker.

  ‘We’re not discerning any pattern in the choice of victims except, well, random stuff,’ Cat said.

  ‘Such as?’ prompted Dougie.

  ‘Well,’ said Cat, ‘Matthew and Melissa both lived in West Hampstead at one point, but so did lots of people. Davos and Ali both studied martial arts, but so what? These are victims plucked out of a hat. That’s the only common factor, the lack of a common factor.’

  ‘Except, social media. Social media is the common factor,’ Gina said.

  Cat frowned; Gina read the implicit ‘no’.

  ‘Not really, boss,’ Cat said. ‘Our killer picks his victims from social media sites for ease of access. They’re all keen networkers, that’s how the killer targets them. Grooms ’em. Then keeps updating their Facebook or ShareIt profiles once he has them in his fucking dungeon.’

  Dougie got up and started to pace. This obliged the detectives on his side of the table to screech their chairs to follow his progress.

  He paced first this way, then that.

  He paced up as far as the monitor and the bookshelves; turned; paced down to the Holo Wall end of the room; turned; then paced back again.

  As he walked and talked he began to gesticulate with a series of archetypal Dougie gestures: fists punching; arms windmilling. It was as if he were winding himself up.

  ‘Fact: eight killings, no suspects. Fact: forty-nine separate lines of investigations are all bumping up against the bleak truth that the killer has left no forensic clues, no CCTV trail. Surmise: he’s a planner, he’s meticulous, and he never walks from A to B without zapping the CCTV cameras first. Which means he has a map of every hidden security camera in London. Which, indeed, every fucker has since they leaked it all on the internet. Fact: this investigation is two years old and over-budget and if we don’t get something soon, I’m going to have to pass it up to Case Review. Let me see the Circle Line slideshow again,’ he said.

  ‘You’re thinking the killer is on the train.’

  Dougie shook his shoulders, like a boxer limbering up for the title match.

  ‘Tempting,’ he said judiciously, in respect to Gina’s suggestion. ‘You’d want to hang around, wouldn’t you? To enjoy your handiwork. Your wickedly evil piece of performance art.’

  Cat typed. The static 3D image of Matthew within the Holo Wall broadened to include the entire Tube carriage.

  Then the image became a temporal slideshow: a speeded up time-lapse account of a day on the Circle Line. When Cat slowed the images, she could zoom in and out to focus on individuals. The background noise was filtered so that they could hear what each and every person was saying or muttering when that person was cursored, or placed in centre frame; subtitles floated beneath or beside each speaker like thought bubbles.

  Passengers came on. Passengers went off. The train was busy. The train was empty. Someone was eating a burger, messily. Then that same someone had vanished, leaving a burger box on the floor to mark his fleeting presence on the journey from Bayswater to Liverpool Street.

  At one point, they saw an old man sat next to Matthew, daydreaming, in a world of his own. A few frames later he was gone and a fat middle-aged man was sitting next to the corpse, and a girl in school uniform was sat next to him. She was talking incessantly into her mobile phone, and the fat man was shamelessly listening in, smiling occasionally at her use of slang and the way she called her friend or boyfriend a ‘dickhead’ whilst encouraging him or her not to be. Neither glanced at Matthew, who had the window seat, and whose eyes were closed, and whose head was bobbing as the train jostled along.

  And so it went on. Passenger after passenger sat within inches of a dead man but didn’t notice his lack of response, or lack of eye contact.

  ‘If the killer is on the train, he wouldn’t sit next to the body,’ said Lisa Aaronovich.

  Cat broadened the POV, so they could see a 3D panorama of the entire tube carriage. A grey-haired man in a suit reading his paper on his phone. A man with paint stains on his fingers, wearing overalls. An old lady in a blue jacket with a piercing stare, texting as she looked around. Teenagers. Office workers. Builders. Tourists. Gangs of hitch-hikers with huge rucksacks. A black man muttering to himself. A grey-haired lady wearing an expensive jacket. A young man and woman with bare arms who kept kissing and touching each other.

  And more, and more.

  Mostly heads were bowed as the passengers typed on e-berries or watched movies or TV shows on their expandable screens. But some honoured the old decorum by sitting and staring into space, not seeing any of their fellow travellers the old-fashioned way.

  ‘John, Alice, Vincent, Hyun-Shik,’ said Dougie into his tablet screen.

  ‘With you, guv,’ said Vincent’s voice, on behalf of himself and the other three Junior Document Readers in the smaller bit of the room’s ‘L’.

  ‘How are you viewing all this? I mean, in practical terms.’

  ‘Yes, guv. Well, we’ve broken it down in terms of four age demographics, under 18, 18-30, 30-60, and old. We’re looking for anyone making eye-contact with the corpse then looking away. We’re looking for anomalous body language. We’re looking for anyone who isn’t in a little world of their own, basically. Alice is double-spotting for furtive conduct on a random basis, ten seconds on, ten seconds off,’ said Vincent. ‘We’re also using face and body language recognition software to ID the passengers, collating it with CRO data. So far we’ve turned up twelve convicted felons, two bail absconders, and a guy awaiting trial for finance fraud. None of them fit the profile but we’ve asked Cat to raise all fifteen of them as Actions.’

  ‘Okay, good work, keep it up,’ said Dougie, returning his attention to the team around the table.

  ‘Unless,’ said Taff, throwing the word out there. His voice was liltingly Welsh and deliberately slurred. Years ago, so the legend went, Taff had perfected a way of speaking that made it impossible for senior officers to detect if he was drunk or sober; a trick that had served him well.

  ‘Unless what?’ Dougie said.

  ‘What are we watching?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Three dimensional CCTV images,’ said Dougie, as if to an idiot.

  ‘VHS or CD?’ Taff asked.

  ‘You’re as old as I am, granddad.’

  That got a smile from the fat Welshman. ‘Older.’

  ‘What’s VHS?’ said Lisa Aaronovich.

  Gina rolled her eyes.

  ‘Hard drive,’ said Cat. ‘All CCTV is on hard drives. TiVo, or the London Transport equivalent. Your point?’

  ‘Hard drives are on computers, right?’ said Taff, who still used a pocketbook and pen.

  ‘Ah yes, I see where you’re going,’ Cat conceded.

  Dougie saw it too. If the killer had hacked the London Transport computer system, he could have downloaded the CCTV images in their entirety on to his own viewing platform. Hence, no need to be there in person.

  Hence, they were wasting their times studying the passengers for a furtive glance or a overly confident demeanour or a dodgy past.

  ‘Send a team in,’ said Dougie.

  ‘I’m sending,’ said Cat. She typed the Action:

  Task Cyber Squad t
o investigate possible Computer Intrusions at London Transport, surveillance systems Circle and District Lines, affecting footage for 14th-15th April 2023, Priority: Urgent. Catriona Okoro, LE: MS5.

  The email went to the Cyber Crime Directorate in New Scotland Yard. A team was assigned in seconds. They began work a few more seconds later. These guys were keen as mustard, probably because they had no lives. Cat had never met anyone from the Geek Squad; she hoped she never would.

  ‘Post mortem,’ said Dougie.

  ‘You were there,’ Taff pointed out.

  ‘For the team,’ he instructed Taff.

  Taff shrugged. He was wearing his favourite tweed jacket, which was so old it still smelled of tobacco.

  ‘Embalming fluid matches the previous seven cases,’ he summarised. ‘The body cavities were filled with foam implants similar to the kind used in cosmetic surgery for ladies’ breasts, just as in the other seven cases. The incisions and penetration marks on the body match the other cases, and are undetectable by the naked eye. Matthew was young, fit, no signs of a struggle, no defence injuries, no sedatives in the blood but they’d be untraceable because of all the embalming fluid. The cause of death is unknown, as per usual, which means evisceration could have taken place ante or post mortem, we have no way of telling.’

  ‘Which organs were taken?’ Andy Homerton asked.

  ‘As before. Heart, liver, lungs, spleen, brain, not the large or small intestines.’

  ‘The edible parts,’ said Gina, and was rewarded by a group shudder.

  ‘Same MO, same killer profile applies,’ asked Dougie. He’d commissioned a profile from the legendary Dr Dennis Knight which had become the squad Bible. It argued that ‘posterity’ was the key concept in these murders. These embalmed corpses would live on, unsullied and undecayed, forever. That was, in Knight’s words, the killer’s ‘defining obsession’.

  ‘Yeah but it’s also a gag,’ suggested Taff. ‘Matthew spent the day on the Tube, stone dead. And no one noticed. That’s London for you! That’s what my Nana would say. She lived in Mountain Ash all her life. She knew the names of every single inhabitant, and all their bad habits, and the names of their dogs and cats too. And she hated London, see. Used to tell me it was the Devil’s own – actually that’s not funny any more. My point - it’s a joke about the alienation of modern society, played out with a real dead body, like.’

  ‘Maybe a non-Londoner then,’ Lisa suggested.

  ‘Don’t be so daft, sweetheart,’ said Gina. Lisa flinched at the sharpness of the rebuke.

  ‘So there it is. Victim Number Eight,’ said Dougie.

  ‘Victim Number Eight,’ agreed Taff.

  ‘Put it on the board.’

  ‘It’s up,’ said Taff.

  Dougie turned around, and blinked, as if noticing the Crime Wall for the first time. He walked closer and peered at the photos of Matthew Baker that Taff had pinned up earlier: three face shots and a full profile of him in swim suit, about to commence a scuba dive. Beneath the photos was a hand-written eulogy in whiteboard marker, written by Taff:

  Matthew Michael Baker

  Date of birth: 2 February 1998

  On Twitter as poseidon54

  Address: 41 Acre Road, London SE21

  Cause of death: Unknown. Same MO as Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Several internal organs removed. Blood injected with embalming fluid. Body manipulated to remove traces of rigor mortis. Face mortuary cosmetisised.

  ‘Let me see his face again.’

  Catriona Okoro typed, and a hologram of the victim’s face appeared in the Holo Wall, staring blankly.

  Dougie looked at Matthew Baker. For a few moments, he succumbed to a sense of dread. He began to fear they would never find this killer.

  ‘Catriona, give us the Actions for the day,’ said Dougie, and Catriona began to type.

  ‘Any other business?’ said Gina.

  ‘One possible newbie,’ said Shai Hussain, who as the Receiver had to look at crime reports from every division in London. ‘Missing person. Sarah Penhall. Student. Absent from Goldsmith’s College in South London for two days, not been seen in the house she shares with four other students, her sister’s going frantic. Active on social networks. Fits the profile for previous MisPers, in that Sarah was a keen social networker. And this message appeared on Facebook forty-eight hours after she was reported missing.’

  Shai typed on his e-berry and the message appeared on all eleven desk tablet screens as well as on Cat’s HOLMES console.

  I’m footloose and fancy free and ready for lurrve. Will somebody love me? XXXX

  They studied that simple message for quite some time.

  ‘The emoticon seems wrong,’ said Dougie, at length.

  ‘According to her sister,’ said Lisa, who had interviewed the sister by phone, ‘she did use emoticons. A retro thing. But the message rang false. Tonally. And, according to the sister also, Sarah’s not the kind of girl who’d fuck off with a boyfriend without telling anyone. She’d tell, like, everyone. The sisters are very close. And she –’ Lisa had to check her e-berry for the name – ‘- the sister I mean, Julia, Julia Penhall, she’s convinced it’s foul play.’

  ‘How old is Sarah?’ asked Gina.

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Dougie exploded. ‘She’s off with a boy. Course she is.’

  ‘Sister thinks not.’

  ‘Let’s see her. The MisPer.’

  Catriona clicked and a holiday photograph of the missing person appeared on their tablets: a full face image of a smiling girl with a suntan and the Colosseum in the background. Dougie looked intently. Sarah was a pretty nineteen-year-old, snub nose, clear skin, a smile that dazzled, and eye-catching purple hair. She was a stunner, yet sweet. And her lively personality shone through even in the 3D holiday snap.

  Beneath the face, Catriona typed in the details:

  Sarah Louise Penhall

  Student, Goldsmith’s College, University of London, BA in Screenwriting and Cinema

  Missing 48 hours

  Dougie thought about it. Then he played safe.

  ‘Put her on the grid,’ he suggested.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Who will it be, my little beauties? Who shall be first?’ said Gogarty, smiling.

  He was feeding the ducks, tossing compacted balls of breadcrumbs through the gaps in the fence by the lake. He was a familiar sight there, the big fat bald man who sat on a bench and talked to the birds as he fed them. Everyone thought he was a harmless old fool.

  One time though, about three years ago, a crew of gangbangers in their teens and early twenties had tried to bully him. They called him a freak and a fat fucking paedo and tormented him for weeks, and finally attacked him by throwing stones at his face and body. He responded to their assault not at all. He didn’t move or speak as the stones hailed upon him, and he certainly didn’t cry out. They left him when he was bloody, and when they were too tired to throw any more.

  Then he tracked them all down, to their homes or their workplaces or the street corners where they dealt their Cat C drugs. He took his time about it. It was nearly a year before he was done. Now, he fed the ducks and no one bothered him.

  There was a sign on the iron fence which said DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS, followed by a long explanation about the ecology of the park and the functioning of the avian gut. He ignored it.

  On a whim, two years ago, Gogarty had mixed psychotropic drugs in with the breadcrumbs, and he’d had a hilarious time watching the silly creatures waddle around in wild circles. But he eventually decided that he was being foolhardy in drawing attention to himself. He never did it again.

  There were four kinds of duck in his local park, as well as the swans, which he tended to ignore. There were seven green mallards, six black headed teals, nine or ten ruddy ducks (they were elusive and hard to count) and two glorious golden-feathered mandarin ducks. Twenty-four (or twenty-five) ducks in all, not to mention the ducklings. All of them vying for scraps a
gainst the competition of those verminous pigeons.

  Gogarty’s favourite trick was to lob the breadcrumbs directly at the ducks he wanted to feed, then shoo away the marauding pigeons with well aimed stones. In the very early morning, when there was no one around - in other words before the sun came up - he would kill as many as a dozen pigeons by this method, and stuff lead shot down their throats and then throw them in the lake. The protein was good, he always felt, for the fish.

  It was a silly hobby he knew, this feeding of ducks, and very much out of character for a man like him. And though he wasn’t sentimental enough to actually name the stupid beasts, he could recognise almost all of them at a glance. At times, he was – yes he really was – just a little bit fond of them.

  His excuse was that the lake visits gave a focus and purpose to his trips to the park. Since, that is, he no longer enjoyed walking for its own sake. And since he didn’t have a dog any more, not after he’d beaten the last one to death in a fit of pique. And since he hated the company of people. So, ducks it was.

  He threw more breadballs. He watched the ducks fight for the smallest crumbs. He saw the pigeons try to muscle in, and he got up and he stamped his feet until they scattered. The ducks waited patiently; he’d trained them by now to trust him. Then when the coast was clear, he made a mountain of bread bits for them and they came hopping to feast upon his bounty. And he smiled.

  After a few hours, he got up and walked a little. The sun had fully risen now; the brooding red streaks of fire had given way to a calm blue lake of sky. He loved the way the sky changed with such spectacular boldness. Clouds, too, awed him with their variety. He liked to spot them and log them; he had a folder on his computer devoted to his cloud-watching, supported by images taken with his e-berry phone. All clouds had names and they were evocative and lovely names. Like altocumulus perlucidus. Or the floccus and castellanus and lenticularis species of the altocumulus family. Or the wispy mare’s tail cirrus clouds – the cirrus fibratus, the cirrus radiatus, the cirrus spissatus or the cirrus duplicatus. Or sometimes – and this really was a treat - the clouds to be seen in the daytime sky were huge and reached up to the troposphere in vast towers seething with black rage. And these big beasts, these cumulonimbus thunderclouds, were known as ‘supercells’.