‘Yes.’
‘Identical.’
‘Yes.’
‘Except for the hair.’
‘Except for the hair. Hers was dyed. Purple. You don’t actually get born like that.’
‘She’s got you there, Ron,’ said Taff, stifling a snort of amusement.
‘Just like to get things clear,’ DC Tindale protested.
Silence was preserved for a while. Except that is for the sharp intakes of breath from Julia and DC Tindale every time Taff committed a major traffic violation.
The car braked abruptly; they’d reached the mortuary.
Julia got out of the car. The senior investigating officer, Dougie Randall, was on the pavement waiting for her. Julia peered up at him, marvelling at his height and breadth. He had shoulders like mountain ranges and feet that were literally twice the size of hers. When he’d interviewed her he’d been sitting down and seemed ‘normal’ to a five foot sevener like herself. But away from a desk he looked like a statue that has walked off its plinth in search of a larger plinth.
‘Julia, thank you for coming,’ Dougie said, in a tone that was courteous yet devoid of sympathy. Julia was grateful for that. Sympathy made her cry.
‘Where is she?’
‘You don’t need to do this, you know. We have DNA, we can –’
‘Where is she?’
‘Follow me.’
Dougie turned and walked briskly into the building. Julia followed, having to almost skip to keep up with his huge paces. Through two brown-wood double doors, past an unattended reception area with a coffee machine, through another set of double doors, glass this time, and into a room with metal hospital trolleys on which rested five dead bodies covered in green plastic sheets.
The female cop was waiting there. Julia couldn’t remember her name. This was the dead common one, the one who had trouble with her aitches. She was wearing a white lab gown and latex gloves, but the big cop didn’t bother garbing up. And so neither did Julia. She realised belatedly that Davies and Tindale hadn’t followed them in.
‘I’m DC Henderson. Call me Gina. I’m very sorry for your loss, Julia,’ said the female cop, formally.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know you have to say that shit,’ Julia said brusquely.
Gina shrugged. ‘True. I don’t have to mean it though, but I bloody well do, right? It’s a total cunt, love, what you’re going through.’
Julia felt a stinging sensation in her eyes at that. ‘I’m not here to grieve,’ she said. ‘Let me see the body.’
Gina beckoned her closer to one of the covered trolleys. ‘We could do this in the Chapel of Rest, if you’d rather,’ Gina pointed out tactfully.
‘Just let me see the body.’
Dougie lifted the green sheet off the body. Beneath it was Sarah.
Exactly eight weeks after she had disappeared – eight spirit-sapping weeks that had left Julia semi-hysterical and unable to sleep – Sarah had been found. Not dumped in an alley though, which is what Julia had assumed would happen. She’d been spotted in the snug bar of a pub in West London, near Victoria Station, with a book and a glass of whisky on the table in front of her. Sitting upright. But stone dead.
And now, on the mortuary trolley, Sarah looked exactly the way she’d looked in the canteen that time, the last time Julia had seen her alive. In other words, Sarah was beautiful and creamy-skinned and glowing with vitality. It was eerie: she looked as if she were about to sit up and start telling jokes.
And yet her eyes were closed, and there was an ugly gash across her throat, and she was a corpse.
‘Can I touch her?’
‘It’s not forbidden,’ said Dougie. ‘But –’
Julia reached out and touched her sister’s eyelids with her finger tips, and she teased them open.
The blue eyes stared up at her dully.
‘The body’s been treated.’
‘Embalmed.’
‘She has makeup on. Blusher. A hint of mascara. She normally didn’t bother.’
‘The killer’s work.’
‘They found her in a pub?’
‘The lounge bar of a pub, yes. The killer broke in, probably in the early hours, then left the body at a table, with an open book in front of her.’
‘What was the book?’
Dougie hesitated.
‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ Dougie said. ‘One of the Narnia books. C.S. Lewis.’
Julia snorted; an ugly sound. She regretted it.
‘That was Sarah’s favourite book,’ she said, ‘when we were little. She hated the films, loved the books.’
‘The killer obviously found that out.’
Julia thought about that.
‘Creepy,’ she said.
‘He or she, the killer I mean, is a deeply twisted individual,’ said Dougie, stiffly.
‘She looks alive but not. Like a waxwork,’ said Julia marvelling.
‘As I say, we don’t need you to do this, but since you have insisted: Can you formally identify this is your sister, Sarah Louise Penhall?’
‘Yes I can.’
Dougie moved to pull the sheet back.
‘What was the cause of death?’ Julia asked, stopping him from covering the face.
‘Her – throat was cut.’
‘I can see that. That was the cause of death?’
‘Yes.’
Julia bent down and looked more closely at her sister’s throat. The scar was livid, and described a crescent shape.
‘Is that how the other victims died?’
‘I can’t discuss the details of this or any of the other cases, I’m afraid,’ Dougie said.
‘It wasn’t,’ Julia informed him. ‘They were killed without any discernible cause of death, weren’t they? No stab marks, no bullet wounds, no broken neck, no poison in the system, though that wouldn’t be detectable because of the embalming fluids. They were all murdered, in other words, but no one knows by what means. It’s in all the papers. The Telegraph had a really thorough account of it. It’s the spookiest part of the whole fucking thing.’
‘That’s pretty much correct,’ Dougie said reluctantly.
‘So why the change in MO?’
‘Love, you should go,’ said Gina. ‘You –’
‘Why the change in MO?’ Julia insisted.
‘I really can’t discuss the case with you,’ said Dougie.
‘Yes you fucking can. Why the change in MO?’
Dougie bit back a retort; his tone remained calm. ‘We don’t know,’ he said.
‘The other victims were, best guesses, probably killed with a surgical knife thrust to the heart, which was later removed from the body, or asphyxiation with a plastic bag, or poison,’ Julia said. ‘Not manual strangulation because that generally breaks the hyoid bone, not drowning, not anything that leaves a trace. All that indicates a methodical killer. A cold blooded killer. A frenzied slash to the throat, that’s something else.’
‘Maybe she tried to escape,’ Gina suggested.
‘Do you know anything about the horror genre?’ said Julia.
There was a moment.
‘What?’ said Dougie, flustered.
Julia took some breaths, composed herself, continued.
‘The horror genre,’ she said. ‘The tropes. The conventions. The feminist theory of horror, Carol Clover, the final girl, all that stuff. Take Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween: empowered victim, or pitiful damsel in distress? I say A, so did Sarah. Horror is a way of commenting on the patriarchy, don’t you see? As well as exploring mythic –’
‘What the fuck are you on about?’ asked Dougie.
‘She wasn’t murdered.’
‘What?’ said Dougie.
Gina sighed a big sigh. A patronising big sigh. ‘Let me take you home, love,’ she said kindly.
‘She wasn’t murdered, it was suicide,’ Julia said calmly.
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Dougie. His tone was dry: going through the motions dry. Julia dug in.
>
‘We were writing a movie together. Horror movie. Female protagonist. Victim of horrible serial killer who abducts then slays his victims in a baroquely evil fashion kind of thing. Set in New York, we went there on holiday there two years ago, we love New York. The girl is abducted from her apartment in broad daylight. In a yellow taxi. Then imprisoned in a dungeon, well it’s a cellar really, by the evil psycho, probably played by Kevin Spacey, or maybe John Cusack or – well, doesn’t matter now. And she’s imprisoned, as I say, and hooded. And tortured, but we don’t have to linger on it, it’s not that kind of horror film. And she tries to escape but gets caught, and she tries again, and gets caught again. Then she realises the bastard is taunting her. He’s letting her escape, to give her false hope, before capturing her again. But before the evil psycho can kill her in the final reel – she kills herself. She uses a piece of broken glass to cut her own throat. Thus thwarting the killer. Then she comes back as a ghost and –’
‘I don’t need to know about the ghost part.’
‘She thwarts him,’ Julia said. ‘By killing herself. That’s in the treatment that we wrote. It’s in the step outline. It would have been in the script, if we’d ever written it, which we won’t now. And it’s what she did. I’m sure of it. Sarah was smart. Resourceful. She knew she couldn’t live, so she decided to find some other kind of victory. This was it.’
The two cops were silent for a while.
‘I buy that,’ said Gina.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Dougie. ‘And what’s more, I hope that you’re right.’ There was a tone of respect in his voice now.
‘Were there any mutilations?’ Julia asked.
Dougie stiffened again.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘It’ll be all over the internet by tomorrow. So tell me. Were there any mutilations?’ Julia asked.
‘Some,’ conceded Dougie.
‘And on the other victims?’
Dougie thought about it. ‘None.’
‘They were all clean kills.’
‘That’s right.’
‘No torture. No mutilation. No rape, so far as you can tell. Just captivity, death, and embalming.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So why the change in MO?’ asked Julia, accusingly.
Dougie sighed. ‘I don’t know. Enlighten me. Why the change in MO?’
‘Only if you tell me what mutilations there were.’
‘She was flayed,’ said Dougie.
Julia was stopped in her tracks. The air seemed to rush out of her lungs. The image in her head was unendurable. She hated this big, ugly, calm, competent copper who was in charge of investigating her lovely sister’s tragic death. She wanted to cry.
Eventually she spoke, but her voice was trembling now, and she knew she was close to hysteria. ‘What sort of flaying? What part of her was flayed?’
‘Just the arm.’
‘The whole arm?’
‘Most of the arm.’
‘Which arm?’
‘The left arm.’
‘Show me.’
‘No!’ snapped Gina. But Dougie pulled the sheet all the way back, baring Sarah’s upper torso, revealing her pale nude deadness, and the salmon-pink left arm that lacked all covering flesh all the way up to the shoulder.
‘Enough,’ said Julia, and the body was covered up again with green plastic sheeting.
Julia was silent a few moments.
‘I’m going for a meal tonight,’ said Julia.
There was an awkward pause.
‘Are you?’ Dougie said, politely.
‘With my dad and stepmum. They’re in London. We don’t really talk much these days. After my dad left my mum – well, long story. And on the telephone, me and Dad – well, nightmare! But we agreed they’d come to London and we’d go to a restaurant. My mum died you see, car crash, not her fault, but that was after he left her, you see, which made it – and anyway I don’t much like my stepmum. And so me and my dad – well. Sarah was his favourite, mind. He’s a big kid really. But I don’t want to be the one to – sorry, I’m rambling.’
‘No that’s fine,’ lied Dougie.
‘Don’t patronise me, I’m rambling. We spoke on the phone yesterday, me and my dad, that’s my point, and dad suggested a restaurant and I’ve got a memory like a sieve.’ Julia looked at the back of her hand and read the message scrawled there in blue biro. ‘Il Castello. See?’
Dougie looked. ‘Looks like Eel Café.’
‘That’s my handwriting for you, crap isn’t it? My mates all use e-berries to write down messages, I use a pen on my hand or arm. Always have. I’ve got a lecture on Tuesday, not going now, but I’ve got to be there early to crib some notes off my mate Gabriel.’ Julia rolled up her sleeve. In faint biro, on the pale skin of her forearm, it read: Nts, G, Tew. ‘That’s not how you spell Tuesday, it’s my joke. In joke. Me and Sarah had lots of in jokes. I remember – no you don’t need to know that. We were at secondary school together, you know, we used to – that’s not relevant either. We used to do the same things, a lot. Like –’
‘What are you getting at?’ said Dougie.
‘She was the same as me. Sarah I mean. Always wrote things down on the back of her hand, or on her arm, in biro. If she didn’t have a biro, then who knows. A knife? But she left a message. To identify the killer. On her arm. Then covered up her arm with a sleeve and killed herself. But he saw it, the writing on her arm. Hence –’
‘That’s why he flayed the arm,’ said Gina.
Julia was jolted by the words; even though Gina had merely articulated what she’d been trying to say.
The arm and torso were covered now, but Julia could still see the images of them in her mind’s eye. Her sister’s slim lovely body on the cold metal trolley. Her sister’s soft creamy skin exposed under the unforgiving fluorescent lights.
And the asymmetric horror of her sister’s slender red-raw arm, naked to the ligaments.
‘She must have known,’ Julia said, with a tremble in her voice, ‘that he would find the message on her arm, and get rid of it. My guess is she wrote his name, you see, his identity, in biro on her own body, for you guys to find. And so he would have to erase it, to protect himself, in the only way he could. But she was smart – did I mention that? She was so smart. She must have known her little trick would fail but she did it anyway, as a way of taunting him. That’s what I think. And in exactly the same way, she knew she couldn’t survive, but she could cheat him of the pleasure of killing her. Another taunt. And so that’s what she did: she double taunted the fucker. That’s Sarah for you. Even when she was defeated she –’
Julia broke off. She could no longer talk.
‘Some kind of victory,’ said Dougie, gently.
Julia began to cry.
Chapter 10
‘How about this one?’
Tom flashed another photo up on his e-berry: Tania Shire, 17, girlfriend of Jez Molloy, leader of the joey gang of which the kid Ricky was a member. She was blonde and hard, with a snake tattoo across her face; the snake’s red hissing mouth framing Tania’s real mouth.
‘No,’ said Hellion.
‘This one.’ Tom flashed another photo in the demon’s face.
‘No,’ said Hellion.
‘You’re lying,’ said Tom.
‘I’ve never seen these kids before,’ Hellion lied.
‘Don’t give me crap. We have CCTV film footage from the street camera as they were beating you. Whipping you with silver flails. We can ID these kids from their tattoos alone, for pity’s sake.’
‘Then you don’t need my testimony.’
‘We do need it,’ Tom insisted.
He thrust his face closer to Hellion, in a blatantly oppressive fashion. Though in truth, he was a bit hazy on whether human body language worked on creatures from the Hell Dimension.
‘This man we’re after,’ he said. ‘Jagger. He’s scum of the lowest order. And he’s the man these kids work for
. The kids who beat you up. They’re not just a local gang, you see, they’re organised criminals. And that’s not the worst of it. Because Jagger recruits these children when they’re young. He grooms nine-year-olds, eight-year-olds, seven and six-year-olds. And he teaches them to thieve. To pickpocket. To shoplift. They commit armed robberies. They even rape. They’re called joeys, he’s a fagin.’
‘I know the terms.’
‘And, as you will be aware, when they’re bored they roll tramps, or beat up your kind.’ Tom tried to project ‘avuncular’, though he wasn’t sure he was getting there. ‘But our trouble is, you see, these kids are all below the age of criminal responsibility, so we can’t really punish them. And besides, it’s Jagger we want. He’s the real villain.’
‘Then arrest him.’
‘Well we aim to. But first of all we need you to help us.’
‘No. I’m sorry. I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t afford to make enemies,’ said Hellion wearily. ‘Not at all, not in any way. I can’t risk anything whatsoever. My status is – I can’t take any risks.’
Tom nodded, exuding friendship.
Then he let the warmth drain out of him.
‘You’re afraid your citizenship might be revoked?’ said Tom coldly.
‘Yes.’
‘If so, what happens to you then?’
‘Demon City,’ Hellion said bleakly. ‘Back to square one. I’ll be a despairing and an abject slave, once more.’
Tom dialled it down. He assumed a concerned tone, and a friendly expression. ‘Are you sure about that, Hellion? I mean, I thought all demons living in London were free to -’
Hellion snarled: a terrifying moment of black mane bristling and yellow double-fanged teeth dripping white saliva.
Then the snarl ended, and the creature closed his mouth and spat out his slobber. And he reassumed his humble ‘talking to humans’ demeanour, which made him look like a dog accustomed to random beatings.
‘People have – misconceptions, sir,’ Hellion explained carefully. ‘About what it’s like in the City. They hear about the money, the orgies, they hear about the lifestyle. But that’s just them, the Royal Demons. For them it’s – well, there’s always an élite and they’re it. But we ordinary demons - it’s not the same thing. It’s a hierarchy. Forget what the law says, if I go back, I’ll be a slave.’
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