by Rob Ashman
‘Was it a fight?’
‘Doesn’t look that way, I can’t see any defensive wounds and his knuckles are clear.’
‘Any sign of sexual activity?’
‘Fucking loads of it, the locals call this blow job alley. There is more semen splashed about in here than in the back of a sperm donor van.’
‘There is a fair amount of blood spatter. Will we be able to piece together the sequence of blows?’
‘I would think so. There’s a lot of forensics here to go on.’
Kray looked around and could see condoms scattered amongst the cans, bottles and food wrappers. She lifted her feet to check she wasn’t carrying any unwanted guests.
‘May I?’ Kray ushered Mitch to step aside and squatted down near to the body. She checked Joshua’s hands and his wristwatch, it was still going. His head was a bloody pulp with brain matter and bone spilled onto the floor.
‘Is there any CCTV on the stretch of road?’
‘No none, that’s why the pros use it so much.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Can’t be sure, he was seen out on the town at around midnight on Thursday.’
‘So, that would make it between twenty-four and thirty-six hours ago.’
A man sporting the same white Teletubby outfit bustled in with a high-resolution camera and began snapping away. The staccato flash made the scene look a thousand times worse.
Kray took out a pen and poked around at the rubbish laying on the floor. ‘No sign of a murder weapon I suppose?’
‘You’re not that lucky Roz, not even on a Saturday morning.’
‘Ha. I can’t remember the last time I was lucky on any day of the fucking week.’
‘You’re working the Madeline Eve case, aren’t you?’
‘Yup, Jackson re-assigned it to me.’
‘Mmm, nasty shit from what I heard.’
Kray was silent, gazing down at the young man lying bludgeoned to death at her feet.
‘What is it, Roz?’
‘Oh nothing, just ...’
‘What?’
‘I wonder if this is linked to the Eve case.’
‘Unlikely. This is a completely different MO. There are no similarities between the two.’
‘That’s true. But when was the last time we had two brutal murders in the same week?’
Mitch scratched at the stubble on his chin. ‘As far as I know, never.’
‘And that’s the link.’
‘Yeah, you might be right. Anyway that’s your job, mine is to give you facts and opinion.’ He changed his tone and lowered his voice, ‘how have you been?’
‘Oh, you know, up and down.’
‘It’s good to see you back.’ Mitch placed his pudgy hand on her shoulder and smiled.
‘Yeah,’ she straightened up, replacing the pen in her inside pocket. ‘I’m taking one day at a time.’
Kray spent the next fifteen minutes picking through the rotten debris around the body, placing items into evidence bags. The camera flash continued to illuminate the scene with its blinding light and an officer was making notes while talking to the homeless guy. Mitch was stood out on the kerb tapping away on his phone, waiting for the vehicle to transport the body to the morgue.
‘That’s me done. If you would like to follow me out, sir,’ announced the officer as he replaced his notebook in his pocket and strolled out of the alleyway. Kray walked past the homeless guy and dangled a twenty-pound note in front of him.
‘Take it,’ she said.
He hesitated, not sure what to make of the offer. Kray stuffed the note in his hand.
‘No, you’re not a thief. Make sure you spend this putting food in your belly, not shit up your nose.’
Chapter 17
Kray was drinking coffee and ploughing through a mound of paperwork while she casually separated the pens to one side of her desk, the pencils to the other. She heard the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, and she knew they belonged to Lucy Frost and Duncan Tavener. The clock on the wall read 11.43am.
‘Christ, don’t you two have anything better to do on a Saturday morning?’ she said to them as they bustled in carrying a pizza box and enough cans of coke to start a children’s party.
‘We got your message about getting in early on Monday so we figured it must be something important,’ said Tavener.
‘And if it’s that important, we thought getting a head start for a few hours would not be a bad thing,’ Frost added as she eased into the corner seat flipping open the box and flooding the office with the smell of marinara sauce.
‘Roz?’ She offered her the box. Kray held up her hand in polite refusal.
‘Well I appreciate the help even though I pity the pair of you if joining me in the office has been your best offer of the day.’ They both laughed and munched at the food. ‘DCI Jackson wants us to run with the latest murder as well as the Madeline Eve case. He said it would be good experience for you.’
Actually, his precise words were, ‘you can take this case as well Roz because you are the one with the crèche’ but she thought it best to paraphrase.
‘Okay, we have Joshua Stephen Wilson, twenty-eight years of age from Preston.’ Frost and Tavener scrabbled to locate their notebooks and snatched at the pens and pencils, disrupting their regimental setting. Kray winced as they scattered across the desk, she tore her gaze away and continued. ‘He has suffered major blunt force trauma to the head with what looks like a lump hammer, we’re hoping that the precise nature of the murder weapon will be confirmed during the post-mortem. He was struck three times with considerable force and his body dumped in an alleyway just off Richmond Street. There was no attempt to conceal the body and we have no CCTV footage. Time of death estimated to be the early hours of Friday morning. He was in town with his mates celebrating a birthday and was last seen on Thursday night when he went off with a woman. His friends raised the alarm when he failed to return to the hotel and they couldn’t find him. The body was discovered around 3.20am this morning by a vagrant who heard his phone ringing. The motive does not appear to be robbery as he had a wallet stuffed full of cash. Forensics have his clothes, so we might get lucky, who knows? The body is at the morgue, the family have been informed and are on their way to identify the remains.’
The two members of the crèche scribbled away.
Tavener looked up. ‘I’ll get onto the clubs and bars to secure the CCTV from Thursday night, Friday morning. And if we have a current photograph of the vic I can take that with me, see if it jolts anyone’s memory.’
‘Yes that would be good,’ Kray replied.
‘I’ll follow up with his friends and take statements,’ said Frost.
‘On a different topic, I will talk to forensics, see if they turned up any fingerprints from the phone box in the Madeline Eve case,’ Kray said. ‘Oh, and by the way, I appreciate you guys coming in.’
‘That’s fine, Roz.’
Kray was expecting them to get up and leave but they both sat there fidgeting. There was a pregnant pause which soured the atmosphere. Frost and Tavener stared at each other as if they were drawing mental lots as to who would speak first. Tavener obviously lost.
‘Talking of the Eve case, there are a number of things which don’t add up,’ he said.
Kray nodded. ‘I agree. A young woman is half strangled, dies from a massive injection of snake venom and has her body infested with a plague of flies, then has her face removed. I’d say that was an under-statement.’
Tavener and Frost glanced at each other again, drawing mental lots.
‘We,’ he gestured with his hand between the two of them, ‘don’t want to overstep the mark Roz, but what you’ve just told us doesn’t make sense.’
Frost took up the challenge. ‘The killer renders Madeline unconscious in a rear naked choke hold, or whatever it’s called, and in a matter of seconds she’s out cold. That would suggest that if the killer maintained the hold she’d be dead, right?’
&nbs
p; Kray nodded her head.
‘So the snake venom has to have another role in the attack other than a mechanism to kill Madeline. If the killer wanted to do that all he or she had to do was hang on a bit longer and that would be it. No more Madeline.’
‘Okay I’ll go along with that,’ replied Kray.
‘And the addition of the flies cannot be to throw us off the scent by giving us an incorrect time of death. The killer must have been aware that Madeline was in work on the Thursday. That doesn’t fit either.’
‘The flies were added to frustrate the collection of forensic evidence.’ Kray made a bold statement, feeling uncomfortable with the line of discussion.
Tavener butted in. ‘But what if it wasn’t that, Roz? What if the flies were added for a different reason?’
Kray knew what was coming and was kicking herself.
‘It’s as though the killer didn’t simply want to kill Madeline Eve, he wanted to obliterate her. The snake venom destroyed her body from the inside and the flies destroyed her body from the outside.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I don’t know Roz, it’s as though the killer wanted to eradicate her as a person. Like he wanted to take away her very existence.’
Kray spun the ring around on her finger trying to control the urge to slap herself full in the face. She paused allowing her calm resolve to return. Frost and Tavener held their breath waiting for her to explode.
Why the fuck am I not the one telling them? Kray berated herself as the demons of self-doubt burst into her head. Why did I not see that? She was so far off her game it was unreal.
‘Thanks for sharing that with me. You have some good points for us to consider as we move forward. Shall we get cracking?’ Kray suggested.
‘Sure, Roz.’
They both rose from the table still stuffing their faces with pizza.
Kray remained seated. ‘I have some tasks to finish here first,’ she said as the two of them marched out. One of the tasks was to give herself a thorough bollocking for not seeing what was right in front of her, or at least she would do, right after she put the pens and pencils back in order.
Chapter 18
It’s a short day at work today and I’m absolutely buzzing. My shift consisted of attending to a motley parade of B-list celebrities who were about to ‘tell their story’ to a brain-dead public, along with a bunch of current affairs experts who trotted out the same recycled drivel I had read in the papers the day before. Critical insight journalism it is not.
I made them look pretty and they spouted off in front of the cameras. Even the usual cascade of bitchy comments and snide remarks washed over me. I was too busy re-living every detail from the night before. The taxi pulls up to the kerb and I pile into my house not waiting for my change.
I pause in the hallway and drop my bag. I’ve got to collect myself, this is not something to be rushed.
I strip off my clothes, my heartbeat thumps out a marching rhythm in my head as I open the door under the stairs and remove the vacuum cleaner and coats. The wooden door at the back has a heavy duty dead bolt, secured with a padlock. I remove the piece of loose skirting board and retrieve the key. It fits snugly and the lock snaps open. I tug at the bar and as the dead bolt slides across, the door opens towards me.
I place my foot onto the top step and stare into the darkness. My left hand brushes against the cold plaster of the wall as I descend inside. The steps are steep, maintaining contact with the wall is crucial.
At the fifth step I can hear the sound of the refrigeration units humming in unison and by the eighth step my eyes become accustomed to the pale orange light pooling at the bottom of the steps. The grain of the wood feels sharp and gritty beneath my bare feet as I feel my way deeper into the gloom. I reach the concrete floor at the bottom.
The green and red LEDs on the fridges illuminate the left-hand side of the room and the orange glow from the heat lamp gives the illusion that the right-hand side is on fire. The ceiling is low and flaky, where the paint of forty years ago has crumbled away. The walls are bare brick.
Sampson is eyeing me from the corner, tightly coiled with his tongue flicking at the air. He was fed five days ago so he’s not excited to see me. A litter of three unwanted rabbits, Flopsey, Mopsey and Cotton Tail, bought from a lovely family who had advertised in the local paper, made a sumptuous dinner. I smiled sweetly at the children as they waved their pet’s offspring goodbye with the promise of a life full of lush grass and veg peelings. I put Cotton Tail into Sampson’s tank alive. He watched it jump around for a good twenty minutes before adopting his trademark S-shape and striking with a force that lifted the poor bunny into the air. Flopsey and Mopsey are stored as convenient ready meals in the freezer. I didn’t kill them first, simply popped them in as they were. I reckon they taste fresher that way.
Propped against the wall is a shadow board, a six-feet wide and four-feet high piece of framed plywood upon which the tools of my trade sit. To be precise, they are the tools of my late father’s trade, each one carefully selected and lovingly maintained to ensure a perfect execution every time. But they are mine now and I like to know that at any moment I have everything I need, a quick glance at the board tells me I’m ready to go. The black outline of the one-and-a-half-pound lump hammer drawn onto the board sticks out like a sore thumb. It is the only gap in the inventory. The hammer will be returned to its rightful place after it has finished soaking in a bucket of diluted bleach.
To the right is a self-standing clothes rail, racked out with garments and empty hangers. There are less empty hangers these days; I might need to think about getting a new rail for my latest acquisitions.
I walk across to the tall upright freezer holding my breath. I’ve been thinking about this all day. I yank at the handle and the suction on the door gives way with a whoosh, a wedge of clinical white light fills the room. The cold air tumbles out, pinching at my skin, making me shiver. My cock hardens.
The words flood into my head and I whisper them out loud, my breath condensing to white fog in front of my face.
‘To chill her blood, how so divine,
Walk in her shoes, her face is mine,
With evil dripping from your pores,
The next face I need to take
… is yours.’
I mutter the lines over and over.
Standing on a glass shelf at eye level is a frosted black manikin head, covered with what looks like uncooked chicken skin. It is stretched around the contours of the head like a mask and held in place with pins. Dark ragged eye holes stare out at me and the slit for a mouth has a crooked smile. The eyebrows are perfectly aligned, but the nose is slightly off to one side, the cheeks tight and flawless.
I’m hoping my knife skills will improve with practice, because despite my best efforts this does not do the pretty face of Madeline Eve any justice at all.
The freezer contains two other glass shelves, each one supporting a frosted black manikin head. Their smooth crystallised surfaces waiting for their prize.
Chapter 19
The time Kray spent with the forensic team had been a complete waste of effort. What was it with these scientific types that they felt the need to drip-feed their findings like a bloody three-part BBC drama? The whole performance was like pulling teeth.
It should have taken a few minutes to tell her that there were no fingerprints on the handset or the buttons. The pound coin reclaimed from the cash box inside the machine was also clean. And apart from the phone box being home to three different sets of urine samples, it was also clear as a bell. They still had it cordoned off just in case there might be other leads to follow.
It should have taken a matter of minutes, not the hour and a quarter they made her sit through their long-winded proclamations.
Kray stepped out of her car, pulling a bag from the passenger seat. It was late afternoon and the cool breeze chilled her face as the sun struggled to warm the air. Puffy white clouds scudded fast across
the sky, driven by the wind off the Irish Sea. She crossed the car park and headed up the hill. The grass, that had recently been cut, stuck to her shoes, shrouding them in green. Twenty yards further on, she joined a pebbled path. Roz stamped her feet, dislodging the unwanted greenery.
She crested the brow of the hill and a vibrant expanse of beautiful gardens opened up in front of her. It was a riot of colour. Flowers of every description carpeted the ground with wooden park benches dotted about for people to enjoy the beauty. Expertly tendered lawns and manicured pathways criss-crossed the scene stretching out in front of her. It was stunning, peaceful and serene. Kray fucking hated the place with a passion.
She left the path and circled around in an arc, heading for the fourth row from the far left. There was a time when this was the first row on the far left, then it became the second and then the third. At some point in the future she will not remember how many rows it was from the left.
The grass cuttings returned to her shoes as she trudged her way between the carnival of blooms. She stopped halfway along and knelt down, removing a handful of wilted foliage from a vase and emptying the dirty water out onto the soil.
‘Hey, how have you been?’ She rummaged around in the bag and brought out a water bottle, twisted off the cap and refilled the container. A fresh bouquet of flowers was stripped of its cellophane and arranged in the urn. Her eyes began to sting, she rubbed them with the back of her hand.
‘I had a bust up with Wacko-Jacko the other day,’ she said, as tears pooled against her lower eyelids. She set the vase back on the ground and gazed up to the sky, her bottom lip shaking.
‘I got this new case …’ The words choked in her throat. She coughed into the crook of her arm and tried again. ‘I got this new case. Wacko gave it to Brownbag to start with.’ Her shoulders shook as sobbing overcame her.
‘It’s … it’s …’ She wiped her nose on her sleeve and cleared her throat. ‘It’s a murder case where a young woman …’ Raw grief dried her words in her mouth. Her head fell forward into her hands. Tears ran through her fingers.