Blood On the Wall

by Jim Eldridge

  ‘Is that why you’re munching before you go?’ asked Georgiou, grinning. ‘Building up your strength?’

  ‘Lunch,’ explained Tennyson, taking a bite of the Mars Bar.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Georgiou.

  ‘What about the superintendent?’

  ‘OK, I’ll see him first,’ groaned Georgiou. ‘While I’m with our lord and master, get messages to the rest of the team. I want them all back here for a debriefing session at twelve. Not just on Tamara Armstrong, but whatever we’ve got on the killing at Haltwhistle.’

  Tennyson nodded. ‘I had the info sent over from the Northumbria force yesterday, as soon as I saw the connection.’

  ‘Good,’ said Georgiou. ‘OK, I’ll go and see Stokes. See you in a minute.’

  Tennyson nodded and headed off to contact the rest of the team, still munching, while Georgiou mounted the stairs to Stokes’s sanctuary, a wood-panelled office whose walls were adorned with framed photos of the superintendent with various local politicians and businessmen, and a shelf laden with trophies.

  Stokes called ‘Come in!’ to Georgiou’s knock, and waved an arm at a chair, inviting Georgiou to sit down, but the expression on the superintendent’s face wasn’t one of welcome. The lack of air-conditioning in the ancient building showed in the fact that the superintendent had his windows open, and a large fan blowing lukewarm air across his desk. Neither seemed to make the superintendent’s office any cooler.

  ‘This is a bad business,’ Stokes said as Georgiou sat down. ‘Ted Armstrong must have pulled in a lot of favours.’

  ‘I’m grateful to him,’ said Georgiou.

  ‘You won’t be once questions start being asked,’ said Stokes.

  ‘With respect, sir, I did nothing wrong when I arrested that youth. I did nothing wrong to get my suspension lifted. It was the decision of the Police Authority.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Stokes. ‘Councillor Maitland isn’t at all happy. He’s already been on the phone to me suggesting some sort of collusion between you and Armstrong.’

  ‘What sort of collusion?’

  ‘He didn’t say. He just wondered why a police officer who was suspended by the Police Authority suddenly gets his job back without an enquiry into the reasons for the suspension. He thinks there’s been some sort of cover-up.’

  Georgiou wanted to say ‘Councillor Maitland ought to be asked questions about his relationship with the Parks family’, but instead he just said, ‘Councillor Maitland is welcome to ask for an enquiry. That’s his right as a member of the Police Authority.’

  ‘But he won’t because Ted Armstrong got you back, and at the moment there’s a feeling of sympathy among most of the members of the Police Authority because Ted’s daughter has just been murdered,’ said Stokes.

  Georgiou nodded.

  ‘The thing is, Inspector, you’d better make sure you’re clean as a whistle in everything you do from now on. Everything by the book, because certain people will be watching you.’

  ‘Councillor Maitland.’

  ‘Not just him. The family of the boy you … you …’

  ‘Restrained,’ said Georgiou politely. ‘Ian Parks. The one they claim I beat up.’

  Stokes nodded.

  ‘They’ve already been on to the press,’ he said unhappily. ‘I had the News and Star on to me first thing this morning, asking for my comments about your reinstatement in view of the allegations against you.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’ asked Georgiou.

  ‘I told them it was a decision by the Police Authority. If they wanted a comment they should talk to them.’

  You gutless piece of work, thought Georgiou sourly. Why didn’t you say ‘I’m delighted that Inspector Georgiou has returned to work’? Show some support for me. Because that’s not your style. Don’t rock the boat. Sit on the fence.

  ‘I suppose Councillor Maitland told the Parks family,’ mused Georgiou.

  Stokes nodded.

  ‘That’s my guess,’ he said. ‘Anyway, you’re back. But be warned, Maitland will be watching you. Remember what I just said, you do everything by the book. You take a suspect into custody – any suspect – I want there to be witnesses who see you do it. Reliable witnesses.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Georgiou.

  ‘Armstrong’s given you a chance. You can repay him by finding this lunatic who killed his daughter. But you do it—’

  ‘By the book,’ finished Georgiou.

  ‘Right,’ said Stokes. Then he added: ‘And do it quickly. People are getting rattled. Two murders in a month, both with the heads taken. If the press are right and this is the same killer as the one in Northumberland then it’s a nightmare. We’ve got a serial killer on our hands. We’ve never had this sort of thing here before, ever. It’s got to be stopped.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Georgiou, getting up from the chair.

  As he walked down the stairs, he reflected how much he despised Stokes. Stokes didn’t want a quick result on this because he was worried about who might be next, he wanted a quick result because he was worried that the statistics reflected badly on him. Two murders. OK, one was in Northumberland, but only just over the border. People would be asking questions about how competent the police force was, and those questions might look at how competent Superintendent Stokes was. Georgiou had the answer to that already: bloody useless.

  Tennyson was waiting for Georgiou at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I got hold of the rest of the team, guv,’ he said. ‘They’ll all be in the briefing room at twelve.’

  ‘Good,’ said Georgiou. ‘Let’s go.’

  Georgiou and Tennyson were just about to leave the building, when a voice behind them called out: ‘Inspector Georgiou!’

  Georgiou turned. It was one of the civilian support workers, Madeleine Wills.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Wills?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a phone call for you,’ she said.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Jenny McAndrew from the News and Star. This is the third time she’s been on the phone for you.’

  ‘Tell her I’m out,’ said Georgiou, and turned to walk out of the building.

  ‘But I told her I was going to get you,’ protested Mrs Wills unhappily.

  ‘Tell her you missed me,’ said Georgiou.

  ‘It might be better if you get it over and done with, boss,’ murmured Tennyson. ‘She’ll only try and get hold of you later. And she might do it at a really inconvenient time.’

  Georgiou thought it over. Tennyson was right. The last thing he needed was a reporter dogging his footsteps.

  ‘OK,’ he said. He pointed to the nearest phone. ‘Put it through to here.’

  Jenny McAndrew had a boisterous but intense voice on the phone.

  ‘Inspector,’ she boomed. ‘You’re a hard man to get hold of.’

  ‘But I’m here now,’ said Georgiou. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I understand that you’ve been reinstated after being suspended,’ said McAndrew. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Georgiou, ‘I understand that, too.’

  ‘And why do you think that is?’ asked McAndrew.

  ‘I assume because the Police Authority have decided I had no case to answer in the charges that were brought against me.’

  ‘By Ian Parks?’

  ‘I don’t know who made the charges against me, Ms McAndrew. If you tell me it was Ian Parks, then I thank you for that information.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be coy, Inspector,’ said McAndrews. ‘You’re not going to pretend you don’t know why you were suspended.’

  Georgiou let a second lapse to contain his rising feeling of anger. He didn’t like the tone this woman was using, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of losing his temper with her.

  ‘Is there a point to this conversation, Ms McAndrew?’ he asked. ‘Only I am very busy. There was a murder yesterday and we’re doing our best to investigate it.’

  ‘The sec
ond one using the same method,’ said McAndrew. ‘But that’s not why I’m calling. I’m asking if you have any comment to the statement that Mrs Parks, Ian’s mother, has given to the press today.’

  ‘As I haven’t heard Mrs Parks’s statement, I’m afraid I can’t comment on it, ‘replied Georgiou.

  ‘I’ll read it to you,’ said McAndrew; and before Georgiou could tell her not to bother, she had started: ‘“This is an absolute disgrace. This man beats up my poor innocent son and gets let off, just because he’s a copper. He’s done this before. He’s a violent man and he ought to be in jail. There is a cover-up going on here. I am demanding a public enquiry. I want justice done.”’ There was the rustle of a piece of paper being put to one side, then McAndrew asked: ‘What do you have to say to that?’

  A lot, thought Georgiou. Like if your son is so innocent, Mrs Parks, how come he has a reputation for beating up and robbing old ladies on your estate? The only reason Ian Parks had never been charged was because his victims were too frightened to give evidence against him. Instead Georgiou said: ‘At this moment I have no comment to make.’

  ‘But you would support a public enquiry in order to clear your name?’ persisted McAndrew.

  ‘As I said, at this moment I have no comment to make. Thank you for your call, Ms McAndrew.’

  With that Georgiou hung up.

  He turned to see Tennyson smiling.

  ‘Well done, boss,’ his DS said, with a wink. ‘I bet she was hoping to make you lose your rag. You Greeks are supposed to have a fiery temper, after all.’

  I’m not Greek, Georgiou groaned inwardly. I’m English.

  He headed for the door one more time and said, ‘Come on, Mac. Let’s go find out what they’ve learnt from the body.’

  FIVE

  The path lab had a smell to it like no other place that Georgiou knew. It was like a surgical ward, a butcher’s shop and a funeral parlour, all mixed up in the smell of formaldehyde. The headless remains of Tamara Armstrong lay on a metal tray, the skin marble white. The pathologist, Dr Mary Kirtle, indicated the gaping open wound that was the neck.

  ‘A large, very sharp knife was used,’ she said. ‘Broad bladed. Not serrated. He even cut through the spinal cord and the trachea with it, straight cuts. No sawing.’

  ‘You think he knew what he was doing?’ asked Georgiou. ‘Someone in the trade? A butcher?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Kirtle. ‘But then, you can get instructions from the internet for everything these days. How to carry out your own brain surgery.’

  ‘Would he need to be strong?’ asked Georgiou.

  Tennyson remained near the door. It wasn’t that he was upset by the sight of dead bodies, it was the smell of the place he hated.

  ‘Strong enough in the wrists,’ said Kirtle. ‘Like I say, no sawing, so the blade went straight through when pressed. And he was cutting horizontally, not vertically. He cut the head off while the body was hanging upside-down. That takes strength and skill. No chance of being able to use downward pressure to cut through the bone. Mind, it was a very, very sharp blade. Look at the surface of the cut.’

  Georgiou examined the cut on the neck: like a joint of meat.

  ‘Whoever it was keeps their knives in very good condition,’ said Kirtle. ‘Fastidious. We’re talking someone who looks after things very carefully.’

  ‘What about the rest?’ asked Georgiou, indicating the body laid out on the table. Even in death, you could see that the body was young. Thin, long legs, long arms, hardly a blemish on her, except for the bruised ruts in the skin of her wrists and her ankles.

  Kirtle gestured towards the marks on the dead girl’s wrists.

  ‘She struggled after she was tied up. See how the skin has been worn and broken by the electric flex. Unfortunately for her, whoever tied her up did too good a job. Again, someone who knew what they were doing, and were very careful to do it right.’

  Kirtle moved to the body’s hands and lifted one for Georgiou to see. Rigor mortis was already losing its rigid grip on the body.

  ‘However, there’s no sign of anything that could be thought of as a struggle before she was tied up. I checked the fingernails and skin of the hands.’

  ‘So she knew him,’ said Georgiou.

  ‘It seems likely,’ said Kirtle, nodding. ‘She wasn’t drunk, that’s for sure. Not only the level of alcohol in her blood—’

  ‘—but the fact she was walking home,’ finished Georgiou.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kirtle.

  ‘Any sign of sexual interference?’ Georgiou asked.

  Kirtle shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not even any attempt.’

  ‘Maybe he’s impotent,’ mused Georgiou.

  ‘That doesn’t stop many of them trying,’ said Kirtle. ‘They can’t get it up but they can still ejaculate. Nothing. No sign of semen.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  It was a long shot, but Georgiou knew of cases where a fingerprint had been left on a victim’s eyeball.

  Again, Kirtle shook her head.

  ‘Forensics will be your best answer on this, but to me it looks like whoever did it was wearing gloves.’

  Georgiou studied the headless body silently for a minute, then said: ‘Nothing that says which sex the murderer was?’

  ‘Sorry,’ replied Kirtle, shrugging. ‘No semen. No saliva. No body fluids. No marks on the body, except the wire and the knife blade. I’ll tell you one thing, though …’

  Georgiou waited.

  Kirtle indicated the open wound that was the neck.

  ‘It’s quite likely that whoever did it, they got splashed with blood. She was bled like an animal at a slaughterhouse before her head was cut off. That’s a lot of blood to pour out. It would have splashed when it hit the ground. Possibly spurted over the killer. Either they were wearing some kind of protective clothing, which they got rid of later, or they went home with their clothes covered in blood. Someone must have seen them.’

  ‘OK.’ Georgiou nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Maybe forensics will have something more,’ said Kirtle.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Georgiou. ‘But if he – or she – is as careful as you say, we can’t count on it.’

  SIX

  As Georgiou and Tennyson walked into the briefing room at police HQ for the twelve o’clock meeting, Georgiou was embarrassed when the four detectives waiting for him broke into a round of applause.

  ‘Well done, chief!’ called out Iain Conway, a fierce, tall-looking Scot in his late twenties. If Tennyson lived on a diet that seemed to consist of sweets and beer, Conway was a health-food nut. Plus high proteins and vitamins. With his muscular neck and shoulders, Georgiou sometimes wondered if Conway added steroids to his ‘muscle-building’ diet. ‘You showed the bastards!’ finished Conway victoriously.

  Georgiou smiled self-consciously.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ he said. ‘But just because I appear to be off the hook for the moment, don’t let it fool you. If we don’t clear up the murder of Armstrong’s daughter, then we’re all at risk of being kicked out for the slightest infringement, real or imagined.’

  ‘While the villains get away with a slap on the wrist,’ said Conway, scowling.

  As the murmur of voices agreed with this sentiment, Georgiou again raised his hand to calm the team down.

  ‘We’ll deal with the politicians later,’ he said. ‘Let’s look at the case first. Because I’ve been away for a few days, I’m going to let Mac bring all of us up to speed on what we have. But first, the word from the pathologist. You’ll all be getting her official written report as soon as she can do it, but for the moment, Dr Kirtle has the impression that our killer is a very controlled person. Fastidious was a word she used. He – or she – is also strong enough to cut through muscle and bone to get the heads off. The fact that both bodies were dealt with in exactly the same way, the electrical tape, the knife our killer used, makes me think there’s some sort of ritualistic aspect to what he does.
But that’s just speculation at the moment. Mac, why don’t you go through what we know.’

  Tennyson nodded and stepped forward to the whiteboards that he had set up earlier. They were adorned with photographs of the two victims, the sites of the killings, maps, and random words written in marker pens.

  As Mac began his briefing, Georgiou looked around the room at the rest of his team. Conway, looking far too big for the plastic chair he was sitting on, with an intensity in the expression on his face as he studied the information on the boards.

  Sitting next to Conway was DS Debby Seward. Thirty-one years old. Like Conway, a physical exercise nut. Tall and thin, her red hair cropped short, she kept herself fit by weekly visits to the gym and martial arts training at one of the many martial arts schools in Carlisle. Like Conway, she was single. ‘Married to the job’, as some people put it. Georgiou had also heard whispers about ‘Debby the Dyke’, but in his opinion this was only from disgruntled male officers who hadn’t been able to get to first base with her. As he looked at her, he remembered how she had been with him soon after Susannah died: soft, caring. There had been a look in her eyes that had even suggested …

  He shook the thought away. It had been a long time ago, but the pain was like yesterday. Seward was just being sympathetic. ‘I’ll be there for you, any time night or day,’ she’d said, and she’d held his hand. He’d just nodded, given her hand a squeeze back, and then changed the subject. He’d been hardly able to talk about Susannah at that time without wanting to hit something, or burst into tears. Since then Seward had been polite with him, and him with her. She’d never repeated her invitation to him; and he’d never asked her about it. It had been another time. Things had been different then. And maybe it had been his imagination. Just sympathy, one human being to another. But there’d been no whisper of any man in her life. Maybe she was gay? Anyway, her private life was her own. So she was single; so was Conway, and no one had ever accused Conway of being gay. At least, not to his face.

  Next to Seward sat DC Kirsty Taggart, the other Scot on his team. Thirty-three, married, no children. Small and big-boned, which made her appear plump and slow to people who didn’t know her. But Georgiou knew that Taggart could move fast when the situation called for it. Georgiou had seen her disarm a man with a machete just by using a nearby chair, her movements so fast that the knifeman had hardly seen the chair before it hit him.