The Graves at Angel Brook (Quigg Book 3)

by Tim Ellis

  Sally Vickers was standing above him with a rolled up piece of paper in her hands. She’d joined Hammersmith forensics department after her art degree two years ago. A couple of years older than Duffy, she had short light brown hair, freckles, and wide hips. Quigg thought she looked homely, but didn’t fancy her.

  ‘Hello, Sally. You’re not going to tell me you aren’t glad I gave you an excuse to get away from the turkey sandwiches, the boring conversation, and the crappy television?’

  ‘I’ve got my family visiting.’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘You’re a horrible person, Quigg.’

  ‘So, what have you got for me?’

  Sally unrolled the piece of paper on the table while Quigg moved his dirty plate to one side.

  ‘She was a psychic, you know?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I’m humouring her.’

  ‘Wasting my time.’

  ‘Well, come on then, Sally - I’m not a psychic, let’s see what you’ve drawn.’

  Sally turned the paper round and went to stand behind Quigg.

  ‘It’s the profile of an old man.’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  He recalled what Aryana had said about looking over his shoulder. ‘Probably this, I suppose.’

  ‘Then you got what you expected.’

  ‘It won’t be much help.’

  ‘It’s out of a psychic’s mind, so it probably wasn’t going to be much help anyway.’

  ‘Another sceptic.’

  ‘I have a computer program that will generate a frontal view from a profile.’

  ‘Is it any good?’

  ‘Have you got a better offer?’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘First thing. Come up to my office.’

  ‘See you then, and please don’t tell anyone about the psychic.’

  Sally rolled up the drawing and put it under her arm. ‘I’ll try not to,’ she said, walking towards the exit.

  He finished his muffin, swilled it down with cold coffee, and then went back to the squad room. He was still on the stairs when his secret mobile vibrated.

  ‘Hello, Ruth.’

  Hello, father of my child.

  ‘You got on with Duffy, then?’

  We are like sisters.

  ‘Why are you ringing me?’

  To tell you that I have found a flat for Lucy, and she is already in there. Have you got a pen and paper?

  He reached Jones’ desk and found a pen and post-it pad. ‘OK, tell me.’

  He wrote down the address that Ruth gave him.

  When will I see you again?

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  You can rub oil on my belly to stop me getting stretch marks.

  ‘I’ll look forward to that,’ he said, ending the call.

  He put the address in his duffel coat pocket. He might go round later and give Lucy the stack of paper he had in the boot of his car that Surfer Bob had produced when he was looking for the Apostles.

  ‘Have you been to see Perkins, Sir?’

  Quigg walked over to the fax and took out nearly a ream of paper. He checked the paper drawer which only had a few sheets in, so he filled it up.

  ‘Jim sent a fax this morning, but didn’t bother telling us. He’s found the references from the first five victims.’ Quigg rifled through the pages of rubbish and other people’s faxes to get to the one addressed to him.

  ‘We’re nearly there, Inspector,’ Father Paidraig said.

  ‘Excellent. Oh, and good job, Walsh.’

  ‘Thanks, Sir. Why?’

  ‘For suggesting the body in Rose Andrews’ coffin might be someone else. Jim compared the DNA against the bodies in the other coffins and the first body at Barn Elms Park. They were swapped over. The first body at Barn Elms is Rose Andrews.’

  ‘So, we’re back to everything being related to Rose Andrews?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ he said, walking over to where Father Paidraig was working at the board. Quigg passed him the sheet with the biblical references on.

  L11:21; N31:4; G3:16; D1:15; E10:20

  ‘If only I could have had these at the beginning,’ Father Paidraig said. ‘Things would have been so much easier. He has used the Old Testament for all the references. These are Leviticus, Numbers, Genesis, Deuteronomy and Exodus. He started at the beginning and has been working his way through the chapters.’

  ‘Why didn’t he go in order?’ Walsh asked.

  ‘To confuse us? He couldn’t find what he wanted? Who knows what runs through a tormented mind?’

  He riffled through his Bible. ‘Please write these down on the board in front of the other letters, Heather: Y-O-U-S-H.’

  Walsh wrote the letters down:

  (Y)(O)(U)(S)(H)(ATSYT)(ALHTFB)(LTI)(NT)(AOAIT)(OT)(ATSBF)(ANLTASJB)(AAE)(E)(P)(AAA)(L)(O)(BAANBIAB) (E) (NAATMF)

  ‘Right, Walsh - I’m going up to see Perkins.’

  ‘OK, Sir.’

  Father Paidraig turned to him and said, ‘We should have the message completed by the time you return, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes, I see you’re nearly there. Good job. Thanks, Father.’

  ‘It is God’s will.’

  ***

  ‘Well, Perkins - what have you got for me?’

  ‘I’ve got a large bill, Quigg.’ Perkins was sitting in his office cum laboratory in an easy chair with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his white lab coat.

  Quigg swung his legs over a lab stool and perched on the hard wooden seat looking down at Perkins. ‘The Chief’s got loads of money; he’ll pay.’

  Perkins grunted. ‘I think you’ll be talking in a high-pitched voice when the Chief sees what you’ve spent.’

  ‘What I’ve spent? I haven’t actually spent anything, Perkins.’

  ‘What you authorised me to spend.’

  ‘I don’t have the power to authorise any expenditure. Did you confirm it with the Chief?’

  ‘Don’t do this, Quigg. You told me…’

  ‘Never mind procrastinating, Perkins - tell me what you’ve got.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how much you pressure me, Quigg. I can only find what I can find.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Perkins - did you find anything?’

  ‘As a matter of fact… My team is probably the best forensics team in the world, you know, Quigg. They’ve been working round the clock in shifts, scouring the area, and let me tell you, that hasn’t been easy. What with the sub-zero temperatures, the snow and the ice, it’s like being a forensic scientist in Stalinist Siberia….’

  ‘I’m going to garrotte you in a minute, Perkins, and when I tell the jury how you shilly-shallied around the question, they’ll probably let me off with a caution and fund a holiday for me in Barbados so that I can recover from the stress you’ve put me through.’

  Perkins stood up. ‘Before I get to the forensic evidence, let me show you this.’

  He walked over to the wall behind Quigg and stood before a map of London pinned on a display board. The map looked like a school project and had coloured string and pins erupting from it. ‘You know that Jim’s done eleven post-mortems up to now, and he’s identified ten of the children? Also, he thought it would be more useful to do the more recent ones first and work back to the decomposed bodies.’

  Quigg’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Well, by doing the recent ones, he could provide you with more information, such as where they lived, where they were abducted from, the date they were reported missing, and so on. Unless Jim can identify the earlier bodies, it’s unlikely you’ll get any of that.’

  ‘OK, I’m with you so far.’

  ‘Good. Well, the map on the wall in front of you identifies where the ten children were abducted from.’

  Quigg peered at the colour map. ‘Why are you doing my job instead of your own, Perkins?’

  ‘As you said, Quigg,
I’m a man of science; I like to look for patterns.’

  ‘Did you find any?’

  ‘The last victim, Kaikara Mangani, was abducted from Peckham on Boxing Day.’ Perkins pointed to a large green map pin with ‘23’ written on the white card in the centre. Attached to it was a piece of green string, which led to a green three-inch square card pinned on the board at the side of the map with the girl’s details written on it. ‘Well, to be more exact, Peckham Rye, which is a railway station on the Inner South London line. As you can see, the numbers follow a specific line.’

  Quigg looked closer and saw that the numbered pins followed a thin black line on the map.

  ‘Number ‘22’ was at Denmark Hill,’ Perkins continued. ‘Number ‘21’ at Brixton, ‘20’ at Clapham High Street, ‘19’ at Wandsworth Road, ’18’ at Queenstown Road, ‘17’ at Clapham Junction, ‘16’ at Wandsworth Town, ‘15’ at Putney and ‘14’ at Barnes.’

  ‘You’ve done a good job, Perkins,’ Quigg said as he followed the line from Peckham Rye back to Barnes. ‘He’s taking children from the area around each train station.’

  ‘He must be using the train,’ Perkins said.

  ‘No, he’s not, Perkins,’ Quigg said absently. ‘He’s using a van.’

  ‘How do you know that, Quigg?’

  Shit! He’d crossed the line between reality and fantasy. That bloody psychic Aryana had told him about the van, but he couldn’t tell Perkins that. ‘It stands to reason,’ he said, trying to cover up his mistake. ‘There’s no way he can render a child unconscious using chloroform, carry them to the train station, pay for two tickets, carry the child off at the other end, and then walk to where he keeps them. Too much could go wrong.’

  Perkins looked suspicious. ‘I suppose you’re right Quigg, but then why use the train stations?’

  ‘What seems likely is that he travels by train to familiarise himself with the local area, and then comes back in his van later, or on another day, to snatch a child.’

  ‘Yeah, a van cruising around a neighbourhood would be noticeable, especially if it’s a distinctive van. So, if I’m right, the next child should be abducted from the vicinity of Nunhead train station.’

  Quigg nearly said something about a child called Kylie with long black hair being abducted, but stopped himself just in time. Instead, he said, ‘If this pans out, Perkins, I might put you forward for an MBE or something.’

  ‘Might?’

  ‘Well, it’s no good knowing where he’s going to strike next, and then not being able to do anything about it. For all we know he might already have snatched another child.’

  ‘Have you had any reports?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Are you expecting him to take another one so soon?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, Perkins, this map is good stuff, but it’ll have to be moved down to the squad room.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I’ll make sure you get the credit for it. We’ll put a title on it, like: Perkin’s Map. How does that sound?’

  ‘What about: The Railway Killer’s Victims by Anthony Perkins BSc (Hons)?’

  Quigg laughed. ‘Let’s not go overboard, Perkins, and don’t mention that name outside this laboratory.’

  ‘What, Anthony Perkins BSc (Hons)?’

  ‘No, you idiot, The Railway Killer. John Duffy and David Mulcahy were known as The Railway Killers in the 1980s. They were convicted of a string of rapes and three murders. All we need is for the press to get hold of the name and they’ll make our killer famous.’

  ‘He’s already famous, Quigg. Twenty-three is a lot of bodies. It puts him in there with the likes of Brady and Hindley, Sutcliffe and the Wests.’

  ‘Well, let’s not compound the issue by giving the bastard a sexy name.’

  ‘I understand, Quigg.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No, no - I did the map to amuse myself. I was copied into the fax Jim sent you. When I get data, I have to do something with it. I started looking for patterns, and there you are.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘Oh yes…’

  ‘You’re not really on the ball today, are you Perkins?’

  ‘I took time out to visit a UFO sighting at Ripple in Kent, last night.’

  ‘Kent! What time did you get back?’

  ‘Four this morning.’

  ‘No wonder you’re on another planet, Perkins. So, what else have you got?’

  ‘The name of the killer.’

  ‘WHAT? Don’t play games with me, Perkins; I’m not one hundred percent myself today, either.’

  ‘On the clothing of victim 20 there was a hair with a follicle. We extracted a DNA profile from that hair follicle. We then ran it through the DNA database and out popped William Satchell, a known sex offender.’

  ‘A sex offender! No, we’re not looking for one of those, Perkins. As much as I’d like to lock up every paedophile in the country, with the exception of the Andrews’ children Jim didn’t find any of the other children had been sexually abused. That’s not the motive behind the killings; it goes far deeper than that.’

  ‘You could at least bring him in for questioning.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  Perkins picked up a piece of paper then said, ‘Forty-eight.’

  ‘Too young: he wasn’t even alive when the first child was taken, murdered and buried. Not only that, Jim has confirmed that the body in the first grave is Rose Andrews, which means that she was moved out of her coffin in the family crypt, and replaced with another child who had been burnt to make her look like Rose Andrews’ corpse. What I’m saying, Perkins, is that all these bodies are related to the death of Rose Andrews; the killer knew her.’

  ‘Oh well, it was only an idea. I don’t have the up to date information that you have.’

  ‘Therefore, you should focus on your own job and stop trying to do mine.’

  ‘Just trying to help, Quigg.’

  ‘You’d help a lot more if you found me hard evidence.’

  ‘Besides the size ten footprint, and related to what we were talking about earlier, I’ve got an impression of a tyre that came from a 1979 T2 VW camper van. The trouble is neither the footprint nor the tyre may be connected to the case.’

  Quigg recalled Madame Aryana’s vision of the inside of an old van with a small driving compartment and red curtains over the windows. He was starting to build up a picture of the killer as a man with soft white hands who has worked in an office all his life, wears size ten boots, and owns an old VW camper van which has red curtains covering the windows. Some of it was fact, some of it was… well, not necessarily fact. He didn’t want to go so far as to say it was fiction, because Perkins could have just verified the VW camper. The red curtains over the windows would only be confirmed or discredited after they’d caught the killer, although it might be useful in trying to spot the vehicle near the next train station. The trouble was, he didn’t officially know anything about red curtains, and they certainly couldn’t be considered as evidence. They had come from the weird mind of a Canadian psychic. God, he was treading a fine line between detection and quackery. And the more he discovered, the more difficult it became separating out what he actually knew as fact, and what he knew as fantasy.

  ‘You keep collecting the evidence, Perkins; it’s my job to find the killer. Once we’ve found him, the evidence you’ve accumulated will convict him - don’t forget that. We’re a team, but it doesn’t mean that we can do each other’s jobs.’

  ‘Sorry, Quigg - I get frustrated sometimes. I’d like some recognition for the part that I play in solving the murders. As it stands, you get all the glory.’

  ‘Glory’s overrated, Perkins. Do you also want to be hauled up in front of the Chief Constable with the possibility of losing your job when the shit hits the fan?

  ‘Well, no… I wasn’t meaning that.’

  ‘I didn’t think so. Look, Perkins - I solve murders out there, you solve them in here. Let’s stay focused on that separation of
responsibilities, shall we? Why don’t you make that your New Year’s resolution, and I’ll try and give you some recognition.’

  ‘OK, Quigg, thanks.’

  ‘Can I go now, or have you got something else for me?’

  ‘No, nothing else at the moment, but we’re still looking. The weather is causing us no end of problems.’

  ‘Will you have Asquith transport the Perkin’s Map down to the squad room?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  ‘Good. Keep at it, Perkins.’

  He left the head of the forensics department slumped in his chair. He was obviously having a bad day.

  ***

  It was one forty-five. He walked back down the stairs to the squad room.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he said as he snaked his way through the desks and chairs to where Father Paidraig and Walsh were standing in front of the whiteboards crossing out letters and trying to make words.

  ‘Nearly there, Sir,’ Walsh said.

  Father Paidraig moved back and looked at Quigg. ‘Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will be able to unlock the last word.’

  YOU SHALL NOT (ATSBF)(ANLTASJB)(AAE)(E)(P) ALONE (NAATMF)

  Quigg was standing with his hands in the pockets of his brown corduroy trousers and stared at the board. The word came to him easily. ‘SLEEP,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ Father Paidraig said, slapping his thigh.

  ‘That’s his motive, isn’t it, Sir?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘The product of an unhinged mind,’ Father Paidraig said.

  ‘You say that, Father,’ Quigg said, ‘but he obviously believes in a spiritual life after death.’

  ‘That may be so, but we are lucky that all the people who believe in a life after death do not kill other people to keep themselves or their loved ones company.’

  ‘Surely he didn’t kill all these children so that they could keep Rose Andrews company in heaven?’ Walsh asked, agog.

  ‘That seems to be the gist of the message,’ Quigg said. ‘Although, let’s not forget that the message is still incomplete.’

  Father Paidraig crossed himself. ‘They will become angels and shine as bright as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father,’ he said.