by Dan Waddell
Foster answered straightaway.
‘I’ve found a report of the murder of Albert Beck.’
‘What does it say?’
‘The killer struck three times. A body was found on Tuesday 25th, Saturday 29th, and Tuesday 1st April.’ He paused. ‘April 1st is tomorrow,’ Nigel added.
He heard Foster sigh. ‘I’m aware of the date,’ he drawled. ‘That’s not the only thing that bothers me. If he’s following this pattern, then he killed someone last Saturday and we haven’t found the body. Where were the first and third victims found?’
Nigel trawled his memory. Years of scanning documents had given him almost photographic recall.
‘The first was Brick Field, Notting Dale. The third near Notting Hill station.’
‘Find out as much as you can about each of the killings, in particular the spot where they were found. Call in when you have something.’
Foster collected his jacket from the back of his chair and put it on. He went through to the incident room and clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention.
‘Listen up. I’ve just had Nigel Barnes on the phone: he’s found a newspaper report from 1879 about three killings in North Kensington in the space of a week. The second killing was of Albert Beck.’
‘The second?’ Heather said.
Foster nodded. ‘That’s not the only surprise. The third victim was murdered on 31st March 1879, the body found the next day.’
A silence fell across the room.
‘So this is what’s going to happen. Andy and Heather, get a team to Notting Hill Gate. That’s where Barnes says the third body was found in 1879. Scout it out, get plain clothes on the street, digging up the roads, begging for small change, whatever you can think of, as long as it’s low-key: just get some bodies around there. Find a place overlooking the station if you can and keep an eye on it. I’ll come and join you there later.’
‘What about the first killing?’ Heather asked. ‘If he’s followed the pattern…’
‘I’ll deal with those who might already be dead. You try and stop someone else joining their ranks.’
11
The mortuary attendant, the only person on duty that evening, at least until the inevitable victims of a Saturday night in the city were wheeled in later on, looked ill at ease when DCI Foster strode in purposefully.
‘Can I help?’ he asked, blinking furiously behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
‘You can. I want to see every body that was brought in last weekend. The ones you still have, anyway.’
‘Did you ring and ask about this in advance?’ he asked nervously.
‘Look,’ Foster stopped himself. ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Luke.’
‘Luke, I’m in the middle of a murder investigation. It is extremely important that I see those bodies and that I see them immediately. Now I’m going to walk in there and have a look. I think it’s best you don’t try and stop me. Agreed?’
Luke nodded slowly.
‘Good man.’
Foster left him at his desk and barged through a set of double doors that led downstairs to the cold store. He could feel the temperature fall as he went further into the depths. At the bottom was another door. Locked.
‘Luke!’ he shouted. He could feel a draught coming from somewhere, he guessed the hidden approach where hearses and ambulances came to load and unload.
The young man scurried downstairs and punched a code into a keypad to one side of the door. There was a click and Foster pushed. He was inside. The air was chilly, though not freezing. He exhaled and caught a fleeting glimpse of his breath in front of him. Rows of cabins filled either side of the room, leaving a wide central area in the middle where a few tables stood. Only one was in use; Foster saw a black body bag. It wasn’t empty.
‘That one’s waiting to be prepared for the tray,’ Luke said, noticing where Foster’s eyes were straying. ‘Alcoholic,’ he added, as if that explained the delay.
At the far end of the room was a chrome mechanism, a lift, a sort of dumb waiter that delivered the body to the autopsy room upstairs. Next to it Foster saw a large whiteboard. On it were the numbers of each cabin, written beside the surname of the deceased.
‘Do you have any record of when these people died, or when their bodies were brought in?’
‘It’s in the register.’
‘Get it, please.’
Luke departed while Foster went to a dispenser and put on a pair of latex gloves. By the time he’d worked them on, Luke had returned, his breathing slightly heavier, with a large black book in his hands.
‘What dates interest you?’
‘For a start, I want to have a look at everyone who was brought in late last Saturday night or on Sunday, regardless of when they actually died.’
Luke put the book down on one of the unoccupied metal tables, running down the page with his finger, then flicking it over. Foster wanted to grab it and look himself but, as he was about to, the technician spoke.
‘Right, we have Fahey.’
Foster looked at the whiteboard. Couldn’t see the name.
‘Released to the funeral parlour on Thursday,’ Luke added. ‘Road traffic accident.’
Foster made a note of which funeral parlour.
‘Gordon.’
This one was on the wall. Cabin 13. Foster went over himself and pulled hard on the handle and the drawer slid out. He unzipped the bag to reveal a man, slightly overweight, in his early fifties, he guessed. His colour was pale blue and his jaw hung open. Foster looked closely at his chest and torso, then lifted both arms. When he found nothing, he summoned Luke and asked him to help sit the body up. With much effort, Foster carefully inspected his back. There wasn’t a blemish on the whole body.
‘Heart attack?’ he asked Luke, who nodded.
‘At home on Saturday night.’
‘Perhaps he won the lottery,’ Foster said, zipping up the bag and shunting the cabin back into its home.
The next name on the list was Ibrahim.
‘This one’s in the deep freeze. Number 30,’ Luke said.
Great, Foster thought, just what I need. There was always at least one cabin where the temperature was 20° below. It stored bodies that required freezing to prevent decomposition. Then, when they were needed, for a second autopsy perhaps, they were thawed out with hot water from the boiler.
‘Is this a keeper?’ he asked.
Luke shook his head. ‘No, it was in an advanced state of decomposition when it was found.’
‘Marvellous,’ Foster muttered.
He pulled the door open and dragged out the tray. The bag was smaller, not body-shaped. He opened it carefully, breathing deeply.
The cold prevented the stench from overpowering him, but what he saw almost did. The body was in bits. An arm here, a leg there, the torso in the middle, the head missing; it was green, not pale blue, and had obviously been maggot food for some time. Foster recalled the case. Another team was on it; probable honour killing was the word.
He picked up the severed stumps and examined them carefully. His nose caught a whiff of rotting flesh, so he started to breathe through his mouth. He checked every part, lifting them all up apart from the torso, which he flipped over like a burger, but there was nothing else. With as much haste as possible, he bundled the body parts back into their cover and out of his sight.
Next on the list was a John Doe. Luke said this one was brought in on Sunday morning. His age was difficult to gauge, though late forties had been the estimate. The face was sagging under the weight of death, black hair tangled and the black-grey beard unkempt. Foster did a double take. It was the tramp whose suicide they had been called to the previous Sunday, the one that Heather had been taking so personally.
He was about to zip it back up there and then, but something made him carry on looking. The chest was clear, the stomach too. He picked up the left arm, saw nothing; then the right, nothing apart from a few track marks. Obviously a junkie…
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Tilting his head to one side, he looked once more at the punctures on his arm. Small nicks, all the world like the scars caused by injecting smack. But then they appeared to coalesce, to join together. He peered more closely. There it was: two slanted red cuts, a small cut bridging them. An ‘A’. It was even less distinct than before, and done with less care, but it was possible to make out the other marks, letters and numbers. The same letters and numbers they had found on Darbyshire: 1A137.
He owed Heather an apology.
He put the arm down. ‘Cause of death,’ he shouted to Luke, his eyes still fixed on the body.
‘Strangulation seems the likeliest option.’
‘Anything from toxicology?’
‘No. But there were signs of heavy drug and alcohol abuse.’
Foster completed a clockwise lap of the body.
He picked up one of the man’s limp feet by the ankle. Strange, he thought. This guy’s feet are in immaculate condition. He couldn’t have been on the streets for too long. Most tramps’ feet are knackered: covered in corns, bunions and blisters, filthy and stinking. It didn’t make sense. Unless the guy used to be married to a chiropodist. The hands were soft, too; smooth and uncalloused like a clerical worker’s, not the gnarled hands of a derelict who slept on the streets, smoked tab ends from the gutter and drank meths.
Something didn’t add up.
Nigel had asked Ron for microfilm copies of the Evening News and the Evening Standard. It seemed to take him an eternity to return. Nigel sat there, cursing his name and his bulk, the building empty and quiet apart from the silent hum of a distant generator. Darkness was beginning to fall and the huge bowls of light, suspended by chains from the ceiling, cast a sepulchral glow across the main reading room.
I need to do something, he thought. He got up and wandered into the second, smaller room. To one side of that was the microfilm reading room, a dark space bereft of natural light, lit only by an occasional lamp and the illumination of the reading screens. Nigel had spent hours of his life in here, spooling through centuries of copy.
To his left, away from the microfilm readers, was a bank of computer terminals, a few of which were allocated for searching recent issues of the national newspapers by keywords. He sat down at one, hit a key and the screen burst to life. There was nothing on this database that would be much use to the investigation, it only went back a decade or so at most. It was the recent past, but still he fancied losing himself in it for a short time.
He wondered how high-profile a cop Foster was. In the search field he typed ‘Detective+Grant+Foster’ and hit return. The machine chuntered reluctantly then produced its results: nineteen hits. The first few were reports of murder investigations in which he’d been quoted. But it was the seventh that caught Nigel’s eye: ‘Top Cop Cleared of “Killing” Father’.
The story was nearly eight years old. Nigel clicked the link immediately.
A Scotland Yard detective suspended after being suspected of murdering his father in a mercy killing has been cleared and reinstated after no charges were brought against him.
Detective Inspector Grant Foster, 39, was arrested two months ago after his father, Roger Foster, a retired detective, was found dead at his home in Acton last July. His son made the call to the emergency services reporting his father’s death.
Last month an inquest into Mr Foster senior’s death recorded an open verdict. The coroner said at the time: ‘It is clear that Detective Inspector Foster helped his father end his life. It is not the duty of this inquest to decide whether that help was criminal. That is a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.’
The news that DCI Foster will not be charged and will return to his job has already attracted criticism from anti-euthanasia compaigners.
Last night, Adrian Lewis, Conservative MP for Thewliss, said: ‘I’m not sure what message this sends out to the general public. It is not for us to decide whether someone has the right to die – it is our Lord’s decision. I do hope this isn’t a case of one rule applying to members of the public, and another to members of the Metropolitan Police.’
Nigel sat back to absorb what he’d read. Regardless of whether he had been charged, there seemed to be an admission that Foster in some way assisted his father’s death. In that case, how did he keep his job? Nigel checked his watch. He could plough on and find more stories, but it had been half an hour since Ron had descended into the bowels of the building and time was getting on.
Back in the reading room there was no sign of life. He decided to go and find Ron himself, hurry him up, get an estimate for how long it would take. He walked across the reading room to the double doors through which the attendants disappeared when they retrieved an order. Nigel had always wondered what lay behind them. A vast cavernous hall stacked with shelf upon dusting shelf of yellowing files? He opened the door and stepped on to the landing of a brightly lit staircase. In front of him was a lift.
He pushed the button and it opened immediately. He half expected Ron to step out, clutching his microfilm or file. But it was empty. He entered and looked for the list of buttons on the wall. There was only one: B. He pressed it, the doors closed and with a slight judder the lift began its long descent.
It juddered once more when it hit the bottom, and with a weary clank the doors parted. Nigel was faced with an area with three exits: one ahead, one to the left, the other to his right. Which to choose? The window of each door was frosted, so he could not peer through. There was no light behind the glass on either side, but the path ahead appeared to be lit. Ron must be down there, he thought.
He opened the door to a long corridor, its walls uninterrupted by doors or windows. At the far end was another double door. Nigel hesitated. What if Ron wasn’t down here? What if he was upstairs wondering where the hell Nigel was? He should turn back. But, no, he was certain Ron was down there and he needed those newspapers. He started to walk, his footsteps the only sound.
He reached the door, dark green and swinging slightly on its hinges. He pushed at it slowly and was immediately hit by the unmistakable, sweet waft of ageing paper and dust. But the area beyond was inky black. Funny, he thought. If Ron is down here, then why isn’t the light on? The corridor light behind him was on, the only source of illumination. He shrugged and stepped through into the darkness. He reached with his left hand to the wall inside the door. His hand touched something cold and hard. Steel, he thought. He patted the area around the door hinges, finally locating a switch. He turned it on.
It took him a while to fully realize the dimensions of the room in front of him. Then he saw that it was a long, low tunnel. He looked up. He was an inch under six feet tall, yet the ceiling could not have been more than two feet above him. There were metal shelves either side from floor to ceiling, containing bound volumes of various newspapers. He thought of Ron and smiled. How did he fit down here? He must weigh twenty stone. Perhaps that’s why he had taken so long. Perhaps, like an adult Augustus Gloop, he had become wedged in one of these tunnels.
Nigel knew enough about the newspaper library to realize that this was one of the four storage units. These were more than 260 feet long. Nigel believed it: he was unable to see the door at the far end. But he could see rows and rows of files. This is what becomes of yesterday’s news, he thought. Not wrapping chips, but bound together in silent volumes in this tomb.
There was the sound of a door shutting. Ron, he thought. He called his name out, though it emerged only as a hoarse whisper, which caused him to cough, choking on the dust generated by twenty-eight miles of shelf. When he finished, there was silence.
‘Ron,’ he said, louder this time.
No reply. Had the sound of the door closing come from behind or in front? It was difficult to tell. It must be the front, he decided. He peered down the long tunnel in front of him, waiting to see Ron’s bovine figure heave into view.
Another door closed. That was definitely in front of him. He stepped away from the door at his b
ack and called again. His uneasiness increased. I should have stayed upstairs and waited, he told himself. The door behind him opened without noise, but he sensed it, a waft of musty air at his back. He spun around.
‘Shit!!!’ he screamed.
Ron dropped the microfilm boxes he was clutching to his chest.
‘Jesus,’ he said, putting his hand on his heart.
Nigel held his hands up, more out of reflex than anything else. For a few seconds, neither man could speak.
Ron broke the silence. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said, his face turning from surprise to anger.
‘I came looking for you,’ Nigel said eventually. ‘I thought you… I don’t know what I thought, actually.’
‘You scared the crap out of me,’ Ron said.
He bent down and collected the microfilm boxes. Nigel helped him. When the boxes had been located and picked up, both men looked at each other.
‘Sorry,’ Nigel said. ‘I’m a bit jumpy. Like I said, don’t know what I was thinking.’
Ron shrugged. ‘Well, promise me you’ll leave the collecting to me, eh?’
Nigel nodded.
Ron handed the films over to him. ‘But you can take these up,’ he said. ‘I need a fag after that.’
Nigel made his way back to the reading room with the reels. He delved first into the Evening News, finding reports on each of the murders, each filling increasing space as a connection between them was made. But in the report of the third murder, and the shock and fear it had spread throughout Kensington – or ‘dread and consternation’, as the Evening News described it – there were no further details on the location of the body, only mention of it being found near Notting Hill station. He checked the next day’s paper to see if any more mention was made. While there was a large report about how terrified local residents were, again no exact location was given.
He loaded the Evening Standard. It was as if the same reporter had penned both sets of articles; they were identical in detail and length. He scanned every report, soaked up every word, but there was nothing new for him to pass on to Foster. He sat back and rubbed his eyes. He checked his watch; an hour had passed in seconds, peering at the dimly lit screen in a dark booth. He noticed the familiar signs of a headache settling in behind his eyes, and he decided to go outside and grab some air to clear his head.