by James Oswald
‘Muti.’ Rose shakes her head slowly. ‘Or rather something dark and evil that grew out of the practice. Something that feeds on the greed and credulity of men.’
‘You know about it?’ I’m not exactly surprised.
‘I do. I have spent time with some well-respected practitioners, learned some of the secrets of their magic. Their healing seeks to bring harmony within the body and between body and land. It’s not destructive, quite the opposite.’
‘But—’
‘That is the true bush medicine, my dear.’ Rose interrupts me before I can get my objection out. ‘What you have seen today? What has been done to these poor boys? That is not muti. Not true muti.’
‘Why, then? What is it meant to achieve?’
‘What does sacrifice ever achieve? In this instance I suspect it is an attempt to gain strength and power. Taking the heart of your foe, taking his manhood. These are very potent symbols.’
Rose falls silent, and I can’t think of anything to say to that. We both drink our tea for a while, lost in our independent thoughts. Finally, one of many reservations I have with the whole situation rises to the top.
‘What I can’t understand is why they just dump the bodies like that. Out in the open, thrown out like the trash. It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s as if they’re taunting us, whoever’s doing this. Rubbing our noses in how powerless we are. How clueless.’
‘That is part of their magic, though. That’s how it works. You cannot accord your victim any kind of respect in death, or you risk giving up the power you have taken from him. Throwing the body out like, as you say, trash, shows they no longer think anything of it. Even taking trouble to make it disappear would be to admit you are afraid of the consequences of your actions.’
Much as I hate to admit it, Rose makes a good point. ‘That’s . . . cold?’
‘That is the logic of it. If you accept any logic in this at all.’
‘So, what about Daniel Jones? He was in the trash, but he was still alive. How come they only cut his balls off? Didn’t take his heart?’
‘Now that, Con, is a question for your investigative team, not me. You were the one who found him, though. What struck you most about him then?’
‘You mean apart from the fact he was alive?’ I picture the scene in my mind, the bins overflowing as usual, the piles of rubbish heaped all around, the foot poking out from under a black bin liner. An attempt to hide.
‘He wasn’t dumped. Which means he must have got himself there.’ Bleeding out, in so much agony it’s impossible to imagine, mouth filled with blood and pain, every step an impossible feat of endurance. What drug had they put in his system to stop him dying from shock? ‘He had to have been anaesthetised, surely?’ I can hear the tone of forlorn hope in my question, even as I know the answer isn’t going to be reassuring.
‘I doubt whoever did this would want their victim unconscious while they were mutilating him,’ Rose says. Her calmness is exactly what is needed, but it’s unsettling all the same. ‘There are, however, many potions and preparations that can render a man insensitive to pain even as he remains conscious. Powerless, paralysed, but lucid. Aware exactly what is being done to him.’
That’s less reassuring. I can’t help but shudder at the thought of what must be the ultimate nightmare.
‘But it is late.’ Rose stands up, takes her cup to the sink and places it ready to be washed. ‘I imagine tomorrow will be a busy day. You should get some rest now.’
I thought perhaps the tea Rose made for me might have a little something in it to help me sleep. That’s how it would work in a novel, at least. As the minutes creep slowly by on the screen of my phone, midnight leaching into one o’clock and on towards two, I wonder whether she didn’t use the wrong potion.
The house feels safe, a refuge in a way my flat in London never has. The only other place I’ve felt so comfortable is Newmore, my aunt’s old lodge up in the Perthshire highlands. I fled there last year expecting to hate it as much as I had when I was a bored little girl, but the house welcomed me. I found sanctuary there for the few days I needed to regroup and take control of the madness. My stay with Rose has been much the same, except that I’ve a horrible feeling things are about to get a lot worse.
I’ve seen dead bodies before. Too many dead bodies. I’ve seen mutilation, too. A car crash can do horrendous damage to a person; jumping in front of a train even more so. I’ve had to deal with both in my career as a police officer. And I found my former boss, Pete Copperthwaite, beaten black and blue, then executed with a single, close-range shot to the forehead. Shot by one of his own colleagues, even now working the system to get himself into a low-security, high-comfort prison. I’ll never forget the expression on Pete’s face. But it’s the memory of the dead young man from earlier this evening that keeps me awake. It’s there whenever I close my eyes, so I stare at the ceiling instead until the shadow patterns of the ornate plaster cornicing high overhead begin to swirl and form into strange monsters, murderous creatures hunting me down to carve out my still-beating heart.
And then I wake up again with a start. A glance at the digital clock face shows another few minutes have oozed by. I’ve had this sort of thing before. Something on my mind that won’t let me sleep until I acknowledge it, file it away, slot it into the hole in the puzzle where it belongs. So what is it? The young man, naked, mutilated, cleaned by the evening rain. His face was pale with blood loss, eyes closed so I’ve no idea what colour they were. The water had pasted his hair to his scalp, but it was thin, cut quite short, though not as short as my own. He had a scrawny look to him, as if food was something that came his way only infrequently, but I don’t remember seeing any track marks on his arms. He wasn’t an addict. So why does my brain want me to remember what he looked like?
It hits me then. I’ve seen him before. But how could I have seen him? Where could I have seen him? I can’t place him, but at least I know now why my brain wouldn’t let me sleep. I can get Harrison or DS Laird to send me a photograph. That’ll hopefully jog my memory.
I’m still mulling over who the young man is when my phone goes off. I must have been asleep for some of that time though, as it’s gone six in the morning. The screen says DCI Bain, so my brief thought of letting it go to voicemail is swiftly curtailed.
‘Sir.’ I try to sound awake.
‘You’re a bloody nuisance, Fairchild. You know that?’
He’s in a good mood then. ‘I take it this is about the young man.’ I pull aside the covers and slide my feet into the wool-lined sheepskin slippers Rose lent me. Staring out of the window shows dawn beginning to pink the cloudy sky, promising what might be a good day for some people. I suspect I’m not one of them.
‘I have to get up to speed on what’s happening, speak to the local DCI in charge and smooth a few things over. Then we need to talk.’
‘You want me to report to local CID, sir?’
Bain makes a strange noise down the line, as if he’s trying to suppress a coughing fit. It takes him a while to answer my question. ‘I don’t want you going anywhere near any kind of police station. Where are you now?’
‘A house down Leith Walk. Staying with a family friend.’
Another pause then. ‘Anywhere nearby we can meet?’
29
I remember the café on the top floor of John Lewis from my university days. ‘The Place To Eat’ they call it, but it’s just as good a place to sit and stare. The tall windows stretching across one entire wall look out across the rooftops towards Leith and beyond to the Firth of Forth. At the northern corner, I can see to Newhaven, Fife in the far distance, and I wonder whether the forensics team are still hard at work in that dank, narrow alley.
‘Fairchild.’
I look round from the window to see DCI Bain walking towards me, mug and a biscuit balanced on a tray he holds with one hand, the other carrying a b
attered leather satchel. I’ve already got my own coffee. I suggested this place because it’s easy to find and close to the city centre. It’s also not too far from Rose’s place, which meant I could get here early. Bain suggested ten o’clock, so it’s just as well I did. I arrived as the doors opened at nine, and it’s still only half past.
‘Sir.’ I wait for a tense minute or so as he puts down the tray, takes the mug and biscuit from it, then shrugs off his coat and hangs it over the back of his chair. I know what’s coming, but he’s going to take his time and make me sweat for it. Only once he’s settled down and taken a long sip of his drink does he finally get to the point.
‘What the actual fuck do you think you’re doing visiting a crime scene like that?’
I’m fine, thank you. How are you? ‘I didn’t actually have much choice, sir. When the local police ask you to do something, it’s usually a good idea to comply, is it not?’
He studies me for a moment, maybe trying to work out whether I’m taking the piss. I am, a bit. This whole situation is beginning to make me tetchy. I’m not even sure if he’s my boss, although I can’t deny he’s a superior officer and so I have to do what he tells me.
‘OK then.’ He holds his mug in both hands, elbows on the table in a manner that would infuriate my mother. ‘What did you make of it?’
So now my input is valued? ‘It looked almost exactly the same as the body in the park near my flat. Except that he was black and this poor bastard was white. I’ve only seen those few photos you showed me back when I found Dan Jones, but they were all black too, weren’t they?’
‘Most of the victims we’ve linked together are, yes. But not all of them. The body we found in Cardiff was Caucasian, and one of the Manchester ones too. This makes three white, five black.’
I try to remember the conversation in Bain’s office, the crime-scene photographs, the geographic spread of the victims. There had been six, he said. So with the one in the park in London and the young man from last night, that makes eight. Plus the one who survived. ‘What about Jones?’
‘Who?’ Bain had been about to take a drink. Trying to coordinate that with countering my question is clearly too much for him, as he spills coffee all over the table. I wait until he’s cleaned it up with a paper napkin before answering.
‘Dan Jones, sir.’
‘What about him?’ he asks after a silent count to ten I can see ticking away behind his eyes.
‘He wasn’t like the others.’
‘I know that, Fairchild. He’s still alive, for one thing. Heart’s still beating, not ripped out of his chest.’
This last bit of sarcasm is spoken perhaps a little too loudly for a public space like the café we’re sitting in. A grey-haired lady who’s taken the table just behind ours lets out a little squeak of surprise, her teacup rattling in the saucer as she rushes to put it down before she spills any. Seems the DCI isn’t the only clumsy drinker in here.
‘I mean, he must have escaped, sir. But you saw his injuries. And he wasn’t exactly the world’s healthiest specimen to start with. That badly hurt, bleeding, he’d be hard pushed to walk more than a few hundred metres, surely. And people must have seen him, right?’
Bain puts his mug down with less clattering than the old lady this time, then rubs at his face with one hand, working finger and thumb into the bridge of his nose before finally looking at me.
‘Believe it or not, we actually know how to run an investigation, Detective Constable. I was conducting inquiries while you were still playing Lady of the Manor up in One Horse Northamptonshire, or wherever it is you lived.’
It’s a cheap insult, and I manage to stop myself from protesting, but he’s not finished anyway.
‘As it happens, one of the first things we considered was that Jones must have somehow got himself to the spot where you found him. And it had occurred to both myself and Detective Sergeant Latham that he couldn’t have walked far with his bollocks cut off.’
‘Oh my word.’ The lady at the nearby table has a Morningside accent not unlike Rose’s when she’s putting on her airs and graces. She has the volume, too, although her words are those of a soprano compared to Rose’s deeper, more contralto voice. She’s loud enough to get Bain’s attention, anyway. He swivels in his seat to look at her with what must be a withering glare if her hurried departure is anything to go by. At least his temper’s cooled a little by the time he returns his focus to me.
‘Karen Eve has been going through all the CCTV footage we’ve managed to collect from the area around your apartment block, and believe me when I say that’s a fuck of a lot. We’ve also had your bins and that whole alleyway forensically examined. We are, basically, collating all the information you might expect and doing everything we can to work out where he came from.’
Put like that, I can see that my initial question might have been a bit annoying. Of course they’re doing the job properly, but I’m not involved so I can’t see it. I can’t help, only make useless suggestions.
‘Is there—?’
‘No, Fairchild, there isn’t anything you can do. Unless it involves keeping the fuck out of our way.’
I slump back in my seat, take a swig of not very nice coffee. I’m about to say something more when Bain speaks again.
‘And that brings us to the point of this meeting.’ The change in his tone is abrupt, switching from the slightly exasperated DCI to something a touch more reasonable. He even puts a little sigh into his voice when he looks straight at me and says, ‘It’s time for you to leave.’
The Place To Eat is always a bustle of noise, people coming and going, taking a moment out of their busy shopping experience to refuel. And yet in that moment it seems like someone has switched off the sound. There’s just me and DCI Bain with our coffees, the rest of the world outside our own protective bubble.
‘Leave?’ I know what it means, but I can’t help myself from asking all the same. ‘Why?’
Bain reaches down to the satchel he brought with him, undoes the clasps and retrieves a newspaper from inside. My heart drops as I see the tabloid format. It almost gives out altogether when he unfolds the paper and lays it on the table in front of me. I thought that Police Scotland top was quite fashionable, but it makes me look like a little girl in her big brother’s hand-me-downs.
‘Detective Sergeant Laird and Detective Constable Harrison are currently explaining to their boss why they took you to the crime scene last night. Would you care to enlighten me as to how they even knew you were in town?’
I open my mouth to say ‘Because Shepherd told them,’ but then my brain catches up. Bain didn’t know they’d been informed of my arrival, and he certainly didn’t know I was going to speak to Mrs Jones. I know Shepherd wanted plausible deniability, but that’s taking it a bit far, surely?
‘Would you believe it if I told you I bumped into DC Harrison and her flatmate a couple of nights ago, sir? Seems her local pub is the same one I used to drink in when I was a student. Some coincidence, eh?’
‘It’s no bloody wonder Billy Latham can’t stand the sight of you.’ Bain rubs at his face again, then puts his hand down on the paper, covering up the headline ‘Newhaven Murder!’ Well, at least they’re not talking about me, even if I’m easy enough to spot in the photograph.
‘Look, sir. I came here to get away from that kind of attention, remember? I was doing a pretty good job of it, too. But when that body turned up, they needed to know if it was similar to what you’ve been dealing with already. Janie . . . DC Harrison knew I was in town, where I was staying. It made sense to get me to have a look, if only to confirm what they already suspected.’
‘It’s still bloody irregular. I was already on my way up.’
‘They couldn’t leave the body there, and photographs only go so far. It’s not that long since you took me to see that poor bastard you found in the park near my flat, anyway.
If that was OK, then why not this?’
Bain pulls the paper back towards him, folds it and places it so that I can only see the bottom half of the photograph. ‘End of the day, you going to the crime scene’s a Police Scotland problem. You could have said no, but then we both know you never would. No, my problem is that you were seen and photographed. They don’t seem to have worked out who you are yet, but it’s only a matter of time.’
I’m not stupid. I know where this is leading. ‘You want me gone.’
‘It’s for the best. We’re going to be up here working this case for a few days at least, probably more if my gut feeling’s right. Thanks to some nuisance local reporter making the same connections as us, the media focus is already more than I’d like. No way that’s going to get anything but worse.’
I start to protest. I’ve run away from these leeches far too much already. My instinct is to turn and fight, but I know deep down that you can’t win against the tabloids. Not that way. I learned that lesson when I broke Chet Wentworth’s expensive camera. If I’m ever going to be able to work again, then I need the press to forget about me, find someone new to pick on. Frustrating as it is, I need to lay low and bide my time.
‘Knew you’d understand,’ Bain says, taking my silence for compliance. He plays with his mug for a while. ‘Meantime, there is actually something you can do. You can help Eve go through the CCTV footage. We’ve a ton of it from around your park too. Might as well earn that salary you’re getting paid, right?’
‘Wait. You want me to go back to London? Back to work?’ I’m delighted, of course. It’s boring as sin going through CCTV footage, but it beats daytime telly any day. The look on Bain’s face tells me that’s not the main reason he’s sending me back though.
‘You want the press to see me, don’t you? You want their attention focused down south so you can get on with the job up here.’ It takes the shine off being reinstated. Bain simply shrugs by way of confirmation.