by SE Moorhead
Kyra remembered when they had found Skylar, her white dress fanned out in the water, blonde hair radiating, open eyes like pale marbles under the glassy surface, the silver Mizpah pendant around her neck. It had reminded her of a painting she had seen in the Tate – Ophelia.
It was an image that would never leave her.
The pond had frozen over solid, making it impossible initially to remove her body or examine her. The surface of the water had been like glass, Skylar’s face breaking through as though a mask had been laid on top of the ice, the rest of her body visible but untouchable. Kyra shook at the memory of Skylar’s pale blue lips, the tips of her eyelashes covered in tiny icy beads, her small black pupils unseeing, the tops of her fingers poking out from the ice as her hands had floated, palm-up.
And resting on her chest, a box, brightly coloured, shocking pink, tied with an orange satin ribbon …
It had been the contents of the box that had linked the two deaths, proving the two women were killed by the same man, establishing the pattern.
On her thirtieth birthday, in the midst of the investigation, her mother and Molly had bought Kyra a special gift, one they knew she would appreciate, and presented it to her in a box with a bow. She could still see the confusion on their faces, the shock when she dropped the box and ran to the bathroom to vomit.
How could she have explained to them what had been in the last box like this that she had seen?
Kyra’s Commset rang, vibrating against the wooden surface of the small table on which it lay, snapping her out of her thoughts. Her mother’s face appeared on the small screen, her expression distraught, giving Kyra a stab of anxiety.
‘Mum? What’s wrong?’
‘Molly’s gone!’ A gasp from her mother as though she was shocked by her own words.
‘Again?’ Kyra flopped back onto the sofa and put her hand to her forehead.
She got it, Molly was upset, but she couldn’t have picked a worse time to do one of her disappearing acts.
‘When?’ She focused back on her mother’s face.
‘I went in to wake her this morning and her bed was empty. I’m so worried … and with him out, and—’
‘Mum! Mum! Take a moment.’ The thought of her niece being out and about when Lomax was free made her stomach cold with fear.
Kyra watched as her mother wiped her eyes with a tissue.
‘Try not to worry, Mum. She’ll come back, she always does. You know what she’s like. She’ll be home before you know it. She’s bound to have been distressed with you know …’
But her words belied her own anxiety and guilt. She should have checked on Molly before she left, but she had listened for at least half an hour through the bedroom wall as the poor girl had cried herself to sleep in the night and she hadn’t wanted to disturb her.
Molly was beautiful, smart and headstrong, but incredibly fragile. Who wouldn’t be in her situation – seeing her mother abducted, never having known her father, and then her beloved grandfather passing away. So much loss in her short life.
But still. Why cause more trouble?
‘I’ve tried her Commset a million times, but nothing,’ her mum said.
Why the hell didn’t I get one of Jimmy’s bloody tracking chips? Then she would have known exactly where Molly was, could have gone straight there and given her a piece of her mind. But Molly would never have agreed to a chip. She was nearly eighteen; the legislature banned chipping children without their consent over the age of twelve.
‘She’s had a shock. She just needs some time to think. She’ll call us soon. I’m sure of it.’ Kyra paused. ‘I’m sorry. I should do more. She should stay with me for a while, give you a break.’
Her mother’s eyes were rimmed with pink, her cheeks red from crying.
‘That wouldn’t work,’ her mum sniffed. ‘Molly needs someone who’s around all the time. You’re always at work. And you have no patience.’
Kyra ignored this. ‘She might have left for college early.’ It was unlikely, knowing Molly. ‘I don’t really know what we can do right now except try to ring her again. She’ll come home when she’s hungry or tired. Try not to lose it with her, okay? She probably needs to calm down, have a bit of head space. When she’s back I’ll come over and talk to her. There’s no point in you two clashing horns again. It will only make things more difficult for you.’
Some psychologist I am! I should have anticipated that Molly would have had a reaction to her mother’s killer being back out on the streets. She might have only been little when her mum died, but it never goes away.
But, on reflection, she knew it was her own guilt that was blinding her. If it wasn’t for me, Molly would still have her mother.
She pushed the thought away.
‘She’ll calm down once the police have got him back in custody.’ Kyra couldn’t bear to say his name.
‘She’ll be back by Tuesday for Emma’s anniversary, won’t she?’
‘Of course she will, Mum.’ Kyra tried to sound as confident as possible. Reassurance was what was needed.
‘Fourteen years.’ She watched her mum on the screen shaking her head. ‘Right then.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.’
‘Okay, Mum, speak later.’
As her Commset screen blacked out, Kyra lay back on the sofa.
Her mind drifted back to the pretty gift box that had lain on the chest of Skylar Lowndry – the shocking pink cardboard, the orange satin ribbon pulled and placed in an evidence bag, the tension as the lid was lifted …
And, inside, a pair of severed hands holding a real human heart.
Chapter Eight
FRIDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2035
7.58 a.m.
He’s waiting for her at the bus stop near the hospital, almost pulls her from the step in his eagerness, wraps himself around her. He’s handsome, older than her. I wonder for a moment if I’ve made a mistake, but then I see her face in profile, a reluctance, a wariness. She leans away from him slightly.
An old man in between us is struggling to alight. I reach out my arm to guide him; he takes it gratefully, his wrinkly face smooths momentarily with a smile, reflecting my own, well-practised one.
I move towards the hospital in the slipstream of people but duck out to stand close to the couple as he corrals her outside the entrance, his face earnest. He has a few admiring looks from women passing by. It might be the uniform he wears, they probably think he’s a doctor.
I study my mini-screen, raising my head intermittently, pretending I am waiting for someone so that I can listen. I shift my feet slightly, I’ve found that if I stand too still people notice something’s not quite right.
As they talk I swipe through the photographs I have collected of her; yoga at the Well-Being centre, in the gym, going to the Farmer’s Arms with her friends, working at the hospital.
I have been this close to her twice before; once in a queue in a shop, and once when I was handing out anti-poverty leaflets in the street. I stole them from a protestor so that I could get close to her. That time, I got to look in her eyes. I’ve even sat in the waiting room, another faceless patient, but she didn’t seem to notice that my name was never called.
This is the closest I have been to them when they have been together.
‘Have you thought more about my offer, Isabel?’ he asks, moving his face in front of hers whenever she looks away so she can’t avoid his gaze.
Isabel.
Such a beautiful name.
‘Please say you’ll move in with me,’ he whines.
I’ve heard her speak before but, every time, it gets me in the guts, like a beautiful piece of music that moves me.
‘I need to concentrate on my exams first, Andrew. Let’s talk about it then.’ She nods as if to verify her words, or maybe to appease him.
He takes her hands and holds them in his own, together in front of her, as though he is praying, and I am reminded of a statue at the children’s home of the
Virgin Mary, her pale hair and blue eyes not unlike Isabel’s.
On the ring finger of his left hand there is a white indentation, a history in pigmentation, a warning.
‘Don’t go out tonight, stay in with me. We’ll get some food, wine, have a cosy night in.’
‘I promised the girls I’d go out with them.’ She pulls her hands away from his and loosens the collar of her coat as she talks. ‘Can’t we meet in the canteen when you’ve finished your first shift?’
You are not worthy of her, Andrew.
‘Give them a miss tonight – I need you more than they do! Anyway, the Farmer’s Arms is a dump! Wouldn’t you rather be with me?’
That is all the information I need.
Tonight is the night.
8.05 a.m.
Kyra’s Commset rang off just as she stepped out of the shower.
The screen was still bright when she picked it up, hoping to see Molly’s number.
TOM MORGAN.
Her heart rate rose as she commanded a return call, audio only. Holding her towel tightly around her, she placed her Commset on her ear, rivulets from her short, slicked-back hair running down her back.
He answered immediately.
‘We found a body, early this morning at the Scrambles. It looks like she died last night.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry if this brings back difficult memories, but I want you to hear this from me. The heart and the hands … they’re gone.’
A wave of horrific recognition rolled over her. She opened her mouth, but it took a moment for the words to come. Feeling as though she had been punched in the stomach, she reeled back and sat down on the edge of the sofa.
And so it had begun.
His ritual – two murders, six days apart.
‘Was she a Type-A?’
This was how the police had referred to the first women found each year, the ones who had been butchered and dumped. It had probably been the kindest way to refer to them, as they had been women down on their luck, pariahs according to the press: a prostitute in 2019; Madelyn, a drug addict, in 2020; and then Emma.
Kyra had struggled to understand the link between the other women and Emma. She had been no saint, but she had been no pariah either. Yes, she had lived an unconventional life, residing in a squat, having a baby young, but she had fought for the environment; that had been her passion. Maybe that was it – she had been arrested a few times for eco-protests. But that wasn’t the same as prostitution and drug-taking, was it? What had the killer known about Emma that made him take her? As a profiler it was her job to know these things, to understand the pattern, but she had failed. Maybe Tom had been right, she had been too close to the case; she hadn’t been able to see beyond her love for Emma.
‘Yes, she was Type A,’ Tom answered eventually.
‘But you can’t find him? Why not? Can’t you use his bio-tracker?’ she said finally. It was obvious, wasn’t it? All criminals had bio-trackers injected before they even left court.
‘It was an old one. Lomax has been locked up for fourteen years. He must have found a way to block the signal. The body was found down at the Scrambles, there’re plenty of the criminal fraternity down there who would be willing to help Lomax with the tech.’
Kyra knew of the Scrambles from her time working with the police. The Croxley Estate, as was its official title, was a ghost town of tiny abandoned houses, part-government owned, created as affordable housing for public sector workers. It had been built at the turn of the century on a landfill site on the Thames which was later discovered to be hazardous, uninhabitable. Junkies and drifters were its main residents now, and those with nowhere else to call home. There was a feeling of collective tiredness, a malaise, as though the toxicity had poisoned their spirits. It didn’t surprise her that there was an illegal dump out there, the detritus of humanity mixed with the detritus of everyday life.
‘He might be hiding down there,’ Tom said. ‘I can’t see anyone grassing him up. We’ve sent an armed team in, but we don’t want another riot on our hands. They hate us as it is.’
Us?
So, she was officially back with the police.
‘What are you going to do now, wait until next Wednesday night to see if he follows the same pattern?’ She couldn’t help the bitterness in her tone.
‘We’re going to do everything we can to catch him before that happens.’
Once the call was over, Kyra dried and dressed in a jumper and jeans. In the living room she put the news channel on and images from the Scrambles appeared. The reporter at the scene was saying: ‘There are rumours she may be the latest victim of the serial murderer known as the Mizpah Murderer. David Lomax, jailed for the killings fourteen years ago, recently escaped during his mother’s funeral and is presently at large. Police have not yet made any statement as to whether or not Lomax is responsible, nor have they given the identity of the woman whose remains were found on a refuse dump here in the derelict Croxley Housing estate which is known locally as the Scrambles …’
Kyra let her mind wander over thoughts that she had locked away for so long. There were some things that didn’t make sense – why had he picked Emma? What did Lomax’s expression mean when he saw the Mizpah pendant? Why were the two types of victims so disparate? If she could only find the clue that would help her crack the code and get to the truth of the matter. Didn’t she owe it to her sister, to the families of the other victims? And if she could understand why the killer did those things, wouldn’t she be able to prevent someone else from dying?
Kyra suddenly imagined herself using CASNDRA with Lomax, lying near the sleeping beast in a darkened lab, excavating the untapped depths of his depravity.
The thought made her shudder.
Would she find the answers to all the painful questions that had tormented her for so long if she looked into his mind? Could she bear to?
It wasn’t possible anyway. They didn’t know where Lomax was. She would have to use a more conventional method of finding answers.
Today was Friday. He had killed last night. She had until midnight on Wednesday before he killed his next victim.
She lifted her laptop from on top of the shelving unit and sat at the small table. With a sense of trepidation, she brought up the psychological evaluation report files from the original case which she had hidden away for fourteen years, prepared to hunt for a clue as to where he might be hiding now.
With a deep breath, she typed in the password MIZPAH.
9.09 a.m.
I can smell her perfume standing here, the roses and the jasmine, and I feel so close to her. I have taken off my shoes, left them at the bottom of the stairs as a worshipper might when they enter a temple barefoot, wanting to feel the carpet she stands on beneath my skin.
I walked back from the hospital to give myself some time to think. Her father left early for work. It’s only the two of them.
Elise was only a child when she died, but I wonder if she would have had a bedroom like this when she reached Isabel’s age – a bridge between girlhood and womanhood played out between the childhood bed and the dressing table full of make-up, the soft toys on top of the wardrobe and the seductive clothes inside, the pink floral wallpaper and the spiked heels.
I open a drawer and touch some of Isabel’s clothes, lift them and put them next to my face, they are soft and fragrant. I run my fingers across her mirror, thinking of what she sees when she looks into the glass. I pull back her bedclothes and touch the cotton sheet beneath.
The feeling of being so close to her, in her space, overwhelms me.
But then I think of my Elise, all the things she never got to do, to be. There was no perfume for Elise, no growing up and exploring her life as a woman … and before I know it, great sobs are choking me. I am on my haunches, broken, in the middle of the bedroom floor.
Finally, when I am spent, I rise up.
I pick up a glass angel paperweight that sits on the dresser amongst the bottles and tubes of make-up. It is crude and col
ourless, the head no more than a spherical blob, the body wide at the base, two tiny wings denoting its status melded to its featureless bulk.
I decide it is a sign that Isabel is the next angel I should send to Elise to protect her.
She was always afraid of the dark.
Chapter Nine
FRIDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2035
2.15 p.m.
A young female officer, who had introduced herself as DC Alex Finn, had shown Kyra in to Tom’s office ten minutes earlier. She had stood over Kyra, watching her suspiciously as the computer read her ID card, and her name, address and occupation came up on the screen. She had been pleasant and polite enough but had scrutinised Kyra when she had rejected her offer of coffee. How could she drink anything now? Her guts were churning thinking about the files she had spent all morning poring over, knowing what she was about to get herself involved in.
A can of worms.
Kyra gazed through the glass wall that overlooked the main core of the station – the Hub, as it was known – and could see fair-haired Alex moving cat-like through the group of other officers who were getting on with their work. The Hub had changed a great deal since Kyra had last been there. The room was not the confusion of computers, sockets, wires, filing cabinets and in-trays that it had been. Now it was stripped back, minimalist, decorated in pale and mid-grey tones which gave a calm, serious atmosphere. Gone were the laptops, replaced by large motion-and-voice-activated computer screens placed almost continuously around the walls of the office, like windows onto the world of crime. There were no radios, telephones or even mobiles visible now that discreet Commsets were the standard.