Perfect Crime

by Helen Fields

  ‘God, Luc, this is my fault, too. I feel as if I persuaded you to stay silent at the start. Now, you’ll be in more trouble for failing to disclose the rape than if you’d just admitted the whole thing. We’ll see the superintendent together. This is as much my problem as yours.’

  ‘Are you kidding? What would be the point? It won’t make things any better for you to be suspended with me. In fact, I suspect you’d just make me watch endless black-and-white movies and eat takeaway. I’m not sure how much of that I could take. This is my problem, Ava. You did nothing more than have faith in me and try to protect my reputation. You don’t need to fall on any ill-conceived sword.’

  ‘It’s just so unfair. Your poor mother will have to relive it all if she wants to ensure the money goes where it should and your career will get put on hold again while the investigation runs its course. Where’s the justice?’

  Callanach picked up her hand and kissed the back of her knuckles so lightly Ava barely felt it. She blinked at him.

  ‘The justice,’ he said, ‘is that unlike the last time I was falsely suspected of a crime, this time I have one friend who I know will stand by me, no matter what. That means more to me than you could possibly know.’

  Ava smiled gently, squeezing his fingers then sighing as her mobile began to ring. Callanach’s followed suit seconds later. They each answered, ducking their heads for quiet against the backdrop of noisy lunchers. One look at each other was all it took to have them both running for the door.

  The Leamington Road flat boasted a short walking distance from the city centre but little else. The top-floor apartment was made up of just four rooms – kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and lounge – and two of those could only fit one person in at a time. Ava and Callanach had made it there before both Dr Ailsa Lambert and the Scenes of Crime officers, and their first job was to stop the firemen who’d found the body from destroying all the potential evidence.

  ‘Who called it in?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Neighbour below smelled burning and called us. He ran up and knocked on the door, but no one answered,’ a fire officer explained.

  ‘I’ll need anyone who entered the flat to make a statement and retrace their steps to avoid DNA or tissue contamination,’ she instructed. ‘Can you describe the scene from when you arrived?’

  ‘Sure, we were pretty certain there was no active fire, as there wasn’t any smoke coming out into the hallway, but even from the floor below, there was a coppery, sulphuric smell, which was very strong when we were at the flat door.’

  ‘Indicating?’ Ava asked.

  ‘The sulphuric smell often comes from burning human hair. It’s the chemical that keratin gives off when it burns. The coppery odour can also come from burning meat if it’s very bloody, but if it’s been in a kitchen, the smell is usually contained.

  ‘We knocked on the door hard and then took the decision to break it down when there was no response. We found the male lying on the lounge floor. He hasn’t been moved, as it was obvious he was dead as soon as we saw him. All my officers did was turn off the electricity and unplug the toaster, then we checked the rest of the flat for people or other fire sources. As soon as it was secure, we called you.’

  Ailsa Lambert strode in, issuing a barrage of orders to clear the scene immediately. She started photographing the body within seconds, addressing Ava without looking over to her.

  ‘Just when I thought I’d seen everything, human beings stoop to new lows. This man’s been dead no more than an hour, rather less, I’d think.’

  She got down on her knees and took a close-up shot of the cable tie that held his wrists together, then looked into the digital camera’s viewfinder screen, enlarging the shot.

  ‘Ava, you have a problem,’ Ailsa declared.

  ‘I take it by your tone that you mean a greater problem than a semi-naked man lying tied up and dead on the floor?’

  ‘I absolutely do. It’ll take more detailed investigations, but judging by the product mark, and the manufacturing groove in the nylon, there’s a good chance these cable ties came from the same batch used in the Fenella Hawksmith murder.’

  ‘Show me,’ Ava said, bending down next to her.

  ‘Here,’ Ailsa said, ‘on the square section the tail is threaded through, there’s a diagonal nick where the nylon is lifted away from the production line. It’s at the same angle and the same length as the other cable ties, and the product code is B80, same as before.’

  ‘There must be millions of them in circulation,’ Ava said.

  ‘Of course, but two of them have turned up attached to bodies in this city, restraining victims prior to death. How likely is that?’

  Ava ran her hands through her hair.

  ‘No you don’t, not in my crime scene. I don’t need any more hairs on this floor. Hands down and hood up.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ava said, pulling her crime-scene suit hood up immediately. ‘I was just hoping against hope that the two deaths had nothing to do with one another.’

  ‘Bursting your bubble there,’ Ailsa said. ‘High levels of psychological torture involved in both. They’d each have known what was coming. This man would have died substantially faster. He’d have been rendered unconscious as soon as the electricity went through him, but still, that’s no way to go.’

  Callanach finished his conversation with some other fire officers and joined them.

  ‘Fuck …’ he muttered.

  Ailsa gave him one of her looks reserved for particularly bad language, which she discouraged at her crime scenes.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ she said. ‘Men always react badly to the disfigurement of male genitalia. This one is especially shocking, I’ll give you that.’ She stood up and leaned over the corpse. ‘So our victim is, I believe, Japanese by race, between twenty-five and thirty years of age at first assessment – visual only – and I’d estimate five foot ten tall. His clothing was unbuttoned and unzipped to allow for exposure of his genitalia and chest.

  ‘There’s a jug thrown onto the sofa, which we’ll take for fingerprinting once it’s been photographed in situ, but my guess is that it was used to pour water over the body to maximise electrical conductivity. What’s left of this man’s penis’ – she took an implement from her bag and hooked it under the blackened inches of flesh – ‘was originally inserted into the toaster before the current was switched to live. With the water, it was easily enough to have killed him. The burns are in line with death by electrocution, as is the splitting of the skin up the groin. His legs were trapped between items of furniture to prevent him from jerking away from the toaster. The other burn points on the body aren’t separate injuries, just a side effect of the electricity trying to leave his body.’

  Callanach walked to the door of the flat, and inspected the locks and surfaces.

  ‘No damage,’ he said. ‘Just like at Fenella Hawksmith’s place. Whoever did this was let in without a fight.’

  One of the tech officers handed Ailsa a passport.

  ‘Here we go. Looks like the victim is Osaki Shozo, twenty-six years of age. He’s wearing a wedding ring and I noticed two pairs of women’s shoes in the corner. We’ll need his wife to attend the mortuary to formally identify the body.’

  ‘I’ll get straight on it,’ Ava said.

  ‘You’d better,’ Ailsa said. ‘Whoever killed Mr Shozo here is terribly disturbed. This, and what happened to Fenella Hawksmith, is the work of a deeply psychotic mind.’

  ‘The deaths are close together,’ Callanach noted. ‘Usually there’s a longer recovery or planning period, or at least a greater time span when the offender’s feeding off reliving the event.’

  ‘Psychopaths need constant stimulation. The more disturbed the mind, the less gratification the perpetrator will take from each violent act,’ Ailsa contributed.

  ‘It’s about more than that, though,’ Ava said. ‘Serial killers refine their technique with each murder. They think up new mechanisms to try out. Most criminally active psychopaths regard the m
urders they commit as a work in progress. A new victim is a blank canvas. Osaki Shozo was an experiment as much as he was an expression of the murderer’s vision and capabilities. The question is, what exactly is our killer trying to show off about himself?

  ‘The Fenella Hawksmith scene was emotionally complex. The bindings were not only a practical method of restraint, but they also took away more than the physical ability to fight. It was like an additional punishment, a sign of what was to come. When you render a victim physically helpless, the offender is also expressing their own power.’

  ‘And the toaster?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘It’s not about the toaster, it’s about his penis,’ Ava said. ‘He’s been emasculated, reducing the victim to something less than male.’

  ‘Could it be retributive, maybe following a sexual assault?’ Callanach suggested.

  ‘Worth considering, although vigilante beatings are usually marked by a high level of out-of-control violence, typically resulting in multiple punches and kicks. There’s one punch to his face but that’s it. Overall, this is very controlled, hands-off violence. It’s structured.’

  ‘True, but there are cases of women waiting until their partner’s asleep or passed-out drunk before cutting off their penis. This could just be a more imaginative version of that,’ Callanach said.

  ‘Only the victim died, which negates the point of rendering his penis useless. Women who commit forceful penectomies usually want their victim to be aware of what’s happened to him. The payoff is in the emotional damage suffered, as much as the physical loss. It would have been obvious to whoever did this that the victim was likely to die.’

  ‘Penectomy?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘Yes. There’s actually a word for it,’ Ailsa said, shifting position to the victim’s head, peeling the tape off his mouth and sealing it in an evidence bag, then prising open his jaws. A chunk of bloodied meat fell out. ‘New evidence bag for human tissue,’ the pathologist called to a passing tech officer. ‘He bit through his tongue. Not uncommon but it’s cut clean off. The shock must have been sudden and massive. His heart would have stopped immediately.’

  ‘Which meant the killer chose a method that enabled him or her to enter, do what they wanted and get out fast. Why such a different scenario to Fenella Hawksmith?’ Ava mused.

  ‘He or she is adaptable. Mrs Hawksmith lived alone. Lock the door, don’t answer, they were never going to be disturbed. Here, there was the possibility that the wife might come home for an unforeseen reason,’ Callanach said.

  ‘It’s my fuckin’ flat. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed to go in!’

  A woman pushed between two officers, tripping on a tech bag and literally falling into the lounge.

  Ava and Callanach both lurched forwards in an effort to shield the woman from the charred body on the floor, but too late. She was screaming before Ava could reach out a hand to her. Ailsa grabbed a sterile sheet from a quick-thinking SOCO and covered Osaki Shozo’s shocking state.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she screeched. ‘Osaki? Oh! Holy fuck, that can’t be real. What happened to my husband?’

  A man burst through, all bulging biceps and amateur tattoos.

  ‘Kylie? Let me see my girlfriend!’ he shouted into the face of the uniformed officer attempting unsuccessfully to restrain him.

  ‘It’s a crime scene,’ Ailsa sighed softly in Ava’s direction.

  ‘Everyone out except SOCOs,’ Ava shouted. ‘Ma’am, I appreciate you’re distressed. We’re going to move you to somewhere we can talk.’

  She nodded to the team of officers, who were now crowded at the flat entrance, suddenly in the vicinity, having been nowhere useful when the entrance to the flat should have been under guard. It took three of them to remove the posturing male, and another two to get the sobbing woman to her feet and out into the corridor.

  ‘If that’s the wife, then why is another man calling her his girlfriend?’ Callanach asked Ava.

  ‘Maybe the marriage was part of a cash-for-immigration-papers deal,’ Ava offered.

  ‘Perhaps, but her reaction was more personal than professional. If that was a business deal, she’d have been off the hook with a dead pseudo-husband and free to offer her services elsewhere.’

  ‘Could you two continue this outside, do you think?’ Ailsa cut in. ‘We now have additional scene processing to undertake and it’s time we made the deceased more comfortable.’

  Ava and Callanach obliged. They found the woman in a police van outside the entrance to the flat. Her boyfriend – the need to follow proper procedure having finally occurred to the uniformed officers – was being held separately. Ava introduced herself and asked the woman’s name.

  ‘Kylie Shozo,’ she sniffed, accepting the bundle of tissues being offered by a policewoman.

  ‘Can you confirm who the deceased is?’

  ‘That’s my husband, Osaki. What in the name of Christ happened to him?’ She blew her nose noisily and dropped the tissues to the floor of the van.

  ‘Osaki Shozo?’ Ava clarified.

  ‘Obviously,’ Kylie replied with an open-mouthed frown. ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘That seems unlikely, I’m afraid. When did you last see your husband?’

  ‘He was here this morning when we left. Everything was normal. Who did that to him?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. I was hoping you might be able to tell us if your husband was in any trouble or had enemies?’

  ‘Osaki?’ She laughed then sobbed. ‘Not likely. He never said boo to a bloody goose. Am I going to lose my flat over this? Will I get kicked out because he’s gone and died?’

  Ava folded her arms and made herself count to five.

  ‘Mrs Shozo, your husband is the victim of a crime. There will need to be a postmortem. The body will be released to you for burial when a criminal investigation has been successfully completed.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just great. I can’t afford to pay for his funeral. That stuff’s expensive. I didn’t ask for any of …’

  ‘Who were you referring to when you said “we” left this morning?’ Ava cut in.

  Kylie stuck her chin in the air. ‘Beef.’

  ‘Presumably Beef is the gentleman who entered the flat after you?’

  ‘That’s right. And my private life’s none of your business, you snooty bitch.’ Kylie took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and shoved a stick in her mouth.

  ‘You can’t light that in a police van, but you’re at liberty to smoke it outside,’ Ava told her. ‘Did you have a conversation with your husband before you and Beef left this morning?’

  ‘No. He was in the bedroom.’

  ‘Can you describe your current relationship with your husband?’

  ‘Are you stupid?’ Kylie laughed.

  ‘Apparently,’ Ava mumbled. ‘Look, Mrs Shozo, we’ll need to take you and – sorry, does Beef have a real name?’

  ‘Sheldon,’ Kylie said quietly.

  That explained the use of the nickname then, Ava thought.

  ‘You and Sheldon will have to come to the police station, give statements, and provide fingerprints and DNA samples to be excluded from other evidence at the crime scene if you’ve both been at the flat recently. We’ll also need to establish your movements yesterday and today. We’ll need contact details for his family, too.’

  ‘Tokyo. I’m not phoning to tell them about this.’ She lit the cigarette anyway.

  Ava opened the van door to release the smoke.

  ‘That’s fine. We’ll contact the Japanese embassy. So, help me understand. Very briefly, you and your husband were separated but still sharing a flat. How did he feel about that?’

  ‘He just frigging cried. Not in front of me, mind, but I heard him locked in the bathroom. For a while he tried to persuade me to stick with it, you know, but he couldn’t get work. We never went out or had any fun. He’s some sort of computer geek, yeah? When I first met him, I thought he’d be able to get a good job here that’d pay a ton. No
point marrying someone who isn’t going to pay the bills, right? So I said yes when he proposed, got him a bloody visa and what happened? I ended up forkin’ out for all the rent, the bills and basically looking after him. Can you believe that?’

  ‘It must have been difficult for you both,’ was the most diplomacy Ava could muster. ‘So, how did you meet Beef?’

  ‘He’s the captain of the darts team at my local. Beef’s in construction. Should’ve stuck to my own from the start. Serves me right for trying something new, I guess.’

  Ava moved to exit the van.

  ‘I did love Osaki, for a while, anyway.’

  Ava paused to listen.

  ‘When we first met, you know? He was kind and sweet, sort of exotic. I loved listening to him talk in Japanese. Did you never meet anyone like that? Who just seemed so completely different to anyone else you’d ever known that you just got carried away with it all?’

  Ava didn’t have an answer for that.

  ‘Will you be able to tell me if he had life insurance?’ Kylie finished.

  Ava left uniformed officers to deal with the appalling Kylie. She’d thought it impossible to feel any more sympathy for Osaki Shozo than when she’d first seen his body, but the realisation that his life must have been just as miserable as his horrific death was gutting.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  11 March

  Five fifty-four in the morning and he hadn’t slept a wink. He never did after a kill. His body was thrumming, laid on sweat-stained sheets and a mattress that had accommodated increasing amounts of solitary celebration, so much so that its owner was planning on purchasing himself a new one directly following his next salvage operation.

  He was the ultimate recycler, the embodiment of green energy, taking the life source of people who’d squandered it and recharging himself, coming out stronger, enhanced from the process.