Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  The torch beam moved up the woman’s splayed body. It didn’t quiver. She wouldn’t let it quiver.

  Whatever you’ve done to her face, you sick bastard, she thought, I’m ready for it.

  The neckline of the strange hessian top showed two pale collarbones and a small cross on a fine chain. The skin of the woman’s neck was bleakly white. Then –

  A cap of black blood. A cut edge of vertebra. The rotten timber behind. Nothing else.

  ‘Jesus,’ Rose murmured. Cleanly beheaded. What the hell?

  She moved the torch beam to the right, tracking carefully down the woman’s shoulder, her arm, to her clawed left hand.

  To what was held in her clawed left hand.

  Oh Christ. Oh Jesus bloody Christ.

  Rose stepped reflexively backwards, caught her heel on a tussock of grass. Fell sprawling.

  She lay on her back in the half-darkness, fighting for breath, staring up at the woman’s body, fastened to a cross, holding her own severed head in her left hand.

  Rose climbed to her feet, mind racing. She fought to get a grip on her thoughts, to master her heartbeat, her breathing – to contain the panic. For half a second, when the white torch beam had fallen across the lifeless face, she’d wondered if she was finally having that breakdown everyone said she had coming. It was, surely, an image from a nightmare, a psychotic’s hallucination – that dangling, lifeless head, suspended by its pale-blonde hair.

  But this is real, Rose told herself. This. Is. Real.

  A real crime. A real murder, and a real murderer. A real body, that was once a real woman, with real friends, real family –

  Time to do your bloody job, DI Rose.

  Now she went over the body with the torch held close by her right temple. The woman wasn’t tied to the cross – she was pinned to it, with neat iron pins pushed through the skin of her calves and wrists. She hadn’t bled. The cross itself wasn’t a cross but a section of an old wooden cartwheel, propped up with scrap timber.

  The hair of the woman’s head was knotted intricately to the dead hand. Her eyes were closed. She’d been pretty, Rose noted – pale as paper in the torchlight, with striking dark brows and an accentuated upper lip. Her chin was pointed and her cheekbones were high and flat.

  Rose pulled off her leather gloves and snapped on a pair of latex disposables. She knelt to examine the severed throat. Wasn’t sure what she was looking for – Christ, she wasn’t a pathologist, and wouldn’t want to be – but you never knew. She gently touched her fingertips to the cut edge of flesh, suppressing a shiver at its coldness. So tidy, she thought. A neat job. One of those. She’d read about the type: the retired accountant running women’s skins through his Singer sewing machine and never missing a stitch; the model-plane enthusiast with a shelf full of severed human ears, each one neatly bottled, pickled, labelled and filed. OCD psychos. As if it was somehow better, neater, because you didn’t leave a mess.

  Every murder leaves a mess, Rose knew.

  The man – yes, it was a man, must be a man – had done a clean, tidy job with the neck, too. Rose had had to climb on to the cartwheel-cross to take a look. It had taken everything she had to turn the torchlight once again on the black blood of the stump. Something about the stark inhumanity of it made her gut turn to ice-water.

  It looked like a cord had been used to tie off the blood vessels. This had probably reduced the bleeding. And Rose noticed something else – a hint of purple-blue, a sad, crocus colour, in the skin of the woman’s throat. Bruises. The hard touch of the killer’s fingers. Just another brute, Rose thought. Just another woman-killer.

  It took her a long time to finish her examination. The boys in the patrol car would be cursing her name. But it was what they owed her, this poor bloody woman, whoever she was. To do their bloody jobs. To do everything they could.

  Peeling off her latex gloves, Rose cast the beam of her torch once more over the body, and felt bile rise nauseatingly in her throat. She was a copper, born and bred; she’d always thought that good coppers could turn their feelings off and on like a tap, could choose what to feel and when to feel it. They could simply decide not to be horrified, not to be frightened, not to feel vulnerable, not to feel sick –

  Her dad would’ve said so. His dad, too. But they’d never seen anything like this. Had anybody?

  The torchlight glimmered on something in the grass, below the dead woman’s feet. Something plastic. Rose knelt, pulling on a glove. The plastic was a clear wallet for a bus pass or travel card; it had half fallen from its place in a woman’s purse.

  Rose glanced up.

  ‘This yours, love?’ She thumbed a driver’s licence from its slot in the leather. ‘Let’s see who you are.’ Or were, she added silently.

  She had to catch her breath when she saw the woman’s picture. The full top lip, the dark brows – the same face, of course, in a way, but Christ, what life there was in it then. The woman’s blonde hair was tousled into a loose pile on top of her head and she was smiling broadly in the photo booth. Must have been having a good day, that day.

  Rose bent her head. Jesus.

  She wiped her eye with a knuckle and blinked at the name on the licence. Katerina Zrinski.

  ‘This was you, Katerina,’ she said firmly, out loud. She tapped the photograph with her fingertip. Scowled up at the body on the wheel, the stark neck-stump, the horrendous burden knotted to the left hand. Nothing but evidence for the lab, that, now, she told herself. Just a body, a thing of bones and cold flesh. Not a person, not a woman – not Katerina Zrinski. You were long gone, Katerina, Rose thought, before he did that to you. She took a last look at the photo before she sealed it into a ziploc bag.

  She bagged the purse, pushed it into the inside pocket of her coat and turned away from the monstrosity that had once been Katerina Zrinski.

  A flash of movement caught Rose’s attention. Something moved in the deep, dark grass.

  Rose spun round, bringing the torch up sharply. Swaying grass and distant trees. An insect danced fitfully across the beam.

  Dawn had begun to show faintly, smudgily, above the horizon to the east; the fields, black when she’d arrived, were blues and greys now. But where Rose stood it was still dark, the meadow still a murk of shifting shadows.

  There was someone out there.

  Katerina’s body was a display, an exhibition, Rose thought as she played her torch over the swaying grass-tops. The killer had wanted someone to see this – otherwise, what was the point? He wanted to shock, to frighten – who knew what exactly went through a twisted mind like this – but he certainly wanted something, some sort of reaction. And surely there was no fun in getting a reaction if you weren’t there to see it …

  He’s here, she thought. He’s watching.

  She turned to look back to the lonely lane where the two cars were parked. The patrol car was a little island of off-white light in the darkness. It seemed a long way away. She flashed her torch on and off to catch their attention. The patrol car’s headlights blazed and faded as a response. They were still awake: that was something. Rose made a sharp gesture.

  After what must have been a short debate, the younger PC, Ganley, climbed out of the car and started warily down into the field.

  Again the noise behind her. Again Rose spun. Again nothing.

  Then the night exploded.

  A crash in the grass followed by a blinding white flash – Rose threw her arm across her eyes. After so long in darkness, so long in silence, the sudden burst of noise and light hit her like a blow to the face.

  But it didn’t take her long to recover her senses. Light. Flash. Camera. Photographer. Go! Three generations’ worth of policing instinct kicked in in half a second, and DI Lauren Rose was sprinting full tilt through the grass, chasing the clunk of a camera-bag and the flicker of white trainer soles in the night.

  She was a fast runner, always had been: good balance, a strong core, muscular legs – legs made for sprinting, not short skirts, she’d a
lways thought. That had bothered her when she was younger. Not now.

  The photographer veered left, probably hoping to lose Rose, but not factoring in the fraction of a second’s advantage his clumsy sidestep would give her – if she was quick enough.

  But this wasn’t Rose’s first foot pursuit, and she’d read the move. She plunged forwards, straw-like grass stems raking across her face, and felt the edge of her shoulder thump into the man’s lower thigh. He made a grunt of pain and crashed to the floor. Dead-legged him, she thought, rolling swiftly to her feet. Good.

  The man was face down in the grass, swearing a blue streak. She dropped a knee firmly into his lower back and dragged her cuffs from her pocket. Clunk, click, off to the nick. Pure muscle memory, this – she could’ve done it blindfold.

  She straightened up, breathing hard. Rubbed her shoulder and looked down at the man groaning at her feet. His camera-bag – a swish one, it looked like – had fallen a few feet away from him. His head was turned to the side; he was grimacing with pain.

  He blinked and swore when Rose turned the torch beam on his face. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Sharp cheekbones, eyes pale and close together, nose long and slightly indented at the tip. A spatter of acne under his raw-shaven jawline.

  Rose dug the angular toe of her boot into his ribs.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked shortly.

  ‘Let me up.’

  ‘Give me your name.’

  ‘Olly. Olly Stevenage.’

  ‘What were you –’

  ‘I mean Oliver. Oliver Stevenage. Put Oliver.’

  ‘What were you doing here?’

  ‘I’m a student.’

  ‘Agriculture student? What were you doing in the middle of a field at five in the morning?’

  ‘English Lit, actually. I –’

  ‘What were you doing here?’

  The young man paused. His expression was somewhere between ‘afraid’ and ‘affronted’. Whoever the hell he was, Rose saw the lad wasn’t used to being spoken to like this.

  ‘I think I should have a solicitor,’ he said. ‘I’m allowed a solicitor.’

  Rose swallowed, pushed her hair behind her ears. Turn it on, turn it off. Going postal on this toerag isn’t going to help Katerina.

  A voice in her head added dully: Nothing’s going to help Katerina. Not now.

  She dropped to one knee beside Stevenage, grabbing a handful of the student’s plaid shirt.

  ‘What did you see?’ she said, forcing her voice to remain level. It was like trying to get a grip on a snapped steel hawser. ‘Back there. What did you see? What did you take a photograph of?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Mr Stevenage, do you think the university will let you complete your degree once you’ve got a criminal record?’

  ‘I’m serious, I didn’t see anything. I took a shot in the dark – to coin a phrase.’ He smirked unpleasantly. ‘I saw the cop car, and someone with a torch. You, I guess. I pointed and clicked. Who knew what the flash might show up?’ A shrug. ‘I’m a journalist,’ he said. ‘I take chances.’

  ‘Actually, Mr Stevenage, you’re a student, and what you’re doing is trespassing on a crime scene and interfering with a police investigation.’ She bent closer. ‘So I suggest you cut out the wisecracks and start taking the situation you’re in a bit more seriously.’

  The student squirmed and made an indignant face.

  ‘Look, it was Rob, all right?’

  ‘Rob?’ She shook him by his shoulder. ‘Rob who?’

  ‘Rob, my housemate. The guy your mates have got in the car. The guy who found – whatever it is out there. The body, right? He’s an astronomer – he was out here looking for, I don’t know, planets or whatever. I got a message from him saying he’d turned up something bloody weird, so along I trotted. I’m a –’

  ‘A “journalist”. Yes. You said.’

  Rose turned as Ganley came galumphing through the grass. She looked up at him. The run had restored a bit of colour to his face, at least.

  ‘In your own time, PC Ganley.’

  The young constable swallowed.

  ‘You all right, ma’am?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She stood, brushing grass from her charcoal trousers. ‘This is Oliver Stevenage, or so he says. The man who found the body – what’s his story?’

  ‘He was in the field making astronomical observations,’ Ganley said, falling automatically into the stiff, just-the-facts manner of the copper in court. ‘Apparently there was due to be an excellent view of the Orion nebula between two and five a.m., ma’am.’

  ‘Did he have the kit? Telescope, whatever?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Looked like a good one, too. And Conners reckons he’s kosher.’

  ‘Hm.’ She looked down at Stevenage, whose face, still pressed into the grass, was twisted into a self-righteous scowl. ‘All right. Get this one up and checked out. I want a full statement – and I mean full, Ganley. And get hold of that camera –’

  Olly Stevenage set up an indignant babble of protest. She ignored it.

  ‘– and find out what’s on it. I want print copies of everything. All right? All right.’

  She left the constable helping the complaining student to his feet. When she looked back to the lane, she saw that three new cars had arrived. She narrowed her eyes against the dawn light: couple of uniforms, half a dozen suits.

  Major Crime Unit. Her colleagues. Great.

  Rose swore crisply, and began to walk back along the faint path of broken stems.

  ‘What’s she got on? Potato-sack chic, is it? Alternative type – eco-warrior. Reiki classes, quinoa for breakfast, that sort of thing.’ DI Leland Phillips, tall, willowy, with a weak chin and lazy-lidded brown eyes, sniffed. ‘The papers are going to be all over this like flies on shit.’

  You needn’t sound so happy about it, Rose thought.

  ‘Shame about the scene,’ grunted DS Mike Angler. He was a thickset man in his thirties with thinning hair and a permanent fuzz of stiff grey-black stubble. Unambitious, dim, bone idle. Phillips’s man, through and through. He scratched his fat chin. ‘SOCO ain’t gonna be happy, ma’am.’

  Phillips made a self-satisfied humming sound through pursed lips.

  ‘Ye-es,’ he said, rocking on his heels. ‘Pity you couldn’t keep on top of the housekeeping here, Rose.’

  She bristled. Couldn’t help it. These Major Crime Unit bastards – they knew how to push her buttons, all right. And a case like this – ‘juicy’, they’d call it – was right up their street. If she didn’t watch it, they were liable to take the case – and Katerina – away from her.

  ‘If SOCO can’t find enough here to give us something to work with, they’re in the wrong bloody job,’ she said.

  Phillips crossed his arms in unimpressed silence. Angler emitted another grunt and sipped from his cup of takeaway tea.

  The horror on the cartwheel-cross looked no better in the ghastly pale light of early morning. The body in its strange garments was horribly, unnaturally splayed. The blood-cap of the stump, now showing dark red, made a sickly contrast with Katerina’s white skin. The severed head knotted to the bony dead hand was an appalling violation.

  ‘Least there’s no mystery about how she died,’ said Angler.

  That’s coppers for you, Rose thought. Mask your horror with a joke. Make an off-colour remark when you feel like crying with fear. Turn it on, turn it off.

  She was closest to the body, resting a latexed hand on the wood of the cartwheel. Angler and Phillips stood a safe distance away – like spectators at a bonfire. She sniffed. The stale smell of the body caught at the back of her throat, but there were notes of fragrance there, too. Katerina had been wearing scent, something simple, rosewater maybe – and then something else more delicate, woody, complex –

  ‘Fuck me. This is a fucking nightmare, isn’t it? Christ Almighty. The state of it.’ DCI Morgan Hume, arriving late, pushing past Phillips and Angler to stand before the body wi
th his hands on his hips. ‘Where are we at?’

  Phillips opened his mouth to speak but Rose beat him to it.

  ‘DS Angler was just about to tell us how she died,’ she said quickly.

  The tubby sergeant glared at her.

  Hume, looking at Angler over his shoulder, prompted: ‘Go on, then, Poirot. Let’s have it.’

  ‘A knife-cut to the throat,’ Phillips cut in. ‘Rapid blood loss from the carotid artery. Over in seconds. The way they do it in slaughterhouses. Highly efficient, in a gruesome sort of way.’

  Hume raised his unkempt eyebrows.

  ‘That so?’ He turned back to the body. ‘The thing about slaughterhouses, Phillips, the first thing you notice about them, is that there tends to be a lot of blood. On account of the bleeding.’ He snorted, shook his head. ‘Fucking hell.’ His foul-tempered gaze fell on Rose. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘The beheading was clearly post mortem. Look here.’ She reached up and touched the woman’s skin by the bruised cut-line. Phillips winced. She took a grim satisfaction in that. ‘Barely any blood seepage round the cut, sir. Her skin’s been wiped down, but not thoroughly. I can smell her perfume. Without a proper scrubbing there’d be blood in the grain of her skin and you can see there isn’t, sir – if you look closely.’

  ‘Okay.’ Hume nodded. ‘So what was it, then? Natural causes? Ebola? Fucking bird flu?’

  Phillips guffawed.

  ‘I’d guess beating and strangulation, sir,’ Rose said. ‘There’s faint bruising, maybe fingermarks, on her neck. No damage to her face, but you can see the edges of some serious contusion here, at her collar. Presumably a lot more under her shirt. Internal injury. That’s my guess, if I had to call it.’

  ‘Well, that seems pretty conclusive,’ Phillips said loudly. ‘Guess we can all go home now.’

  The DCI ignored him. Looked up at the body, blinked, swore, scratched his jawline.

  ‘All right,’ he murmured.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Stick with it, Rose. It’s yours for now. Look her up, go dig out some family, friends, whatever you can find. I want to know who this Miss Zrinski was, what she did, who she knew, where she worked, who she was fucking – especially that. I’ll be at the station. Keep me posted.’ He turned away. ‘Phillips, give her whatever she needs,’ he said as he stumped past them, heading back to the lane.