Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Yeah,’ White agreed. She wound the footage back and froze on the clearest image of the coat he was wearing. There was a white logo on the left of it, but it was blurred. ‘The clothes as well. I couldn’t make out a logo on the coat but I’ll bet you twenty quid that coat’s a North Face or some such brand that the kids hoover up.’

  ‘Show me the sequence again.’ Cole watched as the figure marched casually towards the camera, wondering if he was well aware of the CCTV and was showing off. ‘Age-wise, I’m putting him at anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five, maybe up to thirty. Show me him swaggering again.’

  He watched the killer walk towards the camera. ‘He’s buzzing. Look how he’s walking. He thinks he’s in an East Coast gangsta movie. Great work, Whitey, and this is where the good news piles up. We’ve got footage from Wellington Road if he took a left at the next junction. If he took a right at Rathbone Road, we haven’t got anything until Long Lane. But we’ve got a time window now, so no more hours of watching endless nothing.’

  Cole and White went back to his desk and looked at the tagged and labelled pen drives laid out in neat lines. He picked up two and, handing them to her, said, ‘Wellington Road and Rathbone Road at the junction with Long Lane.’

  ‘He could have carried on straight down Wavertree Road and into the city centre.’

  Cole considered the idea and the geography of the neighbourhood he’d grown up in. ‘He’d had his moment of theatre in front of the CCTV on Picton Road.’ He picked up the receiver of his landline phone and dialled. ‘If it was me, I’d turn into Rathbone Road and take a left down North Drive. That would give him multiple getaway options.’

  ‘Let’s go with those scenarios first.’

  He called Clay. ‘Eve, it’s Barney. Whitey’s come up trumps on the CCTV from Picton Road.’

  37

  12.03 pm

  In Autopsy Suite 1 of the Royal Liverpool Hospital mortuary, Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks stood on one side of the board facing the pathologist Doctor Mary Lamb and her APT Harper.

  Harper nodded and looked down at the body of Karl Adamczak.

  ‘Why are his arms bent at the elbow and his hands bunched into fists, Doctor Lamb?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘You may well have also noticed a less defined bend at his knees.’

  Hendricks looked at the knees and thought that they looked like they were about to attempt a fuller bend, to kneel and pray perhaps.

  ‘It’s a pugilistic attitude. It happens to the human body when it’s exposed to extreme heat. After Mr Adamczak died, the muscles in his body contracted because of their exposure to fire.’

  Hendricks looked Karl Adamczak’s body up and down.

  ‘We performed an autopsy on his twin Václav yesterday. It took eight hours from start to finish. He was exactly the same.’ Doctor Lamb indicated Karl Adamczak’s throat. ‘Put a light there, please, Harper.’ She pointed at a brown discolouration, where the scorch marks on his neck ended and there was a small patch of unburned flesh.

  As Harper illuminated it with his torch, Hendricks examined the curve of the shape.

  ‘I think that’s a thumbprint,’ said Doctor Lamb. ‘If yesterday was anything to go by, I think the cause of death is going to be strangulation.’

  Hendricks looked at her and tried to conceal the horror and utter sorrow he felt for Karl Adamczak and his twin brother. Her elderly face was solemn but in her blue eyes, there was a permanently imprinted smile, and he knew that she could see through his bravado.

  ‘Doctor Lamb,’ said Hendricks. ‘Are you certain that the Adamczak brothers didn’t die in the fire?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely sure. Yesterday, when I opened Václav Adamczak’s throat, I was looking for two things. There was no soot in his windpipe so he can’t have breathed in smoke. Therefore he died before the fire was started.’

  Briefly, Hendricks worked out the logic of the scene from the killers’ point of view. In setting fire to a living human being, they were risking getting burned themselves. Setting fire to them after death gave them time to stage the bodies and get out fast before they placed themselves in danger of smoke inhalation.

  ‘I was then looking for evidence of strangulation, so I took out his larynx and hyoid bone with his tongue attached. I found deep tissue contusion and fracturing to his laryngeal bone.’

  Hendricks’s phone rang out. Seeing Clay on the display, he made his way to the viewing gallery overlooking the autopsy suite; as he connected, he looked at the specimen jars on the wall of the autopsy suite.

  ‘Where are you driving to, Eve?’

  ‘Picton Road.’

  As he looked at the body parts across the room, the visual effect of twisted spines, skulls marked with the black brand of syphilis and a human heart suspended in formaldehyde made the idea in his brain solidify.

  ‘As soon as you’re able to, leave the autopsy and join me at the murder scene. Anything, Bill?’

  ‘Václav Adamczak was strangled and set alight after death. It looks like it’s going to be the same story for Karl. I can come and join you right now, Eve. What’s happening in Picton Road?’

  ‘Terry Mason and Paul Price have found something. Terry was cagey about it. Sounds like matters have just got a whole lot worse. Meet me there.’

  38

  12.30 pm

  As Clay climbed the stairs to the flat above the Polish delicatessen, the brutality of the premeditated violence that had occurred there hit her hard. She felt like she was reliving her first encounter with the conjoined bodies of the Adamczak brothers.

  Walking into the flat, she tried to imagine what the men had been doing twenty-four hours earlier and wondered if they had thought about death as they went about their daily work.

  The speculation triggered a childhood memory.

  Aged five, she had stood at the partially open bedroom door of an elderly and dying nun called Sister Agnes as Sister Philomena prayed and read from the New Testament at the old lady’s death bed.

  ‘Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.’ Then Sister Philomena had stopped reading and, with her back turned to Eve, had spoken softly and kindly. ‘This is no place for you, Evette Clay. Go to your room, please, pray for Sister Agnes, and do your best to go to sleep.’

  It was as if Sister Philomena had an additional sense that told her exactly where Eve was at all times. Clay smiled at the memory, but her smile dissolved as the words like a thief in the night invaded her head. She recalled the graffiti in the room where the Adamczak brothers had died: Killing Time Is Here Embrace It.

  She heard Mason and Price’s muffled voices inside the flat and, from the bottom of the stairs, Hendricks.

  ‘Are you all right, Eve?’

  ‘I’m... fine.’

  Hendricks hurried up the stairs behind her. ‘I’ve just had a call from Doctor Lamb.’

  ‘What’s happening in the mortuary?’

  ‘She’s removed Karl Adamczak’s larynx. She’s looking for deep tissue contusion to see if the cause of death was strangulation. She’s found just that. Identical twins, identical causes of death and post-mortem abuse. How’s Barney doing with his search for the source of the graffiti?’

  ‘Google Reverse search isn’t playing ball.’

  ‘We’re in here, Eve!’ Mason’s voice came from the box room down the corridor.

  Clay and Hendricks arrived in the doorway of a space that was almost completely filled by DS Terry Mason and Sergeant Paul Price. The floorboards were all up and stacked neatly against the wall. Mason and Price knelt on the rafters, exploring the space between them with a torch.

  ‘I think this room is probably where they kept her,’ said Mason.

  ‘Who?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Definitely nothing else here, Paul?’

  ‘Definitely nothing else.’

  Mason rose to his feet and tiptoed along the rafter to the door. �
��The evidence we found is in the kitchen, Eve. I want you to see it with your own eyes before I say anything. I don’t know whether you’re going to love or hate us.’

  On the table in the neat and tidy kitchen were a ketchup bottle, a teapot, two mugs and two evidence bags. Clay pointed at them.

  ‘We couldn’t unlock the phone,’ said Price, sliding an evidence bag towards Clay.

  ‘Poppy Waters will have it open in the blink of an eye,’ she replied. She picked up the brown evidence bag and saw a dirty and much-handled iPhone through the central transparent strip. ‘Bill, can you please take this to Trinity Road and give it to Poppy?’ She was filled with foreboding, her senses charged up. ‘As soon as she’s cracked it she’s to send all relevant images, films or evidence directly to me.’

  As Hendricks took the evidence bag, Clay asked Mason, ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Under the boards in the box room.’

  She picked up the next, face-down evidence bag and turned it over, the pulse rising in her ears.

  Hendricks said, ‘How about that?’

  She placed her right index finger on the transparent strip and felt the material within: the silky texture of human hair. She moved her finger along the length of it, felt the width of a thick clump of hair.

  ‘Bill, we need to take Aneta Koloza to Trinity Road for questioning. Can you organise that now? I want you to stay there for the interview. Call Karl Stone and ask him to pick her up. I’ll be there as soon as I can. And can you ask Clive Winters to pull in Lucy Bell? We need her to account fully for her movements over the past eight days.’

  Clay lowered her nose to the open evidence bag and drank in an oily aroma of what appeared to be half-a-head of hair. She turned to DS Terry Mason, listened to Hendricks following Price out of the house, and said, ‘This is Marta Ondřej’s hair. Tell me why you lifted the boards in the box room, Terry.’

  ‘Top of the door, left-hand corner, I saw a few long black hairs stuck to the woodwork and trapped there by a crack in the surface of the paint. I’d have missed it if I hadn’t seen that,’ said Mason.

  Clay walked back to the box room, looked at the space and pictured herself locked inside it for eight days and nights. She felt the scale of the trauma that Marta had been through. They’d have done it to Philip if it suited their ends, she told herself, feeling her skin turn hot and cold, over and over, and a ball of black anger expanding at her core. ‘Great work, Terry, thank you. Get the rest of the boards up, please – the whole flat.’

  ‘No problem. Where are you going, Eve?’

  ‘Trinity Road. I’m going to talk to Aneta Kaloza!’

  39

  12.30 pm

  For the second time, Detective Constable Barney Cole uploaded a picture of the blurred and smoke-damaged graffiti from the Picton Road murder scene onto Google Reverse Search, and for the second time drew a blank.

  The incident room was empty and had been for hours, which was the way he liked it when he was hunting down information for Eve Clay. He went through the process again and, finding no match, felt his breath escaping from his lips like steam from a fractured pipe. He wondered if the image was nonsense, the invention of the killer to send those in pursuit down a dead end.

  Cole drifted towards the large plate-glass window and, looking long and hard at the image in the light of day, tried to visualise it without the smoke damage and with its lines crystal clear.

  ‘Barney!’ Behind him, Poppy Waters’s voice was calm and quiet. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve alarmed you.’

  ‘No worries.’ He turned. ‘I thought I was on my own. I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘You’ve been standing at the window for more than half a minute – the time I’ve been here.’

  ‘I was lost in an idea.’

  A cool breeze from the air conditioning system pulsed through the warm room; as he indicated for Poppy to sit at his desk, Cole unknotted his tie and opened the top button of his shirt.

  ‘So, Poppy,’ he smiled. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I’ve been told to wait here for Bill Hendricks. There’s a phone from the Picton Road scene needs opening. You?’

  ‘Having a bad time with the distorted graffiti from Picton Road and Google reverse image search,’ said Cole. ‘It’s like putting a buckled coin in a slot machine.’

  ‘Call in a civilian artist...’

  ‘I thought about that one, Poppy. But I can sort out the image myself.’

  ‘You’re good at art?’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve got an A-level in it.’

  ‘Me, too. You still painting, drawing?’

  ‘The job, the family... time’s not on my side. I’ll get back to it one day. Probably pick it up again when my eyesight’s so bad I’d flag down an ambulance thinking it was a bus.’

  He leaned over her and produced a compass and pencil from his desk drawer.

  ‘You keep a compass in your drawer?’

  ‘If I use something during the course of an investigation, Poppy, I keep it, and if I can’t keep it in my drawer because it’s too big, I keep it in my locker.’

  She stood up and moved out of his personal space. ‘So if I need a magnifying glass...’

  Cole produced a magnifying glass from his drawer, and she laughed in her mellow, almost child-like way. ‘That’s amazing.’

  He laughed with her and looked at her for a moment too long as she backed away from the desk. It occurred to him to ask her if she wanted a coffee, but the urgent need to get a handle on the graffiti kept him silent.

  Cole tightened a pencil into the compass, took a piece of A4 paper from his rack and proceeded to draw the outer circle of the graffiti.

  ‘Let me see the image, Barney.’

  Cole showed her the image of the blurred graffiti he had printed off from the wall in the flat on Picton Road. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘It looks sinister to me, but apart from that no, sorry. You?’

  ‘I can see a solid circle at the centre, a concentric circle within the shape and the outer wheel. I can estimate the nature of the recurring geometric shapes within the wheels. It might take a few reconstructions or more.’

  The door of the incident room opened quickly and Hendricks walked directly to Poppy. ‘This is the phone, Poppy.’

  There was a rustle as an evidence bag was passed from hand to hand.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘It’s filthy. It looks like it’s been on a building site.’

  ‘It probably has been on a building site.’

  Cole looked at Hendricks as Poppy headed for the door.

  ‘It almost certainly belongs to either Karl or Václav Adamczak,’ said Hendricks. ‘It looks like our murder victims are responsible for the abduction and kidnapping of Marta Ondřej.’

  40

  1.01 pm

  Kate appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m going to the shop on the ground floor. Do you want anything, Gina?’

  ‘I’m on a diet.’ Riley stroked Marta’s face, looked at the patches of stubble on her head. ‘I’ll have a Mars Bar, a big bag of Revels and a two-litre Diet Coke. To share with others, of course.’

  A man appeared at the glass wall of Marta’s room. Behind the turned-up lapels of his heavy black overcoat, Riley caught sight of a band of white at his throat. She walked out to the corridor and he held out his hand and smiled.

  ‘I’ve got a present for Marta,’ said the priest. Riley’s hand felt swamped in the largeness of his, but she also felt relieved from the difficulties of the day by the kindness he radiated and the compassion stamped in his eyes. ‘It’s all over the hospital chaplaincy about the little girl staying in for tests. Not exactly the ideal start to a new life in a new country.’ The priest released Riley’s hand. ‘How is Marta?’

  ‘She’s on the mend, I think. I hope.’

  ‘I don’t wish to intrude and cannot stay, but I have something for her. I’d be grateful if you could pass it on.’

  ‘Sure.’

  The p
riest looked into the room. His face creased with sadness, he folded his hands together and closed his eyes. His lips moved; when they stopped, he made the sign of the cross. ‘This is a very blessed hospital. The best medical care to cater to the children’s physical needs and the best chaplaincy for the spiritual needs of the children and their families.’

  As Marta turned her eyes towards the priest, he waved his right hand, head high, with the steady rhythm of a windscreen wiper. Then he turned to Riley and, reaching into his pocket, handed her a small silver box with a blue image of the Virgin Mary on the lid.

  ‘Rosary beads, for little Marta. Maybe you could give them to her. It might help.’ The priest smiled. ‘Has she spoken?’

  ‘She has difficulties in communicating.’

  ‘God bless her.’

  He turned and, as he walked away, Riley looked inside the box at the tangle of rosary beads. By the time she’d replaced the lid, the priest was gone and Riley, who still felt the warmth of his hand in hers, was left with the distinct impression that even though she had touched his hand, she had just had an encounter with a ghost.

  Her iPhone pinged with an incoming message and then rang out with an incoming call. On the display: ‘Eve Clay’.

  ‘Eve, anything?’

  ‘I’ve sent you a photo of Karl and Václav Adamczak. They’ve just become red-hot prime suspects in the abduction and kidnapping of Marta Ondřej. Can you show the picture to Verka and ask her if she knows them? Don’t tell her why.’

  ‘I’ll call you straight back.’

  ‘I’ll keep my line clear,’ said Clay.

  As Riley returned to Marta’s side, Kate Nowak appeared in the doorway with a carrier bag half-full of sweets, crisps and sugary drinks.

  ‘Come in, Kate. There’s something I have to ask Verka.’

  The translator stepped inside and closed the door.

  ‘Verka,’ said Riley. ‘I have a picture to show you. Would you take a look?’ She held out her iPhone.