Blood Axe

by Leigh Russell

  Outwardly calm, he offered her a cup of tea, pretending he wasn’t bothered by her unexpected appearance at his front door. He had no idea what she was thinking, but she didn’t know what was in his mind either. Biter was merely his instrument. He was the killer. The wolf in his head panted to tear her flesh.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked, ever so politely, when they were both seated on kitchen stools.

  She had refused a cup of tea. Just as well, as he had run out of milk. He dropped his eyes to the floor under the intensity of her gaze. When he looked up again, she was looking down at the floor. In the instant before she raised her head, his eyes flicked to the knife rack beside the sink. He weighed up his options. If it was necessary to silence her, the opportunity would arise. A warrior never hesitated. But he had to be clever as well as bold. The trouble was, if he struck her with a knife, her blood would spray all around the kitchen in the flat where he lived. It would be impossible to clean up completely. The police were bound to redouble their efforts to find him if he killed one of their own. He would have to find a way to get rid of her without spilling a drop of her blood. It wouldn’t be easy, but he had never been one to shy away from difficulty.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he repeated, trying to keep his voice steady so he wouldn’t betray his feelings.

  Beneath the mask people were animals, able to sense fear.

  ‘We’ve narrowed our search down,’ she replied. ‘We’re pretty sure now that the killer we’re looking for works at the Jorvik museum.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? What makes you think that?’

  She was lying. She had to be. The police couldn’t possibly know where he worked. He had been far too careful for that, covering his tracks so that no one could find him. The river had offered him escape and protection. Even their dogs couldn’t follow him across the water. Somehow she knew more than she was letting on. He didn’t understand what trickery this was. He bitterly regretted having let her in. He took a deep breath. He needed to think clearly. If he panicked, he was lost. She had no idea who he was, or she would never have turned up alone. Growling, the wolf in his head hunkered down. All he had to do was negotiate his way around her questions and she would leave, no wiser than she had been when she arrived.

  ‘I wish I could help you,’ he lied.

  She returned his smile. The stupid bitch had no idea who he was. He burned to reveal himself, but this was not the place for such a display. He would have to content himself with imagining her surprise if she could see his true identity. He tried to focus on her words as she reiterated that the police suspected the axe murderer could be connected with Jorvik.

  ‘We’re questioning everyone who works there to see if anyone can offer us any further information at all. Anything you can tell us might be useful. Anything at all. Nothing is too small to be of potential interest to us.’

  She enquired whether he had noticed anything unusual in any of his colleagues, any strange patterns of behaviour, flaring tempers or signs of stress. He shook his head, thinking, wondering when this was going to end. She seemed to have been sitting in his kitchen bombarding him with questions for hours, when they were interrupted by her phone ringing.

  The wolf growled. He couldn’t control it. Her eyebrows rose a fraction at the rumbling in his throat. He coughed and her features relaxed.

  ‘Frog in my throat,’ he muttered.

  He struggled to control the beast.

  ‘Can I get you some water?’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine, really. Thank you. I’m fine but actually I’m not feeling too well. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

  It was her hint to leave. As she stood up, her phone rang again. She reached into her bag for it. As she listened, her expression altered. Her eyes met his. In that instant he understood. She had been sent in advance to keep him talking so he didn’t leave, and he had fallen into the trap. The police were outside waiting for her to open the door. The phone call had been her signal that all was ready. The flat was surrounded by police officers poised to rush in and capture him as soon as she opened the front door. But first she had to reach it.

  With a snarl, the wolf leapt.

  64

  Ian waited a few doors away from Sophie’s flat, tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. He tried again but Naomi still wasn’t answering her phone. She was probably in a supermarket by now, as Ted had suggested. With no phone signal, she was busy shopping for her weekend. That was fair enough. Her shift was over. There was no reason for her to have returned to the police station at the end of her day. It was just unlucky that they were worrying about her when she had no phone signal.

  The side street was quiet. If it seemed unlikely that a brutal killer was living in one of those ordinary-looking houses, it was still harder to believe in the identity of the axe murderer. Still, this wouldn’t be the first time he had tracked down an unlikely suspect. Whatever he might think about it, the DNA evidence was conclusive. Now that the forensic lab knew what to look for, they had been able to confirm that samples of the DNA found on the axe had also been present in Tim’s shop. That in itself wasn’t proof that it belonged to the killer. Traces of a lot of different DNA were discovered in the shop. Nevertheless, taken in conjunction with the DNA found on the axe and on the materials discovered in the ditch, there was no longer any room for doubt. The killer was a woman. She had naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. Everything pointed to the one person working at Jorvik they had overlooked. It would be easy to confirm that the killer’s DNA matched Sophie’s, but right now Ian had to focus on Naomi.

  He felt as though he had been waiting for hours when Ted drove up. The sergeant parked badly and leapt out of his vehicle. Ian could see the anxiety on his face before Ted reached him.

  ‘She hasn’t been back to collect her own car. She’s still out somewhere in an unmarked vehicle,’ Ted gasped as soon as he was close enough to be heard.

  Naomi wasn’t shopping for the weekend. She was working, her last known destination Sophie’s flat. Ian jumped out of his car and joined his sergeant on the pavement.

  ‘Do you really think all those murders could have been committed by a woman?’ Ted asked.

  ‘Insanity is no respecter of gender.’

  ‘But would she have been strong enough?’

  Ian remembered what Jonah had said. Sophie wouldn’t need to be especially strong if she was using an extremely sharp axe. However unlikely a suspect Sophie might have appeared at first sight, there was no longer much doubt about it. They had discovered the identity of the axe murderer. But before they moved in, they had to consider that Naomi might be in danger.

  Sophie rented a room in a house where she shared a kitchen and bathroom with a flatmate. Now there were two of them, Ian and Ted agreed they would go ahead and enter the property as quickly as possible, even if they had to smash their way in. If Naomi was in there, the sooner they could reach her the better. First they rang all the door bells except for the one labelled ‘Flat 3’. After a moment, they heard footsteps approaching. The door was opened by an elderly man who peered up at them. He was wearing a threadbare grey cardigan and trousers that were too big for his shrunken frame.

  ‘Go away!’

  The old man shuffled sideways and began to close the door. Ian put his shoulder against it and brandished his warrant card in the other man’s face.

  ‘Police!’ he snapped. ‘We need to gain access.’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ the old man retorted. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  There was no time to remonstrate. Ian elbowed him out of the way. He knew this was the kind of behaviour that gave the police a bad name and resolved to return with an apology when the case was over. For now, he was focussed on rescuing Naomi, if she was there. He turned to the old man who was cowering against the wall.

  ‘Don’t hit me.’

 
‘No one’s going to touch you. I told you, we’re police officers. We need to find Sophie James’ flat. Which floor is it?’

  The old man shook his head.

  ‘Which one is it?’

  ‘Number three, on the first floor. I’m calling the police,’ he called after them as they ran to the stairs. ‘You won’t get away with this.’

  They ran up the stairs and found number three. Ian knocked. They waited. There was no response from inside. Not being an external entrance, the front door to the flat was relatively flimsy. Ian knocked again. After a moment, he stood back and turned to Ted.

  ‘Break it down.’

  Ted stared at him, his face taut. ‘Back-up is on its way…’

  ‘We can’t wait. We need to get in there now.’

  With a nod, Ted braced himself. ‘Stand back from the door,’ he yelled, ‘we’re knocking it down. Stand back from the door!’

  With a loud grunt, he kicked the door. It shuddered. He tried again. At the third impact it burst open with a crash. Ian stepped into the silent flat with Ted at his heels. All at once, Ian raised his hand. They listened. Nearby they could hear muffled whimpering. Ian jerked his head towards one of the doors.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘It’s coming from in there.’

  Ian tried the door but it was locked.

  ‘Stand back from the door!’ Ted yelled again.

  Almost at once they heard an answering shout from the other side of the locked door.

  ‘Will you stop kicking doors down? It sounds like Armageddon out there. Jesus, give me a chance. Didn’t you hear me shouting?’

  Ted stepped back, frowning.

  ‘Was that Naomi?’ Ian asked.

  65

  The door flew open. Naomi stood in the opening, her face flushed, her hair a mess. Her eyes looked wild. On one side of her head strands of hair were tangled and matted with blood that was seeping from a wound in her neck. Staining the collar of her white shirt, it was barely visible against the dark fabric of her jacket, making it impossible to see how much blood she had lost.

  ‘You’re injured,’ Ian said, starting forward.

  She glared at him. ‘Yeah, thanks for pointing that out.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘I’m not a fucking doctor.’

  Ian understood the constable was in shock, but he needed to get past her belligerence as quickly as possible and ascertain the extent of her injuries. She was still standing upright and talking coherently, but he was concerned about her loss of blood.

  ‘Let me take a look.’

  She stepped back.

  ‘Stand still, constable,’ he snapped. ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ she replied, with a sarcastic emphasis on his title.

  She didn’t move as he lifted her hair gently off her neck and examined four deep scratches. They looked like flesh wounds, not very deep.

  ‘She did this with her finger nails?’

  Naomi nodded and held out her right arm. ‘The fucking bitch bit me. I’m not sure she broke the skin through my jacket but it hurts like hell. She’s a lunatic.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  Naomi half turned so that Ian could see into the room. Behind his injured colleague, Sophie was crouching on the floor on her hands and knees, snarling like a dog. Her palms were flat on the floor, her wrists manacled together.

  Ian went up to Ted and spoke very softly. ‘I’ll hold her down while you put cuffs on her ankles. We want her immobilised. But be careful. She’s likely to kick. I don’t want a second officer injured.’

  Taking care to avoid her gnashing teeth, Ian grabbed hold of Sophie, pinning her to the ground, with one of his hands firmly pressing her head into the carpet. At the same time, Ted seized hold of her legs and snapped cuffs on her ankles. She wriggled and groaned, but without the use of her arms was incapable of resisting the strength of two men.

  With Sophie rendered powerless, Ian led Naomi over to a chair. ‘Back-up will be here soon. We need to get you to a hospital and get you checked out.’

  ‘I’ll probably need a bloody tetanus jab, thanks to that maniac.’ She jerked her head towards Sophie, and winced as she moved her neck. ‘Talk about a head case. There was absolutely no warning or I would have stopped her in her tracks. One minute we were sitting chatting, the next minute she just leapt at me, growling like a fucking animal, biting and scratching. Honestly, it was unbelievable. Don’t ask me how I did it, but I managed to get my truncheon out of my bag.’ She paused, frowning. ‘The funny thing is, as soon as I flipped the truncheon open, she fell on the floor like a limp lettuce and let me cuff her hands without so much as a squeak. It was weird. I tell you, if she hadn’t stopped with her biting and scratching, God knows what might have happened.’

  Hearing footsteps charging noisily up the stairs, Ian joined a team of uniformed officers outside Sophie’s flat to stop them trampling all over the carpet. The flat hadn’t yet been searched. Treating it as a crime scene might yield useful evidence. The officers were accompanied by a couple of paramedics who arranged for Naomi to be taken to hospital.

  In the midst of all the kerfuffle, Sophie’s flatmate turned up.

  ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  ‘Who are you?’ a uniformed officer asked.

  ‘I’m Fiona Greenway. I live here. Let me in.’ When Ian stepped forward and explained she would not be able to go in the flat until it had been searched, her face went red and she started shouting. ‘What are you talking about? I live here. You can’t stop me from going into my own home! You might not believe it but I pay good rent for this shithouse. Now let me in…’

  She broke off as Sophie was carried out, strapped to a stretcher.

  ‘What the hell are you doing to her? Let her go! What have you done to her? Why have you tied her up like that? This is – that’s it.’ She pulled out her phone and took a photo of her flatmate. ‘This is going online right now. You can’t do this to people. We’re not living in a police state yet. You’ll never get away with this…’

  ‘Put it online and tell people they can walk the streets safely now because the axe murderer has been caught,’ Ian interrupted her sharply.

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Fiona said.

  Ian hesitated before allowing her to approach her flatmate.

  ‘Be careful. She bites,’ he warned her.

  Fiona stepped forward.

  ‘It’s all right, Sophie,’ she began.

  Sophie’s eyes focussed on her flatmate. With a sudden jerk of her head, she snapped her teeth at Fiona who leaped back just in time.

  ‘What the fuck? She tried to bite me!’

  Quietly Ian explained that the police had reason to suspect Sophie was a dangerous maniac who had been committing murders on the streets of York.

  Fiona’s eyes grew wide with alarm. ‘You mean she’s really the axe murderer?’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s for a jury to decide,’ Ian replied, ‘but we have evidence that suggests she is the axe murderer.’

  ‘Was,’ Ted corrected him. ‘She won’t be doing any more of that where she’s going.’

  Recovering from her outrage, Fiona agreed to go and stay with a friend for a few days, until the police had finished with the flat.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I’d want to come back here,’ she added. ‘But at least I suppose I could sell my story to a magazine.’

  ‘Your story?’ Ian repeated.

  ‘Living with an axe murderer! Not that I knew she was, of course.’

  Ian sighed. With all his experience on murder investigations, people still amazed him. Selling a story like that would have been the last thing on his mind if he had been in Fiona’s situation. It made sense, of a kind.

  ‘Young people don’t think the way we do,’ he muttered to Ted who looked
at him in surprise.

  They went downstairs. Sophie was being thrown in the back of a police van, snarling and snapping like a dog. Ted looked pale and Ian wasn’t sure if his colleague was trembling slightly.

  About to ask the young sergeant if he was all right, Ian changed his mind. ‘Oh well, that’s what you might call a good day’s work,’ he said instead. ‘That was a bit hair-raising, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly was. What a nutcase!’

  ‘A dangerous nutcase. You OK?’ he added, as though it was a casual remark.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ted said.

  On the way back to the station to write up his report, Ian thought how lucky he was with his colleagues. Although he had struggled to deal with the crazy killer, Ted had coped, and Naomi had conducted herself with admirable professionalism. Ian was proud to be part of the team that had caught a dangerous murderer.

  66

  Ian went into work late on Saturday. Ted arrived in the canteen about half an hour later. From beneath his lowered brows the sergeant’s eyes squinted as though he was dazzled by the light.

  ‘You look as hungover as I feel,’ Ian greeted him.

  ‘I feel terrible,’ Ted said, sitting down and sipping a mug of coffee. ‘I’m so hungover it’s not true.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Ted frowned at Ian who was tucking into a plate of egg and sausages with beans and mushrooms and fried bread.

  Seeing his colleague’s expression, Ian put his fork down. ‘Best thing for a hangover,’ he assured Ted. ‘The more you eat, the more you soak up the alcohol.’

  ‘That’s bollocks. It’s far too late. Once your brain is fried, you can’t unscramble it.’

  Ian laughed. ‘The way you talk, it sounds like your brain’s made of eggs, fried or scrambled, but I’m telling you, you’d be far better off eating them.’ He scooped up a forkful of egg. ‘Food and lots of it. It’s the best cure for a hangover.’