White Death

by Daniel Blake

  Patrese knew the rules of death notification. Talk directly. Don’t be afraid of the d-words – dead, died, death. Don’t use euphemisms. Driver’s licenses expired, parcels were passed on, keys were lost. Not people. People died.

  Patrese gestured for Kwasi to take a seat, and sat down opposite him.

  ‘Mr King, your mother is dead.’

  Kwasi stared at him. Patrese held his gaze, rock-solid neutral. He didn’t try to take Kwasi’s arm or touch him in any way. Everyone reacts to news like this differently. Some people clap their hands to their chest and catch their breath; some fall sobbing to the floor; some even attack the messenger.

  Kwasi did none of these things. He stared at Patrese for fully half a minute, totally blank, as though his brain – this vast, amazing brain that could see fifteen moves ahead through a forest of pieces on a chessboard – was struggling to comprehend the very short, very simple, very brutal sentence he’d just heard.

  ‘You sure?’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How?’ He blinked twice. ‘How? Where? When?’

  ‘Her body was found this morning on New Haven Green.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘New Haven, sir. Connecticut.’

  ‘What the hell she doing there?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me that, sir.’

  Kwasi looked around, as though seeing the room for the first time. ‘Can you take me home, officer?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Manhattan slid past the windows of Patrese’s car. A church on Lexington spat worshippers out on to the sidewalk. In a Union Square café, a man jabbed his fork in the air to make a point amidst pealing laughter from his friends.

  The journey passed in silence. Kwasi said nothing, and Patrese didn’t try to make him talk. Some people gush an endless torrent of questions, wanting to know everything about how their loved one has died: others are silent, perhaps in the hope that if they don’t ask, don’t know, don’t listen, then it won’t have happened.

  Kwasi didn’t move the entire journey. He sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead. Only once, when they turned past Washington Square Park, did he so much as glance out of the window.

  Kwasi’s apartment was on Bleecker Street. Patrese pulled up outside. A little further on, at the junction with Sixth Avenue, police barriers were being erected on the sidewalk.

  ‘Do you have anyone you can call?’

  Kwasi shook his head.

  ‘No one at all?’

  ‘No.’ Kwasi made no move to get out of the car.

  ‘Would you like me to come up with you?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Kwasi looked at Patrese for the first time since leaving the Waldorf-Astoria. ‘That would be’ – he searched for the right word – ‘helpful.’

  There was a doorman in the lobby; a young guy with tight curly hair and teeth white enough to be visible from space. He got to his feet as they came in.

  ‘Hey, Mr King. Looking forward to the parade tonight?’

  Kwasi didn’t hear; or if he did, he didn’t acknowledge it. Patrese nodded at the man. ‘Parade?’ he asked.

  ‘Hallowe’en parade. Expecting a million folks, they say.’

  The apartment was typical Bleecker: gentrification writ large over smatterings of old-school authenticity. Exposed brickwork and windows framed with industrial steel: wooden floorboards and subtle uplighting. Poliform kitchen with corian countertops and Miele appliances: pre-wired Bose sound system and fifty-inch plasma TV.

  And on pretty much every surface was a chess set. There must have been hundreds, jostling on shelves and squatting on tables. Standard sets were very much the minority. Think of a theme, and it was there somewhere. Cowboys faced off against Indians, Crusaders against Saracens, Red Sox against Yankees, Spartans against Athenians, angels against demons. There were Egyptian gods, Norse gods, Greek gods. Terracotta warriors peered sideways towards Harry Potter characters. Star Wars figurines backed on to samurai. One set was made of automobile parts; another had skeleton keys as pieces, fitting into a hole in each square; a third had squares of all different heights. Blue pieces eyeballed green ones, pink played yellow, red played orange. A hexagonal board was designed for three players; a multi-dimensional set stacked four boards atop each other.

  Kwasi looked at Patrese, saw his interest.

  ‘Can never have too many sets,’ he said.

  This was Kwasi’s refuge, Patrese sensed. When the world got too big and complex and nasty – and it must have been all those things right now for him, and more – here’s where he came, back to the chessboard, where everything had order and rules and where he was the master.

  ‘Which one’s your favorite?’

  ‘Don’t have one. If I did, the others would get upset.’

  ‘The others? The other sets? The pieces?’

  ‘That’s right. Tell you one I haven’t got, though. It’s this one from Wales; you know, part of England. The chessboard of Gwenddoleu. The board’s made of gold, the men are made of silver, and when the pieces are set up, they play by themselves.’

  ‘That’s a nice story.’

  ‘It’s not a story. It’s true. It really exists.’

  Patrese decided to change tack. ‘Mr King, I’m sorry to do this, but I have to ask you some questions about your mother. Help us find the person who killed her.’

  ‘She was killed?’

  ‘I told you that.’

  ‘You told me her body was found on New Haven Green.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but yes. She was killed.’

  ‘How?’

  Patrese had thought about this one already. ‘A knife was used.’ Not a lie. Not the whole truth either, of course, but not a lie. ‘Now, you said you don’t know why she might have been there. In New Haven.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You did, sir.’

  ‘I said, “What the hell she doing there?”’

  ‘I took that as you not knowing why she was there.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Patrese wondered briefly whether Kwasi was being deliberately obstructive. No, he thought, I’ve just told the man that his mother’s dead. Cut him some slack.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘You remember what time?’

  ‘A quarter of ten exactly.’

  ‘That’s very precise.’

  ‘I know the time of everything that happens.’

  ‘What was she doing?’

  ‘Leaving for Baltimore.’

  ‘What was she planning to do when she got there?’

  ‘She was attending a symposium run by the National Council of Black Women.’

  ‘You know where this symposium was?’

  ‘The Hyatt Regency in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor: 300 Light Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202. Phone number 410-528-1234.’

  Hell, Patrese thought, was this what you needed to be world chess champion? Rain Man with dreads?

  ‘How did she get there?’

  ‘By train. Amtrak. Depart Penn Station, New York, yesterday at 10 a.m., arrive Penn Station, Baltimore 12.13 p.m. Return journey, depart Baltimore 9.34 a.m., arrive New York 11.52 a.m.’

  Patrese did a quick calculation. ‘You last saw her at quarter of ten when she had to get a train at ten?’

  ‘I drove her to Penn Station.’

  ‘And dropped her outside?’

  ‘There was nowhere to park.’

  ‘And then you came back here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you didn’t see her get on the train?’

  ‘No. I saw her go into the station.’

  ‘And what did you do after that?’

  ‘I came back here.’

  ‘You were here all weekend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Playing chess.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘Myself.’

  ‘You play against you
rself?’

  ‘Sure. Against computer programs, and against myself. I have a world title match in two weeks. I’m preparing. Practicing. Training.’

  ‘What does that involve?’

  ‘Some general stuff. Get a position, turn it round, see how best to play against it. Also preparing specific openings, a lot of the time. Opening lines are constantly getting developed and refined. You try ’em out, see what works for you. You find a variation you don’t like, you move on to another one.’

  Checking through different lines, trying to look at positions from your opponent’s point of view: chess sounded a lot like detective work to Patrese.

  ‘Did you go to Penn to pick her up today?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Were you concerned when she didn’t turn up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I rang her cellphone. She didn’t answer.’

  ‘You think of doing anything else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like ring the hotel in Baltimore?’

  ‘I had to meet with Nursultan and Tartu. She knew where I was going. I figured she’d gotten the wrong train and had no cellphone reception. I guessed she’d come right along to the Waldorf when she arrived.’

  ‘So your car’s still at the Waldorf?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have no idea why your mother would have been in New Haven?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No friends, family there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She lived here, that’s correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I see her room?’

  ‘Sure.’

  It was clear from even a first glance that Regina had been a neat freak. Her bed was made to a standard that wouldn’t have disgraced the Waldorf-Astoria, the bottles and tubs on her dressing table were arranged with millimetric precision, and the clothes in her closet were color-coded. In the en-suite bathroom, the same level of order.

  ‘How many bedrooms are there here?’

  ‘Two.’

  Patrese looked round the room again: high ceilings, south-facing, plenty of light. ‘If this is anything to go by, the master bedroom must be quite something.’

  ‘This is the master bedroom.’

  Patrese looked surprised. ‘Where do you sleep?’

  ‘Next door.’

  Kwasi’s room was smaller. His bed, a single, was jammed hard up against the far corner, the better to make room for as many bookshelves as possible. Chess books, Patrese saw, with titles that might as well have been double Dutch as far as he was concerned. An Anti-Sicilian Repertoire for White. Caro-Kann: Bronstein-Larsen. The Strategic Nimzo-Indian: A Complete Guide to the Rubinstein Variation.

  ‘Your mom had the master bedroom?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Why, may I ask?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Patrese was getting used to the rhythm of Kwasi’s speech and thought patterns now. Kwasi might be a genius on the chessboard, but quotidian details that seemed obvious to Patrese clearly passed Kwasi by.

  ‘Mr King, your success, your skill, your money bought this place. Most all homeowners I know, it’s the same thing: whoever buys the house gets the nicest room.’

  Kwasi shrugged. ‘Don’t bother me. Bedroom’s just a place to sleep.’

  Most twenty-four-year-old men thought bedrooms were a place to do pretty much anything and everything other than sleep, Patrese thought: but then again, most twenty-four-year-old men didn’t buy a Bleecker penthouse and then ask their mom to move in with them.

  Patrese excused himself and went out on to the apartment’s private roof terrace. He had to talk to Kieseritsky, and thought it best to discuss gory details of beheading and amputation in private.

  The terrace had wrought-iron railings set six inches too low for comfort. A few blocks to the south, floats and giant puppets were already beginning to gather in preparation for the parade. Patrese looked out over the river toward Hoboken.

  As he dialed, Patrese could hear a low noise from inside the apartment. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded as though Kwasi was crying.

  8

  In the first few hours of any major homicide investigation, no news is most certainly not good news. Forensic evidence is fresh, eyewitnesses can remember what they’ve seen, people are willing to offer information. If detectives don’t get decent leads right from the get-go, their chances of solving the crime are seriously jeopardized.

  Lauren Kieseritsky had two pieces of news for Franco Patrese.

  First, they’d found a fingerprint on John Doe’s chest, and it belonged neither to him nor to Regina. They were running it through the system, so far without matches.

  Second, they’d found a knife in the undergrowth on the Green: a hunting knife covered with Regina King’s blood. No fingerprints on it, and no evidence that it had been used on John Doe too. The knife was manufactured by a German company named Liberzon. Officers were trying to get hold of the company to check their US retail outlets.

  Talking of John Doe – the Reverend John Doe – well, he was still unidentified. They knew that he wasn’t from New Haven itself or the immediate environs, as they’d checked every Catholic church within that area. They were now spreading that search outwards, looking for any missing priests within an hour’s radius of the city. If that brought no joy, they’d extend it to two hours’ radius, and so on.

  No one had come forward to say they’d seen anything suspicious on the Green. Shortly before one in the morning, a couple had walked past the church and treeline in question and had seen nothing. Whoever had killed Regina King and dumped John Doe’s body must have therefore done so after that time.

  This concurred with the medical examiner’s preliminary findings. Taking into account the bodies’ exposure to several hours of a crisp fall night and the subsequent effect on the temperatures of the cadavers, the medical examiner had put Regina King’s time of death as between 1.30 and 2.30 a.m., and John Doe’s as between 3.00 and 4.00 a.m. In other words, John Doe had been killed after Regina, in a different location, and then brought to the Green.

  There were no bullet holes in the bodies, and no stab wounds to the vital organs. A full toxicological analysis was still pending, but the most basic tests had showed up no evidence of poisons, sedatives or intoxicants. Blood splatter and flow patterns – particularly the difference between pre-mortem and post-mortem bleeding – suggested that the victims’ arms and skin patches had all been removed post-mortem. It was therefore most likely that the act of decapitation itself had killed both Regina King and John Doe.

  Wouldn’t they have screamed? Not if the killer had put a rag in their mouths. Certainly not once he’d severed their larynxes.

  No sexual interference in either case. That was interesting. Dismemberment is usually sexual and often connected with picquerism, where the killer is aroused by stabbing, pricking or slicing the body; all obvious substitutes for penile penetration, of course. The slicing was here – both in terms of the missing arms and heads, and the patches of skin removed – but there was no sexual interference and no stabbing.

  Criminology theory holds that there are five forms of dismemberment: the practical, the narcotic, the sadistic, the lustful and the psychotic.

  Practical usually involves cutting up bodies to make them easier to transport or store, which didn’t seem to be the case here. Regina had been alive when she’d come to the Green; it was hard to see how removing John Doe’s head and arm would have made him materially easier to move.

  Narcotic, as in the perpetrator being off his head on drugs; well, that was a possibility in Regina’s case, given the frenzy with which she had been attacked, but not for John Doe, whose killing had been a work of clinical precision.

  Sadistic; unlikely, even given the gruesome method of death. Those things which would inflict unimaginable pain on a person, such as amputating their arm and removing their skin, had been done post-mortem.

&
nbsp; Lustful: no, for the absence of sexual interference.

  Which left psychotic. The killer was doing all this for his own reasons, and those reasons would be buried somewhere unfathomably deep within his psyche. It might turn out that they would find the reasons only by finding the killer, through traditional police work and evidence-gathering. Taking wild guesses at what was driving him might simply distract them from genuine leads.

  But as for such evidence-gathering: well, so far there was no forensic evidence worth the name, as was often the case when bodies had been left outside. The police lab was doing its best, though no one was holding their breath for a breakthrough: not because the lab wasn’t good – it was as good as could be expected of any short-staffed, underfunded public body – but because this was real life, and in real life cases don’t get solved in fifty-eight minutes minus commercial breaks.

  The tarot cards were part of a standard Rider-Waite deck, the most common tarot deck in the United States and Europe. They were trying to trace the manufacturer, but that was easier said than done, especially on a Sunday. Manufacturers tend to put their details on the packaging box, but not on individual cards themselves.

  As for the symbolism of the cards, they’d managed to find some basic information on the Internet: the mighty Google, helping cops and porn fiends since 1998. ‘Hierophant’ was more or less a fancy ancient word for a priest: ‘Regina’ was Latin for ‘queen’, which would tie in with ‘empress’.

  The curator at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was one of the country’s foremost experts on the history and symbolism of tarot – the Beinecke had one of the oldest decks in the world, dating back to 1466 – but she was returning from vacation and wouldn’t be at her desk until tomorrow morning.

  Kieseritsky had scheduled a press conference for an hour’s time. Patrese said he’d look after Kwasi, keep the press away from the world champion, and at the same time do some digging to try to find out what had happened to Regina King.