Lost Souls

by Chris Merritt

  ‘Donovan was in year seven at Richmond Park Academy,’ she began. ‘We spoke to the head, and his head of year, too. They hadn’t seen him there since he was reported missing a month ago. Fits with what we know from the misper file. School said his attendance before then was patchy at the best of times. But they’d made some allowances for him, because they knew he was in care and had moved to a new foster placement in the summer.’

  Lockhart nodded.

  ‘His form teacher said he was a bit of a loner,’ she continued. ‘He’d been bullied, apparently for his family situation. Some kids found out his birth parents were both drug addicts and were giving him a hard time for it. Of course, the school played that down, said they’d dealt with it.’

  ‘Could’ve been a reason for him to run away,’ offered Lockhart.

  ‘That’s what we were thinking. He’d also been getting in trouble a bit, too. Fighting, stealing things from his classmates. Not a happy situation.’

  ‘And our colleagues didn’t do much about it when he did go missing,’ said Lockhart. ‘Since he’d run away from previous homes, but always reappeared a few days or weeks later, he was categorised as lower risk.’

  Smith knew the stats; nearly ten thousand under-18s had been reported missing in London over the past year. Most of them were in the care system and regularly absconded from placements. But with fifty-five thousand total missing persons cases annually in the capital, The Met simply didn’t have the resources to look for troubled kids. That was the reality of it, and it pissed Smith off.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Lockhart.

  ‘That’s it, guv.’

  ‘Cheers Max, really useful.’ He glanced back at the boards for a few seconds. ‘So, we have a possible motive for Donovan running away. What we need to know is: who would’ve wanted to hurt him like this? Of course, we can’t rule out that if he ended up on the street, our killer could be a stranger. But if we can find out who else had contact with him before he ran away, that might help. Our victim strategy’s going to be key on this one, since we have no real witnesses or suspects.’ He tapped a marker pen on the whiteboard where the name Eric Cooper had been written under ‘Witnesses’, with an arrow leading to the ‘Suspects’ column, ending in a question mark.

  ‘Luce, did you check out Cooper?’

  Smith watched as Lucy Berry automatically raised her notebook to hide her face, her cheeks quickly flushing red. The analyst was probably the brightest of the lot of them, but she hated saying anything in public.

  ‘Er, yes,’ began Berry. Her voice was almost a whisper and Smith strained to listen. ‘He’s, um, twenty-seven years old, and lives alone in accommodation provided by St Mary the Virgin church, where he’s a verger. No criminal record. And he’s a leader in the Mortlake Scouts. Apart from that, he doesn’t have much of a digital footprint.’

  ‘He works with children, then? In the Scouts.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hm.’ Lockhart paused. ‘Let’s find out if Donovan was in Cooper’s Scout troop.’

  ‘We can ask the foster parents,’ said Smith.

  ‘OK. Now, in terms of electronic witnesses, we know there’s no CCTV in the church. Andy, you’re checking the area for any camera footage we can requisition, right?’

  ‘Yup.’ The big DC cleared his throat. ‘If the killer came from the high street side, we might get something. But the back of the church is all small residential roads.’

  ‘It’ll be worth a house to house, then, too. Our perpetrator would’ve needed a vehicle. Maybe a resident saw something. Priya, can you help?’

  DC Guptill nodded quickly, making notes.

  ‘Luce, you’re also pulling the records of known offenders in the area with history of violence against children, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, um, I’m working on that this morning.’

  ‘Good. The other people we need—’

  ‘Have you tracked down his social worker?’ It was Burrows who’d spoken; the first thing she’d said since the start of the meeting.

  ‘Ah, not yet, ma’am. That’s taking longer than expected. We think Social Services may be trying to get all their ducks in a row before they share anything with us, make sure nothing blows back on them.’

  The DSI tutted. ‘Let me know if you need me to raise it at a higher level.’

  ‘Thanks, ma’am. Will do.’

  Burrows indicated that he should go on, then checked her watch.

  Lockhart turned back to the group. ‘We also need to look at the sports club whose membership card was found in Donovan’s pocket. See what they can tell us. I’m planning to call in there after the post-mortem this morning at St George’s.’

  The guvnor ran through a few final actions, then held up a palm as people began closing their notebooks.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ he said. ‘Dr Lexi Green is going to be helping us out on this. A lot of you will know about her contribution on Operation Thorncross last year, and Op Norton a few months before that. One detail she thinks is significant is in the Bible verse. She reckons the fact it says “children” could mean there are more potential victims. I hope she’s wrong, but we have to consider the possibility that our killer’s already looking for someone else. So, let’s give this a hundred and ten per cent.’

  Lockhart’s words were met with vocal agreement from the team. Smith had long been a sceptic of the shrink and her fancy words. Having letters after your name was no substitute for common sense and a copper’s nose. But she had to admit that the psychologist had done a decent job last year, and she’d twice been on the money when their team was wide of the mark. Maybe she should pay more attention to what Green said this time.

  Children.

  Smith swore she wouldn’t let that happen.

  Ten

  Lockhart stared at the body laid out on the stainless-steel mortuary table. Here, Donovan Blair looked even smaller and more fragile than he had in the church. His thin limbs formed narrow ridges in the sheet that covered him to his neck, where the ligature mark was now starker, deep purple on porcelain skin. Lockhart started to feel the anger growing inside him again, a raw desire to find and punish this killer.

  ‘It’ll come as no surprise to you that the cause of death was asphyxia.’ On the other side of the slab, Dr Mary Volz had lowered her surgical mask. Lockhart glanced up and briefly met her sharp, pale blue eyes. ‘The poor lad was strangled. It’s not my exact area of expertise, but I can tell you a couple of things about the ligature.’

  Volz was probably London’s most experienced Home Office-registered forensic pathologist. She’d done the PMs on two big serial murder cases that Lockhart had led since joining MIT 8. Her calm, careful and meticulous approach meant he had total faith in her work. He’d texted her immediately from the crime scene yesterday to ask if she could do this examination and, fortunately, she’d been able to free up her morning.

  ‘The mark is relatively consistent around the neck, which tells us it was a flexible cord of uniform dimensions,’ she went on. ‘Thicker than wire, thinner and smoother than rope. Something like a length of plastic cable, maybe from an electrical appliance. Perhaps a mobile phone charger. Unfortunately, I’ve seen that before.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Of course, we have to consider the small, outside chance that it may’ve been suicide by partial hanging, with his body touching the ground and the ligature suspended from something low like a door handle.’

  Lockhart cocked his head. ‘Donovan kills himself, someone finds him, then moves and poses his body.’ Improbable as it was, the thought had occurred to him, too. ‘Meaning that we wouldn’t actually be looking for a murderer.’

  ‘It’s unlikely, but we have to rule it out.’

  ‘And can you?’

  ‘Yes. Firstly, the mark is too low. A self-tied ligature would’ve slid upwards towards the jaw as Donovan’s bodyweight pulled him down against it.’ Volz arced a forefinger above the boy’s throat. ‘Secondly, the wound encircles his neck. H
anging would produce a much deeper mark, concentrated at the front.’

  She moved to the end of the table, cradled Donovan’s head and lifted it up gently. ‘Look at this. It was a single loop all the way around, pulled tight in opposite directions from left and right over his shoulders, you see? Almost certainly by a person using both hands.’

  The image of Donovan being strangled flashed through Lockhart’s mind and he squeezed his fists, breathed, and slowly released them. Just like Green had taught him to do in their sessions. Composed himself before speaking again.

  ‘So, the attacker was behind him?’ he asked.

  ‘I believe so.’ Volz was doing her best to be dispassionate, but Lockhart knew she would be affected by this as much as he was. It was impossible for any normal human being not to be.

  ‘Close enough to get a cord around Donovan’s neck without spooking him,’ Lockhart said. ‘Someone he trusted, then?’

  ‘That’s one possibility.’

  Lockhart detected the caution in her voice. ‘There’s something else?’

  ‘Could be.’ Volz gently folded the sheet down to Donovan’s waist, exposing his arms. She pointed to the crook of his left elbow, where a small number of wounds ran to the upper part of his forearm. Lockhart recognised them immediately: track marks.

  ‘He was injecting drugs?’

  ‘Or having them injected for him,’ replied Volz. ‘They’re recent, maybe from the past couple of weeks.’

  ‘You think he might’ve been high when he was attacked?’

  ‘It’d fit with the lack of defensive wounds. He doesn’t appear to have struggled much, so he might’ve been drowsy or disorientated.’

  Lockhart suppressed his growing fury and focused on the new information. Had the killer given Donovan the drugs?

  ‘It’s most likely to have been heroin,’ Volz added. ‘But that’s flushed out of the system pretty quickly. In a young boy with low body fat and a fast metabolism, I’d be surprised if we could find any trace of it now. There are tests, though. Would it be useful for your case?’

  ‘If we can prove he was intoxicated at the time he was murdered, yes.’

  ‘Right. I’ll prepare samples for toxicology, then. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find out what he was injecting. If not heroin, it might’ve been ketamine or meth, perhaps even cocaine.’

  Lockhart bit his lip, closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t bear the thought of a vulnerable missing person being preyed on by someone older, bigger and stronger. Suddenly, he pictured Jess, and wondered whether… no, that was too much. He tried to bring his attention back to Donovan.

  The drugs suggested additional motives for someone to want him dead. Lockhart didn’t even want to think about what the boy might’ve needed to do to pay for those drugs. But, if they could discover what he was using just prior to his death, that might give his team leads to follow up. Dealers who might’ve met him, perhaps even seen his killer…

  It widened the scope of their search and increased the chance of his attacker being a stranger, albeit one who had gained his trust. Despite Green’s theory about the Bible verse, Lockhart still hoped Donovan’s murder was an isolated incident. But a nagging feeling told him there could be more to it than that.

  Eleven

  Lexi was midway through a free hour between her morning sessions at the South-West London Trauma Clinic. She was attempting to make progress on the ever-present backlog of reports, letters and write-ups that meant working unpaid overtime most days. The only way you could deal with all the paperwork in the NHS was, ironically, if your clients didn’t turn up for their appointments. But that meant you wouldn’t meet your targets, so basically you were screwed either way. The trick, she’d learned, was not to let it stress you out.

  She was trying to concentrate on an assessment letter to a psychiatrist, but her mind had been wandering to the murder of Donovan Blair, the crime scene photographs, and…

  ‘Morning.’

  Lexi spun in her chair to see Dan in the half-open doorway to her office. He’d texted earlier to ask if he could drop by. She knew he’d been attending Donovan’s post-mortem at St George’s Hospital, which was just down the way, and was going to let her know what the pathologist had found.

  ‘Hey,’ she replied, smiling in spite of herself.

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘No, it’s all good. Just doing admin.’

  ‘I feel your pain.’

  ‘Come on in.’ She saved her work and switched off the computer monitor, turning to give Dan her full attention as he closed the door gently behind him and took the low armchair opposite her, where he’d always sat during their therapy sessions together. A brief memory came to her of Dan talking about the disappearance of his wife, and her explaining the concept of ‘ambiguous loss’ to him: the physical absence of a loved one, with no closure as to what happened to them.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, rubbing his hands. He hadn’t taken his coat off.

  She dragged the portable radiator out from beside her and rolled it towards him. ‘Sorry it’s so damn cold in here.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve worked in enough old police stations to know the heating never works properly. The Victorians loved austerity as much as our government does.’ He gave a little chuckle, but it disappeared quickly.

  ‘So, how was the autopsy?’

  He outlined the main findings and she started putting the new information into her ‘formulation’: the mental model she was making of this killer’s motivation and behaviour.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Dan.

  Lexi sighed. ‘It’s complex, that’s for sure. On the one hand, you have an extremely violent act, committed against a vulnerable person, a child. Humans are programmed to protect children. Harming them is highly deviant behaviour relative to almost every social norm, across cultures, and is therefore usually accompanied by significant psychopathology.’

  ‘Psycho?…’

  ‘Problems.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘But at the same time,’ she continued, ‘it’s as if the perpetrator cares about the victim. The cleaning, the presentation, and the ID card so we’d know who it was. There’s a kind of tenderness to it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Along with the whole purity and forgiveness thing, the religious aspect. Now we have a little more sense of how hard Donovan’s life really was. Taken away from parents who were abusing substances and neglecting him, bullied at school, running away from foster care. Then, most recently, his own drug use.’ She paused. ‘Maybe the killer knew what he’d been through.’

  ‘I’d say that’s a fair guess if he was responsible for it.’

  ‘He may not have been.’

  ‘You don’t think whoever murdered him was also giving him drugs?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

  ‘There’s a lot we don’t know,’ acknowledged Dan.

  ‘True.’ Lexi shifted in her chair, thought for a second. ‘But what we can say is that this is really deliberate, planned behaviour. It’s sure as hell not random. As twisted as it may be, there’s a logic there. We just can’t see it yet.’

  Dan leant his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on steepled fingers, gazing at the carpet. Silence hung between them for a moment and Lexi wondered if he was thinking the same thing as she was: hoping that the clarification of that logic wouldn’t come in the form of a second victim. Another child.

  ‘I’ll leave it with you,’ he said eventually. ‘Think about it, see what else comes to mind. We’re talking to people who knew Donovan. That might throw up some leads. Anything useful, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Look at the people who knew what he was really going through,’ she said. ‘One of them could be his killer.’

  Dan nodded. ‘By the way,’ he added. ‘I’m trying to clear a budget with DSI Burrows to pay you for this work. You know, a consultation fee for your time. I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to find, though.�
�

  ‘Thanks.’ She flashed him a grin. ‘But you don’t need to do that.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Lexi could always use extra money; living in London on an NHS salary wasn’t easy, as her permanent overdraft proved. But this was more important. ‘Yeah. Use the money for something else, like forensic tests or staff overtime.’

  Dan sat back, blinked. ‘Thank you.’

  She felt herself blush a little. ‘You’re welcome. I just want to help. Especially when the victim’s a kid.’

  They remained looking at one another for a few seconds. Then Lexi’s phone buzzed on the desk behind her.

  ‘Sorry, do you mind if I?…’ She gestured over her shoulder.

  ‘Course not. Go ahead.’

  Lexi picked up the handset and tapped her PIN. ‘It’s just I’m expecting—’ She cut herself off as she saw the message was from Tim. Finally, he’d replied. But she didn’t want to read it now and left the text unopened.

  ‘What?’ he asked softly.

  She hesitated. If they’d still been therapist and client, she wouldn’t have disclosed this. But whatever they were now – colleagues, even friends – Lexi felt she could be more open. ‘Uh, my mom is supposed to be letting me know how my dad’s doing.’

  ‘Is he unwell?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He was having some tests. They think he may have Covid.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh-huh. And he’s in the higher-risk category because he has bronchitis. He smoked a lot back in the day.’

  ‘Right. So, what did she say?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t her. It was just…’ Lexi wondered if she should mention it. Then she thought, why the hell not? ‘My boyfriend.’

  ‘Ah. OK.’

  Was that disappointment in Dan’s tone, or had she imagined it? It didn’t matter, anyway. She put the phone back on her desk, but was still looking at it when Dan spoke again.