by Matt Drabble
He placed the single lock of hair, snipped carefully from the devil that masqueraded as an angel, and placed it neatly in the second ledger inside a small polythene pouch. He shuddered as his hands closed the book on his first day and savoured the feeling of accomplishment; there was surely no crime in taking pleasure in one’s work. His ascension was secured and his place at God’s side would be full of glory; he could picture the halo now.
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“What have we got, Doc?” the man asked as he leaned against the car and pulled on a pair of plastic covers for his shoes. Normally, trips into the woodland would require heavy duty, wet weather gear but the summer was in full effect and showed no signs of abating. The ground was dry and firm which made it easier to find any dropped evidence, but difficult to find any footprints.
“Ah, Detective Inspector! Nice to see such punctuality,” Dr Wendell Reese, the police surgeon, replied, standing tall in full coveralls. He was a slender man of regal military bearing, in his late fifties with well-groomed silver hair in a sensible, but elegant, sweep. His voice was pure upper class and he was highly educated, a fact that he was renowned for sharing given the slightest encouragement. “Female, early twenties I’d say. Cause of death I’d wager at the minute, without a full examination of course, resulted from the massive blunt force trauma to the head.”
“Any sign of sexual assault?”
“Nothing immediately visible,” Reese replied thoughtfully. “But obviously I’ll have a full report for you sometime tomorrow.”
“Are the rumours true?” the policeman asked.
“Rumours?”
“About the symbol and the posing of the body.”
“Ah yes. The tongues will wag, won’t they, Inspector?”
“Well let’s try and keep a lid on that aspect shall we?”
“I do hope that you’re not including me amongst the legion of the loose-lipped?” the doctor said haughtily, drawing himself up with an indignant pose. “I am an educated man, Inspector; I’m not one of your flat foots who appear to share half a brain cell between them.”
“I’m not suggesting for a minute, Doc, that you have a tendency to impress your friends at the golf club with gruesome tales of the underclass after one too many gin and tonics. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing,” the cop said in a low strong voice that reminded the surgeon just who was in charge.
“It’s over here, boss,” a young detective constable said through gritted teeth, joining them and picking up with some amusement at the doctor’s discomfort.
“Lead the way, son,” the DI replied, dismissing Reese without a word.
The Detective Inspector was an athletic looking man in his late thirties. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His hair was sandy blonde and cut short above crystal blue eyes that seemed to grow deeper and more intense, depending on the situation. He was equally adept at interrogation scenes of compassion as well as aggression. His rise through the ranks had been swift and envious, but he had few friends on the force and cared little for the feelings of the lazy and jealous. The carefully selected men under him quickly formed a loyal team, attracted by his demand for perfection and reward for service.
He paused at the edge of the clearing, wiping his mind free of clutter and only concentrating on the here and now. The detective constable stood behind him, making sure that he wasn’t disturbed. It had become a familiar routine, and the young man had learned quickly.
The DI stood rock still and exhaled deeply before moving forwards. He trod carefully, always watching where his feet went. He was pleased to see that the crime scene did not appear to have been contaminated too badly. The body had been discovered by an old woman and a small dog, but not in that order. No matter how quickly a scene was roped off, there were always going to be a multitude of erroneous prints and fibres to eliminate. Fortunately, there were precious few serious incidents in Faircliff and the few suspicious deaths that they dealt with usually consisted of one man with bloody knuckles standing over another after a drunken bar brawl, still trying to understand what had happened. It had been a long time since the town had witnessed such a crime and word was already spreading fast that the body was daubed with the symbol of the Crucifier.
He circled the body and tried to get a feel for the site. Already, he could tell that she had been killed here and not dumped. There was enough blood on the ground around her head to show that this was the scene of the crime. There were branches broken and grass flattened where she had been dragged through the brush kicking. At least she had put up a fight he mused, as he nodded.
He stepped closer and looked down at what was little more than a girl. His emotions were carefully stored to one side. It would be impossible to do his job effectively if he was consistently blinded by rage. He had never sworn an oath of vengeance over a body or given a promise to the bereaved. He viewed the violation with a dispassionate and clinical eye, gathering a picture in his mind of the act and leaving out the violence and suffering.
He leaned over and stared closely at the symbol carved into the woman’s flesh. He had looked upon the photos of the original Crucifier’s mark enough times to tell that it was indeed an exact replica. Her arms were outstretched and her hands were staked into the ground with metal pegs.
He knew that his small crew wouldn’t dare leak the details, but he also knew that the original constables, who would have attended the scene upon the initial report, would no doubt have already delighted in regaling their colleagues with such juicy details.
He nodded over to the DC waiting patiently and silently at the edge of the clearing. The young man turned and went to fetch the forensic team. Detective Constable Tim Selleck had put up with a lifetime of “Magnum” jokes with a smile and had even grown a moustache as a way of diffusing the ribbing. He was a quiet and studious officer, intelligent and keen to learn.
“Are you the Detective Inspector?” a woman asked him as he emerged from the woodland on the other side of the clearing, away from everyone else for a moment of reflection.
He looked over at her and saw her nervous face as she hopped from foot to foot. His gut didn’t exactly go off at her presence, but he did get a strange feeling nevertheless. She seemed to have chosen just the right spot to catch him away from the rest of the police on his own and unobserved. She looked strong and moved towards him with a balance that spoke of some sort of intensive training.
“Can I help you, Miss?” he responded lightly, all the while not taking his eyes off hers.
“I think so, Detective Inspector Meyers. My name is Jane Parkes and I used to work with your father.”
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Randall slipped the constable a fistful of notes that he could ill afford for the brown A4 envelope. The photographs were just too damn valuable for him not to buy.. “And the memory card,” he added, much to the smug copper’s chagrin.
“You what?” the kid said, feigning ignorance.
“I give you a small fortune for an exclusive and you hop around the corner and sell them again to the next poor sod, right?” Randall said, shaking his head. “I may not have been born in the digital age, son, but don’t take me for a prat either.”
The kid eventually handed over the memory card, as his brain couldn’t work quickly enough to come up with a reason not to. The young copper had managed to slip away and find a printer in the time since he had been first on the scene to print off the images from his phone. Randall didn’t mind the kid trying to make a few extra quid on the side; hell, it was exactly what he was doing himself.
Once the constable had made his somewhat grumpy exit, Randall jumped back into his car and drove away quickly before the copper changed his mind. He headed into the town centre and circled until he found a parking space. He paced around for a short while until he found what he was looking for - an internet café.
After a somewhat humbling 10 minutes or so of being shown how to work the computer by a girl who looked to be all of about 12 ye
ars old, he got to work.
The kid certainly had an eye or else he had got lucky. The photographs were so clear on the close-ups, showing the symbol carved into the woman, a Lana Genovese according to the kid’s scrawl on the back of the printout. The name immediately sparked something in Randall’s memory, but the years of alcohol abuse had dulled his recall ability and the woman danced tantalisingly out of reach.
He surveyed the other images and was pleased with the composition of the scene. The images were pretty damn gruesome but his stomach was strong, and during the original Crucifier case he had seen worse and in the flesh to boot.
Back in the day, Detective Sergeant Tom Holland had slipped him snippets of information from time to time whenever anything juicy had come across his desk. They had shared enough pub lock-ins after closing hours for Randall to consider the man as much a friend as an informant. Tom had let him into crime scenes to take a few snaps on the rare occasion of a murder or a serious assault. Randall had interviewed many a confused suspect or victim with permission from Tom, several times in the back of police cars or ambulances.
The Crucifier case, however, had been the jackpot as far as Tom was concerned, and Randall had soon exhausted The Globe’s expense account paying the guy. He had noticed the change in Tom the longer that the case went on; the man had started to take every death personally and Randall could see that the man was going downhill fast. His partner the saintly Detective Karl Meyers, had once taken Randall aside to tell him to back off and stop exploiting Tom. It was a conversation that had rapidly turned ugly and ended with the big DI giving Randall a bloody nose. It still infuriated him that the DI, who had been so goddamned sanctimonious with him, had all the while been consorting with a psychic.
After the dust had settled and Meyers was dead, there were only rumours and gossip about the psychic that he now knew to be Jane Parkes. The police authorities had swept the whole mess under the carpet and Meyers was posthumously awarded the George Cross for bravery. At the same time, both Randall’s and Tom Holland’s careers had taken a parallel nosedive. For his part, Randall had grown tired of trying to prove a story that no one wanted to hear and had left Faircliff to pursue a glittering path into mainstream journalism.
He had been the lead reporter on the Crucifier story, mainly thanks to Tom’s tips and steers. For a white hot minute, Randall had been the name on every major newspaper’s lips. Unfortunately, his own sense of self-importance and talent had proved unfounded and he’d soon disappeared back into obscurity. He’d cut off contact with anyone and everyone that he’d known in Faircliff, including Tom.
He had abandoned his friend, but when Tom had died and passed Meyers’ journal to him he had an opportunity to make up for the past. It was a past that seemed so laden with mistakes and a ledger so heavily emblazoned with bold red strokes. He had a failed marriage and a son who was a stranger to him, but this time he would see the job through; he would expose Jane Parkes for the charlatan that she was and hopefully the story would put him back on top for long enough to make some real money to leave for his child’s future.
He pored over the photographs, feeling a dizzying sensation of déjà vu. The carving of the killer seemed so perfectly executed that it was hard not to believe that he was sitting here as he was eight years ago. Arthur Durage had been labelled the killer known as the Crucifier and the case had been closed with shocking speed due to the authorities eagerness to hide Jane Parkes from the public’s eye. Randall’s heart began to race with a nauseating gallop. What if the saintly DI Meyers and his psychic sidekick had shot and killed the wrong man? What if the Crucifier had simply slipped away into the night, leaving behind a patsy to take the blame?
Randall found his senses sharpen as his mind clanked into gear. First of all, he did a quick search on the internet to see if the story of the murder had broken; it hadn’t. The Globe newspaper was still up and going but the website contained only dull local news. Next, he searched for “Lana Genovese” to see just why the name seemed so familiar. He had expected to trawl through pages of social media and little else, but the first story immediately caught his eye and he cursed himself for his self-inflicted dulled memory. Lana Genovese had been the last Crucifier victim, the only girl rescued from his clutches by Parkes and Meyers on that fateful final night. It would seem that her fate had not been averted, merely postponed.
CHAPTER FOUR
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
“You want to run that by me again?” Detective Inspector Danny Meyers said, with a strange look across his face.
Jane tried to read the policeman, but his face was so like his father’s that she struggled to maintain her focus. “Jane Parkes,” she said a second time, but a little more unsurely.
“Well, that certainly is a name that I haven’t heard in a long time, or wanted to,” Meyers said as his face began to harden.
Jane could see that her presence wasn’t appreciated and she instinctively knew that her name was only going to be met with anger by the man standing in front of her. She knew that she was considered toxic by the rest of the police force, but she’d hoped that Karl had said a few positive things in her favour behind closed doors. She also knew from bitter experience that the dead had short tempers and long memories. Lana Genovese had been hanging around her, sometimes beyond her sight and sometimes peering back at her in the mirror. The woman was not for walking off into the light, not while her murder was unavenged.
“What do you want, Ms Parkes?” Meyers asked, his voice icily cold.
“To help. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do; your father understood that.”
“You don’t ever mention my father,” Meyers said in such a tone that Jane actually took a step backwards.
“Look. I don’t care what you’ve heard about me - I helped your father bring about an end to several cases. He believed in what I could do. He believed in me.”
“And look where that got him,” Meyers snarled. “You were a fucking circus act that somehow got under the skin of a great man and twisted his mind until he couldn’t see straight, and then you got him killed.”
“It didn’t happen like that,” Jane responded in a small voice, but inside she’d always thought that it had.
“Bullshit, Ms Parkes. Now I don’t know why you’re here - maybe you’re going to write a book or do a TV show. Either way, I have no comment.”
Jane stood rock still as the detective turned to walk away. “He’s back, the Crucifier, isn’t he?”
“That’s why you’re here? You think that I’m as stupid as my father?” Meyers laughed incredulously. “You think that I’d just welcome you with open arms? Come on in, Jane; pull up a chair to the crime scene and take out your crystal ball! You really think that I’d let you within a hundred miles of my investigation?”
“I can help,” she offered meekly.
“Ms Parkes, let me make this perfectly clear. If I catch you anywhere near this case then I’m going to have you thrown into a very deep dark hole that MI5 keep for terrorist suspects and no one will ever hear from you again. Do you understand me?”
“If I could just…” she started.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” Meyers suddenly roared.
Just then, Jane felt her own temper start to rise. She had put her health and life on the line to do the right thing back in the day. She had helped stop criminals with Karl and spared countless innocents from suffering. She hadn’t done it for fame or money, she had just done it because it was right to do so and she had almost died. All she had to show for the past was the crushing weight of guilt that Karl had died in her place.
“Alright. Now you listen to me, you arrogant prick,” she growled. “You don’t want my help, fine. You don’t even want to listen to what I have to say, then that’s fine too. I knew your father and he was a good man and a good copper. He knew when to trust his eyes and when to trust his gut; he didn’t have his head stuck up his like you. He was a great old guy and I looked up to him like a father
and he died to save me. I can’t change that fact but I would give anything to take back what happened.” She felt tears prick at her eyes and hated herself for the sign of weakness. “I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t like the sort of copper that you appear to be. He always used to say that the most powerful weapon any police officer had the world over was their gut; when you stopped listening to that…”
“…it’s time to get your ass off the front line,” Meyers finished with a heavy sigh.
“Look. I wanted to talk to you away from the rest of them. I know what everyone in your job thinks of me after the Crucifier case, but you have to understand that I only ever worked with your dad. Everything that people think they know about me comes from rumours and idle gossip.”
“Why are you here, Ms Parkes?”
“Call me Jane.”
“Why are you here, Ms Parkes?” Meyers reiterated.
“There’s something wrong with the picture that you’re all seeing… that I’m seeing. Arthur Durage was the Crucifier, I’m sure of it. Whatever is happening here is something else.”
“And you would know this how?”
Jane only stared at him uncomfortably, not knowing what to divulge. After a few moments, she decided to trust that Danny Meyers was his father’s son. “The dead woman. I saw her die… I was there.”
Meyers stared hard at her for what seemed like an age and when he spoke, his voice was strong. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. Jane Parkes, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now, anything you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence.”
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The following morning, Superintendant Donald Chalmers adjusted the framed photograph that hung on the wall of his office for the umpteenth time. The image showed him in full dress uniform being pinned with a medal by Prince Charles himself. The frame was polished to within an inch of its life but no matter how carefully he adjusted it, it never seemed quite straight.