by Owen Nichols
“Time of death is going to be difficult,” muttered Ben, his head still stuck in the safe, the light from his torch sucked up by the dark gloop he had one hand in. “No insects were able to get to him, so I can’t use succession. I can work out how much oxygen would have been in the safe and perhaps link that to the level of decay.” His voice echoed from the safe as he spoke.
“You’re looking at stage one decay easily, but parts of stage two and three as well,” said Helen, pointing to the internal organs that were now mush, the liver and kidneys no longer identifiable.
“So at least three weeks,” said Anders. “Even if we can’t pinpoint the exact time, we’re looking at a minimum of three weeks.”
“Easily,” answered Helen. “Longer with the lack of oxygen in the safe.”
“It’s disgusting is what it is,” said Barry succinctly. “You got his brains leaking out of his skull and his manhood all swollen up in three different parts. When I die, just cremate me, ok?” Anders patted his arm reassuringly.
“Don’t worry hon, I’ll burn you to a crisp. But first, you gotta help me get all those pieces of skull into that box there.” He gave her a long suffering look and pulled on his extra-large coveralls that needed to be specially made for him and got down on his hands and knees to help. There were only the four of them on the scene, but Anders had contacted Cooper and used FaceTime to film the scene for him. He’d paled visibly in the bottom corner of the screen but agreed to have just the four of them assess the scene initially before using a full SCO team. Though he had no authority to allow such things, any review would go through him. Anders wanted to be certain that anything they did would hold up in court.
Anders was keen that as few people knew about this as possible. Though she trusted her core team, there were far too many people leaving and joining the task force every day that she couldn’t be certain one of them would leak the news to the press. If this house was linked with Buckland and this murder to him, then she didn’t want anyone to know that they had found it, though she was sure Buckland would find out sooner rather than later. The fact that this corpse had been hidden intrigued her. It hadn’t been posted on the Fifty Two Weeks of Murder site, so she was sure it was something that he didn’t want found. If it really was him of course. It could just be some horrifying coincidence.
The teeth of the corpse were shattered and the flesh from the fingers too putrescent to get fingerprints. She and Helen had agreed that the best way was to reconstruct the skull and then hope that the face was known to their data bases. As they worked to gather evidence, Barry grunted irritably.
“I joined the police force to catch criminals, not spend time on my hands and knees looking for bits of skull. Ah, found something.” Anders looked over and shook her head.
“That’s a piece of dirt.” He tossed the grit back into the slop and searched again. Though he grumbled, he was diligent and helped Anders recover more fragments. When they could find no more, he stood up and started to remove his coveralls.
“Oh no you don’t,” said Helen. “You’re going to need to help me move this body, reseal the safe and clear up this mess. Maybe Buckland, if it was him, won’t notice the body was found.” Anders smiled as Barry gave her an evil look and zipped his coverall back up.
“You owe me,” he said and Helen gave a cheeky smile.
“I’m sure I’ll think of some way to pay you back,” she said, her eyes roving his broad chest and narrow waist. He blushed and set about helping her, muttering darkly under his breath. Helen helped Anders remove the main portion of the skull, cutting the spine just below the third vertebra. Her work done, Anders took off her coverall and picked up the dark case that held the fragments.
“When you guys are done, get some rest and I’ll see you back at the Hub.” They all gave varying forms of acknowledgement and she stepped out into the street, grateful for the cool air and dark night. As Anders made her way to the truck, she gained the odd look of recognition, but no one approached her, preferring to scurry off instead. She hoped word wouldn’t get out that she was in Bath and tip off whoever owned the house, but had little choice.
She made it to her truck quickly and gunned the engine, letting it turn miserably before starting. Putting her bag on the passenger seat, a battered old Stetson in the foot well caught her eye. She’d worn it a great deal in America and had become something of a trademark, her fiancé ribbing her mercilessly that she belonged in some old Western. She’d not worn it since that night in Washington and Aaron had claimed it as his own, running round the flat with a sheriff badge and plastic pistols in a holster. He must have left it in the car when Cassie had taken the truck a couple of weeks ago. She held it for a few moments, an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation, before sliding it onto her head. It still fit pretty good.
She switched on her CD player and put in a Tom Petty CD, chuckling at the cliché she must have looked in her truck as she turned the volume up until it was loud enough to keep her awake. Pushing the truck beyond its limits, she then sped down the motorway to London, her mind focused on the task at hand. She couldn’t let it wander, for it would take her, inevitably, to Mal and then to Lucy. She couldn’t afford to grieve. She would though. When this was over with, she would grieve as she always did. Fully and painfully. She’d suffered so much loss in her life, she was accustomed to its icy grip, a permanent companion to her. Anders would let her emotions crash over her defences and knew that it would ebb and flow, pummel her with guilt and hurt and then let her rest, rushing in when she least expected it, wreaking more devastating pain. Eventually it would fade like the tide on a beach to leave smooth sand behind that would be rewritten with a new story, though the dull ache of loss would always remain.
Arriving back at Scotland Yard, Anders grabbed the box from the passenger seat and made her way to the Hub. The space was empty, the late hour having chased away anyone working overtime. She’d also given Jesse the task of taking everyone to the pub to toast Mal and he’d done his job well, knowing why she needed to have the area to herself.
She checked her office quickly, scanning her emails and messages for anything urgent and then made her way to the forensics lab. She set the bag to one side for a moment and took out a sterile needle and some yellow collection tubes from the equipment store. Sitting on the stool, she rolled up her sleeve and tied a band around her arm, just above the elbow. Tapping the Basilic vein until it pulsed visible, she pushed the needle in and collected a sample of blood. Her movements were swift and well-practised. Once the bottle was full, she swapped it over and collected another sample. Finally, she removed the needle, swabbed the area and held some cotton wool over the puncture wound until the bleeding stopped.
Whilst she did this, she perused Helen’s shelves of equipment and gathered what she needed. She’d arranged an appointment with Charing Cross Hospital upon her arrival in the UK, but they’d been slow to respond, so she was happy to do this herself for the time being. As a transgender woman, her liver and renal function had to be tested as well as her haemoglobin, lipid and hormone levels to make sure that they were all within range. Helen had been happy for Anders to do it in her lab and had even offered to do the tests for her. Doing them now helped to calm her mind and focus on something other than Mal and Lucy. It would make her work more quickly on the skull fragments.
Anders’ potassium was a little high and her liver function was at the lower end of the range, but she attributed that to stress. She’d check again in a week. Tidying up after herself, she put the waste into a biohazard box and the reagents back into the neat and orderly rows Helen liked.
Putting on a fresh set of coveralls and surgical gloves, she took the bones from her bag and laid them on the metallic surface. Helen was exceptionally fussy about how her lab was managed and the table gleamed with cleanliness. The bones, chunks of dried flesh and brown, rotting viscera looked like a macabre jigsaw puzzle as she laid them out, counting them as she did so.
“One hundred a
nd four pieces,” she said with a grimace. Whatever had crushed the skull had been heavy and whoever had done it had used that weapon repeatedly in their rage. She knew that they would have missed many fragments in their haste and guessed that several pieces wouldn’t fit as well as she would have liked due to the savage nature of the killing. The brutality would have crushed some bone to microscopic shards and the teeth were too fractured to piece together accurately enough for dental records.
Her first job was to clean the fragments and she took photographs of the bone before cleaning them, keeping all the collected gore for evidence. Eventually, she laid the pieces in order of size and put in her headphones. When working on puzzles, she liked to stand and be able to move, preferably to some beat. It was the opposite technique to her meditation of a crime scene, but for her, equally as useful in focusing the mind. She picked up the largest piece of skull, essentially the lower half with the jawbone smashed off and scanned it closely as “Uptown Funk” sounded through her headphones. Looking at the pieces around her, she picked one up and found a match.
Singing to herself, she started piecing together the skull, dancing and singing softly as “Happy” followed the previous song. Lost in her own world, the skull started to take form. Hours passed and she didn’t notice, trapped as she was in an underground room with no windows and nothing but the glare of neon lamps above. She had her back to the clock above the doorway and didn’t notice as Barry entered and put the corpse from Bath onto a steel gurney, the body bag squelching as he dumped the bag. He grinned as Anders, her back to him, shuffled to the music and sang to herself.
“Not perfect after all,” he said, taking his phone out to film Anders, her singing off key and displeasing to the ear. Thinking he’d get Jesse to play that during the next briefing, he sauntered out of the lab with a whistle and a skip to his step.
Many hours later, Helen entered the lab to find Anders asleep, perched on a metal stool and head resting on her arms as she leaned onto the desk. By her side stood the reconstructed skull. There were several gaps in the bone and many teeth were missing, but she had done an outstanding job. Helen glanced at the gently snoring Anders with a new level of respect. Reaching out so as not to disturb her, she took the skull and placed it onto a Cyberware laser scanner connected to a Silicon Graphics Indy computer. On the screen, the computer placed a wire mesh over the skull and started overlaying tissue depth based upon Helen’s findings on approximate age, gender and build. It was a more accurate method than the traditional one of adding clay to give depth on landmark sites, but still not perfect. She then passed the data to HOLMES and ran it through the police data bases. As she was doing that, she finally took a look at the reconstructed face on the screen and gasped in horror. The computer had the hair colour a shade lighter and the features were slightly off kilter, but there was no mistaking who it was.
Anders woke with a start at Helen’s curse and gave a deep stretch, arching her back deeply as she chased sleep from her body.
“Everything ok?” she asked as she slid from the stool to see what had startled Helen.
“Come look at this,” replied Helen, shock in her voice. “I think we have a new problem.”
Anders stood behind Helen and looked at the monitor. The face was instantly recognisable. It had been plastered on every paper in the world in what had become the largest manhunt since Osama Bin Laden. Barely a day had passed without his face appearing on TV from news programmes to debates to daily shows.
The skull was that of Lord Michael Buckland, the very man they’d been hunting these last few weeks.
Chapter 9
Anders sat on the floor in her office and looked at the evidence around her. She’d drawn the blinds and dimmed the lights, pushing the desk back against the wall and putting a tablet next to her on the floor. She then put her phone into a dock and selected a playlist that she had made from every crime scene linked to Buckland. Playing the music, she started the process of building her construct.
She started at the beginning. Matthew Peters. Nailed to a cross on Wimbledon Common. She re-read every report, every lead, every piece of evidence. She did the same for Boyle. Chopped to pieces over forty days and nights in a shipping container. The vicar and his wife. Killed in a grotesque parody of a fairy tale.
She hesitated then.
Mal Weathers. Killed using the same method that she’d been disfigured with. Shoving her emotions aside, she read the reports, analysed the evidence and looked at the photographs, not shying from the horrific details they showed.
She read the report from Ben and Helen on the corpse in Bath. They’d had little time to gather evidence, but they had been thorough. Once done, she picked up her tablet and scoured the web, chasing her thoughts and finding links. It was time then to build her mental construct. It had taken her hours to reach this point and her stomach gnawed with hunger, but she ignored it, focused as she was.
Closing her eyes, she went back four weeks to Wimbledon common, the music helping her to realise the world as it was then. She dragged Peter Matthews from the van, beat him and tied him to the cross, hammering the nails in after shoving a ball of Buckthorn into his mouth. She wasn’t alone. Someone else was with her, helping to hammer the nails in, taking delight at the bloody mess, squeezing his mouth shut so that the thorns dug deeper into flesh.
The shape was blurred. Fuzzy and indistinct, there wasn’t enough evidence for her to get a clear image.
Boyle. She sliced and diced, tore finger from socket, cut limb from torso. The different grooves of the blade, tough and decisive, the other timid at first, then strong. The third cutting, weaker yet sure, steady in its work. To keep him alive, she needed help. She couldn’t do it alone. Boyle wanted to die so very much, but Anders wouldn’t let him. She gave Boyle constant care, set up a rotation, kept his wounds clean, showed the others how. Anders stopped then. Buckland wouldn’t know how to keep him alive. But she would. She showed them how.
The Vicar and his wife. Anders made the steel boots, heated them up, but needed help to hold the wife’s legs still as she put the boots on her. The poor woman screamed and the acrid smell of burnt flesh and hair clung to Anders like a stain. It took a long time to beat the Vicar. To break every bone, but Anders swung the bat hard and fast. Stopping, she remembered every break. Someone else broke that bone. Too tall for that angle. A shape blurred next to her, swinging the bat with glee. Smaller, not as strong. Then another, raining blows with strength and fury.
Then came Mal.
Alone in her office, tears of anguish streaked down her face as she whipped the skin from his back. She tried to block out his screams, but her construct was too strong, too clear. She tore the flesh in strips of meat from his body until she exposed the bone beneath and continued her terrible work. She sobbed quietly in the now dark office but would not flinch. She paused, rewound, re-whipped, covering every angle until she knew the story of his death more intimately than she had known the story of his life. The memory would be seared on her brain as if she herself had committed the atrocity. She would carry the guilt of his death forever, and, in the dark, with music filling the room, she played a requiem for his soul.
Several hours later, exhausted from her efforts, she climbed stiffly to her feet. The music had been on repeat and she switched it off, erasing the Playlist from the phone. Taking a moment to gather herself, she headed to the door, slightly unsteady on her feet, and made her way into the Hub. The place was eerily quiet, the only sound coming from Jesse’s keyboard as he tapped away, lit only by a single lamp.
“Hey,” he said when he saw her. He looked tired, but his energy levels were high. “You have any luck in your weird dream world thingymaboby?” His question alerted Abi, Duncan and Barry and they came scurrying from Abi’s office, clearly having been waiting for her to finish. Anders gave them all a tired smile.
“I think I know who did it.” she said. “Get McDowell and the team. We’re ending this today.”
Chapter 10<
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Anders stood by the projector waiting for Helen and Ben to make their way from the forensics lab. McDowell was being Skyped and his picture showed at the bottom of the screen. He looked like he had been dragged from sleep and his suit was a crumpled mess. The rest of the team looked shattered, except for Barry, who looked bright and alert. He’d slept on Abi’s sofa while waiting and passed mugs of hot coffee around. Anders accepted hers gratefully and munched on a bar of chocolate as she waited for Ben to fold himself into a seat. At the back of the group, the Met Commissioner, Dawkins sat slouched in his chair. He exuded an air of authority and calm, his silver hair and crinkled skin immaculately kept. Word had it that he was next in line for McDowell’s job when he retired.
“Thanks for coming,” she said as Ben gave her a shy nod that he was good to go. “I’ve kept this meeting small as we need to move fast and I don’t want any leaks. Helen, did you get what I needed?” Helen gave her a sad nod. She’d had Lucy’s body sent to her lab and found the needle mark in the belly button. It was exceptionally difficult to spot and would only be found by those looking for it. Anders turned to Jesse and he gave her the thumbs up. He’d finally found the documents for the house in Bath.
“As you all know by now, we found a body in the house in Bath. Jesse has come up with the goods once again and we can see that the house has been part of the Buckland family estate for generations. Only now, it belongs to Francis, not Michael. The body in the safe is Buckland. We can’t confirm that one hundred percent yet, but we can do that easily enough, given a little time.” She clicked on a remote and the projector showed some archive footage of Lord Francis Buckland. He was giving a seminar in Oxford on Law, the students enraptured by his passion and vigour.