by Tim Weaver
‘What else was there?’
‘You ever heard of “murderabilia”?’
I had. It was the term used to describe antiques or collectables that were connected or related to violent crimes, or formerly owned by murderers themselves. It might be poetry written by killers. Artwork. Possessions. Diaries. It could be watches, gold chains, cigarette lighters or waistcoats.
It could be flayed skin.
‘Korman was a collector?’
Bishara nodded. ‘He had a storage area behind the counter, which he kept covered with a carpet. We found some knives inside, mounted in frames, which we can assume Korman bought or acquired somehow. We found other things too, yet to be catalogued and analysed – including some pricey medical equipment …’ Bishara stopped. ‘We think some of it was stolen from the Dead Tracks.’
Its name froze the blood in my veins. My experience in Hark’s Hill Woods, nicknamed the Dead Tracks by locals, had brought me into contact with the man that had murdered Healy’s daughter; a man called Glass. He was in prison now, but the ripples of his awful crimes continued onwards in the hands of collectors like Korman. It made a certain kind of sense that Korman would find a fascination in Glass: the two men had never met, and never would – but they were both responsible for destroying the same person’s life.
It also confirmed now why Korman didn’t have to run his business like everyone else, only opening when he wanted to work, and closing it when he didn’t – because his bottom line was being bolstered by a lucrative sideline.
Bishara gave me a moment more and then continued, quietly, solemnly: ‘We found DNA belonging to three separate people inside the oil drums.’
My stomach clenched.
‘Two, we haven’t been able to ID yet,’ Bishara said.
‘And the third?’
‘We think that belongs to Ana Yost.’
The idea sickened me, but it didn’t surprise me. And, as I mulled it over, I started to line everything up.
‘David?’
I looked at Bishara. ‘I was just thinking, Grankin must have got Neil and Ana Yost out to the pier somehow. Maybe he told them he worked there and he had a set of keys. Maybe they were all drunk after the fancy-dress ball. Maybe they saw it as a dare. However he did it, Korman was waiting there, and he killed Neil and Ana, and then stuffed them into the drums and turned them to ash. Then Korman and Grankin just waited for the right moment.’
‘The right moment?’
‘To remove them again. No one was going to think to look for the Yosts on the pier, so Korman and Grankin could just bide their time. Once they felt the coast was clear, I think they came back at night, most likely by boat, loaded the drums on and then scattered what was left of Neil and Ana into the Thames. There wouldn’t have been much. Maybe the teeth, because they don’t burn, even at a thousand degrees Celsius – but how are you going to find individual teeth in a river that’s two hundred and fifteen miles long?’
‘So who are these other two we’ve found traces of in the oil drums?’
‘Other victims.’
‘Are you saying we’re dealing with a pair of serial killers?’
‘If we are, it’ll be serial killer – singular. Korman was the killer. I’m not sure Grankin was. Or, at least, he didn’t kill for pleasure. Gail Clark, the twins, probably Carla Stourcroft too – they were all murdered by Korman.’ I stopped, and let my thoughts align. ‘When the two of them bought the house in Whitehall Woods, they switched locations: they stopped using the pier as a kill site, and started using the children’s home. It wasn’t just for symbolic reasons, although that was part of the appeal – it was safer at St David’s too. If Grankin had been desperately trying to hose blood off the walls, I’d suggest whoever it belonged to was killed recently. Maybe the DNA in the oil drums is theirs.’
I swallowed, tasting bile in my throat.
‘What about the audio tapes?’ Sewinson asked. ‘You said you found a cassette recorder on the pier, and we found one in St David’s too, on the floor of the room in which Korman killed Grankin. There was a tape there too, but it’s ruined. No chance of recovering anything. Any idea what they were recording?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why put something on tape in the first place?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why use such old technology?’
‘I don’t know,’ I repeated, and it wasn’t a complete lie: I hadn’t been able to work out why Grankin would record Gail dying, why Korman and Grankin might possibly have recorded the Yosts’ deaths too, and why they’d used an old-style tape deck and not a camera or a phone. But I couldn’t tell Bishara or Sewinson that. I couldn’t tell them that Gail’s last moments had been captured on tape, because if I admitted that, I admitted I was in the room when it was playing, and my lie about Korman being the one who’d killed Grankin would be exposed.
‘Have you found any other tapes anywhere?’
Sewinson didn’t reply. In the seat next to her, Bishara’s head had dropped. He wasn’t keen on talking about anything to do with what had happened at the children’s home, because then we had to start talking about the fire, and that was where he found himself exposed. He’d allowed Korman to breach a crime scene and then set that crime scene alight. It wasn’t Bishara’s fault, but – along with the SOCO – it was his responsibility. I sensed part of the reason he’d chosen to take the deal with me was because he saw a way of advancing the case more quickly. But it was hard to see how he walked away from this unharmed, given the way it would play out in the media. Someone had to be hung out to dry.
I turned my mind back to the museum instead, to Korman’s suicide, to the holdall. ‘What about the items I found in the museum?’
‘The holdall?’ Sewinson moved forward in her seat, flipping through a couple of pages to some notes she’d made. ‘They’re with forensics.’
‘I think the mask will tell us,’ I said.
Sewinson frowned. ‘Tell us what?’
‘The reason Korman returned to St David’s.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘The reason he took such a risk in coming back to St David’s, in disguising himself, was to get inside and retrieve the mask.’
‘And you know this how?’
‘It’s a hunch. But the mask meant something to Grankin, because he was the one that wore it – and it must have meant something to Korman if he was prepared to put everything on the line to get it back. It’s got something on it, or in it, that would have created trouble for them.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. DNA evidence, the type of plastic it’s made from, the crack in it – something. Something big enough for Korman to take that risk.’
Sewinson didn’t look convinced.
‘What about the skin?’
‘We’re waiting on forensics,’ she said blandly. ‘We’ve got a lot of evidence here, Mr Raker. You’ve got to respect the fact that it takes time to –’
‘If there are other victims, do you think they all ended up the same way?’ Bishara asked.
Sewinson glanced at him, surprised at the change of direction, or maybe the fact that he was entertaining my opinion at all. They’d kept things pretty close to their chests, with Sewinson especially circumspect. But if it wasn’t clear before, it was crystal clear now: Bishara wasn’t interested in dancing around the edges of the case for all the reasons I’d suspected. If he was going to get sent out to be publicly flogged, he was going to do it armed with everything he needed.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Burning them is how they got rid of them.’
‘Why not do the same to Gail, to the girls, to Carla Stourcroft?’
‘Gail and the girls, Stourcroft, they were never supposed to be a part of this. But because of the way Stourcroft and Gail started looking into the pier, they became a part of it. They weren’t chosen, they just became something that Korman and Grankin had to deal with. Psychologically, they didn’t see the Clarks and Stourcr
oft as the same as the others, if there are others – plus, by doing it the way they did, by mixing it up like that, they didn’t create a pattern.’
‘But there already is a pattern if there were others,’ Bishara countered. ‘If they were luring people in, and then killing them, there’s a pattern.’
‘A pattern of disappearances.’
‘But a pattern all the same.’
As he watched me, I got the sense he was trying to lead me somewhere. ‘I’m not sure I get where you’re going with …’ But then I stopped, looked at him. ‘You don’t think you’re going to get any matches on the rest of the DNA in the oil drums.’
Bishara started nodding before I’d even finished my sentence. ‘We’ve got DNA belonging to three separate people. I think there’s a reason Ana Yost is the only one that has popped up on the radar so far. I mean, think how long Korman and Grankin could have been doing this. When did they first start using the pier – when it closed in 1993? Or was it later, when Grankin took on the security there? Whenever it was, apart from the Yosts, not a single red flag has gone up in all that time in relation to people disappearing in the same way they did. Why?’
I thought about it – but not for long. How did you make sure your victims were never identified? ‘The other victims are illegal immigrants.’
‘Bingo.’ He looked at Sewinson, then back to me. ‘We found the remains of a smashed cassette tape in a rubbish bag at the back of Grankin’s house and managed to recover about twenty seconds of usable audio from it. It’s not much, but it’s enough. It has the sound of a man screaming in Romanian on it.’
If the majority of victims were here illegally, there would be no record of them, and no indication they were missing. In the end, except perhaps for Neil and Ana Yost, Korman and Grankin had taken untraceable people to a lonely place and they’d reduced them all to ash. But, if that was true, why did Korman and Grankin take the Yosts? Taking Neil and Ana represented much more of a risk than taking someone no one even knew was in the country.
‘What about the infra-red map?’
Sewinson returned me to the moment.
I looked at her. ‘What about it?’
‘What was its purpose?’ She came forward at the table. ‘Why even go to the trouble of creating it in the first place? It’s not like they were going to forget where the holdall was.’
‘I don’t think it’s only a map,’ I said, giving voice to a theory I’d been kicking around. ‘I think it was like an altar to them. To further the analogy, it’s what they worship. The museum, its machines, is the church. I think they stored each of the five items in the five machines that were repeatedly varnished – the watch, the lighter, the chain, the waistcoat, the skin – and they kept the mask inside the bigger one. The mask was the centrepiece. That’s why all the rear doors were open on the five smaller machines, and why the one on the Haunted House was shut: because when the walls started closing in, Korman returned to the museum and transferred everything to the holdall and locked it inside the centrepiece, hoping it would never be found.’
I stopped, recalling how Korman had looked out at the arcade before killing himself. The way a parent looked at their child. ‘I think the arcade meant something to them. They had some attachment to it. Korman knew the Haunted House was the best one to hide everything in. It’s difficult to get out from the pillar. It’s boxed in. The back panel is hard to prise open. It makes sense.’
‘Why bother going to the trouble of hiding them if all he was going to do was kill himself?’ Sewinson said.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘And the items represent what?’ Bishara asked.
‘The mask, I don’t know. Grankin wore it the night Korman killed Gail and the girls. He wore it to the fancy-dress ball when he took the Yosts.’ I paused, trying to piece it together. ‘Maybe it’s the one thing that links everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Every life they’ve taken. I don’t know, I’m stretching here, but maybe the mask is part of their MO – something they bring out for every kill – while the five other items stay where they are, in the machines at the arcade. The mask was Korman and Grankin’s present, something they continued to make use of. The other items were their history, something they left on display; a reminder.’
Sewinson nodded. ‘The other items are from their first kill.’
‘Maybe.’
‘But we’ve done a database search for those missing items.’
‘There’s nothing?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
I thought of East again, of how Korman and Grankin had paid him off, and of how they’d continued to manipulate him. He’d talked to me about not finding anything inside the machines when he’d looked – but, while Grankin worked at the museum, he must have been watching East the whole time, shifting the items around when needed, and returning them to their rightful place when East was done. Over time, Grankin got better at transporting the cases too, so that meant no more scratches or cracked glass, and nothing to raise suspicions in East. In the end, it didn’t matter that Grankin had to get himself fired to secure his alibi for the night the Clarks were killed – he might not have been at the museum any more but, by then, East had stopped looking for abnormalities on the machines. He’d long since accepted his fate.
As if thinking the same thing, Sewinson said, ‘They were taking a hell of a risk leaving those items in the arcade like that.’
‘I don’t think they were.’
‘They left evidence right there the whole time.’
‘Exactly. You can apply the same theory to the pier and St David’s. These are places we pass every day but don’t look inside. We don’t access them, even though they’re in plain sight. Korman and Grankin knew that. They knew, as well, that if they controlled Calvin East, they controlled this place they’d created as a celebration of their work. East would have been the only one who might have found out the truth about what they were hiding, because Gary Cabot had long since given up repairing machines. That was why Grankin kept such a tight rein on East, and which machines he was taking home to repair.’
There was a heavy silence in the room as we all thought about the way the machines had been removed and varnished, used to create a map; the way the very centre of the map, the holdall, appeared to contain items taken from yet another victim, as yet unknown. The innocent people Korman and Grankin had chosen had spent their last days facing a version of hell they could never have imagined might exist. And after that, they were consigned to oil drums, and their ashes scattered on water, on land, wherever they would never be found again.
Now there was really only one question left, and I thought of Healy again as I asked it: ‘Why did they kill the twins?’
Sewinson had started writing something, but now looked up at me. Next to her, Bishara pushed aside his coffee. ‘Their mother was killed in the room next door,’ he said. ‘They were a loose end.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
He opened out his hands. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Korman referred to them as “duplicitous”.’
‘Who?’
‘The twins.’
Bishara frowned, glancing at Sewinson. ‘What did he mean by that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Korman was a psychopath.’
I nodded, letting Bishara know that he was right, and that I should probably just forget it. But I couldn’t forget it. It was playing on my mind, because it was playing on Healy’s mind. I’d tried to convince myself that maybe it was better not knowing, that the answer might be worse than the question.
But the argument rang hollow.
Those girls were joyful, innocent – I’d seen it myself on Calvin East’s home video. They weren’t deliberately duplicitous. They were eight years old.
And that was what I couldn’t let go.
77
The evening I finally got home from the station, I collapsed on the bed a
nd slept for almost fourteen hours, lying there – fully dressed, on top of the sheets – unaware of the thunder that passed across the sky, or the breeze drifting through the open window. For a while, I was unaware of the doorbell going at 9 a.m. the next day either, until my phone started buzzing in my jacket pocket, vibrating against the edge of my hip bone. I stirred, at first incapable of pulling myself out of the fugue, before finding enough energy to locate the phone and answer it, eyes still shut.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me.’ Craw. ‘Are you home?’
‘Hold on.’
Slowly, I swung myself around in bed and made my way to the front door. She was standing there, under the protection of the porch, rain jagging out of the sky behind her, dressed in a long black raincoat, grey trousers and black heels. I saw her look me up and down, my clothes crumpled, my hair standing on end, a mix of amusement and pity in her face, and then – without me saying anything – she stepped up, into the house, brushed past me and headed for the kitchen.
‘You look like you need a coffee,’ she said.
I pushed the door shut. ‘I need a shower first.’
After I was done, I returned to the kitchen, and she was standing at one of the windows, looking out at the front garden. Her car, a red Mini, was parked where my BMW would have been if it hadn’t been parked in a forensics lab.
‘Morning,’ I said, rubbing at an eye.
She turned. ‘Morning.’
She’d clipped her fringe back from her face on the left-hand side, and it had now become long enough at the back to tie into a small ponytail. It gave her slender features a different slant, revealing more of her eyes and cheekbones. I’d spoken to her once since handing myself in, from a payphone inside the station, a conversation that had lasted thirty minutes, and in which I’d told her everything I’d found out. For half an hour she’d just listened, silently, on the other end of the line. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure why I’d been so candid. She couldn’t help me then, and she wouldn’t have been able to help me if I’d been charged, and much of our relationship had been built on an unspoken understanding that we might never feel comfortable giving so much of ourselves away. Yet I’d told her all the same. Perhaps a part of me was just sick of holding on to everything.