by Tim Ellis
Solomon's Key
Tim Ellis
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Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Timothy Stephen Ellis
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Books written by Tim Ellis can be obtained either through the author’s official website: http://tim-ellis.yolasite.com/ at Smashwords.com or through online book retailers.
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To Pam, with love as always
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Chapter One
Tuesday 17th December
The woman’s breasts had been removed. The sweet coppery smell of coagulated blood lodged in his throat. He forced himself to look.
About twenty, slightly overweight, with short dark hair, the victim lay on the double bed – head where the feet should have been. Her arms were arranged at right angles to her body, the palms facing upwards. Her sightless eyes remained open. The legs were spread in a v-shape. He couldn’t imagine the horror she must have suffered. He was drawn to the folded piece of paper that hung from her ear by a safety pin.
As he looked around the bedroom, an intense feeling of sadness overwhelmed him. Boot-sale pictures hung on the rent-drab magnolia walls. Nothing seemed to match the threadbare green carpet. In the corner of the room, a clutter of wide-eyed teddy bears, dolls and furry animals snuggled into each other, as if witness to the evil that had taken place. A rattan chair overflowed with discarded clothes. Two forensics officers were crawling all over the place bagging evidence like thieves.
Looking back at the victim, he was surprised at the lack of blood beyond the confines of the bed. He knew he would never get used to the depravity of humanity. What led the killer here? Why this woman?
‘Glad to have you back, Sir,’ Kim Preston, his detective sergeant said. The team usually called her KP, not because she was nuts, but as a term of endearment. He couldn’t see her mouth, but her eyes were smiling.
‘Thanks,’ he said. It was the anniversary of Angie’s death, he’d been at Highgate cemetery tidying up the grave when the call came. He hadn’t been to the grave since the funeral, and felt guilty. He cleared the weeds, replaced the rotted stalks in the vase with fresh flowers, and talked to her. It was difficult at first; he hadn’t spoken about his feeling to anyone in such a long time.
The Chief Super had forced him to take two weeks off last Friday after losing his rag with her. Well, that’s what she called it, he thought it was a bee in a bottle. The argument had been about holidays. The Chief said he should take time off whilst it was quiet, he wanted to catch up with the paperwork. She said that’s what he had Sergeants and administrative staff for, and so it went back and forth for three days until he erupted like a dormant volcano. He didn’t want to have time to think about Angie’s death and she knew it, but being the Chief she had the last word.
He walked noisily towards KP in his white paper suit, mask, plastic overshoes, and gloves. He caught a whiff of Chanel No. 5. She didn’t usually wear perfume. The call must have caught her about to go out for the night. An image of Marilyn Monroe saying that all she wore in bed was a few drops of the perfume leapt into his head.
‘Take a look at this.’ She handed him the paper in a sealed plastic evidence bag a forensics officer had given her.
He looked at the hand-written indecipherable message, in a language he didn’t recognise, or could even pronounce. There were no breaks in the stream of symbols. He was disappointed. Decoding it would cost time and money. He passed it back to her without comment. Visions of killers who used cryptic messages to taunt the police ran through his mind, particularly the Zodiac killer in America. Some of his messages were still unsolved after forty years, and the killer – unknown – remained at large.
The forensic pathologist, Terri Holmes, stood hunched over examining the corpse. Like spectators at a sporting event, KP and Hart positioned themselves side by side at the foot of the bed watching her work. She turned her head, flashing her eyes impatiently at them, but said nothing.
He knew better than to ask Terri anything yet. If he riled her, he would get nothing until after the post mortem. Her slim hands worked deftly. A few strands of lustrous red hair escaped the white hood and brushed her pale face.
‘This is not going to be a one-off is it, Sir?’ KP said, voicing his unspoken thoughts. The message, the positioning of the body, the removal of body parts, all suggested that the murder would not be an isolated event, and nudged a slumbering memory that he couldn’t quite grasp.
He looked at the blue eyes peering at him between the hood and the mask. Kim had joined him eight months ago from Windsor CID. There had been an immediate physical attraction between them, but they both knew they were a disciplinary hearing away from a sexual relationship, and as such nothing happened. He shrugged.
‘The killer seems to be a very neat person,’ she persisted. ‘He put her pyjamas, which her boyfriend said she’d been wearing when he left, in the washing basket in the bathroom. There was no forced entry, so she might have known her killer.’
‘That seems unlikely, but we shouldn’t rule it out yet. What’s her name?’ He always liked to know the name of the victim, instead of seeing or referring to them as nameless corpses. It put some flesh on the bones so to speak.
‘Gillian Wilkinson. She was a receptionist at Darwins, a solicitor’s offices on Shepherd’s Bush Road about a mile away. Her parents live in Yeovil in Somerset.’
‘She’s a long way from home. How long has she been in London?’
‘Ten months, Sir.’ She handed him a recent photograph.
‘Parents informed?’ he asked, knowing that KP always did everything by the book. ‘We’ll need them to identify the body.’
‘As we speak, Sir. Local yokels are seeing to it.’ He saw the corners of her eyes crease. He knew that she was grinning at her own joke behind the mask. In the face of inhumanity, humour was one of the defence mechanisms they all used. ‘They’re being brought to the station tomorrow morning at eleven.’
They had been called to Gillian’s flat above the fish and chip shop on the corner of Windsor Way and Brook Green in Hammersmith, opposite the L’École Française and St Paul’s Girls School. The boyfriend found her upon his return from work at six-thirty. After throwing up in the toilet, he’d called the police. It was now seven forty-five.
‘Does the boyfriend know anything?’
KP rifled through her notebook. ‘Nothing, Sir, he’s a plumber, currently working on a job in Essex. She was still sleeping when he left at five-thirty this morning. I’ve taken a statement, and let him go to a friend’s house. We’ve got the address. He’s devastated. They were saving up to get married. I’ve asked him to come to the station tomorrow morning to make a formal statement.’
‘The killer must have been watching her,’ He said. ‘Otherwise how would he have known the boyfriend would be away all day? Make sure the neighbours are asked whether they saw a stranger hanging around.’
‘Around here, Sir, everybody’s a stranger.’
Terri Holmes straightened up. She focused her eyes on him. They were like green rippling lakes. ‘Jacob, glad you could make it.’
‘I was passing.’
‘The temperature of the body suggests she’s been dead about four hours. Her breasts and uterus have been r
emoved. She remained conscious whilst it was being done.’
He saw KP’s mask move and her eyes wrinkle up.
They shifted to the side of the bed opposite Terri so they could look at Gillian the right way up. He noticed the diamond stud earring in the victim’s other ear. Where was the one the killer had removed?
‘That’s not what killed her though,’ Terri continued matter-of-factly. ‘She bled to death. It also looks as though she was raped and sodomised before the mutilations. There’s significant bruising around the vagina, and the anus is torn. There are also deep rope burns on her wrists and ankles, which suggests that she was tied to the bed whilst the killer went about his grisly task. Fibres in her mouth, and marks on her face are consistent with being gagged. That’s it. I’ll let you know more after the post-mortem.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. Terri Holmes was in her mid-thirties and married to a consultant surgeon who was considerably older than her. She remained childless, and he wondered if she had made a conscious decision to put her career first.
She began packing the hinged black leather bag with her instruments, and the sealed swabs of bodily fluids taken from the victim. KP and Hart moved to the centre of the room out of the way. She then directed her assistants to seal the body in the white zip-up plastic body bag for transportation to the morgue.
KP scratched her head through the paper hood. Interrupting my concentration she said, ‘What do you think it means, Sir?’
I was trying to get into the mind of the killer – not a very pleasant task. I hoped Terri would find some DNA, which would start us off in the right direction. The killer was obviously male, and probably white. For some strange reason, white males disproportionately carried out these types of murders. He knew the area, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, athletic, neat and tidy, with a familiarity of police procedures and forensics. Probably held a manual job, and had been previously arrested, or committed to a mental hospital for less serious offences before the killings, such as rape. He probably suffered the early loss or rejection of a parent, which resulted in disconnecting from people. ‘What do I think what means?’ I asked absently, my mind still running down a checklist of the environmental, social, physical and psychological traits of killers.
‘Printed on the paper?’
I found speculative conversation pointless, but she liked to bounce her ideas around. The differences between us were what made us good together. ‘I have no idea.’
‘It has to be a message. Why else would the killer leave it?’
Yes, why indeed? ‘I’m sure you’re right, Kim, but we won’t know that until we can decipher it.’
‘Maybe it’ll provide a reason why he did it?’
As usual, she was like a dog with a bone. I changed direction.
‘I want a catalogue of everything in the flat,’ I said, telling her how to suck eggs.
‘Already being done Sir,’ she said, dancing round me.
‘What the devil’s the matter with you? Keep still.’
‘I need the toilet.’
‘Well go then.’ It was hard to imagine Kim going to the toilet, but then I didn’t really try. The familiarity of working closely together for eight months had removed any embarrassment.
‘It’s a crime scene,’ she whispered, the distended bladder clearly addling her brain.
‘You know I don’t mean here. There must be another toilet somewhere near, go and find it. We’re finished here anyway. I’ll meet you outside.’
She shot out in search of relief.
Two of Terri’s assistants followed lugging the body. Terri said on her way out, ‘I’ll be doing the PM tomorrow morning, at about ten.’
Waving my hand, I said, ‘OK, see you there.’
I took a last look around the one-floor flat. Forensics officers were still collecting evidence, cameras flashed intermittently. An all-pervasive smell of fish and chips masked the stench of blood. The Guardian on the bedside cabinet seemed out of place. Gillian didn’t appear to fit the normal profile of their readership, but then you could never really tell. Maybe she’d been trying to better herself. It was definitely today’s newspaper, I’d read mine earlier this morning. There was no address written on it, so a paperboy had probably not delivered it. If she bought it today, she probably would have gone to the Mart I’d noticed three doors away. I decided to pop in there on my way back to the station and see if anyone remembered seeing her.
‘Have you found the other earring?’ I asked a forensics officer on his hands and knees with a torch looking under the bed.
He didn’t get up, but said, ‘Not yet, Sir.’
I guessed they wouldn’t. The killer was probably a trophy-taker, nothing big just a little something to touch, so that he could remember the killing, relive how he felt at the time.
I walked through the lounge to the tiny kitchen alcove. There was nothing of any note. The noise of traffic from the A315 was incessant and overpowering. If she screamed, it was hardly surprising that no one had heard her.
Outside, on the pot-holed road by the side of the building, I noticed the unmarked forensics van discreetly parked. A constable stood on duty at the door to the flat. I ducked under the yellow tape.
‘Any sign of the press?’
‘Not yet, Sir.’
‘Don’t tell them anything if they do turn up, understood?’
‘I don’t know anything, Sir.’
‘Then you won’t have any trouble following my orders, will you?’
***
Stood to one side of the crowd of gathered rubbernecks at the front of the chip shop, KP stamped her feet and rubbed her upper arms with her hands. The wind gusted through her shoulder-length blonde hair and made her eyes water. A white Christmas had been forecast. It was eight-thirty.
‘What’s going on, mate?’
‘Is it a murder?’
I ignored the shouts from the crowd. It was as if their own lives were suspended whilst they rummaged around in someone else’s.
We walked the short distance to the Mart, passing Penny’s Flower Shop and Barlow’s Estate Agents on the way. I pushed on the glass of the door. It opened with a scraping sound. The warm nauseating smell of body odour hit us as we entered.
I waved my Warrant Card and Gillian’s picture under the nose of the unshaven gaunt man behind the counter.
‘Yeah, she’s always popping in for something,’ he said. ‘She lives above the chippy on the corner.’
‘Was she in this morning buying the Guardian?’
He turned his head, cupped his hand to his mouth, and shouted, ‘Ravinder.’
Another slightly older man, with a grey-streaked beard and an orange turban, came from somewhere at the back of the store. ‘What’s the bloody problem now, Tommy?’ he moaned before he saw us.
‘Police want to know whether that girl from above the chippy has been in today.’
‘No, ain’t seen her, and I’ve been here since five this morning,’ Ravinder muttered. He hung about to see what was going on.
Tommy scratched his thinning brown hair and said, ‘She don’t buy the Guardian anyway. The Sun more like, never the Guardian.’
‘Come on, mate.’ I heard a man shout from the queue beginning to form behind us. ‘Some of us want to get home, you know.’
I didn’t look round. ‘Do you remember any strangers coming in this morning and buying the Guardian?’
‘Strangers!’ Ravinder slapped Tommy on the back and guffawed. ‘This place survives on strangers, eh Tommy? Don’t remember a single one of them.’
‘Yeah,’ Tommy agreed.
‘Thanks anyway,’ I said, taking the photograph back and slipping it in my overcoat pocket. I noticed the CCTV camera above them on the back wall. ‘Is that on all day,’ I asked pointing at the small black and white camera.
Ravinder leaned over the counter and whispered, ‘It don’t work. I keep meaning to get it fixed, but forgettin’ is my middle name.’
‘Shame,�
�� I said.
We turned to go. I heard the same concerned citizen in the queue shout after us, ‘Bout fuckin’ time, mate.’ Some mate, I thought.
Large snowflakes swirled about us like dervishes as we stepped outside. The A315 was jammed solid. Frustrated drivers hooted their horns and flashed their headlights. I knew it would be tedious going back to the station now and decided not to.
‘Well, we now know she reads the Sun and not the Guardian,’ KP observed.
‘Let’s go to that pub,’ I said, pointing to the Fox and Hounds along Brook Green. ‘We’ll wait for the traffic to clear.’
KP shivered in her thin trouser suit. I took my coat off and wrapped it around her. The blustery wind forced us to lean forward crossing the road. It was largely a residential area and we snaked our way between the parked cars to get onto the pavement. Despite the weather, about ten hooded youths were hanging about outside the local secondary school. Some sat on bikes, others stood around leaning against the railings. People walked in both directions, hunched into coats against the wind and snow – going home – going out – anonymous.
Two men and a woman crowded together outside the entrance to the pub. Plumes of smoke dissipated in the freezing air accompanied by intermittent coughing.
***
It wasn’t often the chance presented to down a pint of extra cold Guinness. I was pleased to have an excuse tonight. The pub was busy with a mix of locals and business types. No one took any notice of us. There seemed to be a glut of bar staff. A top-heavy barmaid in a low-cut sequinned top with heavy make-up served me fairly quickly. KP wanted a diet coke. After looking at the unappetising menu, I ordered scampi and chips for two. The clock above the bar showed eight forty-five.