Solomon's Key

by Tim Ellis

  ‘He must have been waiting on the road until the Darwin’s went out. How did he get the girl down here? Someone must have seen him. Have you…?’

  Before I could finish KP said, ‘Yes, I’ve got uniforms questioning the neighbours about a car sat on the road, or a man carrying a woman.’

  ‘Well done.’

  We arrived at Letitia Darwin’s bedroom. The door was open and I let KP go first. As soon as I stepped inside, I noticed how cold the room was. It was a spacious bedroom, which was predominantly pink. Pink walls, bedding and carpet. An en suite bathroom and toilet led off from the left. It was obviously a woman’s room. Nothing seemed out of place with the exception of the upside-down body on the bed.

  Terri Holmes stood over Letitia Darwin. ‘Are you going for the record, James?’ she said.

  What record? Was there a record? If there was, I suppose Terri would know about it. I ignored her and moved to the head of the bed so that I could look at Letitia Darwin the right way up. She looked to be above average height, although it was difficult to tell with her lying down, and thin to the point of anorexic. Her shoulder-length hair was dark brown, which would probably have matched her eyes, if they hadn’t been missing. In place of her eyes were yawning holes. It was unsettling and looked like something out of a horror film. Father Jacob had been right about her eyes.

  ‘As you can see, her eyes are missing,’ Terri said. ‘But that’s not all.’ She rolled the body towards her to reveal the back of Letitia Darwin’s head. The skull had been sawn through and the back half of her head, held only by a flap of skin at the neck, fell open to reveal the absence of a brain. I could see through Letitia Darwin’s eye sockets. ‘From what I can see,’ Terri continued, ‘the killer took great pains to remove the brain with the eyes still attached. He used an electric bone saw, cutting from the center of the skull laterally down both sides of the head in front of the ears so that he could peel away the skull for access to the brain.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Presumably, so that he wouldn’t damage the brain.’

  ‘No, I mean why did he take the brain with the eyes attached?’

  ‘That’s your job, James.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The usual sexual abuse.’

  ‘What about the message?’

  She took a sealed clear plastic envelope from her black bag. ‘Runes, if I’m not mistaken,’ she said as she passed it to me.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a PhD in Ancient Languages as well. Where was it?’ I said.

  She screwed her eyes up, but didn’t retaliate. ‘Through a piercing in her top lip.’

  I looked at the message, which probably was runes, or something similar.

  Other than that, there was nothing at all intelligent I could glean from it. If Father Jacob were right, it would be a quote from the bible relating to Lucifer. So now we had victims representing sacrifices to each of the five Princes of Hell just as Father Jacob had said, and if his prediction held out, the killer would need one more person for his sick plan, but who, and from where?’

  Half-remembering a conversation with Jane I said to KP, ‘Give Jane a ring. Find out if she’s identified the hotels at the center of the Sigil.’

  She nodded and moved out of the bedroom to make the phone call.

  I passed the message back to Terri. ‘Thanks,’ I said, but she ignored me. I guess I’d burned my boats with her. Any hope of an early Christmas present had floated off down the river.

  KP came to the door and signaled for me to join her.

  I wasn’t going to get anything else out of Terri, and I had seen all I needed to see, so I walked out of the bedroom and joined KP in the corridor.

  ‘Jane said there’s a long list of hotels, but one of them is the Jumeirah Carlton.’

  ‘Oh God, Suzie.’ My stomach lurched. ‘When did she find this out? I hope she’s done something about it?’

  KP put her arm on mine. ‘Calm down, Sir. She’s only just found out. She rang Suzie’s room, but received no answer, which could mean a number of things. She’s sent a patrol car round there and is waiting to hear from them.’

  ‘Let’s get back to the station,’ I said looking at my watch. It was seven thirty-five. ‘Have you tried Paul again?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes. I’ve told him to go to the station. He says he has no idea what happened. The woman at the VCO said she was still over there. Anyway, he’s going to ring them again and find out what went wrong.’

  ‘He’d better have some answers by the time we get there,’ I said. ‘What about Ali and Brian?’

  ‘They managed to make it home last night, but it was gone midnight by the time they got there. They’re both on their way into the station, but they’re a bit tired. The whole team will be there when we got there, as well as Father Jacob, and hopefully Suzie.’

  The snow was becoming another factor in the investigation. It had been falling quite heavily whilst we’d been in the house, and about eighteen inches lay on the ground. I had to brush a layer of snow off my car whilst reporters shouted questions at me and pushed microphones in my face before I could climb in, start the car and move off.

  ***

  It was slow going back to the station. I could have put my flashing light on the roof, but I doubt I would have got there any quicker. London had simply too many vehicles on its roads, and inclement weather compounded the chaos.

  I pulled into the car park at eight-fifty with KP directly behind me. I noticed the Chief’s car parked in her reserved place. I was sure she would be eager for me to brief her on the weekend’s progress, but I wanted to get myself up to date first, and especially to find out where Suzie was.

  I didn’t wait for KP, but hurried into the station and up the stairs to the incident room. The Chief was loitering in the corridor like a vulture waiting to pick my brains.

  ‘James, come and brief me,’ she said turning towards her office.

  I didn’t want to start something I couldn’t finish in the corridor, so I followed her into her office, but before she could begin, I said, ‘I’ll come and brief you in about fifteen minutes, Chief. We’ve had another murder this morning and Miss Palton is missing.’

  ‘What do you mean missing, James?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, just that we can’t find her and it’s possible she might be the killer’s next victim.’

  ‘Don’t say that, James, inter-agency cooperation would go out of the window.’

  I began walking out of her office, and called over my shoulder, ‘I’ll be back once I know all the details, Chief.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes, James,’ she shouted after me. ‘And don’t forget you’ve got your second appointment with Doctor Andrews at ten o’clock.’

  As if I had time for that, I thought. I had forgotten, but once the Chief knew what was going on, surely she wouldn’t insist I keep the appointment. We’d just have to re-schedule.

  I walked into the incident room. Everyone seemed to be there except Suzie. I looked at Jane, ‘Well, where’s Suzie?’

  She looked nervous, as if I blamed her for Suzie’s disappearance. ‘Two uniform officers received no answer when they knocked on her door. They called the manager and he let them in, but she wasn’t there and there was no evidence of a struggle.’

  ‘Were her clothes and computer still there?’

  ‘No, Sir. There was nothing there. It was as if she’d left. Even her suitcase had gone.’

  ‘And she didn’t check out?’

  ‘No, Sir, but as we’re paying, I suppose there was no need for her to do so.’

  ‘Of course she would have checked out. What about the room key, where’s that?’

  She looked flummoxed, ‘I don’t know, Sir.’

  ‘Well, find out,’ I said. I wondered whether Suzie had taken it personally that I hadn’t contacted her, packed her bags and left. ‘Have we got her mobile number?’

  ‘We didn’t have, but I phoned GCHQ to get it – no answer unfortunately. She
either has it switched off, or else she’s somewhere there’s no signal.’

  ‘Contact the communications center; see if you can locate her through her mobile phone.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘What about the CCTV in the hotel?’

  ‘No, Sir, we haven’t looked at that.’

  ‘Hopefully, we should be able to identify her leaving the hotel with her bags.’

  ‘We’ll get onto it.’

  I turned to Paul. ‘Well?’

  He seemed embarrassed. ‘All I can do is apologize, Sir. I phoned the woman again, well actually, it was a bloke this time. He said she’s still there. I told him that she couldn’t be because we’d found her body here. He phoned Burma again whilst I was on the line, and the man there said she’s still there. To cut a long story short, they’ve been saying she was there based on her leaving date, not on the fact that they’d physically seen her and confirmed that she was there. They’re checking now, but at the moment they have no idea when she left the country.’ He banged his fist on the desk. ‘It’s their fault, I believed what they were telling me, but I suppose I should have verified what they were saying.’

  I wasn’t feeling in a very forgiving mood. ‘Yes, you should have done, Paul. A young woman has died unnecessarily because you didn’t do your job properly.’

  He hung his head.

  I turned to Pea. ‘What did you find out at Social Services about the boy?’ I snapped.

  She jumped. Thrusting her hand in her bag she pulled out her notebook and flipped over the pages. ‘His name is Daniel, Sir. Initially, he was fostered, but during a series of placements strange things occurred which resulted in the death of a foster carer’s own child. He wasn’t blamed exactly, there was no evidence, but they recorded the death as suspicious. After psychological assessment, he was considered to be a danger to others and sectioned. He was placed in Woodgrange, a children’s mental hospital in Hertfordshire, in 1979, which closed in 2000 after a fire. I’m trying to find out whether any of the records survived.’

  ‘Has he asked to see his Social Service records?’

  ‘Yes, he was sent an edited copy in May of 1993.’

  ‘I wonder why he waited so long between seeing his records and Sarah Stone’s murder.’

  ‘Paul carried out a database search for us. In 1994 he was found guilty of GBH, and because he was an adult, they sent him to Broadmoor. We need to do some more checking, but we think he was released from Woodgrange in 1993 when he was eighteen. Shortly after his release, he obtained his records, then was arrested and eventually sentenced, but because of his previous mental history, they sent him to Broadmoor rather than prison.’

  ‘When was he released from Broadmoor?’

  ‘We haven’t found that out yet, Sir. There is no record of him since 1993. If he has been released, then he’s disappeared.’

  ‘What about a photograph, description, blood type, DNA? Have we got anything that will help us track him down?’

  ‘His blood type is O positive. That’s all there was in the records apart from a million pages of social work reports and psychological assessments, which you might be interested in.’

  I was conscious of the time restraints imposed by the Chief. ‘Good job, but now we need to find him. Inform whoever’s in charge at Broadmoor that KP and I are on our way to talk to someone about Daniel Connell.’

  ‘Sir?’ Jane said.

  ‘Make it quick, Jane.’

  ‘The communications center can’t get a fix on Suzie’s phone. They think it might be switched off.’

  I wondered whether Suzie had switched it off on purpose so that I couldn’t ring her. She knew nothing about the possibility of the final victim being chosen from somewhere in the center of the Sigil. I was also aware that the killer switched off Sally Renshall’s phone so that he couldn’t be located. I made a decision. ‘Put an all-points bulletin out for her. It might be nothing, but I’d rather know.’

  ***

  I walked back down the corridor to the Chief’s office.

  ‘That was twenty minutes, James. There’s a coffee on the table going cold.’

  ‘Thanks, Chief.’

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes to bring me up to date before you have to leave for your appointment with Doctor Andrews.’

  I thought it prudent to make my case for non-attendance at counseling after the briefing when she was in full possession of the facts. I told her everything that had happened over the weekend, and concluded with Suzie’s disappearance.

  ‘I can understand the problems you’ve had James, but the press will not be so forgiving. You’ll be pilloried over the Letitia Darwin fiasco, and I’m sure Patrick Darwin will already have spoken to reporters giving them the details. Talking of the wolves, have you organized a briefing?’

  ‘Four o’clock, but I’ve got to go to Broadmoor, so I’m hoping that I can get back in time.’

  ‘Do you want me there for moral support?’

  ‘I’ll be all right, Chief, but thanks for the offer.’

  ‘You know time is running out, James. Today I expect a call from the Chief Constable to replace you. I’ll put him off for another day, but then I won’t have any choice.’

  ‘In light of the pressures surrounding this case, do you think it wise I attend this counseling session? If the press got hold of it, they’d have a field day.’

  ‘You will attend James. The press knows better than to ridicule police officers attending counseling, especially a senior policeman who has seen what you’ve seen recently.’ She looked at her watch, and I looked at mine – it was nine-fifty. ‘You’re going to be late James. I’ll ring Doctor Andrews and tell her you’re on your way.’ She got up, went to her desk and picked up the phone.

  There didn’t seem to be any way out of it. I threw back the last of my coffee and left.

  I collected KP from the incident room. We made our way out of the station and through the snow in KP’s car to the hospital.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I arrived at Doctor Bloody Gail’s office at ten-twenty. Her short dumpy receptionist still made me wait two minutes even though I was twenty minutes late.

  The door opened.

  ‘James, glad you could make it,’ she said ushering me into her office. Today she had on a mix of canary yellow and bright purple with glasses to match. Her hair sat on top of her head in a strange configuration that resembled a dead rat, and made her look even younger than she did before. I caught myself wondering what she would be like in bed. Shocked, I forced myself to think of having a filling at the dentist, but then realized that I was simply displacing my libido onto Doctor Bloody Gail, a common strategy of psychoanalysis patients.

  Looking over her glasses at me she said, ‘You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve re-scheduled my morning appointments and cut short my lunch to accommodate your lateness.’

  ‘Great,’ I mumbled, feeling like the last child to arrive at the party. I think she expected me to be grateful and thank her.

  ‘Now,’ she said sitting down in her noisy leather chair. ‘Where should we begin today?’ I was sure the notebook she had resting on her knee was twice as thick as the one she had used on Friday. ‘Tell me about your childhood.’

  I was aiming for minimum co-operation today. I would tell her just enough to keep her happy, so that she could give the Chief a good report.

  ‘My parents died in the Manchester plane crash in 1985, I have no memories prior to that.’ What I did know was that they had been wealthy. Their estate was put into trust for me, which I received when I was eighteen. It meant that I didn’t really have to work. My father had been one of the top psychiatrists in the country, and my mother a university lecturer in child development.

  I wondered how she could possibly write so fast, and what she was writing so fast about. She had already filled two pages, and we hadn’t done anything yet.

  ‘Childhood amnesia is common before three years of age, especially in boys, but you would have
been six in 1985. Are you sure you remember nothing before that?’

  ‘My earliest memory is attending my parents’ funeral with my Aunt Miriam, my mother’s sister. Afterwards, I went to live with Miriam and her husband, George. There were no other close relatives. The remains of my childhood were reasonably happy and uneventful.’ That wasn’t actually true. In fact, it was some way from the truth, but telling her how it really was would be grist to the mill, so I kept it to myself.

  ‘It would appear that the death of your parents acted as a repressive trigger. We need to bring those memories into the conscious mind. Regression under hypnosis is a proven strategy, James. You need to re-experience those memories to gain insight and self-understanding. We need to get to the root cause of your anger.’

  That would be like giving a shopaholic a credit card, I thought. She had more chance of performing brain surgery on me. ‘Recovered childhood memories remain controversial,’ I said. ‘Even if you were to recover some memories, there would be no guarantee they were accurate, or that the memories actually happened, so the answer is no.’ At last I’d won something.

  ‘That’s a shame, James,’ she said writing frenetically in her monstrous notebook. ‘I feel that the source of your anger lies in the depths of your lost childhood. You seem to be afraid of discovering what is hidden there.’

  ‘In your opinion,’ I pointed out. ‘You have no evidence to support that supposition.’ Now we were talking. I’d been a psychologist for a lot longer than Doctor Bloody Gail; I could tie her in psychological knots.

  ‘You’re right, James, I don’t have any evidence, but I’m sure I can obtain some, either with or without your co-operation.’ She wrote something on a bright purple flower-shaped post-it pad, pulled the top sheet off and stuck it in her notebook. I craned my neck, but was too far away to see what she had written.