The Murder Code

by Mosby, Steve

  ‘Did I keep you awake last night?’ she says.

  ‘Not that I’d ever tell you. How’s Jake?’

  ‘Active this morning. It’s the smell of coffee. I told you.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  Freshly brewed coffee is her favourite smell, and while it’s probably her imagination, she’s noticed Jake respond to it a few times too. Confirmation bias, Tony has told her, meaning she was looking too hard for patterns and remembering the times he started jumping inside her more readily than the times he didn’t. Her husband is far too sensible, but she loves him for that almost as much as for the sense of physical security he gives her.

  As if on cue, he embraces her from behind, rubbing his hands gently over her bump. This close, she can smell drifts of his aftershave, and beneath that, him. He has always been manly without ever seeming to try. Big and solid. The kind of man who can carry anything you set down in front of him, do any job you give him.

  Jake kicks against his hand.

  ‘Feel that?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Going to be a footballer, I reckon.’

  ‘Either that or a right little thug.’

  She pats his hand gently, and he moves away, reaching around her to get his coffee.

  ‘Well, I hope you and Jake are going to look after each other today.’

  Marie smiles again. ‘I’m sure we will.’

  ‘Got anything planned?’

  ‘Just pottering.’

  ‘Good.’ He looks troubled. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

  ‘We won’t.’

  She’s pleased by his use of the baby’s name. The pregnancy wasn’t planned, and it took them both a little time to come round to the idea—Tony more than her. To begin with he always referred to it as ‘the baby’, and even after the scan showed it was a boy, and they’d discussed and agreed upon a name, he still seemed to find it hard to get his head around the idea of Jake. It was easier for her because she could feel him in ways Tony couldn’t. A few weeks ago she’d had a brainwave and invested in a home ultrasound device—just a cheap, simple thing, but using it seemed to have made a huge difference. Tony had heard his son’s heartbeat properly, and after that, it was rarely ‘the baby’ any more and always Jake.

  Tony drains his coffee almost in one.

  ‘Don’t burn yourself, sweetie.’

  ‘I won’t. Asbestos mouth.’

  He kisses her on the forehead. She tilts her head back and he kisses her more fully on the mouth. As they embrace, Jake continues his activities.

  Tony says, ‘My unborn son is already kicking me in the wallet.’

  ‘Get used to it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It’s a sore point, probably, as she knows that’s his chief worry. But he stays in the embrace for a reassuring moment longer before moving away, grabbing his coat.

  ‘Okay. I’ve got to run or I’ll be late. You look after yourself, okay?’ He frowns. ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Me too—don’t worry. I’ll be good.’

  ‘No need for that. Just be careful.’

  Marie sticks her tongue out at him.

  ‘Love you,’ he says.

  ‘Love you too.’

  And then he’s out of the door, closing it behind him. She hears him running down the path and the gate clattering.

  A part of Marie breathes a sigh of relief. She loves Tony’s company, of course, but she could certainly get used to this being-alone-in-the-house-with-Jake business. It feels like her territory now. Her maternity leave has only just begun, and it feels good. No more random hours. The house is hers. Within a couple of weeks, she thinks, you’ll probably be going stir crazy. But in a couple of weeks there won’t be time to do anything much other than care for Jake. And she can’t wait.

  Marie potters around for a while, putting away the dishes she washed the night before, washing the ones she used for her breakfast. Then she picks up the pot and pours herself a coffee, using Tony’s cup. She’ll have one after all—it can’t hurt, can it. That’s when the front door opens and the man in the balaclava comes in.

  Thirty-One

  IN THE TWO DAYS since I’d spoken to Stephen Henderson at the cemetery, the groundskeeper’s skin had reddened to an even brighter shade: almost sore with colour. Whether it was from working out in the sun, or the drink, it had clearly been a rough forty-eight hours.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it.’ He scratched his forehead beneath the blue baseball cap. ‘Not if you hadn’t mentioned it to me to be specially on the lookout.’

  ‘You did good,’ I said. ‘We appreciate it.’

  I was standing by the grave of Derek Evans with Henderson and Nigel Anders, the duty manager responsible for grounds-keeping shifts. Anders was a young man in a neat, slim-cut grey suit, black hair gelled to one side in a sweep. He looked like he was going to be sick.

  ‘We’ve never had anything like this before,’ he said. ‘I mean, occasional vandalism, yes. But never anything like this.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Think it means anything?’

  I didn’t bother answering. Yes, of course.

  I looked down at the remains of the grave. Buried cheaply, at council expense, all he’d had was a cheap wooden cross with a name badge pinned to the upright strut. Most of the graves in this patch were identical: this was where the poor, the homeless, the elderly without families, or without families who cared, were interred. Evans’s resting place stood out, however, because of what had been done to it.

  I needed a timeline here.

  ‘So let’s get this straight. Mr Henderson, you’re sure the grave hadn’t been touched last night?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was fine when I did my rounds.’

  Anders gave me a look at that, as though he wasn’t too convinced and nor should I be. From my encounter with him so far, he didn’t come across as a young man particularly impressed with the people in his employ. Or maybe he was just pissed off that Henderson had called me before letting him know about the desecration first.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Henderson said, perhaps picking up on his boss’s vibe. ‘Like I said, because of what you mentioned, I’ve been paying special attention. Keeping an eye out. And this plot was fine last night. This morning, on my rounds, I found this.’ He sniffed, put out. ‘Not even my plot this morning, but I checked anyway.’

  ‘I believe you. You did well.’ I turned to Anders. ‘What kind of security do you have here?’

  He bristled slightly. ‘It’s a cemetery, Detective Hicks. Not a bank vault.’

  ‘I know. What kind of security do you have?’

  ‘The main entrance is gated from six on an evening until eight in the morning. But that’s not really security as such.’ He gestured around. ‘You can see how big the grounds are. The wall’s low in places. People can get in if they want.’

  ‘You have a watchman?’

  He shook his head. ‘Every now and then, if it looks like we’ve got a problem. Drunk kids, usually. Religious problems. But that’s only every once in a while—it’s not cost-effective normally.’

  ‘Meaning, not right now?’

  ‘No.’

  I looked around the grounds, taking in the scale of them. It would indeed be a nightmare to police the whole area, although obviously we wouldn’t need to do that. We just needed to watch a few graves. Not that the man would return, I was sure. He’d made his point. At the same time, he knew that we’d have to.

  Playing with us.

  ‘Any internal CCTV?’

  ‘Only on the main gate. I don’t know about the streets outside. Like I said, we don’t normally have a need. Certainly not for something like … this.’

  He gestured down at Evans’s grave.

  I nodded.

  Someone had pulled the cross out of the ground, snapped it in half and stabbed it back in over where his body would be. As though, having graduated to using a screwdriver on his victims, our killer resented not ha
ving had a chance to do so on Evans before his death, and was making up for it as best he could now.

  But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it wasn’t the damage he’d done to what was already there, but what he’d left in addition.

  ‘Think that’s human?’ Henderson said. ‘Or animal?’

  Anders grimaced at the question.

  I looked down at the small pile of excrement that had been left where the cross had been. Human or animal? It was impossible to say, of course, but I knew what I was betting. I thought, just as in his letter, our killer was making it very plain to us what he thought about the victims. How little they meant to him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  Thinking: human or animal?

  It seemed increasingly difficult to tell.

  After arranging for scene-of-crime to attend the cemetery, and a pair of reliable sergeants to oversee proceedings there, I made my way back to the department for the midday briefing. It was already under way as I slipped quietly in at the back of the operations room, which was even more crammed than normal. The air was stifling from the presence of warm bodies, and I faced a wall of backs, all paying attention to Laura, at the far end of the room, talking through the developments in the case.

  ‘As you can see,’ she said, ‘the tech department has isolated images of the six victims from the video we received yesterday.’

  She clicked through them, one by one, on PowerPoint. These were not the images that would be shown to relatives for the sake of identification—close-ups on clothes, for example—but the best full-body shots that Renton had been able to extract from the footage. The victim who was killed on camera was the clearest and easiest to look at. The others were blurred and patchy from artificial zoom, but the shots were good enough to identify things like clothes, sex and, in all but one case, hair colour.

  None of the officers in the room had been forced to watch the video in full, and the still photographs were tame by comparison, but even so, looking around the room I noticed grimaces on the faces I could see and uncomfortable shuffles in posture where I could not. One officer in front of me unfolded his arms and rubbed a hand over his chin.

  Of course, it wasn’t just the injuries that were upsetting; these officers had seen worse, and in greater detail, over the past few days. I think it was more the same sense of horror that had stayed with me since I had first watched the clip, growing steadily. These bodies were still out there, unfound and unaccounted for. The first had lain there for God only knew how long, and then others had accumulated around it. Not only was it incomprehensible that the killer could do what he was doing, but the photographs exuded sadness. There is always sadness when you discover a body that has lain unattended for any length of time—a sense of loneliness, almost; an additional wrong—and that sensation came through in these images.

  And of course, now there might even be more.

  Laura said, ‘We are cross-referencing these against the mis-per reports collated by Sergeant Pearson. We believe we have identified the victim in the video—the first image I showed – as Colin Benson, a businessman reported missing three days ago. We are presently in contact with his family, and hope to identify the other victims today.’

  She clicked the PowerPoint controller and the screen changed to show a number of smaller photographs side by side.

  This brings the total number of known victims to thirteen, if we include Kate Barrett, which for the moment we are. You’ve already heard the report from DCI Franklin, who will be joining our operation from Buxton and providing us with much-needed manpower, most of which will be used to search for the unidentified area in which our man now seems to be operating. We need to find that location, for a number of very obvious reasons. Yes?’

  Laura took a question from someone by the wall—something about whether the killer was likely to continue at that location, given that he had sent us the video—but my attention was elsewhere. I was doing my best to scan the officers at the front of the room. I’d missed Franklin’s contribution to the briefing, but he was here. I was wondering which of the backs of heads I could see might belong to him.

  I settled, finally, on one with carefully groomed silver hair. That was probably him, although it was impossible to tell for sure.

  I stared at him for a moment, then back to Laura.

  ‘We also know, from the scene near Swaine Woods yesterday, that he is not solely using this location. We’ve discussed yesterday’s letter already, so it’s possible that alternating locations suits whatever pattern he’s working from. It’s also possible that there is no pattern. We need to keep an open mind. Regardless, we need to find this location.’

  She clicked to another screen, this one showing a map of the city, with a close-up on the rural areas spreading out to the north-east. Even zoomed out, it was impossible to capture it all—the sheer maze-like mass of country lanes. Several square miles at least.

  ‘This is the area we’ll be concentrating on initially,’ Laura said. ‘And yes: it’s an enormous task. We hope IT can help us narrow down our search areas, but for now, this is it.’

  A hand shot up from the opposite side of the room.

  ‘Press?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘This latest development remains strictly internal. We don’t need those roads clogged with amateur search teams and hunters, trampling over everything. It’s our job to find these people. So that’s another difficulty. The search needs to be swift, thorough and discreet.’

  I sensed, rather than heard, the groans in the room.

  ‘I know, I know. We’ve got assignments ready to give out. In the meantime, is there anything else?’

  I stuck my hand up.

  Laura craned her neck. ‘Yes? Oh look—it’s Detective Hicks, back from holiday. Glad you could join us.’

  ‘Glad to be here.’

  I made my way through the standing clusters of officers and in between those seated in chairs. As I approached the front, I saw that Young had joined the briefing, which was unusual for him. He was sitting next to the man I suspected was Franklin, which I presumed was the reason for his attendance—interdepartmental goodwill. I reached Laura and turned to the assembled officers.

  ‘I’ve just got back from Staines cemetery,’ I said, ‘where Derek Evans was interred the day before yesterday. As you may have gathered, we’ve seen some activity there overnight. SOCO are currently on site.’

  I told the room about the scene that had been secured at the cemetery. As I expected, looking around, I saw predictable expressions of disgust on the faces of the officers. What had been done to the grave was the act of an animal, and I heard people muttering to that effect.

  ‘As horrible as it is,’ I said, ‘it gives us another problem as well. A logistical one, you’ll all be glad to hear, because we don’t have enough as things stand.’

  There were the expected groans.

  I said, ‘The funerals of Sandra Peacock and John Kramer are scheduled to take place later today. The others, over the next few days. We’re going to need a presence at each.’

  It seemed unlikely to me that he attended the burials in person—certainly he hadn’t been at Derek Evans’s—but we needed to cover ourselves.

  ‘We’ll also need surveillance on all the burial sites in case he shows up again. My guess is he won’t. Of course he won’t. But he knows this will stretch us thin, and he knows we have to do it anyway because we can’t afford to miss anything. He’s playing with us.’

  I looked around the room, picking out faces, allowing the silence to let the implications of what I’d said sink in. There were other things to discuss—an idea I’d had on the drive back from the cemetery—but I didn’t want to share them with the room yet, not until I’d talked them over with Laura.

  ‘That’s where we’re at for the moment,’ I said.

  Last of all, I looked at Young, sitting in the front row, and then at the man beside him. DCI Franklin of the Buxton police force. He was in
his late fifties, but well preserved: skin tanned and unlined, silver hair swept neatly in a side parting. He had his arms folded. Legs crossed too, so that one trouser leg had ridden up far enough to reveal five inches of black sock above his polished black shoe.

  A tightening.

  Storm clouds rolling ever blacker in the sky.

  Because it was him.

  ‘Earth to Hicks,’ Laura said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I seem to be asking that a lot recently.’

  ‘And I seem to be telling you I’m fine a lot, which I am.’

  Which I wasn’t. Not at all. After the briefing had finished and everyone in the room had dispersed, Laura had introduced me to Franklin. I’d shaken his hand, tried to look him in the eye, tried to pretend I was fine. I had no idea how good a job I’d done, but I thought I’d hidden the unease I felt fairly well. He didn’t appear to have recognised me, but I expected, sooner or later, that he would.

  Laura said, ‘Are you sure? Because you seem—’

  ‘The letters,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘I already have. The subject was changed and you’re too late to stop it. I’ve been thinking about the letters.’

  ‘So have I.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve been thinking something different from you. Because you didn’t see what the guy did at the cemetery.’

  Laura leaned back and sighed, running her hand through her hair. Naturally, it fell down impeccably again.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It just strikes me that that kind of behaviour doesn’t fit with the letters. With the way he comes across in them, I mean. He seems so controlled and articulate. Not the kind of man to go and shit on someone’s grave.’

  ‘He said they mean nothing to him.’

  ‘Exactly. And he could be displaying that, I suppose. But it doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of thing you do if someone genuinely means nothing to you. If I was going by instinct—by logic—then I’d be betting that the man writing the letters did not desecrate Evans’s grave …’