Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  Someone was crying, either in the place the call was made from or from the TV set, Clay couldn’t decide

  ‘I can see from my display that you’re calling from landline number 496 7370.’

  A door closed and the sound of the TV died.

  ‘I’m calling from 699 Mather Avenue.’

  A mannered androgynous voice with no trace of an accent, thought Clay. Someone somewhere in their thirties, she speculated; male or female she just couldn’t tell, but definitely not the voice she’d heard on the call from Vindici.

  ‘What’s the nature of your problem?’

  ‘A man has been murdered and his wife has been tortured. Tell Eve Clay to get over here as fast as she can – 699 Mather Avenue.’

  The recorded call went to the dead tone. Clay hurried towards her car.

  ‘Operator, I want all available officers to block off Mather Avenue, Garston and Allerton Road ends. I want the roads leading off Mather Avenue swamped. Bill. 699 Mather Avenue. Call Barney Cole and see what he can find on the residents, a man and his wife.’

  She got into her car. ‘And, Bill, I’ll meet you at the scene – 699 Mather Avenue. The real Vindici never tortured a woman in his previous outings. This is a copycat, right?’

  ‘Maybe he’s changed his MO again. He didn’t leave food last time, this time he tortures a woman. Who knows how he’s changed over the years?’ replied Hendricks.

  ‘His MO has definitely changed. He used to work alone, now it looks like he’s got an accomplice.’

  Within seven seconds, Clay was driving at seventy miles per hour towards the entrance of Springwood Crematorium with the caller’s cool words spinning inside her skull.

  ‘Murdered, tortured... Tell Eve Clay... murdered, tortured... Tell Eve Clay... murdered, tortured.... Tell... Eve... Clay...’

  Her heart pounded as she hit eighty miles per hour on Springwood Avenue.

  ‘I am Vindici. Come and find me and all this will stop. Or shall I find you first?’

  ‘So you’re back, Vindici,’ said Clay. ‘But why here? Why now?’

  4

  8.03 pm

  Ninety miles per hour was DCI Eve Clay’s top speed as she hurtled from Springwood Crematorium to a detached house on Mather Avenue, not far from Merseyside Police Training Academy.

  As she pulled up outside the house, Clay saw a pair of uniformed constables making their way up the path to the front door of 699 Mather Avenue.

  ‘Stop!’ called Clay, heading for the wrought-iron gate. ‘The killer could still be inside!’ She passed them as she made her way up the path, showed her warrant card and drank in their silent relief. Clay threw torchlight along the edges of the front door. There were no apparent bloodstains and Clay’s instincts screamed that a neat but brutal scene lay inside the house, just as it had in David Wilson’s home.

  Clay pushed the door but it was locked. She recognised Hendricks’s footsteps as he made his way quickly towards her back. ‘Got the ram, Bill?’

  He stepped next to her and with one blow of the ram had the door open.

  The lights in the hall were all on and she sensed the presence of life and death in the same space.

  ‘Police!’ shouted Clay. ‘Call out if you can hear me!’

  No reply.

  Clay listened. She could hear crying, but it was not the sound of a woman in extreme pain. A child crying, thought Clay and there was something in the sound that made her sick and hot in the same moment.

  She smelt burned incense and looked at Hendricks. ‘Same smell as in the Wilson house.’

  ‘Same smell. Same perpetrator,’ replied Hendricks. ‘I’m waiting to hear back from Barney Cole on what he’s found about the owners.’

  Clay looked around the hall and saw a small table with a shelf underneath. On the shelf beneath was a Yellow Pages and Thomson’s Directory. On the table was a notebook, a pen and an empty space rimmed with a square of dust where the landline phone had been.

  ‘The person who made the call has gone!’ said Clay, stepping towards the closed door of the front room. ‘And taken the phone they called from. You look upstairs, Bill, I’ll stick down here.’

  The front-room curtains were drawn, the main light was on and nothing seemed to be out of place. She listened, and heard the sound of tears leaking through the wall of the adjoining room and Hendricks’s footsteps as he raced around the space above her head.

  Clay made her way to the next room, and the crying grew louder, drawing her to the door.

  She paused, making a mental journey based on the call to the switchboard.

  The caller stood in the hall, made the call to switch, walked across the hall to close the door, to kill the sound of the TV...

  Outside, many sirens gathered volume, descending fast along the wide and tree-lined avenue.

  ‘All the lights are on up here!’ called Hendricks. ‘The bathroom and bedroom doors are all wide open except the back bedroom. The door’s locked!’

  Clay raised her arm and with her bunched fingers and thumb pressed the top right-hand corner of the door.

  The door opened slowly to a dark room. The only source of light came from a television set against the wall. Eve could not make out the picture on the screen but it was emitting a pitiful sound of someone in extreme pain and distress.

  Between the door and the television set, a naked woman was seated and bound to a hard-backed wooden chair.

  Clay switched on the light and called out, ‘Bill! Bill! Call the paramedics! She’s still alive!’ The woman moved sharply, startled by the sudden influx of light, her voice strangled by the black cloth that gagged her.

  Behind her, Clay heard Hendricks hurry down the stairs, on his phone. ‘Thanks for that, Barney. That’s really helpful!’ Hendricks stopped at her back. ‘Eve...’ He spoke quietly. ‘This is the home of Steven and Frances Jamieson. Barney looked them up on the NPC.’ His face told the story.

  ‘And Steven Jamieson has a similar track record to David Wilson?’ asked Clay softly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

  5

  8.05 pm

  As she approached Frances Jamieson, Clay spoke as evenly as she could, and kept her eyes on the victim. There was a bloodstain on her left shoulder, running down the side of her back. A pattern of blood covered the visible side of her face, leaking into the gag on her mouth.

  ‘Frances? Frances Jamieson? It’s all right, Frances, please don’t be scared...’ Slowly, she moved towards her, in front of her. ‘My name’s Eve Clay, I’m a police officer.’

  The pitiful crying from the TV set behind her crawled under Clay’s skin, but she resisted the urge to turn and look, focusing instead on the woman in front of her as she held up her warrant card and looked her up and down. Her arms were stretched behind her back, her hands and feet bound to the chair with thin blue rope. Clay placed her in her fifties.

  She felt her stomach turn as she looked at the woman’s eyes, wild and rolling. It looked as though she had been weeping blood, and Clay saw with horror that her eyelids had been removed.

  She was glad when she heard Bill Hendricks moving deeper into the room.

  ‘The paramedics are outside,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘Go get them immediately, please. Tell them to hurry!’

  Check her airway’s clear, thought Clay, untying the gag’s knot at the base of her skull. ‘Open your mouth, Frances. I need to check...’ She turned her face away. Her mouth appeared to be full but she kept her lips tight and snorted air through her nostrils.

  Clay looked around for a weapon, thinking Stanley knife, but knowing in her heart that if the perpetrator had taken the landline telephone used to call the central switchboard, then they’d have also taken the tool used to inflict damage to the victim’s face.

  Clay looked at the woman’s eyes, saw wild disbelief and was reminded of a pair of tiny rafts on a stormy sea. ‘Your husband? Do you know where he is?’r />
  She didn’t move her head, appeared not to hear or understand.

  As she stooped in front of the woman, Clay inspected the neat knot that sealed her hands together. The crying from the TV dug into the top of her head like razor-sharp knives, but still she refused to look at the screen, aware that every second counted if she was to persuade this traumatised woman to talk.

  Moving behind her, Clay took a series of photos on her phone of the band of blood that had flowed from the wound on her left shoulder. As with David Wilson, the killer had carved the word ‘Vindici’ in elegant script on the victim. But unlike David Wilson, this victim had been left alive.

  Clay looked up as Hendricks entered the room, followed by a tough-looking brunette in a green NHS uniform.

  The paramedic froze and shielded her eyes with her hand. ‘Jesus!’ she said, clearly shocked to the core. ‘Oh my God!’

  Squeamish? puzzled Clay. With all the things you must have seen?

  Panic filled Frances Jamieson’s face at the sound of another woman’s voice at her back, and Clay kept her voice calm. ‘It’s all right. She’s a paramedic. She’s come to help you. And there’s another police officer in the room.’

  Something dark passed through Hendricks’s features as he picked up a remote from the floor and turned the television off. When the crying from the TV stopped, Clay heard Frances taking deeper and deeper ragged breaths through her nose.

  Crouching, Hendricks spoke softly to Frances Jamieson. ‘Can you hear me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s finished.’ He motioned the paramedic over.

  The paramedic looked at Clay but indicated the woman’s hands. ‘Can I...?’

  ‘Yes, please do.’ Clay pulled a pair of evidence bags from her pocket, dropped the gag into one. ‘Wait a minute please,’ she said.

  Clay looked at the neatly tied bows of the knots on Frances’s wrists and whispered to Hendricks, ‘Unless he’s changed radically since he’s escaped, Vindici would never have done this to a woman. Even if she did stand by her paedophile man.’

  ‘But we can’t rule out his involvement,’ said Hendricks. ‘The phone call to you directly after Wilson’s murder was definitely him. How do we know he hasn’t changed his MO? Or decided to work with an accomplice?’

  ‘There was no food at the Wilson scene, and we won’t find any here. Vindici was a stickler for detail – and that was the one detail withheld from the media during his trial.’

  Clay turned to the paramedic. ‘Untie her hands now, please.’

  Hendricks opened an evidence bag and, as the paramedic dropped the thin ropes into it, he said, ‘Whoa, what’s that?’

  Clinging to the rope was a long blond hair. Clay checked Frances’s short dark hair and the paramedic’s brown hair.

  She looked towards the sound of turning wheels and saw a short, wiry male paramedic pushing a wheelchair into the room. With a nod of the head, Clay urged him to hurry as she squatted down so she was in Frances’ eyeline. A line of thick mucus rolled from the right corner of the woman’s mouth.

  ‘What’s in your mouth, Frances?’ asked Clay.

  Frances turned her face towards the ceiling. ‘Look at me,’ said Clay. ‘Bill?’ It was all she needed to say. She felt him press an evidence bag into her hand. ‘Look down, Frances.’ Slowly, her head sank. ‘Frances, when you’re looking down, I’m going to open an evidence bag under your mouth. I want you to spit out whatever’s in your mouth.’

  Clay placed the evidence bag just beneath Frances’s lips. She opened her mouth and Clay felt the weight of something soft and wet drop into the bag. And a moment later, another similar weight.

  Clay stood up and, looking into the transparent bag, felt her stomach lurch.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Hendricks.

  Clay glanced at the paramedics. ‘I don’t know what you did or didn’t see then but keep your mouths tight shut. It’s a detail we’re going to withhold from the media to weed out crank confessions.’

  As the female paramedic untied Frances’ feet from the legs of the chair, her colleague pushed the wheelchair closer.

  ‘Neat and tidy knots around her ankles?’ said Clay.

  ‘Same style of neat bows,’ replied the paramedic.

  ‘Our mystery caller took their time then.’ Clay turned to Hendricks. ‘Steven Jamieson’s body will be upstairs behind that locked door. Please open it for me.’

  6

  8.09 pm

  As Hendricks left the room, the paramedics wrapped a blanket around Frances Jamieson and supported her to her feet.

  ‘We’re going to sit you down in the wheelchair and take you to A & E.’

  Clay watched as the male paramedic wheeled Frances, eyes rolling and mouth clamped shut, out of the room.

  Clay caught the eye of the female paramedic, checked her ID badge and spoke quietly. ‘One minute please, Cara. I’ll send a Scientific Support officer to the Royal to meet you there. We’ll need to look at her body for any potential evidence from the perpetrator.’

  She dialled Detective Sergeant Gina Riley, who picked up after two rings. In the background, she heard a woman crying and assumed it was David Wilson’s widow at Springwood Crematorium. ‘Gina, you need to get to the Royal. A & E. You’re going to be meeting a Mrs Frances Jamieson.’

  ‘Is she a paedophile?’

  ‘Her husband was. She’s been tortured. She must have seen the killer. I got the call as you were going into the chapel.’

  ‘I wondered where you’d got to.’

  ‘The killer tipped us off to the scene of their own crime through central switchboard.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘I really couldn’t tell. It was a put-on androgynous voice. It didn’t sound like Vindici though. I’ve got to go.’

  Above her head, a loose floorboard creaked under the weight of Hendricks’s feet. He stopped.

  ‘Cara?’ Clay looked around. They were alone.

  ‘Yes?’ replied the paramedic.

  ‘You did this, Cara, when you entered the room.’ Clay copied the paramedic’s actions, turning her head away from the TV set and holding her hand in the air as a screen. ‘What did the perpetrator force Frances to watch on television?’

  ‘An adult male forcing a female to have sex with him,’ whispered the paramedic. ‘I guess she was about six years of age.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clay. ‘I’m sorry you were exposed to that.’

  The paramedic shivered. ‘Horrible, just horrible...’

  As the paramedic left the room, DS Terry Mason, lead Scientific Support officer, arrived. Clay handed him three evidence bags. ‘The ropes used to bind Frances Jamieson and the cloth that gagged her.’

  ‘Jeez,’ he said, looking at the third bag.

  ‘I believe these are David Wilson’s testicles taken from Frances Parker’s mouth cavity. Terry, you’ve got a female available?’

  ‘Sergeant Cindy O’Brien.’

  ‘Send her to the Royal, A & E. She’s to meet a Frances Jamieson there. Tell her to get a move on. Jamieson’s on her way there now. Thank you.’

  From upstairs, Clay heard a loud bang and caught the edge of something aromatic and smoky.

  As Clay made her way quickly up the stairs, the smell of incense intensified and from behind the door that Hendricks had just kicked open came the unmistakable aroma of fresh blood.

  7

  8.13 pm

  At the top of the stairs, Clay drew in the incense-perfumed air.

  The same kind of ash, she said to herself. It’s only what we found beside David Wilson’s corpse. The same smell from jasmine-scented incense cones.

  ‘Eve, I’m in here!’ called Hendricks from a bedroom at the end of the corridor.

  Walking towards Hendricks’s voice, the smell intensified.

  ‘It’s a lot like last time,’ said Hendricks.

  In the doorway, Clay’s eyes were drawn to the bedside table on which sat a commercially produced twelve-inch potter
y statue of an androgynous child, face deadpan but given a sinister cast by the closed eyes and the elongated eyelashes painted in black lines on the top and bottom of both eyes. The figure was dressed in a simple ceramic singlet that reached the knees and left the feet bare and the shins exposed.

  ‘Same statue as at the Wilson scene,’ said Clay. ‘“Fabricado en Puebla” on the base. From the same ceramics factory. Made in Puebla. Mexico.’

  Clay noticed how the left hand, index finger extended, pointed down and the right hand made a fist, close to the child’s face, knuckles exposed to the viewer as if ready to knock on a door.

  Taking in the position of the child and its relationship to Steven Jamieson’s face, Clay said, ‘This was probably the last thing that Jamieson saw before he died.’

  She turned over the small white tag hanging down the child’s back from a thread tied around its neck and read out loud, ‘Sally’. Jamieson’s victim must have been called Sally. The statue that was left at David Wilson’s bedside had had a tag marked ‘Samantha’. A Vindici-styled calling card.

  Clay made her way to the bottom of the bed and turned her whole attention on to Steven Jamieson’s corpse. Stomach down, his face was turned to the wall, his arm and legs stretched out at angles and his hands and feet bound by silk neckties to the bed posts. On his back were seven small mounds of burned incense and beneath the ash were scorch marks where the perfumed cones had burned down from the smoking red tip to the flat circular base, just as they had done with David Wilson.

  The puddle of blood on the mattress leaked from the space between his open legs.

  Clay watched Hendricks stoop below the window ledge to get a closer look at his face and noticed that something made the usually poker-faced Hendricks wince. Her eyes followed the path of Jamieson’s back up to his neck and head.

  ‘There’s bruising around his throat and neck,’ said Hendricks. ‘He’s been strangled but, if it’s the same as methodology as in the Wilson case, that won’t be the cause of death.’

  ‘We’ll confirm that when we get him down to Dr Lamb’s autopsy suite.’