‘KerPlunk? Yeah, I got it for Christmas once. I was eight.’
‘Imagine someone doing it in reverse, but to a human being. Imagine two people taking turns to stick skewers through another human being’s body over the course of several days, maybe a week, and the loser is the one who kills her.’ He paused, and Emma noticed that the corners of his mouth were turning downwards. ‘They were stuck through her arms, her legs, her shoulders, her cheeks, her fingers, her ribs … anywhere you can imagine, and places you really don’t want to imagine.’
‘Any evidence of two people being present?’
‘No. That was just an assumption on our part.’
‘Did you recover the skewers? You say the pathologist had to estimate that’s what did it.’
‘No – they’d all been removed, very carefully. The pathologist did say two interesting things. The first was that the skewers had probably been sterilised with an antiseptic before being inserted, which indicates a desire to keep her alive for as long as possible, and a certain fastidiousness.’
‘And the second?’ Emma asked when it became clear that Gary wasn’t going to continue under his own volition.
‘The second interesting thing was that, judging from the scar tissue in the wounds, the skewers had been pulled in and out several times over the course of the days or weeks she was tortured.’
‘Oh.’ Emma tried to imagine it, and then quickly tried not to. ‘What killed her?’
‘In the end? Believe it or not, it was a simple infection. Although her captor had taken care with his sterilising procedures, some opportunistic bacterium got in.’
‘Okay.’ Emma was about to ask another question when the door to the courtroom opened and a small man in a suit poked his head through. He nodded at Gary, the family and the group of assorted civil servants, then withdrew.
‘Got to go,’ Gary said. ‘You know how it is.’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’ Impulsively she hugged him again, and kissed his cheek.
‘Stay in touch.’
‘I will.’ She turned to go, then turned back. ‘I suppose the black humour of the situations occurred to you? The woman whose arm was dismantled was left in a car garage, and the woman who was stuck through with skewers was left in a holistic therapy centre where, I presume, they practised acupuncture.’
He nodded. ‘It didn’t escape us. We could never prove that the murders were carried out by the same person, but we always assumed they were. We called him “The Comedian”. It would have been “The Joker”, but the press would have connected that up to Batman if they’d got hold of it, and made us look stupid and unfeeling. Which we certainly weren’t.’
Emma turned to go again, and this time it was Gary who stopped her. ‘Has something else happened?’ he asked. ‘Another body?’
Emma nodded.
‘How was this one killed?’ he asked.
‘Do you want to sleep tonight?’
‘Ah.’ A pause. ‘Get him, Emma. Whoever this “Comedian” is, get him.’
‘I will. We will.’
‘You’ll need a lot of luck.’
‘Or witchcraft,’ she said, and left.
In the car, driving on the long and curving road out of Southend, Emma’s mind ranged back and forth over everything Gary Ellender had said. There was a distinct pattern there – a murderer who abducted his victims, kept them alive for several days or weeks while torturing them, and then disposed of them in some blackly ironic way. With only two cases there wasn’t enough to make more than a cursory connection; Catriona Dooley’s case hadn’t been around for long enough, and the postmortem results were still on sufficiently close hold, that nobody apart from Emma had made the connection. No sexual assault, which was odd. Perhaps the killer masturbated while he was torturing his victims. Perhaps that was the only way he could get off.
But then there was the fourth case; the one she hadn’t talked to anyone about yet. The one she had discovered in the files.
On an off-chance she took a diversion, heading not for Chelmsford but up past Brentwood and towards Harlow. She recalled from the files that the fourth case – chronologically, the second – had taken place there.
Harlow Police Station was a two-storey building of relatively modern construction, built in a square around a central staff car park. It looked something like a new comprehensive school, a similarity emphasised by its location next to a sports centre.
Parking, and showing her warrant card again, Emma was soon inside. She found Detective Inspector Bill Ponting on the phone in his office. He waved her to a seat.
‘Sorry,’ he said as he put the receiver down. He was a big man, barrel chested, with cheeks that were too red to be healthy and a mass of back-combed white hair. He wore a pin-stripe suit that his size couldn’t really carry off properly. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘DS Bradbury,’ Emma introduced herself. ‘I’m working on a case where a woman was abducted, tortured and then dumped in a public area. I believe you had a similar case. I was hoping you could tell me about it.’
Ponting looked surprised. ‘Woman? Ours was a man. Decided it was gang-related. Lot of that in Harlow.’
‘I don’t want to rule anything in or out at this stage,’ Emma said, and then added a little white lie. ‘Ours might be gang-related as well, of course, even though it’s a woman.’
‘Where was she found?’ Ponting asked.
‘Canvey Island.’
‘Ah. There you are.’
Emma wasn’t sure where ‘there’ was, or why exactly she was ‘there’, but she smiled sweetly. Ponting continued: ‘David Cave. Small-time drug dealer, car thief and runner for one of the larger gangs. Word was that he’d got someone’s daughter pregnant. He disappeared. Found his body six weeks later. He’s been worked over with what the pathologist concluded was a potato peeler. Whole top layer of his skin had been removed, front and back. Looked like a freakshow exhibit.’
‘Where was he found?’ Emma asked.
‘Bakery,’ Ponting said. ‘Left bundled up in one of the ovens. Break-in. Someone has a sick sense of humour.’
‘And you put this down to gang activity?’ Emma asked, trying to keep the critical tone out of her voice.
‘He ran with the gangs, he got someone’s daughter up the duff, he was tortured and dumped. What else could it be?’
‘Good question.’ Emma stood. ‘Thanks. I don’t think I need bother you any further.’ She crossed to the door, then turned back as a thought struck her. ‘This may be a silly question, but I don’t suppose David Cave was a singer in any way?’
Ponting fixed her with an unnerving gaze. ‘Funny you should ask. Did a lot of karaoke in local pubs. Got quite a lot of cash winning competitions. Is that important?’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ she said sweetly, and left.
In the car on the way back, she mulled over the information she’d collected. Information that wasn’t all in the official police records. Three disappearances that had turned into tortures and murders, and in all three cases the victims had some connection with singing. One sang in a band, one in a choir and one in pubs for money.
What were the odds that Catriona Dooley had been a singer as well?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Interesting idea,’ Lapslie said. The cold mid-morning wind whipping around the corners of All Hallows Church in Bishop’s Stortford cut into him like a shoal of piranhas. He could hear the growl of Emma’s car engine in the background of the mobile phone transmission. ‘Why would someone kidnap singers?’
‘I’ve often thought of doing the same with Lady Gaga,’ Emma replied.
‘Who?’
‘She’s a singer. Kind of falsetto soul. Never mind.’
‘I hope you’re on hands-free,’ he growled.
‘I am.’
‘It’s just that I’ve never seen a hands-free kit in your car.’
She sounded aggravated. ‘I’m on hands-free, okay?’
‘I only mention it,’ he
said mildly, ‘because judging by the sound of your car engine you’re doing well in excess of the speed limit, and if you’re caught doing that and using your mobile phone the consequences could be horrendous.’
There was a pause, during which the sound of Emma’s engine noticeably changed. ‘I’d better go,’ she said eventually.
‘Yes, you better had. Have you slept, by the way?’
‘Have you?’ she asked.
‘I managed to get home, grab six hours’ kip and get back here again as fresh as a daisy. I suspect you’ve worked through. It’ll catch up with you, you know.’
‘But I’m young,’ she said. ‘I can take it.’ He couldn’t see her expression, but he assumed she was grinning.
‘I’ll check into Catriona Dooley’s background,’ he said. ‘You go back and check the files again for people who have disappeared and never found, alive or dead.’
‘There’ll be thousands of them!’ Emma protested. ‘You know how many people go missing in England every year?’
‘Just check for singers,’ Lapslie said. ‘That appears to be the common thread.’
‘I still don’t understand.’ Emma sounded frustrated. ‘I already spent twelve hours checking through the files. I found all the disappearances that looked similar to Catriona Dooley’s case.’
‘No,’ Lapslie explained patiently, ‘you found all the disappearances where the bodies were found some weeks later, and it then turned out that all the ones you discovered had good singing voices. What I want you to look for now is reverse the process: look for all the cases where people who have good singing voices have disappeared and never been found.’
‘You think he’s still got some kidnap victims alive!’ Emma breathed.
‘We know he discards some in an obvious and blackly ironic way. The question is: does he discard all of them, or just the ones that don’t match his twisted criteria? Remember the voice on the sound file – “That’s gash”, he said. He’s looking for something, and I’m guessing it’s connected with their voices. According to what Doctor Catherall told you, Catriona Dooley was given food and water. If you’ve got somebody tied up, you can keep them alive for quite some time if you’re prepared to feed them.’
‘Jesus.’ Emma’s voice was bleak. ‘I don’t want to think what he’s doing to these people.’
‘If there are any,’ Lapslie warned. ‘Let’s get the facts first.’
‘Okay. I’ll be in touch.’
Emma rang off. Lapslie was about to put the mobile back in his pocket when it rang again.
‘Lapslie.’
‘DCI Lapslie? This is Patricia – Chief Superintendent Rouse’s PA. He wants to see you straight away.’
‘Does he have a telescope?’
A pause while she processed the comment and then threw it away. ‘He has a gap in his schedule at one o’clock this afternoon. Can I tell him you’ll be here?’
Her voice was sweetness itself, but there was an implicit threat lying behind the words. Even without the synaesthesia, Lapslie could taste it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please tell him I’ll be there.’ Before she could go, he added, ‘And can you have a large coffee waiting for me, two sugars? Maybe some of those lovely bourbon biscuits as well.’ He rang off before she could make some comment about reducing police running costs by not catering for meetings of less that ten people.
Re-entering the church, he found that Sean Burrows’ team had started deconstructing the cats’ cradle of wire that was strung from side to side and floor to ceiling.
‘How’s it going?’ he called.
‘It’s a slow and laborious process,’ Burrows replied, crossing an open space towards him. ‘I’m already two men down. One of the wires snapped as we were taking it off the hook that’s attached to the wall. It whipped back and slashed across the face of one CSI and the hands of another. I’ve sent them off for stitches and for tetanus shots and HIV tests.’ At Lapslie’s questioning glance, he added, ‘We just don’t know what’s on these wires. I know Catriona Dooley was clear of HIV, but there might be other blood here that we don’t know about.’
‘Emma’s found three more murders that tie in with the Dooley one,’ Lapslie confirmed, ‘although they don’t have the same wounds as the girl’s body did. But I take your point.’ He looked at the remaining wires. ‘Do we know what these things are made of?’
‘Curiously enough,’ Burrows said, ‘I’m leaning towards the view that it’s piano wire, based on the tension and the breaking strain. Musical instrument strings are one of the most demanding of applications for wires – far more demanding than big game fishing, for instance. They’re placed under high tension, they’re subject to repeated blows and repeated bending, they’re stretched and slackened during tuning and, while being expected to be up to scratch for concert performances, they are still expected to last for decades. They’re made from tempered high tensile steel. If I were making someone run through a funhouse strung up with lethally sharp wire, I’d want to make sure that it stayed in place and they came apart, rather than the other way around.’
‘Musical instruments,’ Lapslie mused. ‘Singers. Music teachers. It’s all connected somehow, but I can’t quite see the connections.’ He shook himself. ‘It would be nice if there were only one manufacturer of this wire in the UK, and we could trace who bought this lot.’
Burrows shook his head. ‘It comes in coils and gets sold by weight. No chance of tracking it down, in my opinion.’
‘What if it’s a high-quality make?’
Burrows pursed his lips. ‘In that case I might be able to track it down for you. But why do you think this is high-quality stuff? This is a torture device, not a musical instrument.’
‘Perhaps it’s both,’ Lapslie muttered, and moved away, leaving Burrows staring after him.
Over in the centre of the church, in a cleared area, he spotted a familiar figure crouched down awkwardly on the ground and scraping something into an evidence bag.
‘Jane? What are you doing out of your shell?’
Doctor Jane Catherall looked up at him. ‘Mark! I’d heard you were back, and then this happened. You do have a habit of presenting me with cases that are out of the ordinary. Thank you.’
‘Glad to help,’ he said, smiling. For some reason, he was very fond of the diminutive pathologist. Seeing her always cheered him up. ‘What’s the lowdown here?’
‘Blood everywhere, and traces of flesh on the floor,’ she replied. ‘I’m collecting up as much as I can. No way of telling how many people we’re talking about yet – I’ll have to identify how many unique DNA traces I have before I can tell you that, but I’ll certainly check the DNA against that of Catriona Dooley. Oh, and I’ve found a couple of dead pigeons as well. They must have blundered in and flown into the wires. That’ll have to be disentangled from any traces of human remains.’
‘I wonder what pigeon tastes like,’ he mused, thinking back to the carp and the swans.
‘Unpleasant,’ Jane said, ‘if you’re talking about the common town pigeon. They eat carrion and garbage. Wood pigeon is a different matter. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ he said. ‘Looking around, could this place have caused the injuries that Emma told me were evident on Catriona Dooley’s body?’
Instead of answering, she extended a hand to Lapslie. He supported her weight while she climbed painfully to her feet. The top of her head was on a level with his chin. ‘Yes, the injuries are completely consistent with wires either cutting through flesh like a cheese wire or snapping under tension and lashing back. You see the same kind of thing with construction workers and, strangely, circus performers.’ She looked around sombrely. ‘I hate to imagine what it was like,’ she said. ‘Pitch black and cold. The poor girl, stark naked and terrified; probably starving, given that the stomach contents I found indicated that she’d been fed enough to keep her alive but not to satisfy her gnawing hunger pangs. Released into this death trap and allowed to blunder around, feeling the wires cut
into her flesh, carving away whole slices which flapped against her body as she ran, feeling the hot blood splattering against her skin and gushing down her arms and legs; feeling herself growing weaker and weaker until she couldn’t go on any more and she sank to the ground, and died, alone and afraid.’
‘Not alone,’ Lapslie said. ‘Every noise she made was recorded. There was someone here, listening. Not watching, but listening.’
For a moment they both remained silent, each in their own world of imagination. Then Lapslie said, ‘You mentioned stomach contents. Do we know what she was fed on?’
‘Does it matter?’ she asked.
‘It might help us profile her captor and killer if we knew how he treated her. Was he kind or unkind? Did he recognise her as a human being or throw her scraps? It’s all part of the bigger picture.’
Jane Catherall shrugged. ‘Analysis of her bowels and her stomach indicate that she was fed on a largely liquid diet, but one that contained most of the nutrients necessary for life. I’d suggest that whoever was holding her captive either fed her on soup or food that was cooked and then liquidised. It wouldn’t have been terribly satisfying, and in the longer term it would have had a detrimental effect on her digestive system and her dentition, but I suspect that was the last thing on her captor’s mind.’
‘Why go to all that trouble?’
‘If her captor had just cooked meals for her, he would either have had to release her hands so she could feed herself, thus risking her attacking him, or he would have to feed her himself, which would take a lot of time. Liquidising the food and then letting her drink it is quicker and minimises time and risk.’
Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation Page 17