by Ellis, Tim
***
After lunch he sidled down to the ground floor to find Celia Rowe in Missing Persons. He’d never been there. In fact, apart from knowing that it was located on the ground floor, he actually had no idea where it was. Eventually, he found a door with a hand written sign pinned to it, which read MPs and a smiley face drawn underneath.
He knocked and opened the door.
Constable Celia Rowe was a short rotund black woman of indeterminate age who wore a permanent smile on her face. He’d caught her eating some strange food out of a plastic container.
‘You wanted to see me?’ he said.
‘And you are?’
‘DI Parish.’
‘From the MIT?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, take a seat.’
He looked around but there was nowhere to sit. ‘Where?’
‘People usually perch on the corner of the desk.’
He perched.
‘Do you want to share my Ackee and Saltfish?’ she said thrusting the fishy dish under his nose.
He hated fish. ‘Thank you, but I’ve just had lunch.’
‘Don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘Chief Kirby said you you’d found something?’
‘I’m always finding one thing or another in here.’
‘A pattern?’ He was beginning to wonder if he’d stumbled into the twilight zone. The tiny office boasted a desk, a computer, a filing cabinet, a chair, and stacks of files on every surface.
‘Any particular pattern?’
‘You told the Chief you’d found a pattern?’
‘I did?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, so I did.’
‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
‘And then you’ll take all the credit for all my hard work.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll let everyone know that it was you who found the pattern should it materialise into an investigation, but it would be very helpful if you could just give me an outline of what you’ve found so that I can decide what to do.’
‘Chief Abby didn’t tell you?’
‘Not a word, only that you’d found a pattern.’
‘Okay, but I should warn you that I’m from Haiti, and trained in the dark practise of vodou, so you don’t never want to mess with Celie.’
‘I’m not messing with you, Celie.’
‘Okay.’ She withdrew a folded piece of paper from between two files and opened it up. ‘I’ve found seven up to now going back to 1984, but I’m sure there’s more.’
‘More what?’
‘Well look,’ she said spreading the paper out and turning it towards him. In 1984, on the 10th of September, nineteen-year-old Andrew Cardigan went missing.’ She moved her finger across the years. ‘In 1991, on the same date, nineteen-year-old Abigail Carr went missing...’
‘Were they reported missing on those dates?’
‘No, those were the dates they disappeared.’
‘Okay, go on?’
‘In 1998 Adam Cunard, 2001 Adele Copeland, 2007 Aimee Carsley, 2008 Ainsley Coleman, and last year Allan Cousins – they’re all nineteen years of age.’
‘They could be spurious patterns.’
‘Which patterns are you talking about?’
‘The fact that they’re all nineteen year’s old and that they disappeared on the 10th September.’
‘Yes, those are two of the patterns, but there are others – look at the names.’
He looked, and it took him a minute – maybe two – until he saw that the names all had the same initials. He nodded his head. ‘I’m a bit excited, Celie.’
‘Yeah, I thought you might be.’
‘And you think that every year on 10th September someone goes missing with the initials AC?’
‘There’s another pattern.’ She pointed to pencilled-in letters above the years.’
He saw it straight away. ‘Alternating boy/girl?’
‘Yeah. Now I’m not sure that’s really a pattern, because we only have seven MPs in twenty-eight years, but when I pencilled the letters in – it worked out.’
‘So what’s the difficulty with the other years?’
‘Do you know how many MPs there are each year?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘One thousand cases every day, three hundred and sixty-five thousand last year, and every year it increases.’
‘That’s a lot of...’
‘Fifty-five to eighty percent of MPs return with 24-hours. Only around one percent remain missing each year.’
‘That’s still a lot of people.’
‘You bet. Between eight and thirty-five are found dead each week.’
‘But some MPs are never found,’ he said rubbing his four o’clock shadow.
‘I knew you weren’t as dense as you looked.’
‘Thank you, very kind.’
‘And of those that are never found, some could be dead.’
‘And not all people who go missing are reported as missing?’
Her smile widened. ‘You’re beginning to see the problem I’m having filling in the other years, but I will fill them in mark my words.’
‘How long since you spotted the pattern?’
‘Last week, that’s when I went up to see Chief Abby.’
He stood up and massaged his right buttock, which had gone to sleep. ‘Do you think there are more before 1984?’
‘Might be.’
‘But?’
‘Paper records only.’
‘Ah, yes, of course. Okay, let’s focus on the years since 1984.’
‘Oh, so now you’re in charge of Celie?’ She pulled a faceless straw doll – approximately three inches long – out of the drawer of her desk and stroked it. ‘You haven’t got any long pins have you?’
He grinned. ‘No, no pins, and you can be in charge of Celie, but... If I’m running an investigation, which it looks like I am, then you can be an adviser to the investigating team.’
‘An adviser?’
‘You’re the expert.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Do we have a deal?’
Celie put the straw doll back in the drawer, but with the head peeping over the top, and pushed the drawer closed until only the head was showing. She thrust her hand towards him. ‘Deal, Sir.’
‘At ten o’clock tomorrow morning, come up to the MIT squad room and I’ll introduce you to the team. Also, how would you like a desk and computer up there for the duration of the investigation?’
She stood up and hugged him.
‘I’ll see you in the morning then,’ he said and squeezed out of the door.
Really, it was a Cold Case, unless people with the initials AC were continuing to go missing. There was one last year, would there be one this year? It was a few months until 10th September. Also, there was no evidence that any of the MPs had been murdered, they were simply missing. So, officially, it wasn’t really a murder investigation. While things were quiet, it wouldn’t hurt to make a couple of enquiries. Maybe, they could start with last year’s MP, and go from there. Celie could have found a serial killer that had been operating under the umbrella of missing persons for twenty-seven years. Yes, he was a bit excited at the prospect of finding out if Celie’s patterns held up.
***
He still had the clue Alex Knight had sent him via email in his wallet. He had told Angie about it, but hadn’t said anything to anyone else. Although, he knew Richards knew, because he’d climbed out of the shower one morning before the wedding to find that his wallet had moved slightly, and when he looked inside, the piece of paper had shifted from one compartment to another. But even though she knew, she couldn’t tell him she knew, because then she’d have to admit how she knew. He could have put her out of her misery by telling her he knew she knew, but then why should he?
Although he kept telling himself that he hadn’t decided what to do, he knew he had. He needed to pursue the lead Alex Knight had sent him. If there was a chance he could find out abo
ut his parents, about his own beginnings in life then he really had no choice. The main reason he was dragging his feet was because the last time he had unwittingly attracted people who wanted to kill him, and he didn’t want to do that again. Also, he had Angie and the baby to think of, not just himself anymore.
This morning, after he’d cleared his emails, he input frati neri into the search engine – really just to find out what it meant – and apparently it was Italian for black friars or black brothers/brethren. He was stupid enough to think that maybe everything would become an open book, and that he’d immediately discover who he was. Of course, he was cruelly disappointed when he saw the possibilities presented to him. There were references to a Frati Neri on the Via Romita on the outskirts of Cupramontana in Italy and a strange sun dial called the orologio solare. A Dominican Order of Preachers who wore black habits were called the Black Friars. Then there was God’s banker, the hanged man – Roberto Calvi. Of course, there was Blackfriars Bridge over the Thames, which was also referred to as ll Ponte dei Frati Neri. There were numerous restaurants and pubs boasting the name, a multitude of religious sites, an illegal masonic lodge called P2, and Blackfriars Hall at Oxford University.
He felt defeated at the number of possibilities and focussed on other work, but the detective in him soon began to consider how he might approach the enigma. The thought of hiring a detective dawdled across his mind like Sancho Panza on a mule, but he discounted the idea as possibly too costly. Stubbornly, he also didn’t want to hand over the investigation to someone else. If he ever did find out the truth, he wanted to gaze back in the knowledge that he had unravelled the Gordian knot. It wouldn’t have the same meaning if a stranger discovered who he was.
The question was where to start? He hated to admit it, but what he needed was Richards to categorise, classify, record, and do all the things he wasn’t much good at. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. If he had to do all those boring things he would, and he’d do them well, but he much preferred the blue sky thinking after all the administrative tasks had been done. Maybe he would let her help him, but he’d make her work for the privilege.
####
His Wrath is Come
For the great day of his wrath is come
Revelations 6:17
Chapter One
Monday, 11th July
‘I’m scared, Sir.’
‘Will you shut up, Richards,’ Parish said into his radio. ‘You’re meant to be hiding, and keeping radio silence.’
‘I know, but it’s dark, and there are spiders in here.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Big ones, and I can hear scraping sounds.’
‘What, like a shackled foot dragging along the floor?’
‘Don’t say that... You don’t think there are ghosts in here as well, do you?’
‘No such things.’
‘But when we opened the crypt we might have woken someone – or something – up.’
‘You watch far too much television.’
‘If the killer does turn up he’ll think he’s stumbled into an episode of the Jeremy Kyle show,’ Kowalski chipped in.
‘Yeah, stop talking, Richards,’ Parish said.
‘You were talking as well, Sir.’
‘Which part of stop talking don’t you understand?’
‘Huh.’
It was ten minutes before midnight. They were in the unused Chingford Mount Cemetery off the Old Church Road. It was Kowalski and Ed’s case – a lunatic was stealing corpses from funeral directors and dumping them in local graveyards. He and Richards were helping out because murders were a bit thin on the ground. Today was his first day back at work after getting married to Angela Richards – or should that be Angela Parish née Richards? – and taking two weeks off to go on honeymoon to Castaway Island in Fiji. After wearing a sarong for two weeks his clothes felt heavy and uncomfortable. Also, the peeling skin on his shoulders and the tops of his feet itched like crazy. He’d spent the day catching up with his mail, his intray, his inbox, and clearing his desk of debris that people had deposited there because they were too stupid to use one of the specific places allocated for rubbish, and most of it was. Also, his monitor had disappeared under a blanket of post-it stickers all the colours of the rainbow, and with no useful information on any of them.
Chief Abby Kirby called him into her office just before lunch, gave him coffee, and sat down at the coffee table with him.
‘You look well, Parish.’
‘I am, and can I say that I appreciate you trying to make everything like it was when Chief Day was here, I think we can have the same kind of working relationship.’
‘Thank you for your honesty, Inspector. I hope we can work together as well.’
‘The Chief and I had a good relationship... and Richards. Do you know she made sure he took his tablets and kept his appointments at the hospital?’
‘Yes, I know. DI Kowalski has told me everything.’
‘We thought... Well... You haven’t slept with Kowalski have you, Chief?’
She smiled emphasising the laughter lines. ‘He said you’d ask me that. Yes, we had a little fling many years ago.’
Parish shook his head. ‘Is there anyone that man hasn’t slept with, do you think?’
‘I’m sure if you look hard enough... Anyway, welcome back.’
‘Not many murders to get stuck into?’
‘Now that you’re back, I’m sure the serial killers will crawl out of the sewers.’
‘I hope not.’
‘In the meantime, I’d like you to speak to a Constable Celia Rowe from missing persons, she thinks she’d found a pattern.’
He leaned forward. ‘Oh?’
‘I won’t steal her thunder, but what she’s found might be right up your street.’
‘Okay, I’ll take a wander down after lunch. Is there anything else?’
She hesitated. ‘I’m concerned about Constable Richards.’
‘In what way?’
‘Do you think she’s a bit young to be chasing serial killers?’
‘No, Chief. If you saw the reference material she keeps in her bedroom you wouldn’t be worried. It was Richards who spotted that the trunk murders were copies from the 1950s. If she were on Mastermind, Serial Killers would be her specialised subject.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. It would cause her more psychological damage taking her off the team than everything she’s had to deal with so far, and between me and Kowalski, we’re looking after her.’
‘I trust your judgement.’
He threw back the dregs of his coffee and stood up. ‘Thanks, Chief. I’ll let you know about the missing person’s theory.’
And that was that. He felt as though Walter Day wasn’t turning in his grave anymore – Abby Kirby was a good replacement, and Parish and Richards were back in the groove.
‘There’s someone coming,’ Ed’s voice came over the radio.
He heard an ear-piercing scream and ran to where Kowalski had put Richards in the Williams’ family crypt.
Kowalski and Ed were already there.
Richards was running around squealing and stamping her feet.
‘What the hell happened?’ he said.
‘It was a vampire rat,’ Richards said. ‘It bit me.’
‘Let me look,’ Parish said bending down and shining his torch at her legs. ‘Where?’
‘Well, it was going to. I could see the blood lust in its burning red eyes.’
‘There goes our stakeout,’ Ed said. ‘I don’t think the nutcase is going to come visiting tonight anyway.’
‘I think you’re right, Ed,’ Kowalski said. ‘Let’s knock it on the head.’
They all turned to point their torches and stare at Richards.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Richards said. ‘You shouldn’t have put me in that crypt.’
***
He’d told Angie on the honeymoon what had happened in the kitchen with Catherine. She
didn’t say anything for a long time.
‘She’ll have to go, Jed.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You didn’t encourage her?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Has she got any family?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll speak to Mary. I’m sure she feels responsible. It was her fault after all that they went back to the hospital.’
‘So, you think Mary feels responsible for Catherine’s fear?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll leave it to you then.’
‘Coward.’
‘Most definitely.’
At breakfast, Catherine said she was moving back to her flat, and thanked everyone for their patience and understanding. She had been seeing Dr Rafferty, and the therapy was helping. Moving out was the next step in controlling her fear.
So, he hoped everything was resolved, and if Catherine wasn’t able to accost him in the kitchen then there shouldn’t be any more incidents. In time, he hoped she would find someone else and forget that she ever had a crush on him.
***
Catherine leaving was all very good, but it wasn’t the main news at breakfast.
‘I’ve found a man,’ Richards announced rather too nonchalantly as she was pouring Muesli into a dish.
‘Oh dear!’ Angie said.
‘Don’t say that, mum. You’ll like him.’
Parish shook his head. ‘You haven’t had sex with him, have you?’
She hesitated. ‘No.’
‘How many times?’
‘Once.’
‘And after the first time?’
‘Twice more, but he loves me.’
‘Bring him to the house tonight, I’ll vet him.’
‘He’s had to go away on business, but he’ll be back Wednesday.’
‘How convenient. Have you checked him out on CrimInt?’