The Essence of Evil

by The Essence of Evil (retail) (epub)

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. Don’t believe everything you see on TV, which I’m presuming is where you’re taking some of your knowledge.’

  Dani felt offended by Grant’s words but she said nothing. It was true she’d never worked a case where a killer had gone to such lengths to dispose of a body and yes, she did take a lot of what she knew from fiction – TV, film, books.

  ‘Have you heard of Henry Wainwright?’ Grant asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘In the late nineteenth century he killed his mistress, and packed her away in a sack of chlorinated lime which he stored in his Whitechapel workshop. A year later he was moving premises and so it came time to move that sack. His landlord saw him doing this and offered to help. During that process the sack somehow came open and the landlord caught a glimpse of a human hand and arm. He alerted the police, and Wainwright was caught. The body had been preserved so well that even a year after the poor woman’s murder, the police were able to prove her identity.’

  ‘Ok, so not lime then. What about acid?’

  ‘It’s not unthinkable, but you can have similar problems to lime, really. You’d have to find the right acid mix for starters, and you’d have to be able to either buy it or mix it in sufficient quantity to allow it to do its work properly, which may well leave an evidence trail in itself. Then you’d need a way of disposing of all the acid afterwards without arousing suspicion. John Haigh tried it. You heard of him?’

  ‘Actually, yes,’ Dani said, feeling a slight triumph. ‘The Acid Bath Murderer.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But wasn’t his method almost foolproof?’

  ‘Almost, yes. When the police first took an interest in him, it wasn’t because they thought he was a murderer at all. They were pursuing him for theft and fraud, and when searching his workshops they found belongings of his victims. He eventually confessed to the murders.’

  ‘So if he hadn’t been stupid enough to be involved in petty crime, and if he’d not kept those belongings, he may have gotten away with it.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not for much longer though. The acid he used to dissolve the corpses turned into a thick sludge. Bodies don’t just disappear in acid, they dissolve into it. Haigh stored the sludge in oil drums. I’m not sure of the overall effectiveness of the method, to be honest. That sludge is going to be pretty suspicious to say the least, unless you use a vast quantity of acid in the first place so that it remains dilute enough to dispose of easily. Plus there’s the risk that some body parts would remain. Teeth, bone. Gall stones or kidney stones, if the victim was unlucky enough to have such afflictions, as was the case with one of Haigh’s victims.’

  Grant finished his spiel. Dani’s brain was working overtime going over what he’d said, and trying to make sense of it all.

  ‘Bodies can be fed to animals,’ Grant said, as though thinking out loud now, and warming back into his role once more. ‘Plenty of animals, pigs for example, will crunch through bones happily enough.’

  ‘Like Robert Pickton?’ Dani said. Grant gave her an impressed look.

  ‘Exactly. He was thought to have killed as many as forty-nine women. Many he fed to his pigs, but it was also alleged that he minced some of the victims and sold their remains as meat.’

  Dani winced at the disgusting words.

  ‘In his case, some DNA traces of the victims did still remain. Pigs won’t clean up every last morsel, or every drop of blood. They’re messy animals. And some of the bone fragments, teeth, would pass through in the pigs’ faeces, but it would still take a lot of effort to identify those traces and match them to victims. To all intents the bodies have disappeared.’

  Dani thought about that one.

  ‘Or you could have a simple case of burying the bodies,’ Grant said. ‘Out of sight, out of mind. Plenty of killers have employed that method over the years, as I’m sure you’ll know.’

  ‘Like Fred and Rose West,’ Dani said. ‘And the Moors Murderers.’

  ‘Two duos, I might add, coming back to the earlier point. In both those cases, the murders were covered up to varying degrees by burying the bodies. In the case of the Moors Murderers, at least one of the victims’ bodies still hasn’t been found, decades later, such is the remoteness of the moors where Brady buried the corpses.’

  The room fell silent and Dani realised she was beginning to feel queasy with all the talk of death and corpses and sadistic murderers.

  ‘I’m sure you realise that this is an area I take great interest in, but from your point of view it’s all just hypothetical,’ Grant said. ‘I’m really not sure at this stage, unless you have something, some evidence of a crime – other than Reeve and Natalya of course – how any of this can help you with your case.’

  ‘Actually it’s all helping,’ Dani said. ‘Knowledge is power, as they say.’

  There was a knock on the door and Dani spun around to see Mary standing there. She had a slight look of disquiet on her face.

  How long had she been there for?

  ‘Your tea’s nearly ready,’ she said. ‘Annie needs to eat before she goes to dance class.'

  ‘Oh, right. Dani—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Dani said, getting to her feet. ‘That’s enough talk of the dead for one day. Thank you for speaking to me at such short notice.’

  ‘That’s really no problem at all,’ Grant said. ‘I want to help you here in any way that I can.’

  ‘It was nice to see you again, Detective,’ Mary said, before turning and heading off once more.

  Grant got up from his chair and Dani followed him out into the hallway.

  ‘You have a beautiful home,’ Dani said, looking around the grand space.

  ‘Thank you. It’ll soon be a hundred years old. We’ve been here a long time ourselves now, over fifteen years. Since Annie was just a baby. It feels a bit big with the three of us. When Annie leaves I’m really not sure what we’ll do.’

  Dani looked around. Adjacent to the open door leading into the kitchen was a plain- looking door. It caught Dani’s eye because it had a small padlock clasped over an outer bolt.

  ‘Is that where you keep the dead bodies then?’ Dani joked.

  ‘What?’

  Dani nodded over to the locked door.

  ‘Oh, ha, yeah. The basement. No. You won’t find any dead bodies down there. Dead bodies don’t need locking in. That’s trying to keep the monsters out.’

  ‘Monsters?’

  ‘Sounds kind of silly now. There was a massive storm a few years ago that blew out the single slit window down there. The noise of the wind whistling through was horrendous. Naturally Ethan told Annie that monsters lived down there.’

  ‘As brothers tend to do,’ Dani said.

  ‘Indeed. The only solution was to put the lock on, to show Annie the house was still safe. I’m not sure she’s ever been down there since. We don’t need the lock anymore, of course. Just never got around to taking it off.’

  Dani felt her phone vibrating and she apologised and took it out of her pocket. She recognised the number from earlier in the day.

  ‘I really should take this,’ Dani said. ‘Thanks for your time.’

  ‘Of course. Let me show you to the door.’

  She answered the phone as Grant walked over with her. He opened the door, Dani smiled at him then headed out.

  * * *

  Two hours later, with the clouds finally parting to reveal the sun just moving down below the tree line in front of her, Dani was sitting on a bench on the leafy university campus looking out across emerald fields that were cluttered with students playing impromptu games of football, rugby and frisbee.

  ‘Like I told the other detectives, I guess I don’t really know her that well.’ Georgia Draper said.

  Nineteen years old, with dyed black hair and piercing eyes, Georgia was supposedly one of Jessica Bradford’s closest friends at university, but the girls had only known each other a few short months.

  ‘At first I
thought maybe she’d just gone home for some reason. Then I noticed those Facebook posts.’

  ‘And who’s this guy she’s gone with?’

  Georgia shrugged. ‘I’ve really no idea. She never mentioned him to me before.’

  ‘And you’ve still not seen or heard from her directly?’

  ‘Not that I can remember.’

  The way Jason had relayed the story earlier in the day made it sound like all was fine and dandy. But Dani was far from agreeing.

  ‘What do you know of Professor Grant?’ Dani asked.

  Georgia shrugged. ‘Never talked to him before. He’s one of our lecturers. Jess was way more into that stuff than me.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I only took that module because she was. I couldn’t really care less. It’s all a bit… weird, isn’t it?’

  ‘Murder? Yes I guess so.’

  ‘But Jess is really into it. She’s got the professor’s book and everything. It was written before we were even born, but she’s well into it. Even went to talk to him about it a couple of times.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jess did what?’

  ‘She was talking to Professor Grant. Went to his office one day so they could discuss killers. How weird is that?’

  ‘So they knew each other?’

  Georgia’s face turned sour. ‘Knew each other? What do you mean? I’m not saying they were shagging or anything like that.’

  Dani felt her phone vibrating in her bag, the fifth time it’d done so in the last couple of minutes.

  ‘Sorry, just give me a second.’

  She fished it out and saw it was Jason.

  ‘I’ll just be a moment.’

  She answered the call.

  ‘Where are you?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m at your apartment.’

  ‘My apartment?’

  ‘I need to speak to you, Dani. We’ve got some results.’

  ‘From the notes?’

  ‘Yeah. And some more from Harland’s apartment.’

  She felt a surge of anticipation, though Jason’s tone worried her.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And we found nothing on the notes. Nothing at all except for your fingerprints.’

  ‘Damn,’ Dani said. ‘And the other stuff?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. The blood traces from Harland’s flat did match with Reeve. Not with Natalya though.’

  ‘So that knife really was the murder weapon?’

  ‘It looks like it. For Reeve at least. The thing is though, Dani, we found no fingerprints or hair or anything else to directly link the knife or clothes to Harland. Or Ethan Grant, for that matter.’

  ‘Really? That’s odd.’

  ‘It is. And that’s not the oddest part. Because we did find some prints on the knife, and also some hairs in that pile of clothes.’

  ‘Whose?

  ‘They’re yours, Dani.’

  Chapter Fifty-One

  ‘Where’s Annie?’ Grant asked as he sat down at the kitchen table.

  Mary was by the counter, spooning out stew onto two plates.

  ‘She’s coming,’ Mary said. ‘Just getting ready.’

  ‘Going out again?’

  ‘She’s a teenager.’

  ‘She’s never here anymore. You don’t think she’s got a boyfriend, do you?’

  ‘Does it really matter if she has?’

  Grant said nothing to that.

  ‘Come on, Steven. It’s going to happen sooner or later.’

  ‘That’s not it,’ Grant said. ‘I’m not an idiot. It’s who she’s hanging out with that I’m bothered about.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means it wasn’t that long ago she was telling us how Ethan and his lowlife friend Jimmy were hooking up with her friends. And not just hooking up, but having sex with them too. The thought of Annie… I can’t even bring myself to say it.’

  Grant’s mood sank further with the talk of Ethan and his no-good friends.

  What had that boy got himself mixed up in?

  Mary placed a dinner plate overflowing with boiled vegetables and stew in front of Grant, then took the seat opposite and set down her plate, containing a slightly smaller portion. Grant took a deep inhalation of meaty vapour. It smelled sublime and he felt his tummy rumble with anticipation.

  ‘You like her, don’t you?’ Mary said, her eyes on her food.

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘No, you idiot,’ Mary said. ‘That detective. You like her.’

  ‘I’m intrigued by her.’

  ‘What, because she’s so messed up?’

  ‘What makes you think she’s messed up?

  ‘Because of what happened to her.’

  ‘You’re saying I only like people who are messed up in the head?’

  ‘Or perhaps it’s the woman in authority you like the idea of. You always like it when I take charge.’

  Mary gave him a seductive look.

  ‘Ugh,’ came Annie’s voice. ‘You two are so disgusting.’

  Grant spun around in his seat, his cheeks burning. Annie barged through and went to the fridge, grabbed a can of Coke, then turned back for the door again.

  ‘Honey, your tea’s here.’

  ‘It’s ok, Mum. I’ll eat at Susan’s. Thanks though.’

  Grant was about to chastise his daughter but when he turned back to Mary he saw she didn’t looked fazed in the slightest. Seconds later Grant heard the front door open and then close.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Grant asked.

  Mary shrugged.

  ‘So we’ve got the house to ourselves tonight?’ he said.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘How about… you know?’

  Mary smiled.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But on one condition.’

  ‘What condition?’

  ‘I need you to do something for me first.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I want you to go and see Ed Francis.’

  Grant deflated, and Mary’s face took on a more serious look.

  ‘What the hell for?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Oh, Steven, come on, don’t be like that.’

  ‘I’m not being like anything. I’m just not sure why you want me to go over there. Has he been snooping again?’

  ‘He’s always bloody snooping. Three times today I’ve seen him. But there’s no sign of Julie still.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s it.’

  ‘What do you mean, that’s it?’

  ‘The car’s back now,’ Grant said.

  ‘Yeah, but she’s not.’

  ‘So you think he’s strangled her and buried her in the garden?’

  ‘Not funny, Steven. I’m serious. I don’t like him. He’s creepy as hell and he’s up to something. Just go over there, take a look around the house, see if anything’s off.’

  ‘Yeah, ok. Hi Ed. Oh, hi, Steven, what can I do for you? Oh, you know, just wanted to take a look around your home. See if you’ve left any evidence of you murdering your wife lying around. Oh, right, yeah. Come on in then.’

  ‘Well that’s good,’ Mary said, sullen now. ‘You’ve rehearsed your lines, so it looks like you’re all set to go.’

  She got up from the table and came around and grabbed Grant’s plate.

  ‘Hey, I’m not finished with that.’

  ‘You are now.’

  She strode over to the bin, flipped the lid and dropped the remains of Grant’s tea into the black bag. Grant opened his mouth to protest but found the restraint to let it go.

  ‘Well, off you go then,’ Mary said.

  Grant got up from his chair. He moved over to Mary and planted a kiss on her lips.

  ‘You, my dear, really are quite something.’

  Mary said nothing to that. Grant made his way to the front door, slipped on his loafers then headed out into the cold and clear night, not bothering with his coat. Across the street Francis’
s car was parked up on the drive. Lights were on in the house. Grant was almost surprised not to see Ed Francis’s face stuck up against one of the windows. When he reached the front door Grant rang the bell and waited. After a few seconds he wondered if his call would go unanswered.

  Should he ring again or head back home?

  He turned and looked across at his own house. He was sure he could see Mary’s outline in their bedroom window. Just then the door opened and Grant spun back around.

  ‘Ed, how you doing?’

  Francis looked slightly annoyed, as though he’d been rudely interrupted, but on seeing Grant he quickly brushed his agitation to one side.

  ‘Steven, what a surprise. What can I do for you?’

  Francis had on a pair of jeans and a buttoned shirt that was half hanging out of his trousers. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His cheeks were flushed from exertion.

  ‘Bit of an embarrassing one,’ Grant said.

  ‘Need some sugar?’

  ‘Almost, but not quite. Light bulbs.’

  ‘Light bulbs?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Grant fought hard to keep his manner passive and relaxed. Light bulbs? He wasn’t quite sure where that bright idea had come from. He’d initially thought about saying screwdriver, but what if Francis kept all his tools in the garage? Mary wanted him to snoop in the house. Light bulbs had been a spur of the moment thing.

  ‘What kind of light bulbs?’ Francis asked, looking a little suspicious.

  Grant moved his hands together, indicating the size.

  ‘You know the ones. About this big. Don’t know the name. The ones you get in table lamps and that.’

  ‘Have you got the old one so I can see?’

  ‘No, it broke.’

  ‘It’s only seven o’clock, you know. You’d probably find them over at Tesco.’

  ‘Yeah, probably. Just thought if you had some, would save the bother.’

  ‘Right. Well, I may do. Come in and we’ll take a look.’

  Francis seemed less than impressed with the disturbance but he moved to the side and ushered Grant through nonetheless. It was the first time Grant had been in the house, and his first impression was that it was sparsely furnished. From the hall he had a glimpse of the kitchen, a dining room and a lounge. All the furniture you would expect was there, but little in the way of the knick-knacks that normally cluttered family homes; paintings, picture frames, ornaments.