The Twelve Murders of Christmas (Quigg 1)

by Tim Ellis

‘Quigg, my favourite DI.’

  Quigg thought the Chief sounded a bit hoarse. ‘You’ve heard about Sergeant Jones?’

  ‘He’s a disappointment, Quigg. How am I going to find out what you’re up to now?’

  ‘I’m going to tell you.’

  ‘So you are. Well, get on with it then, I have a friend waiting to comfort me. Do you have any friends, Quigg? No, I don’t suppose you do. Everyone should have friends at Christmas.’

  ‘I’m working on a murder investigation, Chief. I have no time for friends.’

  ‘No friends, Quigg. That’s how I think of you, you know – No friends Quigg?’

  ‘I can ring back in the morning if it’s not convenient?’

  ‘Of course it’s conv... Get on with it, man?’

  ‘Sergeant Begone was at a loose end, so she’s helping me now, and very good she is too. You don’t think...’

  ‘In your dreams, Quigg. A reporter rang me, you know.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I said you’d tell them everything at three o’clock tomorrow, but you know that doesn’t mean everything don’t you, Mr no friends?’

  ‘Yes, Chief.’

  ‘Is that it then, Quiggy no friends?’

  ‘I suppose so, Sir. We’re...’

  The line went dead.

  The Chief had obviously had too many hot toddies. The phone was still in his hand. He wondered if he could talk to Phoebe and rang the number of the villa Caitlin and Bob the Builder were staying at, but he got an engaged tone. What now? Beryl had left the television on and it quietly droned in the corner. He wasn’t one for watching television, so he switched it off.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Quigg?’

  ‘Inspector, there’s been a double murder.’ It was Dawn Kellett from the despatch centre. He’d notified her earlier that any murders should come through him and not the Chief.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Dove Cottage, on Field Road behind the cemetery – W6 8ER.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Harry and Angela Turtle.’

  ‘Two turtle doves?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Pardon, Sir.’

  ‘Never mind. You’ve notified Doctor Poulson and Mr Perkins?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Thanks, and Merry Christmas, Dawn.’

  ‘And to you, Sir.’

  The line went dead.

  A headache was forming at the back of his skull. What the hell was going on? If, as he and Lulu had decided, the killer knew Mrs Partridge and the motive was therefore personal, then what was he doing killing again? Maybe they’d got it wrong. Maybe all the speculation was just that – speculation, and didn’t add up to a pile of beans.

  He rang Lulu.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for your call.’

  ‘After our discussion I was hoping I wouldn’t need to call you.’ He told her the address and said he’d meet her there.

  Seeing as he had the phone in his hand he tried Phoebe again, but it was still engaged. Caitlin must have taken the phone off the hook – what a bitch. If he’d had any money he could have worked something out with a solicitor. Instead, Caitlin held all the cards and had all the money. He was used to dealing with the inequalities of criminal law, but knew nothing about family law and a father’s rights. He felt as though he’d been robbed, and that the robber had received free legal help, been allowed to keep the proceeds of the robbery, and sent on holiday to Italy to assist in the treatment process. As the victim he was simply ignored with no right of redress – he felt like crap.

  Outside, instead of the engine roaring to life when he sat in the car and turned the key in the ignition – there was a ‘clunk’. He tried turning the key a number of times, which produced a series of ‘clunks’. He also flooded the carburettor by pumping the accelerator continuously. He had to spend twenty minutes taking out the old battery and putting in the new one, but he was thankful for two things. First, he found a spanner that fitted the nuts on the battery fairly easily. Second, the light in the garage still worked, even though nobody had been in there for at least three years.

  Once the new battery had been fitted he turned the key. The battery powered the engine, but it didn’t start the car. He was tired, and angry, and exasperated, and desperate. There were some other emotions mixed in with the overall feeling of rage, but he knew he had to force himself to think, to see through the red mist of being a victim. Once he remembered that he had flooded the carburettor he took his foot off the accelerator and the car started after a couple of tries.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Dove Cottage’ was actually 37 Field Road. Quigg didn’t know much about cottages, but No.37 looked suspiciously like a bungalow to him. When someone described something as a cottage, he imagined it was in the country – although he could see the mist descending on the cemetery to his right – that it had a thatch roof with smoke swirling out of the chimney, and was built with rocks and clay using traditional methods. To his mind, this detached brick dwelling was a bungalow with a sign screwed to the side of the front door, which said ‘Dove Cottage’, but that didn’t make it a cottage in the true sense of the word.

  The reason for his tardiness was evident by the state of his hands. He’d forgotten to wash them and they were covered in grease. Not only that, he’d transferred the black grunge onto everything he’d touched, such as the steering wheel, all the knobs and levers inside the car, his keys and duffel coat... and because the cold had made his nose drip he had smeared the grease all round his face and nose.

  The problem was he hadn’t realised, so that when he walked up the path to the front door the young female forensic officer burst out laughing.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Wait there a minute, Sir.’ She came back with a forensic box, opened it and extracted a small mirror, which she held up for him to peer into.

  ‘What the...?’ Then he saw his hands. ‘Oh crap!’

  The female said, ‘Stand still, Sir.’ She had a piece of cotton wool with cream on it in her hand, and began wiping the mess off his face. It took three pieces of cotton wool before she was satisfied.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Peterson, Sir.’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘Marion.’

  ‘Thank you, Marion. You’ve turned a disaster into something entirely different.’

  ‘Your hands, Sir.’

  He thought maybe they’d strayed to somewhere inappropriate of their own volition, and was relieved when he saw Marion rubbing them with more cream and cotton wool. He wondered if he could leave the dead bodies to Lulu and he’d just stay here with Marion, the cotton wool, and the cream. After his hands she could start on something else maybe...

  ‘Good evening, Sir.’

  He’d had his eyes closed, and for a split second he imagined he was lying on a treatment table in a massage parlour with just a towel between him and Marion the Masseuse, but then... ‘Hello Perkins, I was just coming.’

  ‘I don’t think I need to...’

  ‘I had to change my car battery...’

  ‘...and he had black all over him, Sir,’ Marion explained.

  They were acting as if they’d been caught in flagrante delicto, when it had merely been an innocent act of kindness. Marion the Masseuse had become Marion the Samaritan.

  He put on the paper suit, boots and gloves. ‘Lead the way, Perkins.’

  ‘Seems like our killer is continuing with the Christmas theme,’ Perkins said over his shoulder as he led him along the hallway. He stood to one side when he reached what appeared to be a bedroom and ushered Quigg in. ‘There’s not a lot of room in there.’

  ‘Is that you, Sir?’ he heard Lulu say.

  ‘You’re not expecting the Christmas fairy are you?’

  ‘You’d make a good Christmas fairy, Quigg,’ Debbie said.

  He squeezed in through the gap. ‘You’re too kind.’ Everything in the room appeared to be cream-coloured. The middle-aged couple were laid on th
e bed naked with silver-handled kitchen knives protruding from their chests, and bloody gore where their faces used to be.

  ‘This is looking very similar to the last murder,’ Quigg said.

  ‘Except there’s two bodies, the knives are different, and the writing on the wall says, “Two Turtle Doves”’ Lulu said.

  He craned his neck round Debbie. The message had been written in what appeared to be blood from one of the victims, which had dripped down the flowered wallpaper like something out of a Hammer Horror film.

  ‘No clothes?’

  ‘All gone,’ Perkins confirmed from outside.

  ‘The knives?’

  ‘Different, but the same as the kitchen knives in the kitchen,’ Lulu said.

  ‘No sexual assault?’

  ‘None from what I can see,’ Debbie said, ‘but that’s purely based on a superficial examination, and subject to change following a full and detailed post-mortem.

  ‘I won’t hold you to that, Debbie.’

  ‘In these litigious times one can never be too careful.’

  ‘You’re becoming paranoid. So, who are these people?’

  Lulu opened up her notebook. ‘Mr Harold Anthony Turtle is forty-one, and a stationery salesman. His wife Angela is thirty-nine and is Manager of the flower shop at Charing Cross Hospital. They have no children.’

  ‘Any other observations from anyone?’ he asked.

  ‘There was no forced entry,’ the disembodied voice of Perkins said.

  ‘Squeeze in man, there’s enough room for a beanpole.’

  ‘Very kind, Sir.’ He said as he squeezed in.

  ‘So the couple let the killer in?’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Which indicates what...?’ he directed at Lulu.

  ‘They knew him.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘As much as I find the conversation riveting,’ Debbie said. ‘I’d like to be able to concentrate and get on with my work, so could you take it elsewhere?’

  ‘Of course,’ Quigg said. ‘Come on Perkins, squeeze out, man. What are you doing in here anyway?’

  ‘You...’

  Quigg pushed him out. ‘Come on Lulu, have you finished in there?’

  ‘I think so.’

  When they were all in the kitchen Quigg said, ‘We’re getting mixed messages with all these clues. On the one hand we’ve got the kitchen knives that match those in the house, the unforced entry, the fact that the killer knows certain things about the victims such as Mrs Partridge’s children not being there. On the other hand, we have the writing on the wall, the stolen clothes and faces, and the Santa disguise. Have I missed anything?’

  ‘It’s what the messages say as well,’ Lulu said. ‘How could anybody know a Partridge and two Turtles? He must be picking them to match the Christmas carol.’

  ‘But you’re the one who suggested that he knew the last victim,’ Quigg argued.

  ‘That was until he killed these two.’

  ‘So now you think he doesn’t know them?’

  ‘I think his overriding motive for choosing the victims is their names.’

  ‘Not the clothes and the faces like you said earlier?’

  ‘Have you any idea what he’s doing with the clothes and faces?’ Perkins asked absent-mindedly.

  ‘Do you think we’d be standing here arguing about motives if we did? What do you normally do with a full set of clothes?’

  ‘Wear them?’

  ‘That’s what we think. He’s probably wearing them to relive the experience.’

  ‘And the faces?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as ours.’

  ‘We have no idea who the killer is do we, Sir?’ Lulu said.

  ‘None at all. What about a wreath and the Father Christmas disguise?’

  Perkins nodded. ‘There was a wreath on the front door, and we’ve found evidence of a Santa suit being worn in the house, but whether the killer was wearing it I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay, I think we’ve done enough speculating for one night. Come on Lulu, we’ll go and question the neighbours.’

  They discovered that a rather thin-looking Father Christmas – without the potbelly – had been seen walking down the road with a sack over his shoulder after the murders. Quigg and Lulu surmised that the sack contained the clothing and faces belonging to the two victims, and at ten to nine they said goodnight and agreed to meet at the station at nine o’clock in the morning.

  At home, Quigg discovered that Phoebe had rung, but when he returned the call all he could get was an engaged tone. He went to bed in a distinctly bad frame of mind.

  As he drifted off to sleep he knew he had to make a decision one way or the other. Did the killer know the victims or not? The answer to that question dictated the focus of the investigation. If the killer had known them then he and Lulu could direct their energies towards searching out the people the victims knew and look for similarities, patterns, alibis, and inconsistencies. Sooner or later, they’d find the killer because they would have eliminated everybody else from their enquiries. But if the killer was a stranger who was selecting the victims based on matching criteria for the Christmas carol, then the investigation became that much more difficult. They would have to focus on the evidence such as the knives, the Father Christmas outfit, the wreaths, and the writing. And then there was Marion the Masseuse who wandered into his musings in a tight-fitting white uniform carrying a bag of cotton wool balls and a pot of cream...

  ***

  Sunday, 27th December

  ‘We’re going to proceed on the basis that the killer did not know the victims,’ he said to Perkins and Lulu as they sat in the incident room at nine o’clock. ‘The reason I’ve decided that is based on what Lulu said last night about him selecting the victims to match the verses of the Christmas carol. Are we in agreement?’

  Perkins and Lulu looked at each other and nodded.

  ‘So, the emphasis is on the evidence, Perkins. You’re in the spotlight, so give us some good news?’

  Perkins sighed. ‘The knife that killed Mrs Partridge is a Deglan Chef Knife that can be bought in most places, and on the Internet, that sell kitchen equipment. The knives that killed the Turtles, however, are quite rare. And what’s interesting about them is that they’re both the same.’

  ‘That’s interesting because?’ Lulu said.

  ‘Each set costs in the region of £600...’

  ‘What, for a set of kitchen knives?’ Quigg blurted out.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some people have more money than sense.’

  ‘They’re designed by a woman called Mia Schmallenbach who lives in Brussels.’

  ‘They could have been designed by Mickey Mouse at that price.’

  Lulu laughed.

  Perkins continued. ‘They’re a nested set of knives, and all of them appear to be carved from the same piece of stainless steel, which means that each knife is different. So when I say it’s interesting that the two knives are both the same, it means that they came from two different sets.’

  ‘You mean the killer paid £1,200 just to get two knives?’

  ‘There are only three outlets locally that sell Mia Schmallenbach knives.’

  ‘Which you’ve checked?’

  ‘I had my people on it first thing this morning, even though it is a Sunday.’

  ‘Excellent, and...?’

  ‘And one had a security DVD of Father Christmas helping himself to two sets of knives.’

  ‘I couldn’t help but notice that you used the past tense then, Perkins, and that you have a remote control in your sweaty hands.’

  Perkins pointed the remote control at the DVD and the television came to life.

  They watched as Santa slipped two slim boxes into his jacket and walked out of the shop.

  ‘Just as you described it,’ Quigg said. ‘I don’t suppose...?’

  ‘No, we haven’t had chance to examine the images in detail, that’s the next task on our list, but...’
He reversed the recording until he found Santa reaching for the two boxes and then froze the image. ‘I don’t suppose you noticed that?’

  ‘What?’ Lulu moved closer to try and get a better view. ‘Oh, that didn’t work. The closer you get, the less you see.’

  ‘I’m with Lulu on this, Perkins, what the hell are we supposed to be looking at?’

  ‘Pah, call yourselves detectives, neither of you can see what’s in front of your noses.’

  ‘The ring,’ Lulu said and grinned.

  Perkins had a light in his eyes. ‘Exactly, but not any old ring.’ He turned over a photograph and passed it to Quigg.

  Lulu moved round the table to see it.

  ‘That particular ring is a 19th Century French 18-carat handmade gold ring with a sculptured ivory mask in the centre, and there are only three known to exist.’

  ‘You’re driving me nuts, Perkins. Have you worked out who the killer is all on your own?’

  ‘I wish I had, but sadly no. That is either a copy of one of the three, or an unknown fourth one.’

  ‘The mask matches the faces,’ Lulu said.

  ‘Okay,’ Quigg said. ‘How does that help us? We already know he has a thing about faces.’

  Lulu didn’t respond.

  ‘I thought you had something then, Perkins, but instead you get us all exited for nothing.’

  ‘Hardly nothing, Inspector. My people are already beavering away trying to find out who owns the three rings, and also extrapolating a likeness from this DVD. We have a nose, a forehead, a pair of lips, and the width of his face. From those features we should be able to manufacture a likeness of the person underneath the Father Christmas outfit.’

  ‘Unless we get a match from the database it’s not really going to help us is it? How long will it take?’

  ‘Probably the rest of today.’

  ‘Not much help at all then. What about the wreaths?’

  Perkins looked deflated. ‘We’re still checking.’

  ‘Fibres, bodily fluids, hairs?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve already mentioned the Father Christmas disguise.’

  ‘So, the sum of the evidence and the forensic contribution to this investigation so far adds up to the grand total of...’ Quigg mimed counting using his fingers. ‘...Multiplied by ten reindeer, divided by four Christmas elves, minus two mince pies and a glühwein... nothing, zero, zilch.’