The gates to the churchyard have been sealed off with blue-and-white police tape. More tape has been threaded between fence posts of an adjacent field where a newly erected white tent, lit from within, seems to glow in the dark.
Seventy yards away, police and volunteers have gathered in the parking area for a briefing. Fuelled by thermos coffee and tea, they listen to Ronnie Cray tell them to stay focused and not to leave anything behind. At 6 a.m. they move off, crossing the fields in a straight line with their heads bent, searching the long summer grass and unkempt hedges where the tea-coloured branches and holly look almost black in the low sun.
Cray lifts a plastic cup to her lips. The tea has grown cold. She spits it out.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she says, wiping her mouth. ‘The victim’s name is Naomi Meredith, aged twenty-nine. Her husband reported her missing last night. She’d spent the day in Weston-super-Mare, shopping and having lunch with her friends. She planned to catch the four o’clock bus and should have been home by five. Her house is three hundred yards from here, past that line of trees.’
‘Who found her?’
‘The husband. He arrived home around seven and expected Naomi to be there. He spent the evening phoning her friends and family. He talked to the bus driver, who remembered Naomi. Then he decided to retrace her steps. He discovered her just after 2 a.m. Her body was on the far side of the fence, partially covered with branches and an old sheet of corrugated iron.’
‘How did he know where to look?’
‘He found her handbag next to one of the gravestones.’
Cray ducks under the police tape and we walk to a splintered fence. On the opposite side I see flattened grass and nettles and the bent stems of thistles. Climbing over, we cross duckboards until we reach the white tent. Arc lights are throwing shadows against the canvas and a portable generator provides a throbbing backing beat.
The flap opens as a camera flashes. Twin white dots of light are left dancing behind my eyelids. My sight recovers. Amid the boxes of equipment and tripods, I see the body of a woman, who is no longer young or old. Wearing a skirt and blouse, she is lying on her side, with one leg bent beneath her and her head resting on her lower arm as though she’s curled up and gone to sleep.
The blood that covers her face resembles a mask. Something sharp – a scalpel or razor – must have opened up her forehead while her heart was still beating. Three lines – two longer than the other – intersecting to form the ‘A’. The cuts were not meant to be neat or precise, simply legible.
An image comes back to me – a young woman called Catherine Mary McBride lying in a shallow grave on the banks of the Grand Union Canal. It was ten years ago, opposite Kensal Green Cemetery in London, a Sunday morning, when I watched police recover her body. Ruiz was in charge of the investigation. He asked for my help and I said, ‘What do I know about predators and psychopaths?’
A decade later and I’m staring at another crime scene and asking myself the same questions. Who was this woman? What did she mean to the man who killed her? Where did he confront her? How quickly did he strike? Did they interact? The answers are important because they influence the much larger question of motivation.
A SOCO speaks to Cray. They’re ready to move the body. We’re in the way. Cray motions for me to follow and we retrace our steps across the duckboards.
Walking past the church and through the gates, I come to the main road. There are houses on either side with gaps in between. Somebody might have seen him following Naomi, but more likely he waited for her. Was it opportunistic or did he target her because she meant something to him, or represented someone else?
DCS Cray has followed me.
‘Was she raped?’ I ask.
‘Not according to the initial examination.’
‘What about the bleach?’
‘The paramedics could smell it on her fingers. It could be a coincidence.’
I don’t answer immediately. Walking into the churchyard, I stop at one of the newer graves – a husband and wife buried next to each other. He died in 1942, shot down over Germany. She lived for another fifty years.
Cray is itching to ask me about the symbol and its significance. First I want to know about the other attacks.
‘We know of three,’ she says. ‘The victims were choked unconscious and scarred with the same symbol – always on the forehead. Police didn’t link the crimes because they took place in different counties and were investigated independently.’
‘Did any of the victims know each other?’
‘No.’
‘You said there was an attack on the day of the murders.’
‘A thirty-one-year-old bookkeeper, walking on the coastal path between Portishead and Clevedon, was grabbed from behind in a chokehold and lost consciousness. When she came to she had blood in her eyes. She didn’t realise what he’d done until the paramedics gave her a mirror.’
‘How far is the footpath from the farmhouse?’
‘Less than two miles.’
‘Any sign of bleach?’
‘None.’
‘What about the other attacks?’
Cray rattles off the basic facts. The previous October, a radiologist working at a private hospital in Bristol was on her way home. Someone broke into her car and was hiding in the back seat.
‘Was she married?’ I ask.
‘Separated, but she was dating a married doctor at the hospital.’
The second attack was two months later in Newport, Wales, on the eastern side of the Newport City Footbridge. ‘The victim was married, aged forty, with two kids. He was trussed up like a Christmas turkey. If a security guard hadn’t found him he would have frozen to death.’
‘You said “he”?’
‘Male, a sales consultant, he wouldn’t give us a statement.’
I’m standing at the highest point of the churchyard, looking across the valley to where sheep are dotted on the distant pastures and a tractor moves in slow motion, pulling a trailer along a track.
Cray has spent enough time admiring the view. She wants my thoughts. I clear my throat.
‘Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a famous novel called The Scarlet Letter.’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘It’s about a woman called Hester Prynne who is found guilty of adultery and is made to wear a scarlet “A” sewn on to her dress as a sign of shame.’
‘You think this is about adultery?’
‘All the victims were married or separated.’
‘As a matter of routine we considered the possibility of infidelity as a motive, but apart from the radiologist the rest of them claimed to be happily married.’
‘Maybe they lied,’ I say.
‘OK, so let’s say you’re right – what has this guy got against adultery?’
‘Perhaps his wife left him or had an affair.’
‘Well, that narrows it down,’ says Cray, not hiding her sarcasm.
‘Where is her husband?’ I ask.
‘With Naomi’s parents.’
‘You should keep an eye on him.’
The DCS signals to Monk, pulling him aside for a quiet word. ‘I want you to bring Theo Meredith to the station. Keep it quiet. No fuss. Tell him it’s routine.’
Monk nods.
‘See if he’ll give us permission to search the house,’ says Cray.
‘You want me to apply for a warrant?’
‘We don’t have enough.’
Cray comes back to me with another question. ‘OK, let’s say you’re right and we’re dealing with some religious nutter or moral vigilante – the other attacks weren’t fatal. Why did he kill Naomi?’
‘It could have been accidental or part of an escalation.’
‘And the bleach?’
‘Shows forensic awareness and possibly a link to the farmhouse murders, but it’s not a strong connection. You need to look at the other cases and re-interview the victims.’
Cray puffs out her cheeks and exhales sl
owly. ‘The first two victims refused to make a statement and the bookkeeper withdrew hers a week later.’
‘But you’ll try again.’
‘Of course,’ she says sceptically. ‘I’m sure they’ll put the kettle on and open the Hobnobs.’
26
Built like a bunker beneath the coroner’s court, the mortuary at Flax Bourton has twelve pathologists doing fifteen hundred post-mortems a year. I know this fact because of the chart on the office wall.
A young lab assistant comes to collect me and I follow her along brightly lit corridors that reek of floor polish, disinfectant and a strange mixture of stomach acid, gall and faeces. It’s thirty years since I was in medical school, but I still recognise the smell.
‘If you’ll just wait here,’ she says.
The man I’ve come to see, Dr Louis Preston, has a downturned mouth, slumped shoulders and a Brummie accent that makes him seem eternally miserable. If Preston won the National Lottery he’d make it sound as if his dog had just died. Right now I can see him through an open door, surrounded by interns who have gathered around a cadaver on the slab.
‘This is Mr Norman Griggs,’ says Preston. ‘He spent sixty-two years on this earth and I want you to treat him with the same care and decency as you’d show your own grandfather. Am I understood?’
The interns nod.
‘Dr Earley will perform the autopsy. Watch and learn, people.’
Still peeling off his surgical gloves, Preston meets me in the corridor. ‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘I need five minutes.’
‘If I had five minutes I’d be taking my morning shit.’
‘Please, Louis.’
He grumbles and starts walking. ‘You want to know about Naomi Meredith?’
‘Was it a blood choke?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could he have miscalculated?’
The pathologist stops and turns, intrigued by the question. I tell him about the earlier attacks – none of which were fatal.
‘How much do you know about blood chokes?’ he asks.
‘I know the effect.’
‘Force is applied to both sides of the neck, constricting the carotid artery, decreasing blood flow to the brain. A short compression is relatively harmless, but if you deprive the brain of blood for four minutes we’re talking brain damage. Six minutes, it’s death.’
‘So in this case?’
Preston shrugs. ‘He didn’t let her go.’ He starts walking again.
‘What did he use on her forehead?’ I ask.
‘Best guess – a box-cutter with a retractable blade. Cut her skin to the bone.’
We’ve reached his office. He sits behind his desk and pulls a sandwich and a carton of juice from the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. ‘If I can’t shit, I’m going to eat,’ he says, tearing off a mouthful of sandwich and forcing the corners into his mouth.
‘You also did the autopsy on Harper Crowe.’
He nods, his mouth full.
‘Was that a blood choke?’
His jaw stops moving, recognising where I’m going with this.
‘Harper Crowe showed limited evidence of neck trauma.’
‘What do you mean by limited evidence?’
The pathologist is thinking out loud now. ‘She had some minor perimortem bruising on her jaw, which could have been caused by the small silver crucifix she wore around her neck … if it was pressed hard into her skin.’
‘By a forearm choking her?’
‘Possibly.’
Preston puts down his sandwich, more interested now. He quizzes me on the other attacks, wanting to know how long the victims were unconscious and how they were gripped. I don’t have all the answers.
‘What about the bleach on Naomi Meredith’s fingers?’ I ask.
‘Sodium hydroxide – your basic household cleaner. He tried to destroy his DNA. We managed to get one sample, but it’s highly degraded.’
‘Was it the same bleach used on Harper Crowe?’
‘It had the same chemical combination, but so do most household bleaches.’ Preston wraps his half-eaten sandwich, dropping it into the bin beside his desk. ‘So tell me, Professor, what’s this guy’s motive – power, jealousy, sexual gratification?’
‘Revenge and perhaps control,’ I reply.
‘You don’t sound very sure.’
‘I don’t know him yet.’
The pathologist shakes his head. ‘That’s the difference between you and me – you want to know your subjects. I prefer them dead.’
I am always scared in the days that follow. What if I was seen? What if the police come knocking? What if I left something behind – some trace of me that will lead them here? I have tried to imagine such a scenario, but cannot hold the picture in my mind.
I know I should stop now. But each time I think of pulling back or stepping away, the world becomes dull and vague and pedestrian; so bleached of colour, so boring, so full of cheats and liars.
This one barely struggled. Some people react like that, incapable of comprehending their situation, let alone planning a way out. She didn’t kick or squirm or claw at my forearm when I wrapped it around her neck and began to squeeze. When she regained consciousness she couldn’t remember being asleep.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. She noticed the tape on her feet and hands. ‘No, no, no. Please let me go. I can pay you. Take my purse.’
‘I don’t want your money.’
She threatened to scream. I held my hand over her mouth and nose, letting her understand how easy it would be for me to suffocate her.
‘You really shouldn’t walk home alone,’ I said. ‘Not through a lonely churchyard.’
‘Why me?’
‘You betrayed your husband.’
‘No.’
‘You’re still fucking your boss.’
She hesitated, trying to fathom how I could possibly know this.
‘You think you’re so clever – sneaking around behind your husband’s back … cheating on him. You think nobody knows. You’re wrong! I know!’
‘Why do you care?’
‘Think of what happens to the children when their parents lie and cheat and sneak around behind each other’s backs.’
‘I don’t have children.’
‘Your boss does.’
She began to cry and say she was sorry, repeating the word over and over, thinking her tears could melt my heart. The shock was subsiding. Her mind was waking up.
‘Where is your husband now?’ I asked.
‘Waiting for me.’
‘He should be here. He should be the one to punish you.’
‘Please don’t tell him!’
‘Oh, it’s too late for that. I’m going to write him a letter.’
‘What?’
‘A letter. Shhhhh. I’m just going to put my arm across your throat again. You’ll go to sleep for a while.’
‘Please don’t hurt me.’
‘You won’t feel a thing.’
I squeezed. She twisted. Twitched. Time suspended …
Something happened as I wrapped my forearm around her neck. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to rock her in my arms forever, serenading her into the longest sleep. A clock is a clock. A knife is a knife. A life is a life.
27
Ruiz paces back and forth between the sink and the fridge. Three paces, turn, three more, turn … it’s like watching a guardsman on a battlement. He’s surprisingly light on his feet for a big man, but I can’t concentrate unless he stops moving.
‘So he didn’t suffocate her.’
‘It was a chokehold,’ I explain.
‘Like they use in cage fighting?’
‘Exactly. Instead of closing the windpipe, you deprive the brain of blood.’
I make Ruiz sit down and then move behind him, wrapping my right arm around his neck, so that my elbow is beneath his chin. Then I put my left hand on the back of his head and use it as leverage as I slowly squeeze his neck.<
br />
‘You’ll find it a little more difficult to breathe, but I’m not trying to close off your windpipe. Blood flows to the brain along two pathways – the carotid and vertebral arteries. The carotid artery is where the back of the jaw meets the neck, which makes it quite easy to compress.’
I squeeze. I feel Ruiz struggle. His legs twitch and he reaches for my arm, but within seconds his muscles relax and he wants to flop sideways, his eyes still wide open. I release my forearm and brace myself against him until he regains consciousness.
‘Was I out?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long?’
‘Seven, eight seconds.’
‘I don’t remember.’
He touches his neck and regards me sceptically, as though I might have hypnotised him and made him forget the whole episode.
‘Six pounds of pressure is all it takes. By cutting off the blood supply I tricked your brain into thinking your blood pressure had plummeted and it closed your body down.’
Ruiz rolls his head from side to side, checking that nothing is damaged. ‘What sort of person carves a symbol on a woman’s forehead?’
‘A is for adultery.’
Ruiz looks at me questioningly. ‘Cheating on your spouse might be immoral and selfish, but it’s not against the law.’
‘Not since 1857.’
‘OK, how do you know shit like that?’
‘I just do.’
Getting to his feet, Ruiz rocks forward as though testing the firmness of the floor. He begins pacing again. ‘So we’re looking for a cuckolded husband or a jilted lover.’
‘Or a jealous wife, or her family.’
‘Could it be religious?’
‘Feels more like a vendetta. He doesn’t just punish, he wants to shame.’
I begin telling Ruiz a story from my clinical work when I was summoned to Broadmoor, the secure psychiatric hospital, to interview a seemingly mild-mannered plumber from the Midlands who had beaten a man to death outside a secondary school. He was in his forties, average height, but hugely powerful, having bulked up in weight rooms and fuelled himself with protein shakes and possibly steroids.
The plumber told me he was hearing voices, but I couldn’t find any evidence of psychosis. Instead I discovered a man who was kind and considerate and even-tempered, until I mentioned his wife. The change in him was physical as well as emotional. It was almost like watching David Banner turning into the Hulk.
Close Your Eyes Page 18