Fifth Member

by Claire Rayner

‘There won’t be one if we can help it,’ Gus growled. ‘Any idea who this one might be?’

  Dudley shook his head. ‘Not yet. We’ve only been here a few minutes. The call went out at’ – he looked at his watch – ‘About fifteen minutes ago, I suppose. Urquhart called and said you were on your way, so we waited.’ He looked at George again then, unwillingly. ‘Are you able to deal now? Have you got your gear with you?’

  George took pleasure in assuring him that she had. Not for the first time she was glad she kept a spare kit in Gus’s car; she never knew when she might need it.

  ‘Then we’d better go down.’ Dudley looked over his shoulder. ‘Is Soco here, d’you know?’

  Hagerty detached himself from the group and came over. ‘Evening, Guv,’ he said to Gus, and then looked at Dudley. ‘I don’t know, sir. Ah. Here’s Mike. Maybe he knows more than we do.’

  Mike Urquhart came across the marble floor of the entrance hall at a trot, a little out of breath. ‘I got here as fast as I could,’ he said. ‘What’s news?’

  ‘We know no more than you do. There’s a caretaker throwing his heart up in the lavatories, with one of the uniform people with him, and we were about to go down and look. Is there a Soco on the way?’

  Mike nodded. ‘Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes or so.’

  ‘So we can look but we mustn’t touch,’ Dudley said. ‘Right. No need for all of us. You, Tim and Mike and the Guv and me, that’s all we need. You can’t start, doctor, till the Soco comes, so –’

  ‘I’ll come and look just the same,’ she said firmly, bracing herself for an argument; Dudley looked at her and after a moment capitulated. He said no more but turned and made for the door of the lift.

  The uniformed man standing there was sweaty and pale and Gus looked at him sharply. ‘What do you know about all this?’

  The man shook his head miserably. ‘Not a lot, sir,’ he managed. ‘I was just about to brew up the first cuppa of the night, you know, now the tenants ’ave all gone, and then we was going to go round together, like we usually do, to check they’ve all locked up properly. Only it felt cold, so Darren went down to look at the boiler, and the next thing I know he’s running up the stairs shouting and looking like – well, I never seen a man so pale. He said there was a body down there by the boiler, what had had its throat cut and worse, and then he threw up.’ He looked across the hallway to the door marked ‘Stairs’. ‘He’s in the bog – the toilet now. I never seen a man look so ill. An’ I’m not feeling too good meself. Even when I dialled nine nine nine I was feelin’ funny.’

  ‘Go and lie down somewhere,’ George said. ‘Or at least sit and put your head between your knees.’ She caught Dudley’s eyes on her. ‘It’ll be less trouble than picking him up if he passes out.’

  Dudley jerked his head and one of his uniformed men put a hand on the guard’s arm and eased him away as Dudley led the way to the lift.

  ‘I’ll go down the stairs,’ Gus said. ‘See if there’s anything on the way down. Mind where you put your big feet, you lot,’ he added as the doors closed, and then grinned at George. ‘I shouldn’t wind Roop up like that. He’s the last man to let evidence get touched. Come on.’ And he led the way over the hall to the staircase doors.

  The air of opulence that had so characterized the hall, with its marble floor and superfluity of pillars and brass trimmings and mock art deco light fittings, vanished abruptly. These stairs were strictly utilitarian, tough stone, rather grubby and echoing. The walls were painted a dull yellowish colour and were decidedly grimy. George looked up at the flights curling up and away, and counted. ‘Seven floors,’ she murmured.

  ‘And every one of them to be searched. Come on then. I’ll take the right-hand side. You use the left. And keep your hands in your pockets.’

  ‘Would I do anything else?’ she retorted as together they made their way gingerly down, walking on their toes as far from the centre of each tread as they could.

  ‘Not,’ Gus said, ‘that we’re likely to get much in the way of prints from stone as rough and porous as this lot, but we have to try. Right, here we are. Basement level.’

  He used his foot to push the door open – it was unlatched – wide enough for George to go in and then followed her.

  The lighting was patchy but clear enough. The space looked as basements usually did: a few piles of battered old furniture; a corner with a work-bench and a couple of elderly tools on display, but a well-padlocked cupboard above it which clearly held better equipment; and to one side a large boiler which was hissing gently to itself. The smell was a familiar one: dust and oil and burning gas.

  George started forward but Gus pulled her back, insisting on going first as they made their way round the side of the space where there was undisturbed dust to show no one had walked there (‘Make a mental note of that, George, in case you have to give evidence,’ Gus instructed. She did) to reach the boiler.

  The light was brighter here, but only in a pool, as a shaded overhead bulb threw the whole of its illumination downwards to concentrate on the front of the boiler. It had the usual dials and fittings and George peered at it. It seemed to be working well enough, she thought. It was probably just that they needed to turn up the thermostat if they were too cold … and then she saw it. Huddled to the far side and looking like a darker patch of darkness.

  Gus had pulled a slim torch from his pocket and directed the beam into the darkness, and at once it sprang into horribly clear definition.

  The body was lying, as all the others had, on its back, but this time the legs were crumpled beneath the trunk, the knees pointing awkwardly outwards. The other bodies had had their legs pulled straight.

  ‘He was in a hurry,’ she murmured without stopping to think. Gus looked at her sideways, and said softly, ‘Well spotted. Yeah. He got the hell out fast. But he still did what he does, or most of it …’

  He had indeed. For the first time since the case had started George felt a qualm of the nausea that had so profoundly affected the man who had first found the body. She was used to horrors, heaven knew. Wasn’t her entire working life concerned with matters the average person found utterly repellent? But there was something about this case that made it worse.

  Behind her she heard the hum of the lift, and registered the fact that it seemed to be taking Dudley and the others a long time to descend one floor, but then dismissed the fact as irrelevant. Instead, she stood and stared as Gus made his way to the other side, picking every step as though he was on quicksand, and let the thoughts move through her mind, making no effort to control them.

  Is it because these are mindless serial killings that I find this one so chilling? So disgusting? Why should that upset me? Isn’t a killing done with – what was the word? – malice aforethought, carried out in order to give the killer some sort of material advantage, more reprehensible than one done, like these, simply to satisfy a deep need to kill in a person with no understanding of why he acts in such a way? She turned the thought around in her mind and then said, almost in a whisper, ‘If this is a serial killer, that is …’

  ‘Eh?’ Gus didn’t look at her. He was now crouching on his haunches, staring down at the body. She didn’t answer and he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Poor bugger,’ he said quietly.

  ‘May I come over?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose. Take care where you put your feet. There’s a hell of a lot of blood.’

  There was indeed. She reached the body’s side and looked down at the puddle that was there beneath the head, for the throat had been cut in the now hatefully familiar way, and then at the lower part of the body. There her eyes narrowed and she said, ‘I was right. He was in a hurry. One hell of a hurry.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gus straightened his knees with a little grimace of discomfort as he came upright. ‘Interrupted, do you suppose?’

  ‘Perhaps. In which case you might get a lead. If you can find out who was down here and might have alarmed him.’

  Because he hadn’t finish
ed. This time the excision of the genitals was incomplete. There had been a start on it: the clothes were pulled aside and there was a knife cut to the left-hand side of the groin, but it had not completed its arc, nor were the genitals arranged on the shoulder. The penis, however, had been sliced off and lay on the ground, forlorn and absurd at the same time. Clearly the killer had intended to do what he usually did, but this time, this time, he hadn’t.

  Gus took a deep breath of satisfaction. ‘You’re right. This should get the bastard,’ he said. ‘We may have to interrogate everyone who uses this building for hours, days, even, but one of them will have seen or heard something. They must have done. And that means we’ll get this character –’

  ‘Before he tries the fifth one?’ George said softly. ‘Because the original Ripper did do five killings. And this is just the fourth.’

  15

  The smell of coffee pulled her up and out of her sleep, nagging at her, though she tried to push it away and sink back into the bliss of whatever it was she had been dreaming. She opened one eye and there it was, sitting on the bedside table, just a few inches from her face: a mug, large, embellished with pansies painted in absurd colours, and steaming seductively. ‘I hate you,’ she mumbled. ‘Go away. Wanna sleep.’

  ‘I know you do. But you’ve got to wake up because I have to go and I want to talk to you first. Come on, ducky. I put cream in too. Just to spoil you.’

  She opened her eyes again and grimaced, stretching her sleepy face to a semblance of alertness. ‘You have to go so I have to get up?’ she grumbled, dragging herself upright. ‘Oh well, now you’ve done it, give it to me.’

  He put the mug into her hands, and she curled her fingers round it and, eyes firmly closed, sipped. It was perfect: strong, hot, unctuous with the cream and with just enough bitter undertow to give it power. She felt the energy seeping into her as she drank it steadily; an early call that included a brew like this was well worth while. She had swallowed half of it before she opened her eyes again and leaned back against her pillows, still holding the beaker between both hands. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Half eight,’ he said. ‘I know, I know. But four hours sleep is better than none and you can go back to it after I’ve gone. I can’t catch up till tonight. I wanted you to know that I’ve already been on to the nick. We’ve got an ID.’

  She sat up, fully alert now. ‘What? How? Who?’

  ‘He’d failed to show up at a meeting he had booked, an important one. People had been calling all over London for him. We started to check on missing people and there he was.’

  ‘Then he was an MP?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘A lord then?’

  ‘Not a lord temporal.’

  ‘What does that mean? Stop playing the Riddler with me.’

  ‘A lord spiritual, ducks. Not your sort at all. A bishop, no less. Bishop of Droitwich. Rather a well-known bloke. I can’t imagine why I didn’t recognize him.’

  ‘He wasn’t exactly looking his usual self when we found him,’ she said dryly. ‘Droitwich? I’ve heard about him. Isn’t he the one who caused all that uproar last year over homosexuals in the Church? Picketing Church House and stuff like that?’

  ‘That’s the one. A hard-line traditionalist. Dyed in the wool, in fact. A leading light in the anti-abortion movement too, and anti sex education in schools and –’

  ‘I know.’ She drained her coffee mug before pushing him out of the way so that she could swing her legs out of bed. ‘Considering the man was a doctor before he got religion, he ought to have known better.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair. There are lots of doctors opposed to abortion, aren’t there?’

  ‘We all are,’ she called from the bathroom. ‘I hate it. It’s misery for the woman and for the doctor who does it, it’s messy, it’s risky, it’s expensive, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the backstreet version the women’d go for if we don’t offer them a service, so the majority of doctors opt for a woman’s right to choose. Because, she’ll choose anyway, so let’s give her a choice between treatment by a real doctor and a money-grabbing butcher.’ She stopped suddenly, and after a couple of moments put her head round the bathroom door. ‘Gus, do you think maybe … No, that wouldn’t work. Not with the others,’ and she went back into the bathroom.

  ‘Get a move on,’ he bawled. ‘I can’t stand conversations like this.’

  She did, and emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, wrapped in a bathrobe and rubbing her wet head with a towel. ‘Fastest damned shower I ever took,’ she complained. ‘But since I spent fifteen minutes in the shower last night after the PM I guess it’s no crime. Now, why did you call me so early?’

  ‘Because I didn’t fancy sneaking off and just leaving a note. Roop called at seven, to tell me about the ID and to ask me what I wanted done first, and, of course, how I wanted to set up the stake-out over in Spitalfields Market.’

  She stopped rubbing her head. ‘Spitalfields? Oh!’

  ‘Indeed, oh. That’s where Dorset Street used to be, the place where the Ripper dealt with his last victim. I’m as capable as you of looking at the history books you know. Dorset Street’s long gone and the Market covers the area where it was. So far, the murder sites have been more approximations of the original ones rather than exact, so we have to assume the next one, if he tries it, will be the same. Which means around the Market. And I have to sit down with Roop and plan how we’re to use the force we have and how many more men I have to con out of the Commissioner.’

  He grinned then. ‘Not that it’ll be difficult. With the sort of VIPs our chummy’s polishin’ off, there’ll be resources and to spare for the job. Parliament won’t like it if their people keep getting duffed up, either. I’m not worried about getting what we need, but I still have to plan. Which means spending the day at the nick. And, no,’ for she had opened her mouth to speak, ‘you can’t come with me. There’d be no point, ducks. It really is the most tedious of routine stuff today. We’ll be planning, and collating info we’ve already got. You take the rest of the weekend off. You never know your luck, I might even be able to spend tomorrow at home. So will most of the team. I don’t reckon people work well when they get no R. and R. I tell you what: organize a decent dinner for tonight, what do you say? You haven’t cooked for me since God knows when. It’s always me what does it.’

  ‘Like hell it is,’ she flared. ‘I cook often.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  She blinked, trying to remember. ‘Well, of course, if you’re going to be petty about it …’

  ‘Petty, me? Never. Here, give us a kiss. I’m off. Oh, and yeah, what was it you were going to say when you were in the bathroom?’

  ‘Hmm? About what?’

  He was patient. ‘You said, “Gus, d’you think maybe … No, that wouldn’t work. Not with the others.” What was all that about?’

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘I was thinking, maybe it was one of these people who disagreed with the Bishop on abortion who killed him. But then I thought that wouldn’t make sense of the other killings, would it? The trouble with this affair is we have to think about four killings at once – maybe five eventually – and that’s a whole different ball game from thinking about single murders.’

  ‘It’s also different when it’s a serial killer, the mindless sort. There’s no motive that you can get hold of. Well, there is, in a way, but it’s so obscure, buried so deep in their weird little minds, that no logical person can work it out. No one can ever second-guess a serial killer, right?’

  ‘I’m not sure …’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m not sure at all.’

  ‘What, you mean that it’s possible to understand serial killers’ motives?’

  She looked impatient. ‘Oh, that’s not so difficult. Once you know who they are. I agree it’s not easy knowing before you catch ’em why they do what they do, though some of the profilers do a good job on working out what it might be. And after you’ve caught ’
em, you usually find out. Peter Sutcliffe said he had voices telling him to kill prostitutes, right? No, what I meant was that I’m not convinced this is one of your mad axe-killing types. I keep feeling this is real murder.’

  ‘You don’t get anything much more real than cut throats and necessaries,’ he said dryly.

  ‘Yeah. What I mean is, this keeps feeling to me like the sort of crime where there is a definite motive, a logical and sane reason for what’s being done. We just have to work out what that is and we have our killer.’

  ‘There can’t be a logical, sane reason for these cases.’ Gus had stopped hovering near the door trying to go, but had come back to sit on the bed absorbed in thought. ‘Or can there? If these are sane killings done for a sane reason there’ll be something in common between all the victims, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And if we look at them rather than anything else that will definitely provide the answer? Well, we are looking at them. We know they’re all Members of Parliament.’

  ‘Both Houses, Lords as well as Commons.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And all parties, pretty well. No political bias as far as we can see. This isn’t an over-enthusiastic electioneering type trying to give his lot an edge on the hustings.’

  He grinned. ‘It’d make a change from character assassination I suppose, to go in for the more physical sort. No, it isn’t party political, not in that way. But could it be para-political? You thought of that yourself: a pro-abortionist having a go at one of the antis?’

  She shook her head. ‘Violence isn’t the ploy of the pro-choice people – and never call us pro-abortion on account of we ain’t. I’ve already told you that. It’s the lesser of two evils. It’s the antis who’ve been going in for shooting doctors and clinic people in the States. Never the other side.’

  ‘Well, all right. It’s not an abortionist. But could it be something else of that sort? What have they in common, these victims, that might show us a logical motive for one person to kill them all? And why do it à la Jack the Ripper?’