by Tony Parsons
‘He’s laughing inside,’ I said. ‘Here they come.’
Two dozen horses came slowly down the road, all of them pitch black. The heat of their bodies sent up clouds of steam in the freezing air. The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment on their watering order – exercise for the horses who would not be participating at Horse Guards later that day. In some ways, I thought this was more magnificent. No gilt and gold and swords and plumes, just mounted soldiers in khaki fleeces, but the sight of them on these city streets seemed to touch the day with magic.
Stan strained at his lead in an attempt to go with them. When Scout restrained him he looked up at her with eyes as huge as black marbles in his little head.
Oh come on, he seemed to say.
When the horses had passed by, clomping down to Victoria Embankment on their way back to the stables of the Queen’s Life Guard, we went for breakfast in Smiths of Smithfield.
Stan greeted familiar faces. Our dog was very people-orientated. When the first wild dogs were tentatively approaching the camp fires of man ten thousand years ago, the start of the greatest alliance between two species in nature, man’s food and shelter fair exchange for the affection and protection of the dogs, there’s no doubt that Stan’s ancestors were right at the front of the queue, licking hands and wagging tails and rolling their huge eyes.
Through the massive windows we could see the meat porters of Smithfield finishing their long night shifts.
‘Did they find Bradley yet?’ Scout said.
‘What?’
‘Did they find Bradley yet? Did they bring him back?’
‘How do you know about Bradley, angel?’
‘I saw him on the news. The lady was talking.’
‘Angel, you know you’re not meant to watch the news.’ It had been one of her mother’s rules. And we tried our best to stick by all the old rules. ‘There are things on the news that are not suitable for children your age.’
‘I know. I was watching kids’ TV and then the news came on. And Mrs Murphy turned it over quick to the cookery show. But Bradley was the first thing on the news. And I wondered if they got him back yet …’
‘Not yet. But we will. We’re going to find him and we are going to bring him home.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because it’s my job.’
My phone began to vibrate. It was Whitestone.
‘We need you at the Iain West,’ she said. ‘There’s a problem with the bodies.’
‘These are not gunshot wounds,’ said Elsa Olsen, forensic pathologist. ‘The entry wounds you saw on the victims, and that you understandably took for GSWs, are in fact circular fractures. Circular fractures of the skull in the case of three of the victims and circular fracture of both eye sockets in the other. The manner of death was murder. But it wasn’t a gun that killed them. It was blunt-force trauma.’
Wren had met our little family at the door of the Iain West Forensic Suite at the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road and immediately whisked Scout and Stan off for fun and games at 27 Savile Row. Scout liked Wren. And of course Stan liked everybody.
Now DCI Whitestone, DI Gane and me were deep inside the Iain West, looking lovely in our blue scrubs and hairnets, not quite freezing but shivering in a room where the temperature was always just above zero.
The Wood family lay in a neat row on their stainless steel slabs.
Elsa Olsen moved slowly between them as she spoke. You could see where Elsa had opened the bodies up for examination and then stitched them back up again. On each of the four bodies there was a Y-shaped incision starting at the top of each shoulder where Elsa had gone in with her rib-cutter shears – like many pathologists, she favoured ordinary gardening pruning shears – to examine the internal organs. At the top of each head there was a skullcap where Elsa had sawn open the skulls with a vibrating Stryker saw.
Whitestone nodded at the visible wounds on the boy and the man. You could not see the single entry wounds we had found in the back of the head of the mother and daughter. But you could see the single entry wounds in the centre of the boy’s forehead and you could see the gaping black holes where the father’s eyes had been.
‘But there are abrasion collars,’ Whitestone said.
Abrasion collars are the black burn marks that you find in a gunshot wound fired at close range. And it was true you could see burn marks around the wound in the boy’s head and the holes where the man’s eyes had once been.
‘There might be abrasion collars,’ Elsa said. ‘But it wasn’t a firearm that did it, Pat. It was a tool. A tool with enough brute force to punch a hole through the skull and push a section of bone into the brain. These people were not shot. They were slaughtered.’
I understood now why there were no shell casings. It wasn’t because the killer was a professional. It was because he had not used a firearm.
Elsa Olsen was tall and dark, a blue-eyed Norwegian, one of those Scandinavians who speak English far better than the natives.
‘Have you seen the toxicology report yet?’ she asked.
Whitestone shook her head. ‘It’s not back from the lab.’
‘It will tell you that all four family members had traces of flunitrazepam – Rohypnol, the date-rape drug – in their system at the time of death,’ Elsa said. ‘I found evidence of it in each family member’s gastrointestinal tract. As you know, Rohypnol has no odour. You would not have been aware of it at the crime scene.’
‘So that’s how they were subdued,’ Whitestone said. ‘They were dosed with Rohypnol.’
‘Manner of death was murder,’ Elsa said. ‘White male, forty-five years old – Brad Wood. White female, thirty-five – Mary Wood. White male, fifteen – Marlon Wood. White female, fourteen – Piper Wood. Their bodies were all in the rigid stage of rigor mortis. As you’re aware, rigor mortis sets in after around two hours and then the body becomes progressively stiff. Based on the twelve–twelve–twelve rule – twelve hours to get stiff, twelve hours to remain stiff and twelve hours for the body to start relaxing as it gets accustomed to the fact that it is dead – I can state with some confidence that the Wood family died eighteen hours before they were discovered on the evening of January first.’
‘New Year’s Eve,’ Whitestone said.
‘Why weren’t they out celebrating?’ Gane said.
Whitestone adjusted her glasses. ‘Perhaps they were celebrating with each other.’
They now lay naked in a row on four stainless steel tables.
‘The boy – Marlon Wood – has multiple abrasions and bruising all over his body,’ Elsa said.
Whitestone looked up sharply. ‘Those marks on Marlon – that’s not lividity?’
Like many dead bodies that have lain undiscovered for a while, the bodies of the Wood family all looked as though they were bruised. With the heart not pumping, the blood settles and stagnates and lividity sets in, and it looks exactly like bruising. They all had it. But as we took half a step closer, you could see that it was clearly more extensive on the boy.
‘Marlon has broken femurs,’ Elsa said. ‘As you know, the thigh bone is the strongest bone in the body. It takes a hell of a lot to break it. In fact, 99 per cent of broken femurs happen the same way.’
‘A car,’ I said. ‘Somebody ran him down in a car. He was run down and then carried or dragged into the house.’
‘But it wasn’t the car that killed him,’ Elsa said. ‘Let me show you his brain. I left his skullcap loose to show you.’
Elsa gently removed the very top of Marlon’s head. Then she carefully peeled the front flap of his skull over his face and peeled the back flap of his skull over the back of his head. The features of his face were now replaced with the blank, bloody mask that was the inside of his head.
I took a breath and let it go, making a small cloud of steam in the bitter cold. We gathered at the top of the table for a better look.
‘I can remove his brain if I cut the connections to the spinal cord a
nd cranial nerves,’ Elsa said. ‘But I think it’s clear enough in situ.’
She pulled back a thin layer of what looked like chicken skin etched with a road map of blood and we saw the thick channel burrowed deep into the brain, blood so dark that it was black.
‘Marlon here died from epidural bleeding – he was hit in the front of the head, as you can see from the extensive damage to his skull and brain. Mary and Piper died from subdural bleed – blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. In all three the cause of death was blunt-force head trauma leading to intracranial bleeding. But the father was different. He died of a heart attack. I suspect it was after his first eye was destroyed.’
‘Defensive wounds?’ Whitestone said.
‘Piper fought for her life,’ Elsa said. ‘The rest of them went quietly.’
‘Did she have broken nails?’
Broken nails would be good because they would mean she had clawed the killer and possibly had some of his skin still under there.
‘No, a broken thumb,’ Elsa said, and she looked at the body of Piper Wood. ‘But she fought like hell. She was an incredibly brave girl.’
‘Sexual abuse?’ Whitestone said.
‘Piper had non-motile sperm in her vagina, sperm with no tails, indicting she had consensual sex a few days prior to her murder,’ Elsa said. ‘But I also found evidence of a sexual assault. There was a rape before the murder.’
‘So Piper was raped?’ Whitestone said.
Elsa shook her head. ‘The mother was raped,’ she said. ‘Mary. There was motile sperm in her mouth, vagina and rectum. As you know, sperm survive in a dead body for longer than they do in a living body. When the heart stops beating, the body stops producing the chemicals to destroy sperm. They’re still there, in fact. They can last for up to two weeks in a corpse.’
‘Perhaps watching that caused the father’s heart attack,’ I said.
‘Perhaps,’ Elsa conceded.
‘Does the family know?’ I asked.
‘I informed the sister – Charlotte Gatling – that Mary had been raped when she identified the bodies,’ Elsa said. ‘And she asked me not to make that information public. I agreed.’
‘How does that work?’ Whitestone said. ‘Rape would come out in court. It would come out at the point of prosecution. DNA evidence would mean it had to come out.’
‘Of course,’ Elsa said. ‘Charlotte Gatling understands it has to come out in court. But she requests that it doesn’t come out now. Her father is unwell. Her brother was devoted to her sister. She feels that her family members are already suffering enough without revelations that Mary was raped.’
‘Understood,’ Whitestone said. ‘No problem. And the mechanism, Elsa – what was used to kill them? What are we talking about? A hammer of some kind? A metal spike?’ She shook her head. ‘Because I feel that I’ve seen this somewhere before.’
‘And so do I,’ Elsa said. ‘But not in this country. Not in this job.’
She began to sew the top of Marlon Wood’s skull back to his head with a Hagedorn needle. She used a thick twine and the stitching looked similar to what you see on a baseball. It’s not as messy as it sounds. The heart is no longer pumping so the dead don’t bleed.
Only the living bleed.
‘When I was a child, growing up on a farm in Norway,’ Elsa said, ‘there was one year when we had had floods in the spring followed by a drought in the summer. That meant there wasn’t enough fodder for the cattle. So all the farmers, including my father, slaughtered their herds for beef. And before my father killed his cattle, he stunned them by firing a metal bolt into their brains. That’s when I saw these wounds.’ She indicated the Wood family. ‘This is exactly what it looks like when livestock are prepared for slaughter.’
5
‘Who kills with a cattle gun?’ Edie Wren said quietly back at West End Central. ‘Spree killers – all spree killers – every single one of them – come to the party armed like Rambo.’
We had moved our investigation down the corridor to MIR-1, the larger Major Incident Room, but the four members of our MIT were huddled in one corner and keeping our voices down because Scout was sitting in the middle of the room, Stan dozing at her feet, doing her drawing at one of the workstations until Mrs Murphy picked her up.
‘This wasn’t a spree killing,’ Whitestone said, equally quietly. ‘For a start, it wasn’t multiple locations. A spree killer would have wandered through that rich little road taking out the neighbours until we cornered him and he worked up the nerve to blow his brains out. And spree killers love soft targets. Spree killers love shopping malls and cinemas.’ She glanced across at Scout and made her voice even lower. ‘Spree killers love schools. A spree killer doesn’t select a gated community with a security guard for his target. And you’re right, Edie – he doesn’t choose a cattle gun for his weapon. He comes armed with more firepower than he can ever possibly use. This was a hit.’
‘But a contract hit doesn’t fit,’ I said. ‘Despite what he did to the father’s eyes.’ I had left the Iain West Suite more convinced than ever that he – or they – had come for Brad Wood. ‘The cattle gun rules out a pro,’ I said. ‘Or even an aspiring amateur. And a pro would have killed Bradley or left him alone, but they wouldn’t take the kid with them.’
‘Hitman, gang member, psycho,’ Gane said. ‘Nobody kills with a cattle gun. Why would they?’
‘It happens,’ Whitestone said. ‘Once every ten years or so some local yokel runs amok on a farm and reaches for the nearest thing that looks like it can cause serious harm. Picks up a cattle gun. But they don’t steal a child …’ She shook her head, as if the memory she was searching for was just out of reach. ‘Tends to be an impulse kill rather than premeditated. It’s not unknown. Except in the middle of London. It’s unknown here. Where’s Dr Joe?’
We were still waiting for our favourite forensic psychologist to come in and explain to us what particular flavour of psychopath could make the kind of mess we had found in Highgate.
‘Dr Joe is in the States for the holidays,’ Wren said. ‘He’s flying back early for us.’
‘Edie?’ a little voice said.
We all turned to look at Scout.
‘Yes, sweetheart?’ Wren said.
‘Check this out, Edie,’ my daughter said. ‘My picture.’
Wren crossed the room to Scout.
‘Wow, so that’s you and your dad and your dog – Stan, right? – and these are the Queen’s horses?’
‘Right,’ Scout said. ‘And they’re all black, see?’
Whitestone turned to us.
‘I want Edie on the missing boy for now,’ she said. ‘Bradley. We’re getting sightings all the time.’
‘How many?’ I said.
‘The last time I looked it was over two hundred. We’re going to need some extra hands to sort the fruitcakes from the genuine leads.’ She nodded at me. ‘Your friend in 101 might be able to get us up to speed on precedents.’
‘Right.’
She meant Sergeant John Caine in Room 101 of New Scotland Yard – the Black Museum, a unique archive of the most notorious crimes of the last hundred years. It wasn’t officially called the Black Museum any more – it was the Crime Museum, in case calling it the Black Museum hurt any ethnic minority’s feelings. And it wasn’t actually a museum at all – the days when Arthur Conan Doyle had the key to the place were long gone. Now the Black Museum was used as a training facility to impress on young coppers that every day on the job could be their last day on earth. More than anything, the Black Museum was a memorial to evil.
‘Curtis, run the MO through HOLMES,’ Whitestone told Gane. HOLMES, or more accurately the new improved HOLMES2, is the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. ‘See who’s been convicted for murder with a cattle gun. Living, dead, the lot. I believe there’s at least two of them currently doing time. Couple of farm boys who were unlucky in love or didn’t get their Christmas bonus.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment as a memory sti
rred. ‘Now I remember – it must have been thirty years ago.’
‘Someone took out a family with a cattle gun?’ I said.
‘A father and his three grown-up sons. There was a girl – and her mother – but he didn’t touch them.’ She shook her head; it was all a very long time ago. ‘But he’s probably dead by now.’
Whitestone looked across at Scout and Edie chatting away to each other and totally oblivious to the rest of us. But still she kept her voice low.
‘The Slaughter Man,’ she said.
I had arranged to meet Mrs Murphy under the old blue lamp that marks the entrance to West End Central but as soon as Scout and I stepped out of the lift, I saw that was never going to work.
The press pack seemed to have grown. The TV vans now stretched all the way down Savile Row. Uniformed officers were doing their best to keep the crowds on the pavement and the traffic moving on the narrow road, but reporters with orange tans kept sneaking into the middle of the road so they could do their pieces to camera with the blue lamp of 27 Savile Row in the background. They jabbered dramatically in a dozen different languages.
‘It’s very crowded, isn’t it?’ Scout said.
‘It is, angel.’
It was also bitterly cold. I fastened the top two buttons on Scout’s coat and jammed her hat over her ears and picked her up, scanning the crowds for an old lady sporting the kind of hat, coat and handbag that the Queen would favour.
‘There she is,’ Scout said.
Mrs Murphy was sensibly waiting just beyond the crowds, a black cab with its engine running waiting beside her. She saw us and began to smile and wave. I called over a uniformed officer.
‘You see that lady in the green hat and coat?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can you get her to the door?’
The young copper nodded and stepped into the street, waving Mrs Murphy and her cab forwards. Suddenly the crowd stirred. Two police motorbikes were turning into Savile Row from the Conduit Street end, the blue lights pulsing on the big BMW bikes and piercing the misty morning. And then two more. Photographers began to sprint towards them. And then there was the car, a black 7-Series BMW with its windows blacked out, edging past the paparazzi now followed by another two motorbike outriders, all of them shouting at the press to get back. The first two outriders pulled up just behind Mrs Murphy’s black cab. I saw her worried face at the window and I carried Scout down the steps, my arms wrapped tight around her.