by Steven Dunne
It was DS Noble’s turn to stand and face the throng. ‘We’ll have hard facts by tonight for full briefing tomorrow morning at eight a.m. sharp…’ more groans followed ‘…yes, I know. You’ll just have to set your alarms.’
‘Enough of that,’ bellowed Charlton, folding his arms.
The noise subsided quickly and Noble began again. ‘Let’s deal with what we know. As we speak there are six corpses lying in the mortuary.’ He waved a hand at the crime scene photographs on the boards behind his head, as if it were necessary to prompt colleagues to examine them. As well as the crystal-clear SOCO pictures there were a couple of grainy mobile phone shots taken by PC Duffy using Brook’s phone before the ambulances had arrived. They showed an unconscious Jason Wallis on the sofa, first with the bloodied scalpel under his hand and then with his phone on his lap.
Consulting a notebook, Noble continued. ‘The crime scene is 229 Drayfin Park Road. Miss Chelsea Ingham, a thirty-two-year-old unemployed beauty consultant, was found in the main bedroom of the house. In the same bed was her current partner, twenty-three-year-old Ryan Harper, who we’ve identified from his fingerprints. He appears to be an unemployed labourer though he has a fairly long jacket of minor offences, the most serious of which was assault.’ Brook and a few others were nodding in recognition at the name. ‘Both of these victims had their throats cut. Also found dead in the bedroom was Miss Ingham’s nine-year-old son by a previous partner. D’Wayne I think it is – that’s the son, not the partner. The lad had been hung, although the pathologist is not certain that was the cause of death. He’d also had two fingers removed and placed in his pyjama pocket – a Reaper signature from the first killings in Harlesden twenty years ago.’ All parents in the room lowered their heads. The rest stared unblinking at the relevant photograph. ‘The files on all the previous killings are on the system so any spare minute needs to be spent reading up on The Reaper’s MO.’
‘Anything on the ex-partner?’ asked Hudson.
‘In the clear, sir. He’s a builder and working in Dubai,’ answered Noble. After a pause to shake out any further questions, he pressed on. ‘Also, in the backyard of 229, we have the bodies of three seventeen-year-old males. Stephen Ingham, Miss Ingham’s elder son by another partner, and Benjamin Anderson. The third body we believe is David Gretton. Those IDs are dependent on formal identification by relatives. A fourth male, Jason Wallis, is now in the Royal Derby, recovering from mild hypothermia. Most of you know his history from the previous Reaper investigation nearly two years ago.
‘The three deceased outside the house all had their throats cut in identical fashion to the two adults in the bedroom. The cuts were clean and professional, there were no signs of hesitation and the weapon used was a scalpel recovered at the scene from Jason Wallis’s hand. Provisional blood analysis would seem to suggest that, apart from the little boy, all victims were killed where they were found. Lividity would seem to confirm that.
‘The three older boys were sitting on two old sofas in the yard and had probably been consuming significant amounts of alcohol and soft drugs.’
‘What drugs?’ broke in Charlton.
‘Marijuana definitely, sir, but the post-mortems will give us a clearer picture. Now at the moment we’re assuming that whoever attacked the Ingham home is still at large.’ Grant glanced across at Brook with a raised eyebrow. ‘Jason Wallis did come under brief suspicion for the killing of his family two years ago but was subsequently cleared, and we’re reasonably sure that once again Wallis is not our killer. However, his presence at a second Reaper killing is unusual to say the least. His survival, for the second time, is even more unusual, so we can’t rule him out. We hope to interview him later today, provided he’s regained consciousness. As Jason’s the first living witness to survive a Reaper attack – if you discount the Wallis baby – we may have some significant details for tomorrow’s briefing. The murder weapon, the scalpel, was covered in blood and presumably will have Jason’s prints on it…’
‘Sarge, am I missing something?’ asked DC Cooper. ‘Why can’t Jason Wallis be our killer? Seems straightforward to me. Sole survivor. Weapon in hand.’
‘It appears the weapon was placed under Jason’s hand rather than in it.’ Noble indicated the picture on the wall showing the scene before Jason was lifted onto the stretcher. ‘Also, had Jason been the killer, he would have had to stand behind the victims, and the sofa where he was found unconscious would have been covered in blood spatter even if he had sat back down. It’s not.’ Noble looked round for any follow-up.
‘Our best guess on time of death is between 1.00a.m. and 1.53a.m. this morning. You’ll find out why 1.53 in a minute; obviously that’s provisional and as the three older boys were out in the cold it’ll be more difficult to pin down in their cases. We’ve already got door to door underway and we’re coordinating any relevant CCTV around the area. Hopefully we can discover how the killer arrived at the Ingham house, but for now nothing is ruled in or out until we have something solid to get our teeth into.
‘Until we get a heads up on definite leads from Forensics and the post-mortems we have to get stuck into the legwork. If the killer’s local, fine, but if not it means looking at ways in and out of Drayfin and Derby, so we look at bus and rail passengers and cab firms, we check with Traffic and trawl through the cameras. We search the entire estate top to bottom.
‘Van hire firms need checking as The Reaper hired locally two years ago. Also any hotels or B&Bs with male guests staying last night or the night before who have checked out. Get lists and addresses and any credit card details and cross-reference those with descriptions from previous investigations on file. But remember, assume nothing.’
‘Why are we so sure it’s a male?’ asked DS Gadd. ‘The Wallis victims two years ago were poisoned before they were cut open. That’s a woman’s MO.’
Brook spoke now, pausing briefly to find a way to give nothing away. ‘That’s true but the MO’s not exclusive to women. Older, weaker men use it as well. Like Crippen.’ ‘Like Victor Sorenson’ remained unsaid. ‘And all descriptions from previous Reaper killings point to a lightly-built, middle-aged male. Possibly older.’
‘Also we’ve something concrete on that shortly,’ added Noble. Again he paused for any follow-up before continuing. ‘We also look at the victims – we look into their history, see if there’s anything in there that might have caused someone to do this to them. Two years ago we were sure the Wallis family were targeted because of their petty criminal background, specifically Jason Wallis’s sexual assault on a Mrs Ottoman, a teacher at his school. The antisocial behaviour and petty criminal background of the victims would fit with previous Reaper murders.’
‘Didn’t the Ottoman woman have a nervous breakdown and attempt suicide?’ said Laura Grant.
‘I think she did,’ said Noble. ‘And that made her husband John Ottoman briefly a suspect in the Wallis Inquiry…’
‘Then why suggest the offence was petty?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t say it was,’ answered Noble.
‘You said…’
‘How did this Wallis escape The Reaper last time?’ asked Hudson, changing the subject. ‘The files aren’t clear.’ He glanced over at Grant who read the signal and decided to leave the rest of her sentence unsaid.
‘That’s because we were never certain,’ jumped in Brook, seeing Noble hesitate. ‘At first we thought he was lucky and arrived home after the murder of his family. We assumed he’d staggered home drunk and ate some of the drugged pizza delivered by The Reaper. He was unconscious at the scene and didn’t even know his family were dead until the next day. It was only later we had to face the fact that The Reaper was probably at the scene the same time as Jason, but left him alive for some reason.’
‘What reason?’ demanded Grant, her eyes boring into Brook.
‘Like I said, we were never sure…’
‘I mean, why kill the daughter and not the Wallis boy? Sounds like a vicious little th
ug,’ she added.
Brook shrugged, unable to meet her eyes.
‘We asked the same question,’ replied Noble. ‘We’re open to suggestions.’
Charlton spoke up while looking at his watch. ‘I don’t think we should get too bogged down in the past no matter how much it informs the present. Anything else, Sergeant Noble?’
‘Just to remember that maybe there’s a domestic lurking in here somewhere. The Ingham boys had two different fathers, one’s out of the country but maybe there’s an ex-boyfriend in the works. Even a neighbour pushed over the edge. Who knows? You’ll get your assignments from DC Bull in a minute.’
‘Thank you, John,’ said Brook, pausing for a second to look around at the throng, some of whom were fingering coveted cigarettes in pockets. He could see in all of them that sliver of suppressed excitement that such a high-profile investigation generated; he wished he could share it. ‘There is some good news before we get back out there. DS Grant.’
Grant stood up and nodded at all the strange faces. ‘Yes, we think we have the killer’s voice on tape.’ There was an immediate murmur from the assembled officers. ‘If it’s him this would be a big leg-up. This 999 call was recorded this morning at 1.53 a.m.’
Brook looked at the floor. Around that time he’d been just yards from the killing ground. The killer had probably finished his work long before but the questions still nagged at him. Why lure him there? To make him think The Reaper was still out there? Or to try and frame him for the Ingham murders? He shook his head as minutely as he could. Surely this wasn’t another attempt at recruitment? Get him to take up The Reaper’s mantle? Is that why Jason was left alive again? Another gift for Brook. Like Floyd Wrigley all those years ago in Brixton.
Grant, with a little prompting from Jane Gadd, pressed the appropriate button on the machine.
‘Emergency. Which service do you require?’ The voice of the operator boomed out and Grant adjusted the volume. There was a pause, filled by an indistinct noise which might have been breathing, might have been the wind. Then Brook heard it, soft at first but still quite clear in the background. If he hadn’t already known what it was, it might have taken him longer to identify. Clair de Lune. The soft melody tinkling away gently, distant but audible. Then the operator tried again. ‘Emergency. Which service do you require? Hello. Are you able to answer?’
A few seconds later Brook heard the sound of a breath being exhaled into the phone, then a man’s voice, ‘They’re all dead!’ followed by a buffeting sound. Then nothing but the faint sound of the music with occasional interruptions by the operator trying to elicit further responses.
Grant waited a moment before switching off the machine. ‘Now it’s hard to distinguish from just four words, and whoever that was may have tried to disguise his voice, but you’ll agree that’s still clearly a male voice. And in the background is the music that was playing at the scene when DI Brook and the patrol car arrived to investigate.’ Grant shot a glance his way;
‘How did they know where to go?’ asked Jane Gadd.
‘The call was unbroken,’ answered Grant. ‘It was Jason’s phone, found on his lap, covered in blood and a print, which is still being processed. I don’t know Wallis but it’s not the voice of a teenager as far as I’m concerned.’
Brook shook his head. ‘It’s not Wallis,’ Noble agreed.
‘What about the music?’ asked DC Cooper.
‘It’s called Clair de Lune by Debussy,’ said Grant. ‘You may have heard it in the Ocean’s Eleven film.’ There was an outbreak of nodding from the cinema-goers in the room. ‘Two years ago in the Wallis house it was Gustav Mahler playing, isn’t that right, DI Brook?’
‘As far as I can remember,’ he answered, without looking at her.
‘Any impressions about the voice, anyone?’ inquired Hudson.
‘Sounds local to me,’ added Rob Morton. ‘The way he said “They’re all”, like it was one word instead of two.’ Brook looked over at him with a thin smile.
‘Must be local if he’s working the same street as two years ago,’ someone said.
‘Great. All we need now is a name and address,’ grinned Hudson to induce a round of chuckles. ‘There’s a university here, isn’t there? Maybe they’ve got a language guy,’ he added quickly, suddenly aware that some might think he was having a dig.
‘Linguistics,’ said Grant, smiling – Hudson knew the correct word, she was sure.
‘That’s the one. Put that on your list, Rob.’ Hudson nodded at DS Morton before looking over at Brook.
Brook stood up from the table. ‘Before we get onto our assignments I want to give you some idea what we’re up against.’ He paused. He knew the words but he had to weigh them carefully. ‘Two years ago this Christmas, and just a few doors away on the same street, the Wallis family was executed. I’ve chosen that word deliberately because these crimes aren’t personal and, if this is The Reaper, he has no contact with his victims until he goes to take their lives. The only clues left behind two years ago, and in London twenty years ago, were what The Reaper wanted us to see. We got no weapon, no prints, no fibres or hairs or anything that might have been used to make a case against a suspect, even if we’d been able to identify one.’
Grant looked up at him with a half-smile on her face.
‘This time it’s different. The killer has left us with a lot of evidence to go at. For that and other reasons that we’ll go into tomorrow, we’re working on the theory that this may be a copycat. Certainly there was no suggestion of a Derby man being involved in any of The Reaper killings, including the Wallis case two years ago. That is a piece of information to be given to no one outside this room.’ Brook paused to look round the room to ensure his message had been understood. ‘And with the evidence we’re compiling there’s a much better chance of catching last night’s killer. However, if it is a copycat, there’s a much higher probability of him striking again soon so we need to be on our mettle. Even more so than usual,’ he added as an afterthought to stroke a few egos. Brook wasn’t a natural people person, but bitter experience had taught him that most people needed encouragement.
‘All your assignments are absolutely crucial to the investigation as a whole so please don’t think that if you’re being asked to trace the origin of the barbecue from the scene, you’re just following up a minor lead. Nothing we ask you to do is unimportant and the smallest detail could be critical.’
Brook turned to Charlton.
‘And let me say again so there’s no confusion,’ said Charlton. ‘Anybody who thinks it’s okay to talk about details of this investigation to anybody, even if it’s about the colour of the elastic bands in the Incident Room, will find themselves in serious trouble. Now let’s move with a purpose, people.’
Brook stood back slightly from Hudson and Grant as they spoke to the hospital reception and fished the vibrating phone out of his pocket. He located and pressed the answer button, gluing it to his ear.
‘John. What?’
‘Good news. Ish.’
‘Go on,’ he said, ignoring Noble’s linguistic mangling. ‘The thumbprint on the mobile phone is not yours and it’s not Jason’s either.’
‘So it could be the killer’s.’
‘Looks that way. However, there are no matches on the system. Whoever did this has a clean record.’
‘It’s something to go on.’ Brook was silent for a moment. ‘John. Any chance you could check the print against IAFIS?’
‘IAFIS?’
‘That’s the US fingerprint database.’
‘You’re well informed.’
‘There’s a civil section for government employees, FBI, people like that. You might need some kind of permission.’
‘Care to tell me why?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘I see. It’s keep me out of the loop time again, is it?’
‘It’s only a hunch. But forget I asked, John.’
‘Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do.
Is Hudson with you?’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve got the results from your tests and I want him to hear them from me. Pass him the phone please, sir.’
Brook waved the phone at Hudson. ‘For you, Joshua.’
Hudson took the phone. After listening intently for a few seconds, he nodded. ‘Very good, John. Never doubted it.’
The police constable babysitting Jason Wallis stood behind the doctor. He made a drink signal to Brook who inclined his head and the fresh-faced young PC turned and headed down the corridor.
Brook peered at the curtain, behind which lay Jason Wallis, and wondered how the youngster would react to seeing him again. The morning after Jason’s family had been butchered, Brook had been greeted by a face of hate as Wallis, unaware of events, had paraded his contempt for the police and all authority. By the end of that interview, the fifteen-year-old Jason had been jolted back to his childhood with questions about the murder of his parents and younger sister. A few well-chosen photographs had sealed the deal. Jason’s lip had wobbled and he’d wept for the first time in years – for his family, yes, but primarily for himself. What’s going to happen to me? What would his reaction be now?
‘We’ve sent a blood test off to your Forensics people but physically he seems fine, if a little out of it,’ said the doctor, addressing Hudson. ‘If you ask me he’s probably just had too much to drink and maybe a few too many puffs of marijuana. These substances always lower body temperature which explains the mild hypothermia. We’ll keep him in overnight to be sure, but the main problem is likely to be shock.’
‘What about stomach contents?’ asked Brook.
‘We did pump his stomach in case of toxins but it was virtually empty,’ replied the doctor, checking his chart.
Brook’s eyes narrowed. ‘Empty? He went to a barbecue. You’re saying he didn’t eat any meat?’
‘Some breakfast cereal, that’s all. Your people can tell you what kind,’ he added with a shrug.