‘Has anyone been near it?’ asked Tulloch.
The CID detective shook his head. ‘Nope. Once we got the animals back inside and knew what we were dealing with, we waited for you.’
Tulloch nodded and turned to Anderson. ‘Any idea when SOCs will get here?’ she asked.
Anderson stepped to one side and made a call to find out.
‘Are the animals kept inside overnight?’ asked Joesbury.
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘It’s safer. And at this time of year, much warmer.’
‘So it could have been left some time in the night and no one would have spotted it till this morning?’ he asked.
‘Well, the zoo’s locked at night,’ said the keeper. ‘No one’s supposed to come in. There are nightwatchmen.’
Joesbury was looking round. ‘Mind if I take a walk, Tully?’ he asked.
She shook her head and he left the enclosure. He had to step to one side to let some new arrivals through. SOCs hadn’t taken long to show up.
Ten minutes later, covered head to toe in Tyvek, Tulloch, Anderson, the senior crime-scene investigator, Anna the keeper and I stepped out from the gorillas’ house and into the enclosure. We were halfway across the outdoor area and the head was in view when we spotted Mike Kaytes, the duty pathologist that morning, making his way towards us. He was already suited up. We stopped to wait for him.
‘No flies,’ I said.
‘Sorry?’ said Tulloch.
‘Look,’ I pointed out. ‘Over there, it looks like dung, am I right?’
‘Well, we haven’t had chance to clean yet,’ said the keeper.
‘There are flies on it,’ I said. ‘I can see them from here.’
‘OK,’ said Tulloch.
‘But none on the head,’ I went on.
Tulloch stared at it for a second. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Maybe she used something to preserve it that’s keeping them away.’
Kaytes had arrived. He nodded at us all and then we let him approach the head by himself. He took his time, walked close and stopped. Then he made a circle around it, looking down all the time. When he’d completed the 360 degrees he crouched low, blocking our view. We could see him reach out but not what he touched. He got down on to his knees and peered forward. Then he pushed himself back and stood up.
As he walked towards us there was an expression on his face I couldn’t read. He almost seemed on the verge of a smile.
‘You haven’t heard from Madame Tussauds this morning, have you?’ he asked the CID detective.
‘Not our patch,’ Hallister replied. ‘Why?’
‘I think you might be about to,’ said Kaytes. ‘Go and take a look.’
He followed close behind as we moved over to the head. We formed a circle and looked down. I breathed in hard through my nose. The smell stayed the same. Earth, coffee from the nearby cafés, the detritus of warm-blooded animals. Nothing else.
Tulloch dropped to her knees. After a second so did the rest of us. We must have looked like some sort of bizarre prayer meeting.
‘It’s not human,’ said Kaytes, unnecessarily. This close, it was unmistakable. ‘What you’ve got there is a waxwork.’
72
‘AHOAX THEN,’ SAID HALLISTER.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Kaytes. ‘That red stuff around the stump wasn’t paint. That was blood.’
Tulloch, the pathologist, Hallister and I were sitting at one of the zoo’s smaller outdoor cafés, a fish and chip bar near the bug house. The day was getting colder but no one seemed to want to go indoors. Anderson had been left in charge of the crime scene. Mizon was interviewing visitors and Stenning was still looking at CCTV footage. I had no idea what had happened to Joesbury.
‘Human blood?’ asked Tulloch.
‘Impossible to tell till I have a good look at it, run a couple of tests,’ he replied. ‘I’ll probably know later today.’
‘It wasn’t a hoax.’ We looked up to see Stenning and Joesbury had arrived. ‘I’ve seen the CCTV footage,’ Stenning went on. ‘She got into the zoo last night wearing her trademark clothes. You know – baggy black jacket with coloured symbols, black beanie. One of the cameras picked her up by the Komodo dragons at three twenty-four a.m. She was carrying a small holdall.’
‘How did she get in?’ said Tulloch, looking round.
‘Over the fence,’ said Joesbury. ‘Budge up, Flint.’ He pulled a chair up and squeezed in between me and Tulloch. Leaning forward, he put a map of the zoo on the table. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Other side of the camels. There’s an iron fence between the zoo and the park. It’s barely five feet high. I think I even found the exact spot.’
‘How?’ said Tulloch.
‘There are four indentations in the grass,’ said Joesbury, ‘forming the four corners of a rectangle about two feet by fifteen inches. Someone’s gone over to photograph them. They were just there.’ He pointed to a spot on the map and we all leaned in closer.
The perimeter of the zoo formed a right-angled triangle, with two roughly equal sides that ran along the Prince Albert Road and the main avenue through Regent’s Park. The hypotenuse ran diagonally south to north-west through the park. About halfway along it, between the enclosures for camels, pygmy hippos and bearded pigs and the new Komodo dragon exhibit, was the tip of Joesbury’s index finger.
‘I could see similar marks on the other side of the fence,’ he said. ‘This spot isn’t directly overlooked by any cameras. I think she had a light aluminium stepladder that she used to give herself a bit of height on the park side of the fence. She jumped over and reached through the railings to lift the ladder up and across. Then she left it on the zoo side ready for a quick getaway.’
‘It’s that easy to break in?’ said Tulloch.
‘Well, sooner or later, anyone wandering around at night will be picked up on camera, trip an alarm or bump into one of the security staff,’ said Stenning. ‘But if the guv’nor’s right, she had hardly any distance to go before she got to the gorillas. I’ll bet she was in and out in ten minutes.’
‘Why, though?’ asked Tulloch. ‘What is she playing at?’
‘That’s exactly what she’s doing,’ I said. ‘She’s playing.’
Joesbury leaned back in his chair and gave me the full benefit of his ‘nasty’ smile. ‘And she’s really starting to enjoy herself,’ he said.
By the end of the day we knew that the wax head had been liberally smeared in human blood, which is why the gorillas had reacted to it. Whether it was Karen’s blood we’d find out in time, but none of us had any doubts. Tulloch had assigned two detective constables to try and track down where the head had come from. They’d started with Madame Tussauds, who couldn’t report any missing exhibits, either from the main collection or the warehouses. Staff there had been happy to hand over a list of other possible suppliers. Searches through eBay and other internet sites were proving surprisingly fruitful. Likenesses of severed human heads really weren’t that hard to find.
‘The world’s gone fucking nuts,’ was Anderson’s reaction to that, when he got back from the zoo. Stepping into the incident room, he had a moment of unprecedented popularity. In response to numerous questions, he said that the gorillas were fine, none the worse for their upset of the morning, that the keepers were watching the pregnant female closely but weren’t unduly concerned, and, just so he knew where he stood, was anybody in the room still interested in the ongoing murder investigation?
When he’d got over his huff, he told us that the zoo had been opened again, with only the Gorilla Kingdom still out of bounds. None of the morning’s visitors that Mizon had talked to had seen anything out of the ordinary, but we hadn’t expected them to.
The figure in the black skateboarding clothes had come and gone by moonlight. I sat and watched the few seconds of film showing her cross the main avenue over and over again.
‘She’s five eight, possibly five nine,’ said Stenning, who had come up behind me without my hearing him. ‘And those cl
othes look loose to me. I’d say she was quite thin.’
‘Karen Curtis’s mother described the nurse as a little thing,’ I said. ‘Five nine isn’t little.’
‘Perhaps she just meant skinny,’ said Mizon. I hadn’t realized she was there either. ‘And she said black hair. In the photograph we have, Victoria had black hair. Impossible to see under that cap though.’
‘Some women change their hair colour more than I change my socks,’ said Joesbury. I must have been really engrossed not to see him coming. ‘And clothes make a huge difference to body shape. What do you think, Flint?’
‘About what?’ I said, without taking my eyes off the screen. ‘Your chances of pursuing a second career as a personal stylist?’
He leaned against the back of my chair. I could feel his knuckles against my shoulders. ‘Do you think she’s wearing heels?’ he said. ‘Wind it back a bit.’
Mizon leaned over and clicked the recording back to the beginning.
‘Look at that,’ said Joesbury. ‘Look at the way she’s walking.’
We watched the black figure keep her head down as she crossed the main avenue and disappeared into the gorilla enclosure.
‘Gayle, are you wearing heels?’ asked Joesbury. Mizon raised her right foot to give us the benefit of her two-inch court shoes. It was a modest heel by most women’s standards but about the maximum a serving police officer could get away with.
‘Can you walk over to the far wall?’ asked Joesbury. ‘If anyone wolf whistles, I’ll clobber ’em.’
Mizon made a face that was somewhere between a simper and a silent giggle and set off.
‘Flint, are you in your usual Doc Martens?’ said Joesbury. ‘Why don’t you do the same?’
Reminding myself that telling a senior officer to eff off wasn’t the way to keep a low profile, I got up and walked to the wall. I didn’t even own a pair of Doc Martens. When I reached Mizon I turned round. Joesbury was an asshole.
‘OK, both of you, come back. Slowly.’
We did what we were told. Only one of us was smiling.
‘I hope there’s a point to this,’ said Tulloch from the doorway.
‘I’d say what we can see on screen is a woman trying to make out she’s bigger than she is,’ said Joesbury. ‘She wears baggy clothing and heels.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She’s walking like Gayle. Heels throw a woman’s hips forward. And I’d say she’s being careful, like she’s worried about stumbling. Flint, on the other hand, is stomping around like a man.’
A couple of people in the room sniggered. I wasn’t one of them.
‘I’d say Mrs Richardson got it right,’ said Joesbury. ‘She is quite small. How tall are you, Flint?’
‘Five six,’ I said, through gritted teeth.
‘Really?’ He walked over and lifted my jacket from the back of my chair. ‘This is a size twelve,’ he said. ‘And it drowns you. So you’re an eight? Ten on a fat day?’
‘Thank you, Mark, we get the point,’ said Tulloch. ‘She’s a small to average-sized woman who tries to disguise it when she knows she’s likely to be filmed. Now, before I forget, are you free to go to Cardiff over the weekend? You can take Gayle to keep you in order.’
I excused myself and left the room. I needed to find something to break.
73
Saturday 6 October
I WAS WALTZING. SO I KNEW IMMEDIATELY IT WAS A DREAM. I’ve never waltzed in my life. But in my dream I was whirling, Viennese style, spinning like a top, round and round as the music grew louder, and everywhere I turned there were red balloons and streamers and bright-scarlet confetti falling like petals from the ceiling.
I spun faster, and the music in my head started to hurt. Then suddenly the balloons and the streamers and the petals were changing, taking on odd shapes, gleaming wet. The streamers weren’t paper any more, they were entrails. The petals were blood spatters and the balloons – oh Christ – the balloons were severed human heads, staring at me with milky eyes everywhere I turned.
With something between a gasp and a scream I was awake. I was out of bed, standing at its foot, shaking. The room was dark and for a second I could see nothing but the lights of Joesbury’s alarm system. Tiny red lights.
I’d had no idea how disorientating it would be to wake suddenly in the middle of the night and not be in bed. How vulnerable it would make me feel. I stumbled across the room and switched on the light.
As soon as I could see, the first thing I did was to check my body, my arms, legs, torso. The dream had been so vivid that even now I was convinced I was covered in blood. There was nothing, of course. The sticky dampness I’d felt on waking was just sweat. Harder to explain away, though – in fact, impossible – was the music.
The music hadn’t been part of the dream. The music was still playing. At first I thought it was in the room with me, but I knew I’d checked all the locks and alarms before going to sleep. It was coming from outside. I was wearing a running vest and loose shorts. I don’t own nightclothes. I found a sweatshirt on the chair and pulled it on.
Outside, the music was louder. I was surprised other people in the house hadn’t woken and heard it. It was an instrumental version, but of course I knew the lyrics off by heart. Raindrops, roses, copper kettles and wild geese. All the best things in the world. Favourite things.
Through the shed window I could see a light flickering, like a candle flame. And the door didn’t seem properly closed. I was halfway down the garden now, my bare feet cold on the stone path. The shed door was unlocked and just an inch ajar.
Doorbells, sleigh bells, girls in white dresses. My own list of favourite things hadn’t been quite the same as Maria’s, although I couldn’t argue with most of her choices. My list, though, had included being the first to dive into a swimming pool and break the lovely clear stillness of the water. Also the steam that comes off ponies’ bodies on winter mornings. And the velvet soft feel of their noses. I’d adored ponies.
I’d been in the shed earlier. When I got home from work I’d changed and unlocked it. I’d stared at the dummy’s head on top of my punchbag and imagined it with turquoise blue eyes, tanned skin and even, white teeth. An hour later I’d returned to the flat exhausted.
Books were my other great passion as a child. I’d practically taught myself to read and it rarely took me more than a term to get through everything on the classroom reading shelves. With never enough spare cash to buy books, the lending library had been a godsend. Every Saturday morning I was there. And my favourite book ever? The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, of course.
The music was coming from the shed.
I’d liked city parks, too. The way the grass and the trees seem to form a bubble around you, shielding you from the noise and smells of the city. And the zoo, I shouldn’t forget that. I’d always, from being a toddler, loved visits to the zoo. Pools and ponies, parks and the zoo; and public libraries full of books. My favourite things.
I was at the shed. All I’d done was walk the length of the garden path, but it seemed to have taken a very long time to do so. Even longer to stretch out my hand and push the shed door gently.
From the very beginning, this case had been about me. At some level, I’d always known that.
There was no need to go into the shed. From the doorway I could see the punchbag swaying to and fro, as though remembering the hammering I’d given it earlier. Or as though someone had not long left it. It had the look of a clock’s pendulum, marking time. Tick tock. I could also see that the inanimate head I’d pictured earlier as Mark Joesbury’s face was no longer on top of the punchbag. Something else had taken its place.
There was no need to switch on the lights. Five candles in a circle around the punchbag made extra lighting unnecessary. They flickered and danced in the breeze that the open door had allowed in. Their light was soft, golden, warm as the morning. They made Karen Curtis’s severed head look almost alive.
74
‘YOU’D BETTER COME AND S
TAY WITH US TONIGHT,’ SAID Helen, looking down at me. ‘Dana keeps the spare room made up in case the two of us have a row.’ I looked up and tried to smile. Helen’s long blonde hair was plaited behind her head. It made her look younger.
‘I’ll stay with her,’ said Joesbury from the doorway. He’d spoken to Helen, but then dropped his eyes to me. ‘If you’d prefer to stay here, Lacey.’
I could sense Helen’s eyebrows rising towards her hair. I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said, to no one in particular.
‘How’re they doing out there?’ asked Helen.
‘They’re done for now,’ said Joesbury. ‘They’re going to seal off the shed and the garden. Just in case there’s anything left to find in daylight. Let’s hope the rain holds off.’
‘Have they taken it away?’ I asked.
‘Yep,’ said Joesbury.
‘You’ve been very brave,’ said Helen, her hand on my shoulder.
The three of us were in my sitting room. The clock on the cooker told me it was nearly four in the morning. I was on the sofa, Helen perched on one arm. Dana and the rest of the team were processing the crime scene my garden and shed had become. I hadn’t moved since Helen had sat me down and wrapped the duvet around my shoulders shortly after she’d arrived. She’d made me tea, but my hand had been shaking too much to drink it. She’d suggested I might be in shock and that perhaps I should be taken to A&E. I’d refused and begged her not to mention it to Dana. So far she hadn’t.
‘Did the cameras pick anything up?’ I asked Joesbury.
‘Not a sausage. We had them all angled towards the house, not the ruddy garden shed.’
‘How did she even get in there?’ asked Helen.
‘The key wasn’t hard to find,’ said Joesbury. ‘Tully has just torn me off a strip for not securing the shed as well as the flat.’
‘Is she leaving uniform outside for the rest of the night?’ asked Helen.
Joesbury nodded.
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