by Kate Rhodes
Arc lights had already been set up in the car park, SOCOs crawling across the tarmac on hands and knees, eyes riveted to the ground. Tania and Angie walked towards me, the two women’s greetings revealing their different personalities: Angie gave a double-handed wave, while Tania barely managed a nod.
‘The body’s in situ,’ Angie said. ‘I hope you’re feeling strong.’
‘It’s that bad?’
‘The priest fainted before the ambulance arrived.’
‘Where’s Burns gone?’ I asked.
‘To the station. The press have got wind of it; he’s keeping them away.’ She turned to face me. ‘Ready to see her?’
I grimaced. ‘No time like the present.’
The BMW was parked on the far side of the car park, beside swathes of plastic sheeting that covered the asphalt like red carpet. Plenty of people had stood there already: the police surgeon, pathologist and photographer had finished their work already. But Hancock would be here for the rest of the night, bagging litter and poring over the car’s interior, praying for DNA. He gave me a nod as he rose to his feet.
‘How are you bearing up?’
‘I’ll live, Pete. When this is over, you owe me a strong black coffee.’
‘Too much caffeine addles your brain.’ He pressed a torch into my hand. ‘You’ll need this for a proper look.’
Pete’s appearance showed the pressure he was under, white brows lowering in a deep frown, his skin sallow. TV shows did forensic scientists no favours by pretending they could conjure answers from even the most barren crime scenes.
I came to a halt once I had a direct view into the car’s boot, my vision blurring. There was something surreal about the way Dawn Coleman had been folded like a piece of origami, dozens of test tubes strewn across her body. She lay on her side, knees curled to her chest, swaddled in black fabric. The collar of her blouse was so filthy it was impossible to guess its original colour. Her face was as pale as candle wax, lips such a dark blue they looked as if they’d been tattooed, her blonde hair matted with blood. I thought of her two teenage daughters coating her hallway in fresh white paint, concealing every blemish.
When I forced myself to look again, torchlight revealed the level of staging. The test tubes were the sort used in medical labs, each one containing a splash of bright red liquid. The Pure logo was drawn in chalk on the raised lid of the boot. Something shifted inside my stomach when I saw that her bound hands were raised like she was offering a last prayer. There was no way of guessing what kind of treatment she’d suffered, or where she’d been kept for forty-eight hours, but the need to know burned at the pit of my stomach. Years ago I’d spent time locked in captivity but, unlike Dawn Coleman, I’d had the good fortune to escape.
‘How long before the body goes to the mortuary?’
‘By morning.’ Hancock’s eyes scanned the ground again. ‘She needs identifying.’
I made my way inside the church, partly to clear my head, but also to locate the priest. Father Brendan was kneeling at the altar, which held a row of candles glowing brightly in the dark. His Irish brogue was audible from twenty paces, even though he was reciting a Latin mass. I perched on one of the pews to steady my nerve. Churches always had a calming effect on me, even though mysticism left me cold. Even at Sunday school I’d been unable to imagine anything beyond what I could touch and taste and hold. A confessional box stood in the corner of the nave, the air heavy with incense and dust. The priest’s words echoed from the vaulted ceiling. In the flickering light I could see that he was tall, grey curls springing from his skull in all directions. I expected him to be in his fifties, but when he eventually turned round, his face was boyish; he couldn’t have been much older than me. He collected one of the candles from the altar as I approached, hands trembling as he studied my ID card.
‘Could I ask a few questions, Father?’
‘Of course. This is such a tragic thing.’ His face clouded.
‘Were you saying a mass just now?’
‘A requiem. I’d have done it sooner, but shock got to me.’
‘That’s not surprising; you’ve had a dreadful experience.’
‘I visit the sick and dying all the time, but that’s different.’ His voice lapsed into silence.
‘How did you find her?’
‘I saw the car when I drove home from a prayer meeting, late last night,’ he said, frowning. ‘No one in their right mind would leave a BMW here overnight. Its doors were unlocked.’
‘Had anything unusual happened before that?’
He looked thoughtful. ‘It may not be relevant.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Yesterday afternoon a man came to confession; he said he’d done terrible things. I could hear the pain in his voice.’
‘Did you see his face?’
‘The confessional grille blurs people’s features, for anonymity. He’d gone by the time I looked for him.’
‘Can you remember what he said?’
‘Not in exact words, just how despairing he sounded.’
‘Would you recognise his voice, if you heard a recording?’
He rubbed his hand across his jaw. ‘I doubt it, I’m afraid. After a while one voice blends into another.’
I nodded. ‘One thing before I go, Father. Can you explain your church’s name?’
‘The precious blood refers to Christ’s sacrifice. He gave his life for us, didn’t he?’ His parting gaze was stern, as if I’d failed my first catechism.
My eyes struggled to adjust when I stepped from the candlelit church into the harsh glare of arc lamps. Even though it was the middle of the night, people were milling by the side of the road. Gawkers always fascinated me. This lot varied in age from a couple of young men who looked the worse for wear, clearly on the way home from the pub, and an old man who should have known better. Roger Fenton was the only journalist in sight, which made me wonder who had tipped him off when Burns had been fighting to keep them away. The intensity of his gaze gave me another twitch of discomfort, despite the team’s certainty that he had no connection with the crimes. He had passed me key information, and been first at Jordan Adebayo’s crime scene too. If he was one of the abductors, his job allowed him to follow the investigation’s every move; but why would a reporter suddenly turn killer? I blinked my eyes shut for a moment, aware that my closeness to the case might be clouding my judgement.
When Tania and Angie walked towards me, I decided to speak my mind.
‘Could one of you check Roger Fenton’s alibis again? The guy’s an expert on the Tainted Blood enquiry.’
Tania raised her eyebrows. ‘The only link is that he joined Pure in 2012, but you said he did that for research purposes.’
‘Humour me, please. Look at him again.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
She and Angie exchanged a look of disbelief, as if the request proved I was cracking under the strain. I stayed silent on the way to the station, perched in the back of Tania’s car, redrawing my image of the killers. Whoever had murdered Dawn Coleman had a strong sense of symbolism; their enjoyment of high drama had been part of Jordan Adebayo’s murder too, but this time the site was religious instead of historic. Maybe their biggest thrill came from imagining witnesses’ faces as they peered into the boot of the car.
Burns was holding court back at the station. His expression had changed, panic replaced by stoicism, but his team looked exhausted. The incident room smelled of heat and entrapment, dozens of people locked indoors for days without respite. I watched him organising the crowd, more by body language than instruction. The heft of his shoulders ensured that any request was granted instantly, but his confidence seemed to falter when he spotted me, like I’d caught him play-acting. Once the briefing began, his swagger returned. He gazed around the room steadily, as though he was awarding points to the best listeners.
‘The case has taken a new direction. Now we have proof that the killers are politically motivated; they’re kill
ing government advisors on the Tainted Blood enquiry. There are ten names on the list; Dawn Coleman’s the fifth to be taken. Lisa Stuart’s still missing, and they’re holding Clare Riordan. We have to make sure that the remaining five get round-the-clock protection until the killers are found. Let’s run through what we know so far. Alice, do you want to start?’
When I rose to my feet, the team watched with varying degrees of scepticism. ‘I still think we may be looking for a couple who know Clare Riordan, professionally or personally. It’s rare for a hostage to be held this long; the killers may blame her most for denying the patients compensation, or they’re using her to gain information. We’re looking for a couple with reason to harm all five victims. The suspects include Sam Travers, Clare’s lover, still bitter about her rejection. His work as a film-maker put him in touch with dozens of medics, including Lisa Stuart. Most urgently of all we need to find Eleanor Riordan. She’s disappeared from home before without telling her boyfriend, but there’s an outside chance she could be working with a man with a blood fixation. It’s unlikely that she’s been taken, because the killers always leave a sample of a new victim’s blood within twenty-four hours. Any of the tainted blood victims could be seeking justice for the illnesses they’ve received, so you need to take each one of the names on Pure’s membership list seriously.
‘The killers chose a religious site this time because they’re on a moral crusade, convinced that right’s on their side. We also know that they’re obsessed by the history of blood medicine. I think it’s likely that Riordan’s being held at a location linked to their theme, so it’s worth checking abandoned hospitals and health clinics. Location analysis suggests that the killers are based in south London, targeting victims inside a two-mile radius of Walworth. Clare Riordan’s son escaped from the killers there; he seems certain that’s where his mother’s being held. More street searches in the area would be a good place to start.’
Burns gave me a quick nod of thanks, but I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. When I paused by the doorway he was motionless in the centre of the room, people whirling around him, like a ship’s mast in a storm. It must have consumed all of his energy to project so much calm while Clare Riordan was still being held, vulnerable to the same fate as Dawn Coleman.
44
My stomach carried on doing slow somersaults at the memory of Dawn Coleman’s murder scene as the morning passed. I was still feeling queasy at lunchtime, but at least my profile report had a new dimension: the killers’ fascination with blood extended beyond medical history to religious symbolism. It was worth looking at anyone in Pure with religious convictions; it seemed too coincidental that Father O’Casey had heard such a tortured confession just before Dawn’s body was found. As the afternoon ticked past, my anger grew harder to control. The choice of location underlined how sick the killers were: they had shown no remorse about depriving children of their parents, yet they still believed they had right on their side.
The ageing copper guarding the safe house that afternoon gave me a baleful stare, as though I was guilty of keeping him from his dinner. Most of the Met’s spare manpower had been diverted to investigate Dawn Coleman’s murder, and protect the five remaining members of the advisory panel. Gurpreet’s smile looked strained when I found him in the kitchen.
‘Mikey’s gone even deeper into his shell,’ he said.
‘That’s not your fault, you’ve been great with him.’
He seemed so upset that I gave him a brief hug goodbye. I was grateful for the unconditional kindness he’d shown Mikey since the start of his ordeal.
The boy was kneeling on the floor in his room, using the art materials I’d brought him days before. He was building an elaborate structure from folded pieces of card, his stare a little too focused, as if he was running a fever.
‘You look busy, sunshine.’
‘Almost there,’ he muttered.
His hands flew as he worked on the model. It looked like a miniature fortress, with square walls and turrets.
‘I like your castle,’ I said. ‘Dinner’s in half an hour.’
He was too busy sticking down corners to respond. The evening followed the same pattern as before. We sat in front of the TV, his head on my shoulder. He seemed glad to accept the comfort of a mother substitute, but my feelings were more complex. The people I loved could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and I’d never had a child depend on me before. Behaviourists say that parental love stems from biological programming, but my feelings for Mikey had nothing to do with genetics. He’d breached my emotional defences and it was too late to shut them down. I let my hand coast across his temple, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.
‘Time for bed, Mikey.’
He was close to sleep when I checked on him again. His sky-blue gaze fixed on me as he pointed at his cardboard fortress, windows and brickwork picked out in black ink. It looked so impregnable that anyone entering the huge doors would never escape.
‘Not far now,’ he said firmly.
‘Get some sleep, sweetheart.’ I kissed his forehead, then left him alone.
Back downstairs I toiled on my computer, entering the coordinates of the Church of the Precious Blood. New location analysis software was part of the Home Office’s latest profiling programme, helping to link sites in a crime series. The killers seemed to be using different systems for the calling cards and murder locations. The blood samples were scattered across a wide radius, but the killing sites were much more focused. The Old Operating Theatre and the Church of the Precious Blood were a stone’s throw from each other, connected by a jagged red line. The software indicated that the killers were based at the heart of south London, not far from where Mikey had escaped from his abductors’ car. My thoughts spun across suspects who lived inside the zone: the Pietersens, Gary Lennard, the Thorpes, Luke Mann. The names were another source of frustration. Dr Pietersen had been cleared, Lennard seemed too sick to harm anyone, and the Thorpes had a solid alibi for the morning Riordan was taken. Mann had a clean record and no identified motive for a string of blood-related attacks.
I was still puzzling at eleven o’clock when I called Burns. There was a quiet hiss of traffic when he picked up.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘The church on O’Meara Street. Pete’s lot are back for the final check.’
‘Did they find anything?’
‘A syringe in the car. It’s gone to the lab for DNA testing.’
‘That’s a good start.’
‘What are you up to?’
‘Looking at maps. I’m sure Riordan’s being held near where Mikey was found in Walworth. Maybe he heard or saw something that’s leading him back there.’
Burns gave a loud sigh. ‘We’ve been through there like a dose of salts.’
‘Everything they do is symbolic. I’m almost certain the building they’re using will be linked to haematology or blood sacrifice.’
‘We’ve just found out that some of Pure’s members were treated by Clare Riordan. They probably never realised she signed their rights away.’
‘Someone did. Is there anyone we know?’
‘Gary Lennard was a patient of hers years ago.’
‘He never mentioned it.’
‘We’re checking his alibis.’
‘He’s dying, Don. The guy can hardly stand up.’
I pictured Lennard at his elegant house in Deptford, struggling to breathe as he surveyed his oriental garden, with his ex-wife nursing him. Surely he was too sick to harm anyone now? But how would he react if he knew that one of his own doctors had signed a mandate denying him full compensation?
Burns gave a muffled curse, followed by loud footsteps.
‘Are you okay?’
‘It’s pissing down here, I had to run to the car.’
Outside the French windows, a flurry of rain pelted the glass. ‘Do you ever wonder how life’ll be when this is over?’
‘We’ll be sunning ourselves in Morocco
.’
‘Don’t make idle promises.’
‘I’ve found the perfect hotel.’
I let out a laugh. ‘Get some sleep before you keel over.’
The rain had stopped when I rang off, the grubby walls of the living room collapsing in on me. I followed my night-time tradition and stepped outside, breathing the city’s smell of diesel and damp air, listening to the mosquito buzz of a plane landing at City airport. But when my eyes opened again, panic flooded my system. This time there was no room for doubt; a hooded figure stood at the end of the garden, motionless between the trees. It was too dark to be sure, but the slim frame convinced me it was a woman. I hit the panic button as I rammed the door shut behind me, fumbling with the key. Were all the bedroom windows locked? I ran upstairs and peered into Mikey’s room. His thin form lay curled under the duvet, my pulse steadying again.
The taciturn policeman was in the kitchen when I got back downstairs.
‘Something wrong?’ His tone suggested that I’d raised the alarm just to annoy him.
‘Someone was in the back garden just now.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘You’d better show me.’
I pointed through to the French windows, feeling a twinge of embarrassment. The back wall was at least eight feet high; an intruder would have to be pretty limber to hurl themselves over.
‘We should call the station.’
‘The garden’s empty now.’ He studied my face. ‘You look exhausted, love. Maybe you’re imagining things.’
I counted to ten before responding. Something about being blonde and child-sized made it easy for people to doubt me. I grabbed my phone and called Burns’s number on speed dial. ‘We’ve had an intruder, Don. The building’s secure, but I need more guards. Forensics should check outside.’
The officer threw me an angry scowl. ‘You’ll look pretty stupid if you’re wrong.’
‘Why don’t you wait outside? New officers are coming to replace you.’
My hands were shaking. The combination of seeing the shadowy figure and having my judgement questioned had kick-started an adrenalin rush. Hancock listened in silence when he arrived, then searched the garden with one of his juniors, torch beams strafing the back wall. Pete’s face was grave when they returned. They’d found scuff marks on the bricks and damaged plants where someone had landed on the undergrowth. I felt grateful that he’d come himself, instead of sending a team member, after toiling at Dawn Coleman’s murder site all day.