Cold Sacrifice

by Leigh Russell

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you Joey’s mother is dead.’

  Shelley stared blankly at Ian for a few seconds. Then she dropped her head in her hands. Ian waited. After a moment she raised her head again. She looked pale and was clearly shocked.

  ‘I wondered if there was something up,’ she said. ‘To be honest with you, I was afraid she’d just buggered off.’

  Ian leaned forward. ‘You said you thought she’d probably had one too many. What exactly did you mean by that?’

  ‘Just what I said,’ she replied cagily. ‘I meant just what I said. She used to drink, nothing wrong with that. That’s all I meant. It’s not a crime to have a drink now and again, is it? Was it the drink that did for her, then?’ She shrugged. ‘She’s better off out of it, if you ask me. Only her boy’s not for me to look after. She wasn’t family, nothing like that.’

  Ian sat back in his chair and said he hoped she might be able to help the police in their investigation into Candy’s murder. Shelley looked startled, then frightened.

  ‘Murder?’ she repeated. ‘Who said anything about murder? You never said she was murdered.’

  Ian took advantage of her momentary confusion to prompt her with another question.

  ‘Why did you leave it so long before coming here to report her missing? Didn’t you think something was wrong when she didn’t collect Joey from you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘She was –’ she hesitated, ‘she was forgetful.’

  ‘You mean because she took drugs?’

  ‘No. I mean because she forgot things.’

  ‘Had she ever forgotten to collect her son before?’

  When he was assured Shelley knew no more than she had already told him, Ian let her go. Given the circumstances, she agreed to take Joey home with her again while social services were contacted.

  ‘I had no idea,’ she kept repeating. ‘I feel awful now. I was annoyed with her for not picking him up. I had no idea she was dead.’

  60

  WHILE THEY CONTINUED CASTING around for leads, Rob brought in a profiler on Monday morning. Gerard Greer was a short small-boned man with delicate features and a pale clean-shaven face. Apart from his square chin he looked quite effeminate, with dainty hands, and light brown hair that reached down just below his ears. He peered around the team through rimless glasses, blinking nervously, although his voice was calm.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘and I’m only raising it as a question, if you haven’t been barking up the wrong tree? We don’t know it’s the same man who killed all three women, do we?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence otherwise,’ Rob murmured.

  Ian grunted in agreement.

  ‘Jade and Candy, granted,’ Gerard went on in his measured tones. ‘They were both likely to be victims of violent attacks.’

  A muttered protest passed around the assembled officers.

  ‘They’re prostitutes, so they’re fair game,’ a female officer called out angrily. The profiler looked at her, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘You know perfectly well that’s not what I meant at all,’ he responded evenly, ‘but given the line of work they followed, they were putting themselves at risk from violent men acting out fantasies and frustrations, often the worse for drink, things getting out of hand, that sort of scenario. A man looking for someone to punish is likely to seek out sex workers. That’s what I meant.’ His bland tone had an edge of cold anger as he added, ‘only a fool would think otherwise.’

  No one answered.

  Rob prompted the profiler to share his conclusions.

  ‘No conclusions, only questions. Let’s deal with Martha first because that case appears to be straightforward. It seems highly likely the husband killed her. Assuming that to be the case for now, as he had both motive and opportunity, there are two possible hypotheses. One, Henry killed his wife and this released some suppressed lust for killing so he went out looking for other women to kill.’

  ‘One of whom just happened to be his alibi,’ Ian pointed out.

  The profiler ignored the interruption.

  ‘The second option to consider is whether Henry killed his wife in a one-off fit of rage after thirty years of a marriage in which he felt trapped. Getting rid of Martha was his only escape and he snapped one day. The opportunity offered itself and that was it. He wouldn’t be the first to lose it like that. If that’s the case, then it looks like the other two women might have been killed in the fall-out from the first murder. Perhaps the woman who gave him his alibi changed her mind and told her friend. As a sad consequence, he killed them both to protect his identity.’

  ‘What can we deduce about the killer, or killers, from the three victims and the way they were killed?’ Rob asked.

  ‘If we are looking for one killer, then we’re dealing with an interesting character.’ Gerard beamed, warming to his analysis. ‘Is he sending us a clumsy sort of message with his different methods of despatching his victims?’

  He raised an elegant hand and counted off each word on a separate finger as he spoke.

  ‘Stabbing, strangling, suffocating. Is it his intention to avoid following a pattern because he’s read somewhere that a pattern can give a serial killer away?’

  ‘Seen it on the telly more like,’ someone said.

  ‘Indeed.’ Gerard inclined his head.

  ‘The victims were all women,’ a female officer pointed out.

  The profiler nodded. ‘Yes they were, but that’s not much of a pattern. Is he deliberately avoiding a pattern, or is he experimenting with different ways of killing?’

  ‘Or perhaps he’s just using whatever comes to hand at the time, a knife, a piece of rope, a pillow?’ Rob suggested.

  There was a faint murmur of assent.

  ‘That’s a strong possibility,’ Gerard agreed. ‘The pillow would certainly suggest the third assault might not have been planned out in advance, but was rather an opportunistic, spur of the moment action.’

  ‘That’s a lot of speculation,’ Rob said. ‘Have you got anything specific for us?’

  ‘This man is functional in his killing. He doesn’t spend any longer than is necessary despatching his victims. He just wants to get rid of them. The experience of killing isn’t his end.’

  ‘It’s the end for the victims,’ someone muttered and a few other officers sniggered.

  As the profiler’s voice droned on, Ian’s attention drifted. He had tried to imagine what it would be like for a man to be married for thirty years to a woman he didn’t love. Henry must have loved his wife once, enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her, but it was hardly unusual for relationships to break down. What made the Martins’ marriage different was that Martha’s faith might have prevented them from divorcing. The statement made by their neighbour appeared to bear that out. If that was true, the marriage had become a life sentence for her husband. Ian focused his attention back on the profiler, who was still talking.

  ‘All of which means a second killer may be responsible for the deaths of Jade and Candy, someone preying on –’ he glanced at the female officer who had interrupted him aggressively earlier on, ‘preying on vulnerable women.’

  ‘Someone who’s killed two women in a week,’ Rob added quietly.

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  ‘Let’s pursue a few more lines of enquiry,’ Rob said. ‘Ian, get yourself back to the club where the girls worked. Put pressure on the manager there. He must know something.’

  This time no one made any light-hearted quips about Ian being given all the interesting tasks.

  ‘You’d think they’d be closed, out of respect,’ someone said.

  ‘I don’t think the girls there ever had much respect from anyone,’ Ian replied.

  61

  IAN DIDN’T RECOGNISE ANY of the girls who were hanging around outside the club, leaning against the wall, their skirts halfway up their thighs, gossiping and smoking. He wondered if any of them had left young children at home, perhap
s supervised by brothers and sisters not much older than their siblings. As he entered the club premises, he tried not to think about Joey and the bleak future stretching out in front of him. Some people came out of the care system to make a success of their lives. Joey had the same chance as any other disadvantaged child. He might be taken in by a loving and encouraging foster family. It was a horrible irony to speculate that his prospects might actually have improved now that his mother was out of his life. She wasn’t likely to have been a positive influence on him.

  He knew the way and went in without knocking. The fat manager was slouched behind his desk. He looked up when Ian entered and his pudgy fingers tightened around a tumbler of Scotch.

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  Lifting the glass, he downed the whisky in one noisy gulp. While Ian deliberated how to proceed, he realised the other man found his silence more intimidating than any rough words. As he watched, Jimmy’s broad forehead began to shine with perspiration. The empty glass trembled in his hand.

  ‘What?’ he demanded again.

  Ian guessed he didn’t trust himself to say more without betraying that he was either drunk or terrified, or both. With a cold smile, Ian stepped forward and closed the door behind him.

  ‘What was your relationship with Della?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Della, the first of your girls who was killed, what was your relationship with her?’

  Jimmy rose clumsily to his feet, swaying slightly. He thought better of it, and sat down again with a jolt. Pressing his lips together, he stared belligerently at Ian who stood silently waiting for an answer.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ian repeated the question for the third time.

  ‘She was a dancer. She worked here. Blonde girl.’

  ‘I know that. What was your relationship with her?’

  Jimmy shrugged.

  His small dark eyes lost their cowed expression and he straightened up, glaring across the room at Ian. The Scotch had hit him.

  ‘I didn’t have a relationship with her. If you want the truth, I probably couldn’t have picked her out in a crowd, before all this happened.’ He waved one hand in the air with a surprisingly graceful gesture. ‘She was just one of the dancing girls. Same with the other one, Candy. Yvonne deals with the performers. Look at me!’ He gesticulated angrily at his desk, cluttered with paperwork. ‘I’m sitting here, up to my balls in bills, while they’re out there having a good time.’

  Ian did his best to push the manager to divulge information but the fat man resisted all attempts to rile him, insisting he had no dealings with Della or Candy, beyond paying them for the time they spent performing at the club.

  ‘It’s a bloody nuisance, all this. It’s terribly sad,’ he concluded, ‘but if you want the truth, Inspector, by this time next week no one here’s even going to remember their names. They’re two a penny these tarts.’

  Ian was disgusted at the way he dismissed the two dead girls, referring to them as if they were performing animals in a circus. But Jimmy was adamant he had barely spoken to the victims, and Ian was inclined to believe him. Ian asked to speak to Yvonne and Jimmy picked up the phone and summoned her.

  ‘You can talk to her here,’ he told Ian as he hung up.

  Yvonne was a scrawny woman in her fifties. Her fine bone structure suggested she had once been good looking. Now wrinkled, with dark grey pouches under her eyes, she whined in protest at Jimmy for calling her away from her duties.

  ‘There’s a police officer here wants to talk to you.’

  Yvonne turned and stared at Ian, sizing him up. Ian asked to speak to her alone and the manager clambered noisily to his feet.

  ‘This is an outrage, a bloody outrage, asking me to leave my own office. You’ve got no right to do this, no right at all. Your chief is going to be hearing from me. I’ll complain –’

  ‘It won’t take long,’ Ian assured him. ‘I would have thought you’d be only too pleased to help us with our investigation into who murdered two of your dancers. It can’t be good for business. And it was your idea for me to speak to Yvonne in here,’ he added with a smile.

  ‘Three of the girls didn’t show up this evening,’ Yvonne chimed in. ‘They’re all getting the jitters.’

  Jimmy spun round, swaying precariously on his legs, and squared up to Ian.

  ‘You need to bloody do something about this. Catch the bugger, Inspector, lock him up. He’s already killed two of my girls. Two of them dead.’

  Ian let the man rant for a few minutes, listening to him carefully, but Jimmy gave nothing away. He just grew louder and less coherent.

  ‘We’ll get him, you can be sure of that, if you will just let us get on with our job,’ Ian finally interrupted. ‘Now, if you can stop obstructing my enquiries –’

  ‘Don’t you start threatening me. I know my rights. I’ve done nothing wrong. I do a good job here. I give the girls work. I keep them off the streets. You and I both know the type of girls we’re dealing with here.’

  ‘Sex workers, you mean?’

  ‘Your words, Inspector, not mine.’

  ‘But it’s what you meant.’

  ‘No, I said they’re dancers.’ He waved one hand up and down as though conducting an orchestra. ‘Dancers, not prostitutes. I run a dance show here. People like to come and watch girls dance. There’s nothing wrong with that. I run a respectable establishment. I’d bring my own mother here if she was still alive, God rest her soul.’

  62

  IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE happened. A lamp was supposed to stay on all night beside his bed. Not satisfied with that, he kept a light switched on in the corridor outside his room as back-up in case the bulb went in his room. But the bedside light had gone out and his door was closed, so it was pitch black when he opened his eyes. Fighting a growing panic, he pushed back the covers and slid his legs out of bed. Shuffling nervously forward, he felt his way across the carpet with his bare feet, running his hand along the side of the bed. From the end of the bed it wasn’t far to the door, but he had to reach it without anything to hold on to. He could feel himself trembling as he edged forward, his hands stretched out in front of him. With an effort of will he reminded himself that he was safe in his own sanctuary in England.

  It was years since he had escaped the night terrors of a heretical monastery where the monks had forbidden him to have a light in his cell. Night after night he had lain on his hard bed, unable to sleep. Sometimes he had been disturbed by dreadful screams. Now, in the dark, the memory of those long nights tormented him. At first he had been desperate to find out why the monks were crying out. When he had learned about the unspeakable horrors they practised, he had regretted ever learning the truth. It was more cruel than anything he could have imagined. He had stumbled on the truth when he had chanced on a group of monks burying a recruit. The novice had died very young, barely more than a child.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He is dead.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that. How did he die?’

  ‘God did not choose him to survive the initiation.’

  ‘Only a few are chosen,’ one of them added.

  ‘What initiation? What did you do to him?’

  ‘The chosen must leave behind all earthly desires.’

  As he spoke, the monk made a gesture as though chopping off his genitals.

  He opened the door of his bedroom. In the dazzling light he made out a blurred figure. He blinked, trying to distinguish her features as she bowed her head to him. A halo of light glowed around her fair hair and he could see she was very thin.

  ‘Is everything all right, leader?’

  ‘My light has gone out.’

  She fell back in alarm. Sensing her panic, he was quick to reassure her.

  ‘My bedside light, that is.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you meant –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He understood her confusion. She thought he had been referr
ing to his divine status.

  ‘Who is responsible for leaving me in the dark?’ he demanded, recovering from his terror.

  ‘It was just the bulb –’ she stammered. ‘It couldn’t be helped –’

  ‘Who shut my door?’

  ‘Your light was on when the door was shut.’

  He sensed she was frightened and softened his voice. The gods demanded unquestioning devotion from the disciples. She had proved herself loving and obedient, willing to do and say anything he asked of her.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said gently. ‘While I am here, you need never be afraid. You are safe now, and the gods will watch over you for all eternity. All you have to do is keep the faith, and love me.’

  ‘Yes, leader.’

  ‘Look at me.’

  She raised her head to reveal a very pale face with light blue eyes framed by white eyelashes. One of his favourites among the disciples, he had shared his divine love with her before.

  ‘After you have fixed the light, you will stay with me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight.’

  She lowered her head submissively.

  He woke in the night to find her lying beside him.

  ‘You have served me well. Now leave me.’

  Her face lit up at his praise. Smiling, he watched her slip into her robe and scurry away. As the door closed behind her, he lay back on his pillows and looked around his room, dimly lit in the soft glow from his bedside lamp. In addition to a double bed, there was a wooden cabinet that housed the gods and the silver cup of salvation. Twice a day the gods were carried downstairs to witness disciples eating ambrosia and drinking from the silver cup. That was how the gods knew who lived under their protection.