by Helen Fields
‘Very good,’ Tripp said.
‘Right, Salter, you drive. It’s exactly 9 a.m. now. Clock’s ticking,’ Ava said.
This time the student halls were busy with young people shouting to one another, hurrying down corridors bumping backpacks, playing music and texting.
Ava smiled to Natasha as they arrived on Kate Bailey’s corridor. ‘Would you go back and do it all again, if you could?’
‘In a heartbeat. I had the best sex of my life at university. Oh, to live in a world where adults managed to reach their middle years without developing hang-ups and chips on their shoulders. It was all so exciting. The world was waiting for you, and you were so certain nothing bad could happen.’ They stared at Kate’s door as Salter came up behind them, chatting with the security guard.
‘Professor Natasha Forge, meet Detective Constable Christie Salter,’ Ava said, as the guard opened Kate’s door. Salter nodded a polite acknowledgment, snapping on gloves as she walked inside.
‘Nothing’s moved,’ Ava said. ‘And the bed hasn’t been slept in. The corner of the duvet is folded back exactly as I left it yesterday.’
‘Does her phone ring when you call it?’ Salter asked Natasha.
‘It did yesterday morning, but it doesn’t now. I assume her battery has run out of charge.’
‘That would explain it,’ Salter said, looking at Ava.
Sliding the wardrobe door across, Ava searched through the rack of clothes. ‘To your knowledge, does Kate have more than one winter coat?’
‘I’ve only ever seen her in a dark green parka,’ Natasha said. ‘Sometimes if it isn’t cold she’ll just turn up in a jumper with a scarf.’
‘Then her winter coat is here,’ Ava commented.
‘Which means that perhaps she wasn’t planning on staying out very long,’ Salter said.
‘If she was going away for a few days, she’d have taken it,’ Natasha said. ‘Ava, I have a bad feeling about this. I know that’s what everyone who reports a missing person must say, but …’
‘Get back into the SugarPa website,’ Ava instructed Natasha. ‘Make some notes about the profile of the man Kate was supposed to meet. We’ll have to contact the company behind the site as soon as we get back to the station and see if they’ll volunteer his details. We’ll find her, Natasha. I promise.’
Salter wandered into the corridor, knocking on doors as she went. Ava could hear her talking quietly to a few of the other students, asking if any of them had seen Kate or heard from her.
‘Not for a couple of days,’ a girl’s voice came clearly and loudly. ‘And I wish she’d come back because she left some beef on in her slow cooker. I unplugged it eventually, but it’s stunk the place out and now it’s just sitting there rotting. It’s disgusting. People shouldn’t just go off and forget stuff like that.’
Natasha turned ashen. Ava put an arm around her shoulders as they stared at the laptop screen together.
‘Here it is,’ Natasha said, clicking open the messages and scrolling over the name of the man with whom Kate had been making plans. ‘John White.’ She clicked and they waited for a new screen to appear. A small circle wheeled uselessly beneath the cursor for twenty seconds before a new pop-up box declared that the member had left the service. ‘That can’t be right.’ She clicked several more times. ‘Ava, we have to do something. Where the hell is she?’
Natasha stood sharply, upending the chair. Ava reached forward and took her by the hands. ‘Listen to me. There’s still no evidence that anything bad has happened. Maybe she had a difficult experience with this man and took the first train home to Durham. You said yourself she’d had problems before. Perhaps she didn’t even bother coming back to pack a bag if she has spare clothes at her parents’ house.’
Natasha took a few deep breaths. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Okay, fine. So we call her parents.’
Salter came back in. ‘Nothing. No one I’ve spoken to has seen her. A couple of the girls here tried to call her about the slow cooker causing a problem in the kitchen but there was no reply. The girl in the next room is on the same course as Kate and confirms that she’s missed her classes for the last couple of days.’
‘Salter, pack up her laptop. Let’s see what the cyber team can get off it. We’ll need a good photo of Kate – there was one on the SugarPa website. Natasha, I’ll need her mobile number and the details to contact her parents.’ Ava walked into the en suite, pulling a plastic bag from her pocket and returning with a hairbrush inside it. ‘For a DNA profile, just in case we need it. Better to be fully prepared. If we end up with any suspects it’ll ensure we know as quickly as possible if Kate’s been in a vehicle or at their house.’
‘Her fingerprints?’ Salter asked.
‘Will be all over the laptop. Have it processed as soon as we’re back at the station before sending it to the cyber unit. Let’s go. We’ve done all we can here.’ Ava left the room first. Natasha stood fighting tears in the centre of the room. Salter took her gently by the arm and led her out into the corridor and down the stairs to the exit.
There was a rush of students from behind them as they moved towards the doors, each trying to get their hands into a series of pigeonholes, pulling out envelopes and boxes which they ripped open as they made for the outer doors. Ava and Natasha went ahead. Salter turned back, looking along the top row of alphabetically arranged pigeonholes and locating Kate’s. She reached up, grabbing the items stacked within. Two standard letter envelopes and a package were there. She flicked through them. The return address in Durham made one likely to be a letter from her parents. That saved one avenue of investigation. Another was a mass-mailing offer for a credit card that Kate could no doubt ill afford. The package was large and soft, lined with bubble wrap. Clothes, Salter thought. Probably the result of some online shopping. If the sales receipt was dated it might help with the precise timeline. Having not yet shed her gloves, she slipped a nail under the seal and ripped along, opening it up to check the contents.
Christie Salter produced a strangled noise from deep in the back of her throat, then closed her eyes momentarily, sighing deeply. As she pulled herself together, the hallway filled with students advancing towards their postal pigeonholes.
‘Everyone, stop right where you are,’ Salter said. ‘No one touches anything. I need you all to exit the area.’
‘You can’t stop us from—’ the first voice whined.
‘Yes, I can. I’m an officer with Police Scotland. You need to either go back to your rooms or leave the building. This area will be closed off for a few hours.’ She turned to stare out of the double doors to the street. ‘Ma’am,’ she called, to no response. ‘Ma’am!’ she shouted, louder.
Ava opened the exterior door to look back into the corridor. ‘Problem?’ she asked.
‘And then some,’ Salter replied.
Ten minutes later the area was sealed off. University security supervised students entering and exiting the building via a fire door. Callanach turned up with Tripp while Ava comforted Natasha beyond the crime scene perimeter.
‘Where is it?’ Callanach asked.
Leaving Natasha with DC Salter, Ava accompanied him to the officer who was labelling the exhibits. He opened the envelope gently, lifting its contents with gloved hands to avoid contaminating it with his own DNA.
This doll was a more accomplished finished article than the first. The stitching was smaller and neater, with no discernible tears. The eyes had been coloured in a good match for the brown of Lorna’s. Hair had been more artfully and permanently glued to the doll’s head. Where the nose would have been, a tiny gold stud pierced the skin, gleaming under the harsh electric light.
‘They must have changed the type of glue they used this time,’ Callanach noted. ‘There are virtually no strands loose in the envelope.’
‘The mouth is different on this one,’ Ava said. ‘The downward stitches are more deliberate, thicker. It looks as if a different thread was used. We’ll have to open it up soon an
d see if there’s another note inside.’
‘Agreed. Who found the doll?’ Callanach asked.
‘Salter. I’ve been trying to keep her out of this investigation. I wasn’t sure how she’d handle it, but she seemed calmer than I felt. Natasha is a mess. She knows the missing girl and I think she’s feeling responsible for what’s happened to her.’
‘Leave Salter here with Natasha and the forensics team. You and I can take the doll directly to Jonty. He can confirm if it’s a match to Lorna. Once he’s taken all the photos and measurements, we can ask him to open it up.’
‘Fine,’ Ava said, slipping the doll back inside the evidence bag, pausing as it was halfway inside. ‘This one’s much more lifelike, don’t you think? Whoever made it did a good job of capturing the shape of Lorna’s eyes.’ She ran a gloved thumb down the soft skin from which the doll was made. ‘You know, this is one of the most inhumane things I’ve ever witnessed. Most of the people we deal with, I can get a handle on their psychology. Their rage, jealousy, insecurity, whatever drives them. But this? It’s completely alien to me.’
Callanach took the package from her and slid the doll back down inside, resealing it. ‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘The sooner we start getting answers, the better chance we have of finding Kate alive.’
‘I’ve already wasted twenty-four hours,’ Ava said. ‘If I’d just trusted Natasha’s instincts when she came to me yesterday … There’s so much I could have done in that time.’
‘You can’t undo what’s done, and you couldn’t have known what had happened to Kate. If we’d raced off investigating every missing person report we’ve had in the last day, we’d have exhausted every officer in Police Scotland. There has to be more than an empty bed to believe a criminal event has occurred. You followed procedure. Focus on now. Tripp has Kate’s laptop and is taking it to the cyber investigation unit himself. We’ve got people waiting to attempt to trace the emails, and the procurator fiscal is ready to apply to the court for SugarPa’s confidential member information. You did the best you could with the information available to you yesterday.’ He took a half step forward and gripped Ava’s hand. ‘We can still find her, Ava. She’s not dead yet.’
‘You can’t know that for sure,’ Ava said quietly.
‘I know that Kate being alive is the most likely scenario. A pattern is emerging and we have no reason to believe he’ll deviate from it. Thinking about the things you could have done will only slow you down. Don’t give him an advantage he doesn’t deserve,’ he said, reaching out gently and running the tips of his fingers down the back of her thumb, wishing he could rub the chill from her hands. They always seemed to be in the middle of a crowd these days. Six months ago there had been plenty of evenings when it was just the two of them. He wondered what had changed. Selina, he remembered guiltily. And before that Ava had been seeing Joe for a while. Their evenings laughing in the back row of an empty late-night cinema screening had ground to a halt in the midst of other relationships. And Selina was trying so hard to make things work. Almost too hard. Being with Ava, though, had always been effortless.
‘Thank you, Luc,’ she whispered. ‘At some point you should probably remind me that I’m supposed to be the one with the answers.’ She smiled at him, visibly pulling herself together. ‘Right, let’s go. Jonty will be waiting.’
As they drove through the city’s ancient streets towards Cowgate and the City Mortuary, Kate awoke on a table in the dark. It would be another four days until she returned to the city.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘“Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death”,’ Ava read from the tiny scroll hidden within the stuffing of the doll.
‘It’s a reference to baby Tansy, literally a birth arising from the killer’s perception of Lorna’s sinful life,’ Callanach said. ‘Apparently it’s from James, chapter one, verse fifteen. Whoever is doing this believes they have some divine right of judgment over these young women.’
‘It’s not the first time,’ Jonty said. ‘The Yorkshire Ripper claimed he’d heard the voice of God telling him to murder his victims. Ed Gein was brought up in a strict religious household. He’s another killer who used the skin of his victims, although I don’t believe there were any dolls involved.’
‘Ed Gein?’ Ava asked. ‘Did the police ever establish his motivation?’
‘He had something of a mother obsession. It’s likely he was brought up being told all women were wicked and sinful. He dug some of the bodies up for their skin, others he killed. When police finally raided his home they found a vast array of items made from human skin. Seat covers, a belt of women’s nipples, a wastebasket, a corset. It was never established exactly how many women he’d murdered, but the bodies taken from the graveyard were largely females who bore some resemblance to his mother,’ Jonty responded.
‘So it was personal to him, deeply meaningful,’ Callanach said.
‘Undoubtedly. Gein was devastated by his mother’s death. There was some suspicion he’d killed his brother, perhaps to have his mother to himself. In the end, Gein was declared legally insane and spent the remainder of his life in institutions, where he eventually died.’
‘So the doll might be a representation. It could be that the killer lost a baby they cared about, perhaps a brother or sister, even. Or perhaps it represents their own abusive childhood, the loss of that early innocence,’ Ava said. ‘The skin thing is what throws me though. What’s behind it?’
‘The theory is that it’s the feel of it. With Ed Gein, I believe, when his mother died he wanted to carry on feeling close to her, literally still feeling her skin. Most people grow up holding their mother’s hand, sitting on her lap, being cuddled. We may never think about it consciously, but the feel of our mother’s skin is the first thing we learn from birth. As investigators we spend a lot of time considering the way things look. I’m acutely aware of how different organs smell when I’m performing a post-mortem. Sound is often a particular focus in witness statements – a scream, or a thump, or a vehicle’s engine. We often ignore touch and yet it defines our relationships. Deprive a human of it and they’ll find a means to fill the gap. Self-hugging is often seen with psychiatric patients. For whoever is creating the skin dolls, the texture, the feel of them, is likely to be a tremendous motivation.’
Ava and Callanach stared at him. ‘Is that what you spend your spare time doing, Jonty? Reading about bizarre horrors from criminal history?’ Callanach asked. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate it, but …’
‘All part and parcel of the job, sadly. It’s no different than recognising a pattern in types of assaults. Understanding what motivates a killer often fills in missing information that then helps me identify the process that’s led to a death. Please don’t get worried about me. My downtime reading tends towards the romantic rather than crime.’ He smiled. ‘Now, on to this latest monstrosity.’ He carefully separated the skin doll into its front and rear sections and overlaid the front part onto Lorna’s abdomen, a sterile sheet between them. ‘There’s no doubt the skin’s from Lorna,’ he said. ‘Look, there’s a tiny nick to the right of the head where it looks as if the original incision was begun. We’ll send a sample of the skin for DNA testing to confirm, but I’m as sure as I can be.’
‘How long until we get news on the DNA from the pubic hair?’ Ava asked.
‘We successfully obtained a DNA profile from the hair, but no match has been found on the police database,’ Jonty said. ‘We’re double-checking, but it doesn’t look hopeful at all.’
‘A rapist and killer who’s never been arrested before?’ Ava said. ‘You don’t just switch from model citizen to psychopath like that.’
‘No, but he might never have been caught before. That’s the problem. Send the DNA profile over to Interpol as well, Jonty,’ Callanach said. ‘It may be that the offender isn’t from the UK, or hasn’t been convicted of a crime here yet.’
‘I’ll g
et it sorted as soon as we’re done here,’ Jonty said.
‘Do you have the first doll here? I’d like to compare the two,’ Ava asked.
Jonty went to a refrigerated cabinet and took out a sealed tray, placing the two dolls next to one another for inspection, but careful to ensure they didn’t quite touch, to avoid cross-contamination of the evidence.
‘It’s the mouth that’s really changed. On the Zoey doll it was haphazard. Just a few stitches where the mouth should be. With Lorna’s doll, the killer has gone to much more effort. The lips are drawn on with considerable care, then the stitches run over the top. Each stitch is individual – you can see each has its own knot. The dolls are silent.’
‘Because the girls have been silenced?’ Callanach said.
‘Or because the killer didn’t like what they were saying. To stop them screaming, or begging for their lives. I don’t know. There are so many possibilities,’ Ava said, glancing at her watch. ‘Damn, I need to be elsewhere. Jonty, what can you tell me about the bus death? We still don’t have a full name for the victim, I’m afraid.’
‘I managed to isolate the knife wound from the bus impact damage. I won’t show you unless there’s a need. You’ve more than enough to deal with today. There’s a wound in the eye directly above the upper horizontal slash, which would have been enough to wake a drug user from even the deepest fugue. There’s no drug that could have blocked out that level of pain save for medical anaesthesia. I suspect that the person wielding the blade was clumsy and caught the eye. It’s also possible that the effects of the drugs were wearing off and the woman felt the damage to her face, jolting as she panicked, and that’s when the eye injury was incurred.’
‘Or the attacker was bored with inflicting the same injury and decided to increase the damage to see what would happen,’ Ava said.