A Beautiful Breed of Evil (The DI Stella Cole Thrillers Book 5)

by Andy Maslen

  Thirty-five minutes later, the lakeshore was Jimmy’s private domain no longer. Diesel engines chuntered. Walkie-talkies crackled. Cops were chatting. Behind black-and-yellow crime-scene tapes, a few dozen bystanders stood, phones aloft, capturing the scene for posterity, or Facebook at least. The chief had sent Jimmy to wait in his truck.

  A silver-and-yellow Manitowoc mobile crane towered above the white CSI van, two black-and-white prowl cars and the chief’s Cherokee. The thrum of its huge Diesel engine set up a sympathetic vibration in the chief’s chest.

  He sent a couple of divers down to attach a lifting rig to the SUV and recover the bones. They popped up now, like seals, gave the circled finger-and-thumb for OK, and flippered back to the shore. Between them bobbed a black body bag.

  The divers hauled themselves and their burden out onto the warm planking. The lead diver unzipped the bag, letting the lake water stream out. The chief peered in and the sightless eye sockets of a human skull stared back at them.

  The chief signalled to the crane driver, pointing at the water and giving him the thumbs-up.

  For good measure, he yelled, ‘Go get it!’

  The tone of the engine deepened under the load. Slowly, roof first, then windows, sides and finally wheels, the black SUV emerged. Water sluiced over the hood and spattered the lake surface.

  With the SUV secure on the shore, a gum-booted CSI strode forwards, lifted the driver’s door handle and stepped back smartly. The pressure of the water inside the vehicle swung the door out, narrowly missing her right hip. And in a great flood, several hundred gallons of lake water rushed out onto the deck.

  But it wasn’t the water that caused gasps and salty expressions. Nor the four-foot-long mottled-brown flathead catfish that came out with it, slithering across the planks before splashing back into the lake.

  What drew the sounds from the lips of the assembled law enforcement officers were the scatter of human bones that the outrushing water deposited at their feet. The skull, perforated between the eye sockets, bobbled and rolled to a stop at the chief’s booted feet.

  ‘Looks like we got us a real puzzle, eh, Chief?’ a detective asked, pointing at the skull.

  ‘Uffda! You betcha!’ was all the astonished chief could manage.

  The following morning, Andersen stood looking at the two skeletons on their side-by-side stainless-steel tables in the ME’s autopsy room.

  Using an extending chromed pointer, Dr Cory Pleasaunce tapped the female skeleton’s ribcage on the left side.

  ‘Your divers found a .40 S&W jacketed hollow point that matches the Glock. Right where her ribcage was lying.’

  ‘No surprise there.’

  ‘No. But you want to know what is surprising?’

  Andersen smiled. He and the ME went way back and he knew how much she enjoyed trying to trip him up.

  ‘Go on then. Surprise me.’

  Pleasaunce tapped the male skeleton’s skull, a little to the right of the bullet hole. Andersen found it unsettling the way its top had been cleanly sawn off and now lay beside it like a gruesome ashtray. He peered in, noting the scoring and multiple fractures on the inner surface, imagining a JHP round pinging around the murderer’s brain like a pinball.

  ‘We found that round, too. It wasn’t hard. It was sitting waiting for us inside the cranium.’

  ‘So far, so unsurprising. Come on, spill the beans,’ the chief said with a smile.

  She returned the expression.

  ‘It was a Speer Gold Dot jacketed hollow point.’ She paused for a beat. ‘In a thirty-eight special. You’re looking at two guns. The Glock and a thirty-eight. Probably a revolver. And I’ll tell you what. I have never heard of a murder-suicide where the doer used two guns.’

  Chief Andersen called up the dive team again. After forty minutes of fingertip searching, they surfaced with a Smith & Wesson.38 ‘Airweight’ revolver. He sent it off to the ballistics lab in Minneapolis and the techs there emailed him back to say it was a match for the slug recovered from the male victim’s skull.

  A trace on the Glock 22 came back with a weapon registered to the FBI. Specifically to the armoury at the Chicago field office.

  Cory had removed a gold wedding ring from the male corpse’s right hand. Inside it bore the engraved text:

  Adam & Lynne 24.5.97

  A smaller ring recovered from the lake floor had an identical inscription.

  Chief Andersen ran the SUV’s plates. It came back first registered to an Adam Collier, resident in Chicago.

  With a pile of evidence before him, he rang the Feds in the Windy City. After taking a few details, the receptionist routed his call.

  ‘This is Special Agent-in-Charge Eddie Baxter. What can I do for you today, Chief Andersen?’

  ‘Well now, I’ve got a couple skeletons up here. We just recovered them from a lake. One male, one female. The male was sitting in a black Ford Explorer SUV registered in Chicago beside a Glock 22 registered to your field office there.’

  SAC Baxter drew in a sharp breath.

  ‘Everything OK?’ the chief asked.

  ‘Yes. Go on, please,’ Baxter said in a tight voice.

  ‘Well, we also recovered two wedding rings. Same engraving on both. Adam and Lynne. Twenty-four, five, ninety-seven. Which strikes me as the British way of writing our dates.’

  ‘I’m going to need you to hold everything securely for me, Chief. I’m coming up to see you. Where’s the nearest airport?’

  ‘That would be Rochester International. I had one of my guys look up flights for you already. You can get the four-fifty-five American Eagle flight. Gets in at quarter after six. When were you thinking of coming up?’

  ‘Today.’

  The chief put the phone down and blew out his cheeks. The Feds. In Preston. Well, it would be one for the grandkids, that was for sure.

  3

  London

  Back at Paddington Green, Stella went to see her boss. Detective Chief Superintendent Calpurnia ‘Callie’ McDonald looked up as Stella entered the spacious office.

  ‘What’s up, Stel? You’ve got a glint in your eye,’ she said.

  ‘New case. Weird one. More than usually weird,’ she added, to forestall Callie’s telling her that ‘weird’ went with the territory in the Special Investigations Unit.

  Callie pursed her lips, today a darker shade of red than her signature scarlet.

  ‘Go on then. Gie me a wee case of the heebie-jeebies,’ she said, roughening her genteel Edinburgh accent to something sharper.

  Stella outlined the basics.

  ‘Odd, but not weird. What aren’t you telling me?’

  ‘Like our Lord, I’ve saved the best till last.’

  ‘Och, so now you’re blaspheming, too? Spit it out, woman!’

  Reflecting that Callie’s turn of phrase was unpleasantly appropriate, Stella did.

  Callie nodded. ‘That is weird,’ she said finally.

  Stella convened a briefing with her team. Joining her in the meeting room were her bagman, DS Garry Haynes, plus DI Roisin Griffin, DS Barendra ‘Baz’ Khan, DS Stephanie Fish and DC Camille Wilde. Other members of the team had either transferred out, retired if their thirty was up or were simply busy on other investigative teams within SIU.

  She’d set up a laptop connected to a projector and beamed a photo of the dead man’s blood-besmirched face onto the screen. Over the next twenty minutes she gave them all the information she’d acquired so far, which included that from the West End Central Murder Team who’d caught the case initially.

  ‘Robbery gone wrong?’ Cam asked.

  ‘His phone and laptop were still there, plus a very nice watch, a wallet with credit cards and two hundred in cash, and a bunch of extremely expensive paintings. Plus assorted gold and silver cufflinks and his gold wedding ring.’

  ‘Sex crime?’ This from Baz.

  ‘Apart from the tongue, I saw no other injuries or mutilations. Nothing sexual, either. No perv stuff in the bedroom.’

/>   ‘You think it’s a serial, boss?’ Garry asked.

  ‘I bloody hope not. But if it is, we’ll have to move fast. I don’t want to see headlines blaring out at me from every newsagent’s window about a “senior slayer” terrorising the old and rich.’

  Stella looked down at her notes. So what did they have? Not a robbery. Nor a thrill-kill. Up to the point the tongue had been removed, and despite the use of a firearm, the whole thing smelled like another murder in Normaltown. But the mutilation moved it into a new postcode: W1 3RD.

  ‘The tongue, guv,’ Cam said. ‘Was it taken out before or after he was shot?’

  ‘Good question. Doc Craven wouldn’t commit, but if it was ante-mortem, as he’d probably say, then we’re looking for a sadistic psychopath. If it was post-mortem, it means something else, though what I have no bloody idea at this point.’

  ‘How about forensics?’ Roisin asked.

  ‘West End Central are turning everything over to us once their team are finished. Lucian, can you prioritise it as soon as it arrives, please?’

  Lucian nodded. The senior CSI at Paddington Green, Lucian Young was one of the people at work Stella counted as a friend, as well as a colleague. He was also a computer genius who’d sold a company he’d started with friends while at university before even leaving for the world of practical science.

  ‘Which version of the Bible, guv?’ Cam asked.

  ‘Swedish. Someone, probably the killer, underlined one verse and put Brömly’s tongue right on top of it. The other one was bookmarked in a different colour from all the others picked out.’

  She projected the two verses onto the screen along with their English translations.

  Ordspråken/Proverbs 11:12

  Den som förminskar sin granne saknarförnuft, men en förståelsesman förblir tyst.

  He who diminishes his neighbour lacks reason, but a man of understanding remains silent.

  Ordspråken/Proverbs 28:13

  Den som döljer sin synd blir aldrig lycklig, men den som bekänner den och ångrar sig möts med barmhärtighet.

  He who conceals his sin is never happy, but he who confesses and repents is met with mercy.

  ‘So they’re significant to the killer?’ Cam asked.

  ‘Or the victim. Or both. Can you get onto the National Crime Agency and ask for two accredited Swedish interpreters to give us evidence-grade translations, please?’

  ‘Some nutter’s gone biblical,’ Rosh said.

  ‘It’s a line of enquiry, certainly.’

  ‘“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out”,’ Rosh said. ‘It’s obvious!’

  Stella shook her head, already anticipating another blow-up from the DI. ‘I don’t think it is. Something about this points in a completely different direction.’

  The two women had clashed many times in the past, and after Stella had caught Roisin leaking details of an investigation to a journalist had delivered a bollocking that had almost reduced Rosh to tears.

  ‘What direction, boss?’ Def asked.

  DS Stephanie Fish had won her nickname after her initial moniker of ‘Definitely Fit’ had been shortened to something more manageable.

  Stella inwardly thanked the blonde DS with the supermodel looks. Def was a shit-hot interviewer. She was also the team peacemaker, and often poured oil onto the turbulence Rosh and Stella stirred up whenever they were in the same room.

  ‘I think he was killed to silence him. I think the killer left the tongue there as a message. “Talk and this is what happens.”’

  She wrote up the others’ suggestions, from a straight contract hit to a bizarrely staged domestic and assigned tasks accordingly. Cam to get the Bible verses to accredited interpreters. Baz to start working the address book, contacting friends and any family. Rosh to make contact with the Swedish expat community. Garry to secure the dead man’s medical records. And Def to run a search on the National Homicide Database for murders where tongue removal was a feature.

  ‘My first guv’nor told me something once,’ Stella said after finishing the distribution of jobs. ‘If you can find out how the victim lived, you can find out how they died. I want to know everything about Tomas Brömly from the moment he was born to the moment he carked it.’

  She finished work just after six-thirty. Some of the other female detectives were heading to a nearby Italian place called Buccia di Limone. The occasion was a monthly meet-up called Good Girls Drink Plonk. Once a dismissive nickname for female officers, Plonk had been proudly reclaimed.

  Stella had been a regular attender but since meeting Jamie, she’d started missing the odd session. This was one of those times. It was her turn to stay at his place tonight. She smiled at the thought of her boyfriend’s cooking, and his taut, slim body pressed against hers in bed.

  She swung her leg over the Bonnie’s saddle and pushed the starter button. The engine started with a glorious bark that reverberated around the underground parking garage and brought a smile to her lips. She blipped the throttle, just for fun, and pulled away, the rear tyre screeching on the grey-painted floor.

  Roisin knew she wasn’t a brilliant detective. Even though she hated Stella, she recognised in her that rare and indefinable skill that marked out the truly great thief-takers from the also-rans.

  But Roisin also knew that technical competence wasn’t always the best or fastest route to promotion. Being good enough could keep you in post. Being connected could get you higher up the greasy pole than any number of solved cases.

  She’d made it her business since arriving at Paddington Green to cultivate those connections she thought would best help her in her ambitions. And she used one now.

  As she sat at the long candlelit table in Buccia di Limone’s private dining room, Roisin raised her glass of Chianti. She turned to her neighbour, Assistant Commissioner Rachel Fairhill. One of the rules of ‘Good Girls’, as its members called it, was that rank was forgotten.

  ‘Cheers, Rachel,’ she said.

  ‘Cheers. How was your day?’

  Roisin nodded and sipped her wine.

  ‘Good. Can I ask you something?’

  Rachel smiled. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘I love my job at SIU, but the opportunities for promotion are pretty limited on account of we’re so small. I just wondered, if anything comes up where you need some help, would you keep me in mind?’

  ‘Of course. After sitting in for me on that dreadful community relations committee, I owe you. Nothing at the moment. But I’ll make a mental note. Ah,’ she said, smiling up at a waiter, ‘here’s my pollo cacciatore!’

  Roisin wished her buon appetito and poured more wine. As she drank, she offered a silent toast to her own career.

  4

  Crowthorne, Berkshire

  Stella pulled off the road and gentled the Bonneville across the pavement and onto Jamie’s drive. The house itself was a red-brick Victorian rectory: two main storeys plus a loft conversion in the steeply pitched tiled roof. A wrought-iron balcony extended out from the master bedroom. She loved to drink an early morning cup of tea or an evening gin and tonic out there.

  She found Jamie at the black granite kitchen counter, perched on a bar stool. He was reading a report of some kind, a slender-stemmed glass of red wine at his elbow. He was wearing chinos and a soft, faded Levi’s denim shirt with mother-of-pearl press studs. His feet were bare.

  She planted a kiss on the back of his neck. He turned and returned the kiss, full on the lips, lingering over the embrace.

  ‘Well,’ she said when he let her go, ‘somebody’s had a good day.’

  He grinned. ‘The Journal of Criminal Psychiatry accepted my article on childhood attachment disorders in serial murderers.’

  ‘That’s brilliant! When’s it coming out?’

  He shrugged. ‘It has to be peer-reviewed first. Then they’ll take a proper look at it and possibly send it back for revisions, but hopefully this side of Christmas.’

  ‘Is that good?’

&n
bsp; ‘For the JCP? It’s fast-track, believe me. Wine?’

  He poured her a glass and clinked rims with her.

  ‘Apart from the good news, how was your day?’ Stella asked him.

  ‘I have a new patient referred from the High Court. Found not guilty of murdering his elderly parents with an axe by reason of insanity,’ he paused. ‘He believed they were sent by the devil to poison his Weetabix.’

  Stella snorted, narrowly missing spraying wine over Jamie’s shirt. ‘Oh god, sorry, darling. I know it’s not funny.’

  ‘It kind of is,’ he said, smiling. ‘For Broadmoor, that counts as light relief. As I think you know.’

  Stella did know. When your boyfriend worked at one of the UK’s special hospitals for the criminally insane, seemingly innocent enquiries like hers yielded tales that would have most people looking for the exit.

  ‘How about your day?’ he asked.

  ‘New case. Really weird.’

  He frowned. ‘Isn’t that rather why Callie set up the SIU?’

  ‘That’s what she said. What do you make of this?’

  When she finished speaking, Jamie blew his cheeks out. Then he tapped his index finger against his pursed lips. It was a signature gesture of his. It reminded Stella of her initial feeling that this was about silence.

  ‘Did someone on your team latch onto the religious nutter angle?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I did to start with. Then I dismissed it. Rosh was sold on it, though.’

  He took another mouthful of the wine. ‘Why did you dismiss it?’

  ‘Look at the MO. Brömly was shot. Most likely with a handgun. That’s a pro’s weapon. And extremely difficult to get hold of. Your average religious maniac wouldn’t be able to lay their hands on one. Let alone an undiagnosed schizophrenic or some poor sod off their meds. I’m also thinking it’s a man.’