Stolen Hearts

by Elise Noble

  Black snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves—presumably he’d raided the first aid kit at the villa—and crouched down to take a closer look. Rather him than me. The body was already starting to smell, and beetles crawled over the exposed flesh.

  “I’d say the chances are slim. See?”

  He angled the top of the bag towards me, and I saw a length of red cord tied around it. And—you’ve guessed it—it was tied with a surgeon’s knot.

  Ah, shit.

  We were now firmly in serial killer territory, and with the discovery of this new victim, so different from the rest both in the sex and in the method of disposal, the waters were now so muddy that the next step was a mystery.

  “At least we’ve eliminated one suspect,” I said, trying to look on the bright side. “It wasn’t Selmi. He’s still locked up at the police station, right?”

  Khaled nodded.

  “Excuse me, excuse me, coming through.”

  A small Egyptian man ducked under the makeshift rope and strode towards us, carrying a black leather briefcase almost as big as he was. None of the cops stopped him, so I figured he was somebody they knew.

  “The medical examiner?” Black guessed.

  “Yes, Dr. Ibrahim.” Khaled nodded, bleary-eyed. “From the government hospital.”

  “Who are these people?” the doctor asked Khaled. “Foreigners? Why are they here?”

  “I’m an American detective consulting on the case,” Black told him.

  “Good, good. Captain al-Busari needs all the help he can get.” The old guy’s knees cracked as he bent to examine the body. “Na’am, he’s definitely dead. Somebody has made a mess.”

  “How long has he been dead?” Khaled asked.

  “There’s no significant decay. I will take the liver temperature. Air temperature is twenty-one degrees.”

  When the doctor started fishing around the dead guy’s abdomen, I was kind of glad I’d skipped breakfast. I might have spent years causing death, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed looking at the aftermath. Not at all. The squelching noises put me off lunch too.

  “Hmm…” The doctor’s curious expression turned to confusion. “There is no liver.”

  Black raised an eyebrow. “No liver?”

  “Here is the stomach, the spleen, the diaphragm… No liver. It’s not here.”

  “Maybe our killer cooked it up with fava beans and a nice chianti?” I suggested.

  Black opened his mouth. Closed it again, then spoke. “You know, I was about to come up with a pithy comeback, but you could actually be right.”

  “What does that mean?” Khaled asked. “Fava beans and chianti?”

  How could he have missed that masterpiece? “You never saw The Silence of the Lambs?”

  “I do not like sheep.”

  I burst out laughing, and everybody stared at me. “Uh, cannibalism. Hannibal Lecter, the guy from the movie, he ate his victims.”

  And also had a sense of humour. My friend Sofia, who knew more about drugs than most doctors, had explained it to me once. Lecter’s antisocial personality disorder could have been treated with monoamine oxidase inhibitors, or MAOIs. And what three food groups couldn’t you eat with MAOIs? Meat, alcohol, and high-protein produce. Not only was Lecter cracking a joke, but he was also admitting he hadn’t been taking his meds.

  But I didn’t think Khaled would appreciate that little snippet of information. In fact, he’d gone quite pale.

  “You think there’s a cannibal in Dahab?”

  “We have to consider everything when it comes to motive.”

  “That could be right,” the doctor said. “The victims were all young. Tender meat.”

  One of the privates standing behind Khaled ran off, doubled over, and retched. Wasn’t this a fun morning?

  “We need to keep pushing forward with the investigation. When we’re done here, we’ll go over the statements you’ve taken so far. And you said you saw a vehicle—can you describe it?”

  “It was dark, and I didn’t see it very well.”

  “But you probably saw more than you think. Was it a dark colour or a light colour?”

  “Dark. It did not stand out against the night.”

  “And what shape was it? A pickup? An SUV? A sedan?”

  “Not a pickup. It was taller than that.”

  “Did you see anybody behind the wheel?”

  “No, it was driving away from us.”

  “Who else saw it? Gamal?”

  Khaled waved over the kid who’d just heaved his guts up. “They want to know about the car we saw last night.”

  “The SUV?”

  “Did you get a good look at it?” Black asked.

  “I only saw the back.”

  “What can you tell us?”

  “It was an SUV.” Duh. Gamal glanced sideways at Khaled, who nodded encouragingly. “A Jeep, perhaps? Or a Kia? Something like that. There was a white sticker in the back window. That is all I saw.”

  Black asked a few more questions, but that really was it. Still, at least we had one more clue than we’d had before.

  “Right, we need to cross-reference the people on our list with the vehicles they have access to. Does anyone know what Youssef drives?”

  “A white pickup,” Gamal supplied. “But it was not him last night. Gosia’s group set his chickens free, and he spent all evening trying to catch them.”

  One step forward, two steps back. If that was true, we’d lost our two main suspects.

  And we were supposed to fly home in three days.

  CHAPTER 30 - EMMY

  I YAWNED AS Black sent a sleep-deprived Khaled home to get some rest, and then listened in as he began educating the remaining gaggle of privates in the rudiments of searching and documenting a crime scene. A sketch. Photographs. A careful fingertip search, noting the location of any items of interest. And keep an eye on observers—it wasn’t unusual for the perpetrators to stop by to admire their handiwork.

  While he focused on the what, I wondered about the why. Why here? I put elastic bands from Black’s makeshift field kit around my shoes so my footprints could be differentiated from any already there and took a look around the wider area. The previous bodies had been well-hidden, one underwater and one high in the mountains. This torso had been abandoned in plain sight, although that could have been because Khaled and Gamal disturbed the killer. Had he taken the rest of it home with him? Or… Or…

  My gaze landed on the chain-link fence around the water treatment plant and the oxidation ponds beyond. If I was going to hide a body, and I couldn’t get into the mountains because the police were searching them and there were animal rights protesters running around at each end of town…

  The flutter of plastic caught my eye, a black ribbon snagged on top of the fence.

  “Black! Over here. The scene goes up to the ponds. Fifty bucks says the rest of him’s in there.”

  The question was, how the hell were we going to get him out? No way was I diving in there with all that sludge and fuck knows what bacteria.

  In Khaled’s absence, Gamal seemed to have become the de facto leader of our motley bunch of helpers. According to Khaled, the department’s officers preferred either desk jobs or checkpoint duty because then they got to sit down all day. The legwork fell to the privates, and most of the investigation too, it seemed.

  At least until a cloud of dust announced the arrival of Captain al-Busari. Took his time, didn’t he? What was it today? A housewarming party? Somebody’s anniversary celebration?

  “We should go,” Black said to Gamal. “Remember everything I’ve told you. Work slowly and methodically, and don’t let the captain or anybody else trample over the scene before you’ve finished with it.”

  By that point, the ME had removed the body with a promise to carry out the autopsy that day and email the preliminary results to Gamal and Khaled by the following morning, so we made ourselves scarce. Why didn’t we confront the captain? Because we were only in town for a few more
days, and if he kicked us off the case, there’d be even less chance of solving it. Not trying to brag, just stating a fact. Under al-Busari’s leadership, the Dahab Police Department was a useless hive of bureaucracy, even though he had some good men working there. And not only that, he could make Captain Bob’s life very difficult if we pissed him off before we left.

  Retreat didn’t come easily to either of us, but Black played war like a game of chess. He thought strategically and always stayed two moves ahead. If he said back off, we’d back off.

  But we’d be ready to attack at the perfect moment.

  “What now?” I asked when we got back to the villa.

  “First, I’m going to give Dan the good news—today, she gets to learn all about oxidation ponds so we can work out how to search them. And we need to identify this morning’s victim. He wasn’t local judging by the colour of his skin, and then there’s the shark tattoo. In this town, there’s a fifty-fifty chance he’s a diver. We need to visit the dive centres.”

  “Ooh, yay! I can go see Rodrigo and his buddies again.”

  “Or you can go to the scuba centres while I take the freediving schools.”

  “Sure, that’s fine too. Did I mention Mateo’s gay? And also single?”

  “Shut up, Emmy.”

  “And he’s into muscular physiques.”

  “Keep that up and you’re walking.”

  Well played, Emmy, well played. The first of the scuba centres happened to be right next door to an ice cream stand, which meant I got to have a delicious three-scoop lunch while I asked my questions. According to the girl behind the counter, only one of their customers had a shark tattoo, and it was on his ass. I didn’t ask how she knew that.

  My joy was short-lived, though. At the fifth centre I went to, our mystery man’s picture was taped to the front of the counter, the words Have you seen Duncan Sumner? written across the top in red marker. Blond hair, blue eyes, his smile wide as he held a surfboard on a faraway beach. Something about him looked familiar, and I racked my brains as to what.

  “Can I help?” the guy behind the counter asked. An Irishman in his late thirties, but he’d been in Egypt for a while judging by his weathered skin.

  “I’m here from the UK for a week, and I thought I might try scuba diving. How would I go about that?”

  The worst part? As with Gosia, I couldn’t tell anyone the full story. Not before Duncan had been formally identified by the police.

  “We offer the full range of PADI courses, but if you’ve never tried scuba before, it’d be best to start with an intro dive.”

  I pretended to look interested, nodding along while he explained the details. “Awesome. I’ve got a camel safari this afternoon, but I’ll see what I can fit in later in the week. Hey, who’s this guy? Is he missing? I’m sure I saw him in a restaurant earlier in the week.”

  “You probably did—he’s been living in Dahab for three months now. But he only went missing last night. He went out to help search for that girl who ran off—Zara or something, her name was—and just never came back home. His wife’s getting worried. Says it’s not like him to disappear without calling.”

  That was where I’d seen him. He was one of the people who’d stopped us on the promenade to ask if Zena was the girl everyone was looking for. He’d been heading towards the high street at the time. How the hell had he ended up in the desert?

  His wife was right to be worried.

  “Do you have a spare flyer? I’ll ask around at my hotel.”

  “Sure, I can print one off.”

  Outside, I fished my phone out of my pocket to call Black, but before I could dial, it rang in my hand. Sloane, my office assistant in Richmond, was calling.

  “Emmy? There’s a Spanish man on the phone for you. Javier Martinez? He says you left him a message about organic food?”

  “Yes! I did. Can you put him through?”

  The line was crackly, and I ducked into an alley to get out of the wind. The waves were crashing onto the shore just a few metres away too, which made it difficult to hear.

  “Javier?”

  “Emerson Black? I received your voicemail.”

  “Thanks for getting back to me, and apologies for contacting you out of the blue.”

  “It’s okay. This is about Gosia? You say she’s gone missing?”

  “I’m sorry to say that her body was found in the mountains behind Dahab this week. She’s been identified now.” Javier’s gasp told me his feelings on the matter. “You knew her well?”

  “No, I mean, not really. But she was such a kind soul. Always helping the animals.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. We’re trying to reconstruct her movements on June twenty-seventh, which is the last day she was seen alive. We understand she went out to take orders for vegetable boxes. Do you recall seeing her?”

  “No, I didn’t see her.”

  That was a quick answer. “You’re sure?”

  “Certain. You see, the twenty-seventh of June was the day my father died, and when I got the call in the morning, I packed and took a taxi straight to the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh. The only people I spoke to before I left were my sister in Madrid and the driver. I left money in the apartment for my landlord and called him later that week from Spain to explain what had happened.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” I’d get our Madrid office to check his father really had died, but assuming Javier was telling the truth, we’d hit another dead end. “When was the last time you saw Gosia?”

  “The week before, as far as I remember. Whatever day she came to take the orders.”

  “Did you see anyone with her? That day or any other day?”

  “No, it was only ever her. She came to the apartment to ask what I wanted, then a man delivered the food in a truck a few days later and collected the money. Her husband, I think? He said they ran the market garden together.”

  Selmi. “I don’t suppose you know a man called Marten, spelled M-A-R-T-E-N, who was in Dahab at around the same time as you? His surname begins with a B. He’s the only other person on Gosia’s list we haven’t managed to trace.”

  “Marten? You’re sure it’s a man?”

  “I don’t know of any women called Marten. Why do you ask that?”

  “Because my neighbour in Dahab was called Beatrice Marten. I suggested she order boxes from Gosia too, but I’m not sure whether she ever did. She’s a vegan, and she used to make the best katsu curry. We spent— You don’t need to know this, do you?”

  “You were close to Beatrice?”

  “We both moved into our apartments on the same day, so we became friends. But I haven’t seen her since I left. She went back to Holland soon after.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a phone number for her?”

  “No, but I have an email address. Would that help?”

  “Definitely.” He read it out, and I scribbled it onto the back of Duncan’s picture. “Thank you.”

  “I wish you the best of luck with finding the person who killed Gosia. Please, if there is anything more I can help with, just call.”

  “It’s three a.m. What are you doing?”

  Black had been asleep earlier, but now he was sitting up in bed, staring at his tablet. I rolled over to look, rubbing my nose where my iPad had hit it earlier when I fell asleep reading a biography of Jeffrey Dahmer.

  “The autopsy report’s arrived. Dr. Ibrahim must’ve worked all evening.”

  “Did they find any teeth marks?”

  “I’ve only read the first paragraph.” And judging by the squiggles, it was in Arabic. “What’s klawi?”

  “Uh, kidneys, I think?”

  “Right. They’re missing.”

  “Shit. The liver and the kidneys are both missing?”

  “And the heart.”

  “Dahmer ate the hearts and livers of his victims, but not the kidneys. Hardly surprising, since they stink.” Of urine. That was what they made, after all. “What about the spleen? Is that there
? Did you know spleen sandwiches are a Sicilian delicacy? Some mafia guy Sofia ‘dated’ made her eat one, and she puked up after.”

  “The spleen was still there. And Dr. Ibrahim found the same cut-marks on the ribs again. Plus there’s a note in the email to say the marks were also on one of the bones found by the bridge.”

  “If we’re not careful, there’s gonna be a mass exodus. So many of the residents are only here temporarily, and who wants to wait around to become a victim? At least Twitter hasn’t mentioned cannibalism yet, although I imagine it’s only a question of time.”

  Black wrapped an arm around me as I leaned in closer to read the rest of the report, and despite the warmth, I couldn’t help shuddering. The dismemberment hadn’t been a particularly professional job. Somebody had cut both femurs and both humeruses right through, close to where they joined the torso. Dr. Ibrahim’s best guess was a hacksaw, although he still had to run more tests on that.

  And the dismemberment was a new thing—Carmela’s skeleton had been intact, and all the other bones that’d turned up had been whole.

  “Why start chopping up corpses now? Ease of disposal?”

  “Ease of disposal would make sense. The fence around the oxidation ponds is six feet high. It’d be difficult to haul a whole body over. And smaller pieces would be easier to hide.”

  “They’d also fit better in a stock pot.”

  “I’m not sure about cannibalism. It’s rare. A tabloid money spinner.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Black fell silent, staring at a sliver of moonlight that fell across his notes on the wall opposite. He was wearing his thinking face. What was going on in his brain? I’d learned to read him quite well over the years, but parts of his psyche were still a mystery to me.

  Finally, he smiled. “As it happens, I do.”

  CHAPTER 31 - BLACK

  “WELL?” EMMY ASKED, and Black suppressed a chuckle at his wife’s impatience. How long should he make her wait?

  She turned the bedside lamp on, and he blinked as light flared against his retinas. “It’s just a theory.”