Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  ‘Yeah, or maybe an eyebrow hair.’

  ‘Can you get DNA from it?’

  ‘It’s got the root, so we might be able to get nuclear DNA,’ he said. ‘Given enough money and time. From that we could get an individual profile we could match against NDNAD. The shaft will only give us mitochondrial DNA.’

  ‘Which would do what?’

  ‘Which would only tell us whether they shared a mother with someone on the database.’

  Lucian took a pair of fine-tipped tweezers from a black leather tool roll and teased the eyelash away from the stamp, before sealing it in a glassine sachet and placing that in a clear plastic evidence bag, which he labelled, dated and signed. Then he took out a scalpel from its elastic loop and worked the tip under one corner of the stamp.

  Easing the blade deeper in with a series of tiny sawing motions, he took several minutes to lift it clear and place it, face-down, beside the envelope. The back of the stamp was clean. Not so much as a speck of dust marred the sticky surface, even though it might have been designed to collect it.

  He spent the rest of the day examining the letter and envelope for physical evidence. After he’d run them under all his alternative light sources, from UV to different colour filters, he moved on to dusting the paper with fingerprint powder. And he drew a blank.

  Last thing before leaving for the day, he called Roisin.

  ‘We found what appears to be an eyelash stuck to the edge of the stamp. It’s still got its root. The probability we can get a DNA profile is between sixty and seventy per cent, though. Hair’s rubbish for DNA compared to body fluids or skin cells, I’m afraid. What do you want to do?’

  ‘First, congratulate you for some excellent work. Second, I don’t want to waste budget on something that, in all probability, won’t even be the killer’s DNA. It could be the postman’s, somebody in the sorting office, even one of the journalists at the Sun.’

  ‘Agreed. So no fast-track, then?’

  ‘It’d cost too much money, and we’re haemorrhaging it faster than Lucifer’s vics, to be honest. Send it off, but tell them we’re happy to wait in line.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  And Roisin thought, as she ended the call, Not yet.

  66

  WEDNESDAY 29TH AUGUST 2018 1.50 P.M.

  PADDINGTON GREEN

  Five days after Stella had watched Adrian Trimmets leave with the case file, he emailed her his profile. Not ‘preliminary’, she noted. Very confident. Remembering his modest assertion that he would try to provide something genuinely useful, she double-clicked the icon and began reading.

  DISCLAIMER: this profile is based on available evidence and data as supplied by the Metropolitan Police Service. All conclusions, recommendations and analysis are given in good faith but are only guidelines. It is quite possible that the killer may exhibit all, some or none of the following characteristics. Dr Adrian Trimmets offers no warranty as to the accuracy, usefulness or effectiveness of this report and asserts that any and all responsibility for successfully apprehending the killer profiled in the following pages lies with the Senior Investigating Officer, DCI S. Cole, and her colleagues, and not with Dr Trimmets.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Stella said out loud, as she prepared to read on. ‘The ultimate jobsworth. I bet you’ll be all too keen to claim the credit when we do catch him, though, won’t you?’

  She clicked over to the first page. And sighed. He had apparently just copied and pasted from a textbook.

  Serial killers can be divided into two types: organised and disorganised…

  She skipped ahead, looking for something original, her heart sinking with each fresh sentence.

  The killer is likely to be a white male, aged between seventeen and forty-five. Probably of lower-than-average intelligence, although he may exhibit certain high-functioning intellectual abilities.

  He will have poor social skills and will be either unemployed or employed in a low-skilled job. If he is employed in a high-skilled job, he will probably have received disciplinary warnings for poor performance. He will live alone or with a parent or parents. If he lives with a partner, he may be physically, verbally or sexually abusive.

  His choice of victims is significant. It suggests that he bears a grudge against Christian women. The torture indicates that he has a great deal of suppressed anger and further indicates that he probably exhibits poor impulse control in other areas of his life. He may, for example, be a compulsive eater or gambler and/or have problems with alcohol and/or drugs.

  The mutilations suggest that he has rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. However, his low IQ means that if he works in the medical profession, it will be on the periphery.

  Potential employment could include mortuary assistant, hospital porter or even a printer at a firm of medical publishers.

  The killer has grandiose opinions of himself as doing ‘great work’ to rid the world of religious hypocrisy. If caught, he will probably have a collection of religious books at his home.

  He may well be a church-goer, attending so he can monitor the people he despises, although it is possible that his hatred for Christianity means he has adopted a different faith such as Islam, Judaism or Hinduism. He may also be a passionate and vocal atheist.

  She’d had enough. Not bothering to print, she closed the document then shouted,

  ‘What. A. Muppet!’

  Everyone not on the phone turned to look at her.

  Garry grinned.

  ‘Not what you were hoping for, boss?’

  ‘Oh God, you could say that. It’s the usual garbage. He might be this, but he might that. He’s anywhere from late teens to middle age. Blah blah blah. But the best bit, which I think might just unlock this bastard of a case for us…’ She paused. ‘In fact, listen up, everyone! I quote: “His choice of victims is significant. It suggests that he bears a grudge against Christian women.’’’

  The laughter was loud. When it had died down, Roisin picked her moment.

  ‘No shit.’

  Cam brought a sheet of paper over.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Yes, Cam, what’ve you got? Is that the list of guests off the radio show?’

  ‘Yes. I highlighted all the Christians. Yellow means they’ve already been on, pink that they’ve been invited. Apparently they do a mixture of shows, some on different religions, others focusing on just one. It’s possible he could target a Jewish woman, or a Muslim, but I don’t think he will.’

  Stella shook her head.

  ‘Me neither. Thanks, Cam.’

  She skim-read the list. Picked out in yellow and pink were twenty-three women, with a brief note beside each name explaining why the producer had picked them for Women of Faith.

  ‘What shall we do, boss?’

  ‘I want you to call them. You’re going to have to explain the basics, but keep it low-key. No mention of what he did to the first three. Advise them to be extra-cautious and to try and avoid being alone. Have you got their contact details?’

  ‘No. The prick at the BBC gave the GDPR line. I swear to God, boss, it’s like a magic amulet now. Everyone bleats out ‘GDPR, GDPR!’ as if that means they don’t have to help us catch a serial killer!’

  Stella grinned.

  ‘All right, calm down. I don’t want you having a heart attack. They’re all reasonably well known, otherwise they wouldn’t have been invited onto the show. See what you can dig up online first. If you get stuck, we’ll have to have a nice chat to a magistrate about a warrant.’

  Cam smiled and nodded.

  ‘Thanks, boss.’

  Stella watched her hurry back to her desk, approving of the way she did everything with determination. No slouch, no amble for Camille Wilde. Good girl.

  67

  FRIDAY 31ST AUGUST 8.45 P.M.

  OLIVIER BAR, NATIONAL THEATRE

  In the play’s interval, Greer set the two glasses of chilled white wine down on the table. She and Callie clinked glasses.

  ‘What do yo
u think so far?’ Callie asked.

  ‘I love it,’ Greer replied. ‘But before we discuss Anthony and Cleopatra, there’s something I have to tell you.’

  Then the information about Craig Morgan, somewhat evolved from its pure form when Arianna had passed it to Tamsin, leaped from Greer’s brain to Callie’s. Her eyes popped wide.

  ‘No!’ she whispered, her mouth already curving upwards.

  ‘The bigger the better, apparently,’ Greer said, maintaining a poker face and reaching for her glass.

  ‘You have no idea how helpful that is,’ Callie said.

  ‘I’ve been watching your press conferences. I think I might have an inkling,’ Greer said.

  ‘Aye, well, hopefully I won’t have to do any more except to announce we’ve got him. Either way, I’ve got that dirty wee clipe by the balls now.’

  Greer threw her head back and laughed, drawing amused glances from their fellow patrons.

  ‘You’ll have to get wee Arianna to let go o’ them first!’

  68

  TUESDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 10.00 A.M.

  Professor Karlsson had been surprisingly enthusiastic about meeting Stella. Perhaps the idea of discussing the link between Lucifer’s MO and the tortures inflicted on Christian martyrs appealed to his academic brain.

  ‘Can you come to my office?’ he’d asked the previous day when she’d called. ‘All my background research is here.’

  She’d agreed and rode carefully through the morning traffic from Lisson Grove to Karlsson’s office in Gordon Square. The UCL Philosophy department building was a five-storey Georgian house built of greyish stone. Parking her bike and shaking out her ponytail, she made her way inside and explained to the receptionist who she was and who she’d come to see.

  Karlsson came down to collect her in person. Her mental image evaporated as he arrived in front of her, hand outstretched, smile playing on his lips. No shambling, slightly overweight bumbler in his fifties, wearing a tweedy jacket and bowtie. No shapeless corduroys, no erratic hairstyle. In their place, a trim man in his mid-thirties with a neat brown goatee seasoned with silver, and piercing, dark-brown eyes. He wore pinstriped suit trousers and a sharply ironed white shirt, open at the neck.

  ‘DCI Cole, I presume,’ he said.

  ‘Stella, please.’

  ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘Come this way. Did you have an easy drive over? The traffic on the Euston Road is murder, isn’t it? No pun intended.’

  ‘I rode over. I live on Lisson Grove, so it was a ten-minute journey.’

  He looked her up and down.

  ‘You must be very fit. You don’t look out of breath at all.’

  She smiled.

  ‘My bike has an engine. I just sit there and twist the throttle when I want to go faster.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Ah. That’ll teach me to make assumptions. A fatal error for a professor of Moral Philosophy.’

  ‘And for a detective,’ she couldn’t resist adding as they reached the lifts.

  Karlsson’s office was a perfect match for his physical appearance, Stella decided, taking it in with a practised eye. No piles of paper or wobbling stacks of books to mess up the perfect proportions of the white-painted room. No half-dead pot plants or off-kilter posters taped to the walls. The two walls not interrupted by the door or the window were lined with shelves on which hundreds of books were arranged alphabetically by author.

  A framed photograph of Karlsson shaking hands with the previous prime minister took pride of place on the wall behind the desk, itself a model of precision, and decluttered to the point it might have arrived that morning from a furniture store. The desk phone, closed laptop and lamp might almost have been supplied right along with it, under the heading, ‘people who bought this desk also bought these’.

  Karlsson gestured to the chair in front of the desk.

  ‘Please.’

  He eased his lanky frame into the padded executive number facing Stella, pressed his fingers together under his chin and smiled, but kept his mouth shut.

  Not in a hurry to get stuck in. I like that.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Peter,’ she said. ‘And for your help yesterday. It was a very useful insight.’

  He waved the compliment away.

  ‘I’ve known Jamie for years. We like to help each other out whenever we can.’

  ‘So, I don’t know if you follow the news, but three women have been murdered in the last two weeks. I’m the senior investigating officer on all three murders, which we believe were committed by the same man.’

  Karlsson spread his hands on the desk. Stella noticed a series of scars that ran across the fingers of his right hand.

  ‘I know we academics have a reputation for being unworldly, especially philosophers, but I do try to keep up on what’s going on in the real world. I read the Guardian from time to time. I saw one of their articles.’

  He smiled as he said this. Stella interpreted the expression as a sign he could see how one who inhabited the ivory towers of academia might appear to a hard-working, real-world copper. He continued speaking.

  ‘You’re talking about Niamh Connolly, Sarah Sharpe and Moira Lowney.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jamie asked me about Saint Lucy. Are you saying one of the dead women had her eyes gouged out?’

  ‘Yes, Moira Lowney. Though I’d ask you not to share that information.’

  ‘Of course, understood. Copycats and so forth. Jamie asked me about martyrs. Is that the line you’re pursuing?’

  ‘At the moment, it looks promising, yes.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Old Foxe would be delighted.’

  Stella blinked.

  ‘Sorry, Peter. What did you just say?’

  He frowned.

  ‘Oh. Nothing. Just that old Foxe would be jumping for joy if he knew.’

  ‘Who was old Fox? A pet?’

  ‘No, a writer. Foxe with an E. He was a sixteenth-century English historian. Best known for a work called The Actes and Monuments, but everyone calls it Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Why?’

  ‘Again, confidentially, the killer is using the pseudonym MJ Fox when he contacts his victims. Jamie and I were talking about what its significance might be.’

  Karlsson nodded.

  ‘Makes sense. If he’s obsessed with the pain and cruelty of martyrdom, Foxe gave some pretty graphic descriptions of the methods.’

  Stella made a note in her book, while Karlsson asked another question.

  ‘What did he do to the other two women?’

  ‘Sarah Sharpe was shot full of crossbow bolts and Niamh Connolly’s breasts were removed and placed on a dinner plate on the table in front of her.’

  ‘Sebastian, Agatha, Lucy.’

  ‘The saints, yes. We believe that the man the media have dubbed Lucifer is copying the methods used in their martyrdoms.’

  ‘Oh no! I mean, yes. But it’s more than that. In fact, it’s worse than that. Shit!’

  Surprised by the sudden expletive, and the academic’s sudden pallor and stricken expression, Stella felt her interest quicken.

  ‘What do you mean worse? I’m struggling to think of anything worse than having your eyes cut out while you were still breathing.’

  ‘How about being skinned alive?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Saint Bartholomew. Originally Bar Talmai, which means Son of Talmai in Aramaic. He was one of the twelve apostles, known as Nathaniel. The stories vary but, in the most popular version, Bartholomew was flayed alive after converting King Polymius, the King of Armenia, to Christianity. The king’s brother, Astyages, ordered Bartholomew to be tortured and killed because he feared retribution by the Romans.’

  Now it was Stella’s turn to frown. What was he talking about? Why this particular saint?

  ‘And you think Lucifer might do that next?’

  ‘I don’t think he will. I know he will.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because he’s using my book as a guide.’


  69

  TUESDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 10.15 A.M.

  Karlsson swung round in his chair and grabbed a hardback off a shelf to his right and turned back to face Stella. He handed her the book then waited for her to open it.

  She looked down at the book, which smelled faintly of ink. The glossy dust jacket was almost tacky to the touch. New, then. A reproduction of a mediaeval etching dominated the front cover. It depicted a woman hanging head down from a scaffold, while grinning yokels set about cutting down through her groin with a two-man saw. She read the title aloud.

  ‘Unholy Pain: Martyrdom and the Cult of Cruelty in the Christian Church.’ She looked up at Karlsson, whose eyes were tight with tension. ‘Snappy,’ she said.

  ‘My publisher’s idea. My working title was “Why is God Such a Sadist?”’

  ‘Not a fan, then?’

  ‘I think you could say not. In case you don’t follow the philosophical news, I am known as Britain’s foremost radical atheist.’

  Stella nodded.

  ‘Kudos,’ she said drily. Then she remembered the final line she’d read of Trimmets’s profile. He may also be a passionate and vocal atheist.

  She opened the book to the dedication page.

  ‘To Cee, for proving love is blind.’

  ‘Who’s Cee?’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘How did she prove love is blind?’

  ‘She’s a Church of England vicar.’

  Stella frowned.

  ‘Must make for interesting dinner table conversations, then.’

  Karlsson smiled.

  ‘As I said, love is blind. We met at a debate organised by the university. On opposing sides, naturally. The teams went to the pub afterwards and by the time I’d presented all my arguments to Cee, I’d also fallen in love.’