The Curator (Washington Poe)

by M. W. Craven

  She tapped her laptop’s keyboard and a photograph of a building appeared on a wall monitor.

  ‘This is the first crime scene. These are the admin offices of John Bull Haulage in Carlisle. On Christmas Eve a cargo administrator called Barbara Willoughby opened her Secret Santa present. She was supposed to be getting a mug with an engagement ring inside. Instead she got this.’

  The photograph changed from the outside of the drab building to a close-up of a scuffed beige carpet tile, the hardwearing type found in offices up and down the country.

  Two fingers lay in the middle.

  They’d been severed close to the knuckle. The cuts appeared neat. The bloodied ends were clotted and dry and snagged with fluff. One of the fingers still bore a ring. It was thin, almost certainly a woman’s wedding band.

  The photograph changed again. This time a mug appeared onscreen.

  #BSC6 was printed on the side in large black letters.

  Flynn said, ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘We have no idea,’ Nightingale said. ‘We can’t find any reference to it online.’

  ‘If it’s on the internet, Tilly will find it,’ Poe said.

  ‘We also have no idea how the mug ended up under their Christmas tree,’ Nightingale continued. ‘It wasn’t the one that Barbara was supposed to open. The paper used to wrap the mug is interesting too.’

  She brought it up on the screen. Four pieces of paper. Crumpled and torn by Barbara Willoughby when she had opened her gift, then flattened by CSI so they could be photographed. A4 size according to the forensic ruler that lay beside them. Each piece was patterned with silhouettes of a black water bird. A swan, or possibly a duck with an elongated neck. Nothing else. No words, no message.

  ‘These sheets of A4 appear to be bespoke. We think they were produced on an ordinary household printer. Other than the bird symbol, there was nothing of any forensic value on them. Detectives are interviewing staff at John Bull but we don’t think anyone from the firm was involved.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ Poe said.

  Nightingale didn’t answer. Instead, she tapped her laptop again. The exterior of a church appeared on the screen. It was constructed from red sandstone and had high, arched windows filled with stained glass. A tall steeple towered above an imposing ironbound oak door.

  ‘Crime scene number two: Saint Luke’s on the outskirts of Barrow-in-Furness.’

  The photograph changed.

  It was a close-up of the church font. The bowl was made of brass or copper, and was ornately carved with religious symbols. Two severed fingers lay in the middle of it.

  Poe stared at the image, burning it into his brain. This was his first impression and he needed to see it as the killer had intended him to. The horror would have to wait.

  The fingers were clearly female again. One of the fingernails was pierced at the end with a gold stud. Nightingale displayed a close-up. The stud was in the shape of a teddy bear. Poe thought the fingers looked younger than the ones found at the previous crime scene.

  The next photograph was of a hymn board. It was light oak and had five rows for the service’s hymn numbers to be slotted into. The middle row held a piece of folded-up A4 paper. #BSC6 was written on it.

  ‘We don’t know how this deposition was achieved either. The fingers definitely weren’t there during Midnight Mass. The warden found them at 6 a.m. when he went in to turn on the heating for the Christmas Day service. There’s no sign of forced entry and only he and the vicar have keys.’

  Poe raised his hand.

  ‘Sergeant Poe?’

  ‘Can you bring up all the images you have of the inside of the church, ma’am?’

  Nightingale did. There were several.

  Poe studied them. Saint Luke’s was like most churches Poe had been in. A Bible lectern on the left, a pulpit on the right and an altar front and centre. The stone floor looked well worn and uneven. Ornate candleholders and offertory boxes flanked two rows of oak pews. Wrought iron curtain rods framed the back of the door. A pair of heavy curtains were tied back, no doubt ready to be used as draught excluders during a service.

  He made his way to the front of the room.

  ‘Creeping round in the early hours of Christmas morning is too risky; anyone out then has burglar written all over them,’ he explained. ‘Any copper worth their salt will give them a pull. Even if it’s just out of boredom. A quick search to check they’re not going equipped, and instead of a screwdriver or crowbar, the cop finds severed fingers? I don’t think so. This isn’t how our guy likes to play.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Midnight Mass is the one service of the year that’s packed with non-regulars. I think our perp will have attended the service, slipped away at the final whistle when everyone was wishing each other merry Christmas, and found somewhere to hide. Churches like this have cubbyholes everywhere. The warden would have been so eager to get home I doubt he checked for stragglers. Probably just a shout out that he was about to lock up.’

  Nightingale nodded. Poe saw others were nodding too.

  ‘Thoughts on how he broke back out?’ Nightingale asked.

  Poe pointed at the front door and the thick draught curtains tied back beside it.

  ‘He didn’t. All he had to do was wait until the morning and hide behind the curtains when the warden came to turn on the heating. He’d only have been popping in so I doubt he’d have locked the door behind him and it would have been too dark to see what was in the font. The perp only had to wait until the warden was in the back before walking out the front door.’

  Nightingale stared at him.

  ‘That’s how I’d have done it anyway,’ Poe added.

  ‘I want the Midnight Mass crowd interviewed,’ Nightingale said. ‘All of them. Today if possible. I want to know if there was anyone there they didn’t recognise. Helen, can you arrange?’

  ‘Will do, ma’am,’ a woman in a suit said.

  ‘Let me know if you need more people. Paul, CSI is still processing the crime scene, right?’

  ‘They are,’ a man near the front said.

  ‘Get them to check anywhere someone could have hidden for a few minutes after Midnight Mass ended. It’s possible he slipped up and there was some forensic transfer.’

  ‘I’ll phone them now, ma’am.’

  CSI Paul left to make his call and Nightingale tapped her laptop again.

  The screen changed.

  ‘The last crime scene: Fiskin’s Food Hall in Whitehaven. They open for an hour each Boxing Day to draw the meat raffle.’

  It was the interior of what a lot of old-fashioned butchers had had to diversify into. Big pieces of meat still hung on hooks, dark red haunches and forelegs marbled with tallow and suet. Steaks and hams and streaky bacon were still displayed on artificial grass. But there were also tables piled high with jams and biscuits and olive oils and balsamic vinegars and other things Poe thought had no business being in his favourite type of shop. There was even a salad bar.

  The screen changed again, this time to the cooked meat counter. It was glass fronted and full of sliced ham, fancy coleslaws and pies. And right in the middle, nestled between the sausage rolls and the sliced black pudding, was yet another pair of fingers.

  These ones were podgy and the nails were bitten to the quick. The amputation looked less clinical than the previous crime scenes. The ends of the bones were splintered and the skin was torn and messy.

  Poe thought they looked male.

  The perpetrator had affixed a folded A4 sheet, displaying the now familiar #BSC6, to a white plastic price tag. Nightingale’s next photograph, of the A4 page unfolded and straightened and next to a CSI forensic ruler, could have been mistaken for the one from the church – they seemed identical.

  ‘The killer was caught on the shop’s CCTV but his face was well covered. He waited until Mick Fiskin was drawing the raffle and simply walked behind the counter and placed the fingers in among the cooked goods. Bold as brass
. He then walked out with the crowd when it was all over. It’s a good fifteen minutes before anyone notices what he’s done. We have someone trawling through the CCTV in Whitehaven but it’s not saturated. We aren’t hopeful.’

  Nightingale turned off the monitor and everyone settled in their seats.

  ‘Obviously we have hundreds of photographs and CSI are at all three scenes, but these are the highlights. Questions?’

  ‘The fingers, are they from one person or six?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘We think three. We’ll confirm soon but the pairs seem to match visually. We’re fairly sure one is male and two are female.’

  ‘You’ve been referring to the perpetrator as “our killer”, ma’am,’ Poe said. ‘I assume you don’t think this is just a sick prank?’

  Nightingale shook her head.

  ‘The pathologist found one finger on each pair had something called “vital reaction” – that’s what happens to living tissue when there’s trauma. Inflammation, clotting, the presence of a range of chemicals that wouldn’t be there if they’d been removed after the victim had died. The other finger didn’t show vital reaction, which means it was taken some time after death.’

  ‘Assuming the fingers in each pair are from the same person then, this man wants us to know these are murders,’ Poe said. ‘If the fingers were all removed before death, they could have potentially been stolen after a legitimate surgical procedure. If they were all removed after death occurred, it could have been medical students or someone messing around at the mortuary or funeral parlour.’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘That’s our assessment too.’

  ‘You’ve not found or identified the victims yet, I assume?’

  ‘No victims, no IDs,’ Nightingale confirmed. ‘Any more questions?’

  Poe had several but he’d wait until he’d read the file. He kept his hand down.

  ‘OK, then. If the SCAS guys can stay behind, everyone else can get back to work.’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ Poe said after the room had emptied. Flynn also stayed behind. ‘When we do find a body, there’s a pathologist in the north-east you should ask to take a look. Estelle Doyle. It looks like we might need the best and, trust me, she is.’

  ‘I’ve heard of Professor Doyle,’ Nightingale said. ‘Will she be available? And do you think she would look at the six fingers? The attending pathologist was a locum.’

  ‘I’ll call her when we’re finished here.’ Estelle Doyle was the weirdest person Poe knew – even weirder than Bradshaw. He’d be surprised if she did something as vanilla as celebrate Christmas. Black Mass maybe.

  ‘Good,’ Nightingale said.

  Flynn said, ‘Putting writing on the side of a mug takes specialist equipment. How’s that lead going?’

  ‘We’re following up with businesses who do digital printing but we’re not optimistic. There are thirty who can do it in Cumbria alone, and if you include UK-wide mail order businesses and people who’ve bought home kits, the numbers are six figures.’

  Poe had guessed as much.

  ‘The A4 pages he leaves with the fingers are curious,’ Nightingale said. ‘When we processed them the tech noticed that a different printer had been used for the note left at each scene. Apparently each printer drum has flaws as unique as fingerprints.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ Flynn said.

  ‘Unless he’s using printers in libraries and internet cafés. Making sure he never goes to the same place twice,’ Poe said. ‘Might be worth checking their CCTV.’

  ‘Already on it,’ Nightingale said.

  They discussed it for a while longer. It was clear Nightingale had hit the ‘golden hour’ hard and was conducting a thorough and intrusive investigation. She’d got in early and had ensured that evidence wasn’t compromised, lost or destroyed, witnesses hadn’t yet drifted off and there’d been no time for alibis to be constructed. Her primary role was to develop lines of enquiry for her team to follow. It was a responsibility that Poe had never sought – the wrong decision could waste hundreds of investigative hours – but he knew when it was being done well. Nightingale knew what she was doing.

  ‘What do you want from us, ma’am?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘Large investigations move at the speed of logistics,’ Nightingale replied. ‘And that’s how they should. It’s how everything gets done. But with this I think I’d also like a smaller, independent investigation running parallel to the main one. It can be reactive, maybe even proactive, in the way that the main one can’t.’

  She turned to face Poe.

  ‘Would I be right in saying that a Venn diagram of the people you know and the people you’ve upset would closely intersect?’

  Flynn snorted. ‘A Venn diagram of the people Poe knows and the people he’s upset would be a fucking circle.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Poe said.

  Nightingale smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Sergeant … look, can I call you Poe? Everyone else seems to.’

  ‘Poe’s fine.’

  ‘Someone like you, with no ties to the investigation, with no real worries about upsetting the political hierarchy, could be invaluable. If you’re OK with it, DI Flynn, I’d like SCAS to work independently. You’ll report directly to me and if you need support I’ll arrange it.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Flynn replied. ‘And I know it suits Poe. Upsetting the political hierarchy is his particular area of expertise.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘Poe, darling,’ Estelle Doyle said. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve found some online mistletoe?’

  ‘Er … no,’ Poe replied. ‘No mistletoe here … only cold weather.’

  In the grim world of forensic pathology, Estelle Doyle was, as Bradshaw would have described her, an outlier. Even in the mortuary she dressed like she was off to an S & M club. Black hair and even blacker makeup. Fishnet stockings and stilettos. More tattoos than David Beckham, lip gloss redder than arterial blood. Poe found her extraordinarily beautiful and utterly terrifying. But she was unrivalled in her field and that was enough for him to keep going back to her lair.

  Pathology was only part of her expertise. All forensic disciplines came naturally to her and she divided her time between forensic pathology, forensic science and lecturing.

  And for some reason she had a soft spot for him. Poe didn’t know why. Her contempt for police officers was never understated, but with him she would find the time to make sure he understood everything. Earlier in the year, she’d said it was because he was the perennial underdog and that he had Capraesque qualities. Poe had been too scared to ask what she meant.

  Doyle paused and Poe forgot to fill the silence.

  ‘It’s the twenty-seventh of December, Poe. Surely even someone as adamantine as yourself can find someone to spend the festive season with?’

  ‘Adam Ant what now?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Poe,’ she replied. ‘What is it you desire of me?’

  Poe was sure she spoke like this just to make him blush, even over the phone.

  ‘I have a finger for you,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you now?’ she drawled.

  ‘Lots of fingers.’ He knew he was making it worse but for some reason, whenever he talked to her, he became a right chatter of shit.

  ‘Well, aren’t you just the gift that keeps on giving, Poe?’

  ‘We have three separate crime scenes,’ he said, recovering some dignity. ‘A pair was found at each one.’

  ‘Same victim?’ She was all business now.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m visiting friends in Haltwhistle so I can be at the Cumberland Infirmary in thirty minutes. How soon can you get everything to me?’

  Poe glanced at his watch. Assuming Nightingale agreed, he reckoned he could have them there within the hour. He told her.

  ‘See you soon then,’ she replied. ‘You do bring me the most fabulous gifts, Poe.’

  The line went dead and Poe went looking for Nightingale.

  Chapter 6
/>   It had been six months since Poe had seen Estelle Doyle. She’d helped enormously in the Jared Keaton case. She’d given them the early break and then overseen the recovery of evidence in one of the most complex crime scenes anyone in law enforcement had ever had to deal with.

  Poe trusted her. It was as simple as that. She stood up to senior investigating officers and interpreted the evidence as she saw it. She had no interest in following the narrative the SIO was trying to present. Some detectives preferred malleable pathologists but Poe wasn’t one of them.

  ‘I hate these gimmicky killers,’ Poe muttered to Flynn as they walked down the stairs to the mortuary in the Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle’s major hospital.

  Flynn had insisted on coming with him. She wasn’t quite waddling yet but she wasn’t far off. Naively, he’d asked if she’d wanted to stay in the car.

  ‘I’m not the one who’s fucking ill, Poe,’ she’d snapped. She’d ignored the lift and taken the stairs to prove her point. She could be just as stubborn as him sometimes. By the time Poe had caught her up he was wheezing so hard it sounded like he’d swallowed a whistle.

  Flynn smiled in satisfaction. Point proved.

  The fingers had been sent ahead and Nightingale had tracked the order and confirmed delivery with them.

  It was the 27th of December and this part of the hospital was quiet. Their footsteps reverberated along the sterile corridor.

  At the end was the mortuary.

  Poe knocked on the door and entered.

  Doyle was bent over an inspection table. At first glance it looked empty. It wasn’t. Two fingers were in a small tray. Doyle was working on them.

  She straightened when she saw them.

  She was wearing a lab coat, a hairnet and goggles. Standard attire when the metal met the meat. Her eyes were ringed with black eyeliner and her lipstick was crimson. Poe didn’t know if she always looked like this, whether it was a work thing and she dressed like Mary Poppins when she was on her own time, or if she did it just to watch him squirm.