‘No, he means the slashed throat. Sarah was the first victim to have a detectable cause of death,’ Gina said.
‘The MO is different because Sarah wasn’t cold-bloodedly killed,’ said DC Alliea Cartwright, ‘nor was she killed at all. Instead she committed suicide, throwing all the killer’s plans awry.’
They’d all read Dougie’s account of Julia Penhall’s theory. It was now the favoured hypothesis.
‘Brave girl,’ said DS ‘Cat’ Okoro. Like all the women on the Squad, she’d thought through this scenario, and it haunted her.
‘Do we have any ideas about the date of death?’ Taff challenged.
‘Not without the watch,’ Ronnie said, angrily.
‘She could have died four weeks ago, she could have died three days ago. No way of telling because of the embalming process,’ Alliea confirmed.
‘I thought we were hoping for a timing on the throat-slash?’ said DC Lisa Aaronovich.
‘Inconclusive.’ That was Andy; he’d just read the results of the second post mortem.
‘The pub she was found in had a state of the art security system, the landlord is ex-Old Bill,’ said DC Seamus Malone. ‘He says, the CCTV control box isn’t in plain view, it’s concealed behind some brickwork. So, the killer must have known that, maybe he used to work nearby, knew the pub –’
‘You can buy a scanner that locates concealed burglar alarms,’ said Alliea.
‘Yeah, but –’
‘It’s a shit pub, the landlord doesn’t know his beer,’ said Ronnie Tindale.
‘Well that’s hardly relevant.’
‘Pattern analysis shows the killer favours leaving his bodies in places where there is high electronic security, but few or no security guards,’ Cat reminded them.
‘That’s because he’s not fucking thick,’ Taff suggested.
‘Maybe –’
‘Whoah whoah whoah,’ said Dougie; and all discussion halted.
Dougie allowed a six second silence.
‘We need a fresh approach. We know there’s been a change of MO and we suspect we know why, but that helps us not one whit. So, blue skies time. Cloudless blue skies and running ideas up flagpoles and balls of spittle ratiocination required. What crazy and absurdly unlikely ideas are we failing to consider here?’ he said.
There was a tactful silence. Dougie had a reputation for sometimes clutching at straws. This felt like one of those occasions.
‘Seriously. What are we missing?’ he persisted.
‘If we knew that, we wouldn’t be missing it, you daft bugger,’ said Cat, with a rueful smile.
Catriona Okoro was a big woman, in both personality and physique. She had maternal breasts, a lover’s hips, and fists that could flatten a docker. Her mixed race had blessed her with extraordinary looks, and people in the street often stared at her because of the wild frizz of her auburn hair and the freckles on her jet-black skin.
‘We’ve followed every protocol,’ Andy added. ‘We’ve cross-referenced three million items of data. But we’ve got nothing to work on, guv. No witnesses, no DNA. No pattern to the killings other than the cyber-grooming and the fact he’s good at avoiding detection. And you know what happened to our honeytrap operation on the web.’
Dougie nodded; it was a bitter memory.
‘Computational analysis?’
Catriona: ‘Nope. We’ve run all the data through the grinder, including the Sarah Penhall case. Fuzzy logic, swarm robotics. Nada.’
‘Funeral parlours?’
‘Every mortician in the Metropolitan region has been interviewed at least twice,’ said Ronnie Tindale, with peculiar relish. Ronnie was a Nottingham born detective who’d been with Five Squad six years. He was legendary as the kind of man who could add gloom to a funeral.
‘Ditto, mortuary assistants,’ Ronnie continued. ‘Ditto cleaners who work in funeral homes or mortuaries, pathologists and clinicians who work regularly with corpses. Ditto Egyptologists. We’ve also tagged every internet user who has downloaded data on embalming in the last twenty years and CRO’d each and every one of them.’
‘There’s a pattern we’re missing,’ Dougie insisted.
Another tactful silence was preserved.
‘I’m the senior investigating officer on three cases at the moment,’ said Dougie sternly, ‘including the Butcher of Clerkenwell which despite much pressure I refuse to wind down. I’m also the supervisory SIO on six other cases. There are sixty other SIOs in London East, three of them made up in the last six months, eighty plus in London West. We’re deluged. It’s a fucking murder plague.’
‘Yeah, and we know why that is,’ said Taff, bitterly.
‘Catriona?’ queried Dougie.
‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘No correlation, guv. The murder rate after the Occlusion went down, not up. This serial killing epidemic is recent. A phenomenon of the last four years. Starting from six years after the demons, you know, irrupted.’ She looked sheepish; it was a word they all hated.
‘Well I stand corrected,’ said Taff fake-cheerfully.
‘Something else then.’
‘Must be,’ said Cat. ‘The supernatural angle – no way. Every crime scene has been scanned by a demonologist, including the pub in Victoria, and our guy who checked out the Black Horse found no traces of spooky demon stuff. We’re talking human killer here.’
‘I know we are. I’m thinking aloud, bear with me,’ said Dougie irritably.
A longer tactful silence was preserved.
‘Guv?’ said Gina, at length. Subtext, what the fuck are you playing at? He gave her a foul look.
The silence resumed.
‘Maybe we’re casting the net too narrow,’ he concluded at last.
‘Fair point,’ said Taff sarcastically.
‘Guv, are you losing it?’ Ronnie suggested. ‘I’m thinking, premature senility or Alzheimer’s?’ Dougie threw him a ‘Die, you bastard!’ smile.
‘Can I make a suggestion?’ offered Fillide.
‘Gina,’ said Dougie: meaning, sort the bitch out.
‘If you have a suggestion, RDC Melandroni,’ Gina said aggressively to Fillide, ‘put it in writing, eh? There’s a sweetheart.’
They all knew that Fillide’s written English was appalling; her Action Reports were the object of regular ridicule. So this gibe from Gina was calculatedly offensive.
Fillide shrugged. ‘Don’ fuckin’ matter,’ she said. ‘I don’ wanna be here anyway.’ She made a facial gesture. A mouth-popping mime, which, Dougie guessed, in any culture was probably obscene: and in her home city was certainly so.
He glared at her. She glared back at him with hate in her eyes.
Fillide looked completely out of place around the briefing table. The other female officers wore casual gear, just like the men; but Fillide always wore a dress. And it was always, without fail, a gorgeous, glamorous, and shockingly expensive dress.
Today Fillide’s gown was a blend of richly coloured amber and silver and pale green fabric, exquisitely patterned, perfectly cut; hugging her voluptuous body and leaving her slender brown arms erotically bare. Her hair was expensively coiffured. Her deftly applied makeup gave her beauty an intangible noli mi tangere sheen; her lips were as red as her Prada shoes. She wore amber beads the size of gulls’ eggs around her neck that picked out the amber hues of the fabric. Her ear-rings dangled down to her shoulders; they were golden globes suspended from long golden chains, and could be used as flails if she swung her head fast enough.
She looked, all in all, more like a fashion model about to step on to a catwalk in Paris than a Metropolitan Police detective on a murder enquiry.
‘Okay then,’ said Dougie. ‘Let’s go with this, people: seventeen murders on my desk alone. Sixty-nine in this Command. One hundred and forty-two Met-wide. Catriona, put them all in the system. Do a network analysis of every murder case in London for the past, let’s say four years.’
‘That’ll take a while,’ said Catriona, typing frantically at her
keyboard.
‘How long a while?’
‘Ready now,’ said Catriona.
A virtual list appeared on the Holo Wall, spanning the entire width of the room: a broad tower of words that threatened to burst out of the ceiling and windows, listing every murder committed over the last four years within the Bounds of London.
Dougie stood up to get a clearer view. The same list was available on the desk tablets, and some of the squad used Zoom to start reading the names. But Dougie liked to see his data in mid-air, where he could walk among it, and inside it.
The type was small verging on invisible, in order to get all the names in. Dougie stepped into the tower of type. Names of murder victims danced upon his burly tall body as he walked around inside the holo. Peering at them, like a kid staring at an ant swarm and wondering where the hive-mind army will eventually march.
‘Larger.’
Catriona upped the font; the edges of the list now vanished into the walls.
‘Exclude domestic murders.’
Several thousand names vanished. The list shrank substantially.
‘Exclude probable gang murders.’
Another cluster of names vanished. Dougie stepped back a little, so the names were no longer written on him.
‘Exclude any GBHs which subsequently became murder.’
Another cluster of names vanished.
‘Exclude any probable crimes of passion or murders for gain.’
Another cluster vanished.
‘And now sort the names. On the basis of personal relationships or other clear connections between the victims. And filter out any that aren’t thus connected.’
A host of names vanished and others shuffled in mid-air, and were rearranged with arrows to indicate relationships between the victims.
‘Exclude slight acquaintances.’
The network decluttered; a host of arrows vanished.
‘Sort in date order.’
The names shuffled and became a tower of names.
‘Talk me through them.’
The name at the bottom of the tower turned red. Catriona read it from her HOLMES console, as the others watched the Holo Wall or read it on their desk tablets.
‘Michael Soames. Died almost exactly four years ago. Probable gay murder. Bound and beheaded in his own home. He’s connected to another murder victim called Anthony Meadows, they were friends at University and also lovers. Anthony read the eulogy at Michael’s funeral. And subsequently became a victim of the Butcher of Clerkenwell.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ Dougie said.
Catriona hit a key, and the name above Michael Soames lit up in red: Anthony Meadows.
‘I said, in date order,’ snapped Dougie.
‘Yeah, sorry.’ Catriona retyped frantically.
The name didn’t move.
The bottom of the tower of names still read:
Anthony Meadows
Michael Soames
‘For fuck’s sake Catriona.’
‘Sorry, computer glitch.’ Catriona typed again.
‘No it’s right,’ said Ronnie, reading off his own screen. ‘Michael Soames, DOD June 29th 2019, Anthony Meadows DOD July 15th 2019. Two weeks between the murders. Anthony died a week after his best friend’s funeral.’
Dougie blinked.
‘If this was Dickens, that would be a coincidence,’ he said. ‘Next.’
‘Yeah this is –’ Catriona typed. ‘Yeah, odd, um.’
‘Next, in date order. It’s not rocket science, Catriona.’
Catriona typed, marshalling a data base of thousands of names, which cross referenced the murder victims by age, location of death, means of death, family connection, personal connection, cause of death and suspected perpetrators; all in a matter of moments.
‘There’s another coincidence,’ she pointed out. ‘Next name to be flagged is Gerald Meadows, who is connected to the second victim Anthony Meadows. In that he’s Anthony’s father. But Gerald died in a murder suicide. Nothing to do with - Sorry, I’m wrong. He was the murderer. Gerald I mean. He killed his grandchildren. Drove them in his car on to the M1 North, then crashed into a -’
‘Light it up,’ said Dougie brusquely.
Catriona lit it up.
Gerald Meadows
Anthony Meadows
Michael Soames
‘With dates.’
Gerald Meadows: August 1, 2019
Anthony Meadows: July 15, 2019
Michael Soames: June 29th 2019
‘A murder every two weeks,’ marvelled Dougie. ‘What else do we have on Gerald and Anthony?’
Ronnie was the first to check the biog files on his HOLMES V. ‘Dad Gerald was a University lecturer. King’s College London. English. And a poet. Son was too in fact; several magazines published his poetry. I’ve read Dad’s poetry, as it happens. Not good. Shit in fact. Pretentious, really. It’s –’
‘Ronnie,’ Dougie warned.
‘ – a load of wank,’ said Ronnie undeterred. ‘However, father and son did often give poetry readings together, for paid audiences. Gerald was highly regarded by the critics even though, as I’ve explained -’ Ronnie made an ‘urgh’ face.
‘Were they close?’ Gina asked.
‘They were son and father,’ Ronnie said, irascibly.
Dougie took it; you had no choice with Ronnie.
‘Did they fucking like each other, or fucking hate each other?’ he asked.
‘Both?’ Ronnie hazarded, philosophically.
‘Anyone?’ Dougie appealed.
‘No way of telling,’ Catriona suggested.
‘Hack their emails from the cloud.’
‘We can’t do that guv!’ said Cat. ‘Not without a warrant.’
‘Do it.’
Catriona looked over at Andy, Actioning him with a glance.
Andy Homerton set up a decrypt program and scanned the emails. It took about seven minutes. No one spoke in all that time.
‘Yeah, they were close,’ said Andy. ‘Very close indeed, I’d say. Wish my bloody dad –’
‘Can it,’
‘Yes, guv.’
‘Next.’
‘Melissa Anderson,’ said Catriona. ‘In her forties. A Senior Lecturer in English. And a colleague of Gerald Meadows. He wrote a poem to her once.’ She checked. ‘A love poem.’
‘Date of death?’ Dougie knew the date of death. ‘August 15th, 2019,’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
‘She was the first Embalmer victim,’ Dougie said.
‘Yes she was, guv,’ Catriona said patiently. She’d been on the Embalmer enquiry for all of its four years. She knew every victim’s biog by heart.
‘And she had a close and possibly romantic relationship with Gerald Meadows, who died in highly suspicious circumstances, and who was the father of Anthony Meadows, a victim of the Butcher of Clerkenwell.’
‘Yes, guv.’
Dougie thought a while. He had the tiger by the tail, and he was regretting it.
‘Light up the tower, with italic type to indicate intimate relationships, as opposed to work associates or non-close relatives. In other words: lovers, spouses, civil partnerships, siblings, parent and child. You follow my logic?’
‘No, guv,’ said Catriona.
‘Just do it.’
There were two hundred and fifty names on the tower by this point; fifty six of them were in italics.
‘Delete the names that aren’t in italics.’
A host of names vanished; only fifty-six remained.
‘Give me the probable killer of each victim, by nickname if it’s a serial killer, starting from the bottom.’
‘Unknown killer; Butcher of Clerkenwell; murder suicide; Embalmer; Balham Strangler; professional hit by person unknown; Butcher of Clerkenwell,’ Catriona began.
‘Stop.’
Dougie thought.
‘This is impossible,’ said Gina. Knowing it wasn’t.
Dougie looked at Catriona; his eyes asked th
e question, Do you get it?
She looked back at him: meaning, yes, she got it.
‘Fifty-six killings. Multiple MO’s. But just one killer or one team of killers,’ synopsised Catriona. ‘Common factor is that each victim is the loved one of the immediately preceding victim. Lover, husband, wife, brother, sister, parent, child, best friend.’
‘One killer?’ Gina said.
‘Not impossible,’ argued Ronnie. ‘If you never took a bloody holiday.’ He grinned at his own wit; no one joined him in his hilarity.
Dougie was figuring it out fast.
‘The killer has been hiding from us,’ he said. ‘In plain sight. Using different MO’s. Killing in different parts of London. Killing with seeming randomness, but in fact, making a pattern. A shape.’
‘A Murder Love Chain,’ said Taff, naming it.
‘A Love Chain. You got it.’ Dougie let the concept seep into him, then spoke it out loud: ‘Whoever the murder victim loves the most, he or she will be murdered next.’
‘Oh fuck,’ said Lisa Aaronovich, the youngest member of the squad, turning green.
‘Scroll to the top,’ said Dougie. Catriona scrolled. The topmost name, as the most recent of the murders, was Matthew Baker.
‘Where’s Sarah Penhall?’
Sarah’s name was added a keystroke later.
Sarah Penhall: body found 30th May, 2023, no verifiable DOD.
‘Does she have a link with Matthew?’
Catriona typed and peered at her own screen, not the holo. ‘No, or it’d be flagged. Not Facebook Friends, they didn’t have each other’s email addresses. They didn’t work together. They – yeah. That’s it. They went to school together. Primary school. Different secondary schools. But as kids, they went to Bedleigh Primary School in Chichester. They’re both from Chichester.’
‘School photo. There must be a school photo, on Flickr or Friends Forever,’ Dougie ordered.
‘I’m looking.’ Catriona typed. ‘Here it is.’
A school photo appeared in the air on the Holo Wall and on all twelve desk tablets. Forty or so ten-year-olds glared out at the camera, with hauntingly young faces.
‘Target Matthew.’ An arrow appeared on the holo image, pointing. A short tubby bespectacled geek was highlighted in red.
‘You’re kidding me,’ Dougie said.
Hell on Earth Page 12
