by Will Carver
I knew this was coming. And still I couldn’t stop it.
When I arrive, Paulson is talking to a fireman I don’t recognise, a cigarette hanging from his top lip, oblivious to the sudden irony of his habit. An ambulance is parked on the kerb, the back doors flung open. I pull up nearby and take a moment to collect myself.
My sergeant tilts his head, acknowledging my arrival, and motions for me to come over.
I scratch around my neck, pulling the uncomfortable shirt collar away from my skin. It’s a humid, sticky day. Heaving myself out of the musty car, I push the door shut, trapping in the stench of Scotch and insomnia, and amble over to the live crime scene.
‘Too late?’ I ask, deflated, arriving in the midst of conversation, my hands in my pockets.
‘Chief Archer, this is DI David.’ Paulson takes care of the formalities. ‘He is the lead investigator on this case.’
I sense the high-ranking fireman judging me on my appearance. I see him look me up and down as though I have just emerged from a doorway and asked him for money to get into a shelter for the night. He doesn’t even realise he is doing it.
Paulson, of course, picks up on this behaviour and cocks me a knowing glance. Archer turns to survey the building, and behind his back I mouth the words ‘Where’s Stringer?’ to Paulson, enquiring about our usual fire department contact. He shrugs his shoulders and makes a shape with his lips that says ‘Gone.’ Archer is new and clearly out to impress.
‘A fire was called in about fifteen minutes ago,’ the chief relays authoritatively, looking up at one of the windows on the block in front of us. ‘Anonymous call.’
Paulson flicks through the notes in his own pad and looks up at the same window. I keep my attention on Chief Archer, staring up at his six foot five inch frame, mesmerised by his hefty moustache jumping up and down with every word.
‘It’s contained now. Made to look like some kids were messing around with candles or squatters making trouble. But obviously it’s not.’ Now he looks directly at me. ‘Seems to me it’s that guy you haven’t managed to catch yet.’
I don’t know what to say. He’s right.
He turns back to the building. ‘We’ll know more in the next couple of days.’ He continues to reel off his script, methodically, as if unenthused at the meagre blaze he and his team have been rushed out to; like he is disappointed the whole street isn’t burning down. A missed opportunity to stake real ownership on his new position.
Archer offers me nothing in the way of significant information or respect but I thank him for his report and duck under the tape that cordons off the entrance to the building. Paulson ambles close behind me.
Two flights above us, I hear a clunking noise and the voice of the male paramedic telling his partner to ‘Lift!’ He comforts the patient saying, ‘There you go, miss,’ then squeezes clean air into her mouth and nose. I stop partway up the stairs and look back, wide-eyed, at Paulson.
She’s alive.
I turn and leap up the stairs two at a time. Paulson, almost instantly breathless, attempts to follow, but his bloated heart can’t pump the blood to his muscles quickly enough.
Three flights up I meet the paramedics who are wheeling a woman down the stairs on a gurney. I stop them.
‘How is she?’ I ask, catching my breath.
‘Sir, I need you to move,’ the male paramedic says forcefully, glaring at me, his knuckles turning white as he grips the mobile bed tighter in his frustration.
He starts to push the gurney holding the girl towards me, hoping I will step aside.
I slam my hands down on the surface either side of the girl’s legs, widening my stance and leaning forward to halt proceedings.
‘Sir—’ The male paramedic raises his voice; his female partner jolts nervously.
‘This is my witness,’ I state, cutting him off. Paulson finally gasps his way to my side, holding the banister for support. ‘I am Detective Inspector David.’ I lower the level of my voice, hoping to clarify the situation somewhat. I watch the tension release from the paramedic’s shoulders and slowly push myself upright, taking my hands away from the victim. ‘I am Detective Inspector David,’ I repeat deliberately, ‘and this could be a valuable witness in a high-profile case.’
I have their attention now. Neither of them tries to jump in again but I still sense their urgency.
‘Is she going to make it?’ I don’t have time to sugar-coat it.
‘She’s inhaled some smoke,’ the female paramedic chimes in.
‘OK …’ My tone urges her to go on.
Her partner interrupts again. ‘She should be fine but we really need to get her to the hospital.’ I see he wants to start pushing the gurney again.
‘Take my partner with you,’ I instruct uncompromisingly. I look at Paulson, who draws in another exaggerated breath; he has to tackle the three flights of stairs again after not fully recovering from his journey up.
The paramedics wheel the victim past me, reluctantly obeying my order. They have no choice. My authority takes precedence at a crime scene. I draw Paulson aside.
‘Stay with her. I want to know as soon as she wakes up. OK?’
‘OK, Jan,’ he replies, releasing his grip from the railing to demonstrate his readiness for the task.
‘As soon as she wakes up,’ I reiterate.
He nods.
‘I’m going to need a sketch artist ready too, so you’ll have to call that in on the way.’
Paulson dutifully follows the victim down the stairs and into the back of the ambulance waiting outside. I continue up to view the scene of the crime.
But I already know what I’ll find.
The smoky stench emanates through the corridor and hits me with only a few stairs to go. I smell charcoal and fruit. I smell hay, just as I had in the woods on the May Bank Holiday; just as I had for the four victims before that.
As I enter the doorway of the apartment, it is as I expected. A circle of salt large enough for someone to sit or kneel inside. Ahead of that, on the floor, a silver candlestick with the stub of a black candle. I know before it is tested that it will show remnants of essential oil rubbed on the outside.
For a brief moment, I convince myself I can smell sulphur, but I can’t.
Next to the candle is a small circular fireproof dish containing a charcoal powder laced with a crumbled dried fruit.
It is the same as the others.
The dish faces the altar, the spot where the victim was found. This is the only thing that is different from the previous crime scenes; the only aspect that has changed.
But I knew all this last night.
And that’s why I know there is something here I am missing.
I can understand why Archer was disappointed: this was hardly an inferno. The altar is a large wheel attached to the ceiling by chains. It appears to be a wagon wheel, wooden, with a frame of iron around its circumference. The spokes are wooden too and thread into a metal centre which undoubtedly caused heavy bruising to the victim’s back as she writhed against it, attempting to free herself.
Below the hanging wheel are the remains of what appears to be a controlled bonfire. Only a couple of feet across, it explains the scent of hay in the air.
I move over to the window and see Archer below.
The fire had not roared out of control. The walls are still intact. The ceiling has some smoke damage but nothing significant. This was called in anonymously. It’s not as if a neighbour saw smoke bellowing from the windows and the flames danced around the room, alerting passers-by that the building was on fire.
This is the same killer, it’s clear to me; but, somehow, this time, it is different.
Standing in the centre of the salt circle, I close my eyes and think about what The Two were trying to tell me last night. What extra information were they trying to give to me that nobody else has?
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
The light flashes Paulson’s name on and off.
‘P
aulson?’ I answer the phone.
‘She’s awake, Jan.’ He speaks in an almost whisper.
‘Already? Fuck. Does she …’
‘She remembers the face,’ he says excitedly, interrupting me. From his tone I can tell he is smiling.
‘Call the artist now. I’ll meet you down there.’ I hang up before he even has a chance to respond.
When I arrive at the hospital, Paulson is standing guard outside the witness’s room. She is Brooke Derry, twenty-seven years old, from London. Through the window in her door I can see she is gingerly sitting up in her bed, talking to a man who is rubbing frantically at a drawing pad with his blackened thumb.
Give it another twenty minutes of softening the chin, sharpening the cheeks and widening the eyes, and we will have an accurate image. The identity of the killer that has eluded us since October last year.
The artist performs his final smudge and blows some black dust off the page. He turns it around to Miss Derry and she nods. He then swivels the drawing around to face us as we peer through the window of the ward door. We haven’t been in yet. I didn’t want to add any pressure to her, to influence her. She needed time to focus on the identification before I question her.
The sketch shows a woman; long, mousey hair, late thirties, high cheekbones, probably very pretty ten years ago.
An impression of the woman we will eventually come to know as Celeste Varrick, the killer we have been chasing.
Our first truly tangible lead.
I now know the face of the murderer I pursue. I can stop her before she strikes again, before The Two have another chance to torment me.
But I am hunting a ghost, a shadow. Somebody has got to her before me; she has been captured already.
I’m chasing someone that no longer exists.
Brooke
I TELL THE police everything I remember.
My statement is a true account of the event of my near-death experience to the very best of my recollection.
I came straight home from work as I always do. I unlocked the front door to the building. I had my earphones in so I couldn’t really hear anything other than my music. I pressed the button for the lift because I live on the top floor and I wasn’t going to walk up the stairs after a full day of work. I must have only taken one step inside the lift when I was grabbed from behind.
I didn’t see a face and the hand that clasped a handkerchief over my mouth was gloved. I remember them being stronger than I was but that isn’t difficult: I’m pretty small. I couldn’t say whether there were any identifying marks at this point or how this person smelled or whether the body that pressed itself against my back to hold me rigid as the doors closed behind us was a man or a woman; it happened too quickly.
Then I blacked out.
This is what I tell Detective Sergeant Paulson while we wait.
The second part of my story is more vivid. Though groggy and disoriented, the shock of finding myself in that position seemed to focus me somewhat.
The first thing I recall is the scent of the straw bundle burning underneath me. It wasn’t a completely detestable fragrance, to be honest. It had something to it that made it more palatable than burning wood or fabric. Either way, I was certainly ingesting some of the fumes, but not choking at this point.
I hadn’t yet opened my eyes. I wanted to take it in one sense at a time. As I said, I was still in a slight stupor and panicking wasn’t going to help. I soon sensed that I was moving ever so slightly. Like I had been swinging back and forth but was coming to a stop and my motion had switched, twisting from side to side as momentum slowed.
My hearing was next to focus as the fuzziness in my head continued to evaporate. A woman’s voice was emanating from the area directly ahead of me. It was rhythmic, almost singing. But not quite. It was soothing. Complementing the motion of the wheel I was attached to.
This was the voice of my captor, I thought.
Don’t unnerve her.
I didn’t want to open my eyes fully in case she noticed. I tried to see through a squint but had to fully open my eyes and blink because the smoke was making them water. She didn’t see, though; she was facing to the side at this point.
‘But she did eventually turn to face you?’ Detective Sergeant Paulson asks abruptly, almost excitedly, as he interrupts my recounting.
‘Yes, it was only a moment after that she turned to face me head on.’
‘And you think you can describe this to our sketch artist?’ He waves at the door and a man with a pad enters my hospital room. DS Paulson stands up ready to greet him.
‘Yes. I remember the face lucidly. That’s not something one forgets,’ I confirm.
DS Paulson offers his chair to the artist and leaves me alone in the room with him to describe the woman I saw at my attempted murder scene. He advises me to take my time, and assures me that he will be waiting just outside.
I tell the artist that she was pretty in a non-conventional way. High cheekbones, large eyes that were grey or green, hair that was long and naturally wavy but a little greasy – not in a bad way, though. She was tall and thin. The word I use is wispy. Her skin was pale, her lips were thin and lacked colour, but her upper lip was pronounced. The first sketch looks a bit like her but after a little smudging and rubbing, he manages to push the eyes further apart, point the chin a touch more and move the nose down; all without erasing a single line.
He flicks the pad around and I nod. That is the extent of my reaction. This is the face of the woman I am telling the police I saw at the site of my attempted murder. The person who tried to kill me; to make me her sixth victim.
Shouldn’t I feel fear? Or a surge of adrenalin? Should I not be shaking?
Should this lack of reaction stand out to the three detectives? The one in front of me with a sketch pad, Detective Sergeant Paulson, who is outside, and the tired-looking one, January David, who has just arrived?
Do they think they have already captured their killer just because they have a picture of her face?
Detective Inspector David introduces himself to me. He tells me that he is not here to talk and does not want me to strain my voice any further. He’ll be back at some point to go over my testimony again, but he says he just wants to thank me, that my help has proved invaluable and that I should count myself extremely lucky.
That’s exactly how I feel. Privileged to be here. To be alive.
And now I feel important, and crucial to the case.
I am exactly where fate designed. I am distracting the police, feeding them the information they require about Celeste. While I am here being so vital and helpful, the person I have described so vividly as the villain is receiving a similar treatment to that which I experienced only a few hours ago.
Now she is hunted.
I just made her the most wanted woman in the country.
January
IT HAS TO be Murphy. He’s the only one who’s stupid enough to do it.
Not thinking further than his own ambition.
My mind has not rested since we saw the sketch of the killer we will soon come to know as Celeste Varrick. This is a concrete lead. Nothing from a dream, or a vibration felt as a candle flame dies out, or a hunch from experience. It’s something we can all see and touch and use. This is real police work.
My plan was to hold on to this information, to digest it and compare it to everything else we have gleaned so far. However, something doesn’t sit right. The signature is the same; the candles and salt circle are present, the aroma, the burning, but the MO has evolved. She was fastened to the hanging wheel rather than resting on her knees. Was the killer interrupted? A personality doesn’t just change partway through a serial murder; I know that, Murphy knows that. It’s how we catch these criminals; we see their personality, their psychology in the scenes they leave behind.
It is different. Slightly. But enough for me to notice. I know that what is being presented as reality is not always truth. Things are never exactly as they seem. Som
etimes the differences are the mistakes that lead to a conviction.
But Murphy takes the picture as gospel. He idiotically thinks, or the people pulling his strings believe, that we’ll find Celeste Varrick quicker if everyone in the country is looking out for her. That’s not how it works. The inevitable public hysteria would prove a hindrance at best. Now we know the face of the killer, that it is a woman, we’ll have people calling in with inaccurate, misleading sightings across the capital and beyond. It will slow down the investigation. The team will have no choice but to look into every claim no matter how ludicrous.
It will promote a vigilante mentality. Civilians taking the law into their own hands, attacking women who resemble the killer, detaining a lookalike. All the while, the true perpetrator continues her work, planning her next victim, or worse, fleeing and leaving another string of unsolved cases.
Leaving more families to destroy themselves through lack of closure.
Leaking the artist’s impression of our suspect to the press will undoubtedly set us back when it should have taken us closer to resolution.
I only needed a day.
Tomorrow morning, when people get up to start their working week, they will be greeted by the sight of a killer they did not need to know about yet.
Archer left a message saying that this wasn’t the only fire in London tonight; that his team was called out several times, that he’s been trying to get hold of me since I left.
That Brooke Derry might not be the only victim of the evening.
V
THIS MORNING I wake up when the rolled-up newspaper thuds against my door. I sit bolt upright on the sofa, stiff after an uncomfortable night’s sleep, the alcohol desiccating my brain. I missed my usual run. It doesn’t seem right to leave her here alone, even though I know she’s trapped.
