Blood On the Wall

by Jim Eldridge

  ‘Got it.’ Conway nodded. As the big Scot got up, he picked up the copy of the newspaper. ‘You sure you don’t want this?’ he asked.

  Georgiou shook his head.

  ‘I said, I’ve got one.’

  ‘Yes, but you might want two copies,’ said Conway. ‘One to throw darts at; one to keep and read later when you’re calm.’

  Georgiou smiled.

  ‘I’m already calm,’ he said.

  As the four detectives left the room, Tennyson turned to Georgiou.

  ‘So, what’s our next move, boss?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re going to see a historian and talk about the Reivers,’ said Georgiou.

  TEN

  Georgiou and Tennyson were sitting in the office of Diane Moody, one of the curators at Tullie House Museum, listening to a lecture on headhunters given with great enthusiasm for her subject. Diane Moody was a large woman with enormous, powerful-looking hands. Strangler’s hands, thought Tennyson.

  ‘As I have said, you will find the cult of the headhunter all over the world,’ Moody told them. ‘I’ve already given you the example of the jungles of Borneo, but in other parts of south-east Asia …’

  ‘I was thinking more of it being found in Britain,’ said Georgiou gently. ‘Historically speaking, that is.’

  ‘Of course.’ Moody nodded. ‘Forgive me. I tend to get carried away. Well, it did happen here, obviously. Mainly among the Celts.’

  ‘The Celts?’ asked Georgiou.

  Moody nodded again.

  ‘As I’m sure you know, Inspector, at the time the Romans arrived to occupy Britain, the dominant peoples here were the Celts. It is generally reckoned they had come here from continental Europe, particularly Gaul. Now, of course, France.’

  Georgiou nodded to show that he was following her.

  ‘The Celts spread across Britain, into Wales, up into Scotland and, of course, Ireland, the three countries that still retain a great deal of Celtic culture. Not least in their language. Gaelic in Ireland and Gallic, spelt Gaelic but pronounced Gallic, in Scotland.’

  Georgiou nodded again.

  ‘And the heads?’ he asked gently, before this developed into a full-blown history of the Gaelic-speaking peoples of the world.

  ‘You know that this area was settled by the Brigante tribe of Celts when the Romans arrived?’ she said.

  I do now, thought Georgiou. He decided if he said ‘No’, he and Tennyson would just get a big lecture on the sub-cultures of the Celtic tribes in northern Britain, so instead he just nodded and gestured for Moody to continue.

  ‘The Brigantes, along with the other Celtic tribes, believed that if they took the heads of their enemy, they would at the same time be taking their power. So, the more heads they collected, the more powerful they became.’

  ‘What did they do with the heads once they’d collected them?’ asked Tennyson.

  ‘They built them into the walls of their encampments. Again, the same phenomena can be found in parts of south-east Asia. Walls built of human skulls. I find it fascinating that cultures so far apart geographically are so close culturally. Don’t you, Inspector?’

  ‘I do indeed, Ms Moody,’ agreed Georgiou. ‘What about the Border Reivers?’

  ‘Ah.’ Moody beamed happily. ‘Now that’s a different topic altogether, and one on which Tullie House has an enormous amount of material. Another fascinating phenomenon: a culture of family lawlessness which has echoes on the other side of the globe, notably in Canada and parts of middle America. Although that could be, of course, because so many Scots were exiled to North America, either through poverty or punishment. Did you know that when the Americans landed on the moon in 1969, the three men who stood on the podium at the big celebrations were all from Reiver families? Neil Armstrong, the astronaut, Richard Nixon, the President, and Billy Graham, the church leader. History follows us through time!’

  ‘But did they collect heads?’

  Moody looked at him and frowned.

  ‘Heads?’ she repeated. ‘The Border Reivers?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Georgiou.

  Moody shook her head.

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ she said. ‘Head collecting is associated with pagan religions. The Reivers were Christians. Well, at least nominally. The image of the Christian religion is the Hanged God, not the beheaded one. Are you familiar with Frazer?’

  ‘Which Frazer would that be?’ asked Tennyson.

  ‘Sir James George Frazer,’ said Moody. ‘The Golden Bough.’

  Georgiou shot a quick glance at Tennyson and saw that his sergeant looked as bewildered as he did. Moody spotted this and went on to explain.

  ‘The first volume was published in 1890 and it’s never been out of print. It is the classic study of magic and religion.’

  ‘I see,’ murmured Georgiou. ‘When were the Reivers operating again?’

  ‘I think I can safely say the organized lawlessness that one associates with the Reiver families first came to notice in the middle of the thirteenth century,’ said Moody. ‘The Law of the Marches was introduced in 1249 to try and bring order to the region. These attempts failed, of course, because the border area was so far from the two seats of government for the two countries of England and Scotland. Certainly the Reivers became stronger and stronger during the 1300s and 1400s, but it was during the sixteenth century, the 1500s, that Reiver activity reached its peak.’

  ‘But if a Reiver was caught, he was executed?’ asked Georgiou.

  ‘On rare occasions,’ agreed Moody. ‘Generally the officers of the law ransomed them back to their families. Most law officers at that time were as crooked as the thieves they were supposed to catch.’

  ‘But if they were executed,’ persisted Georgiou, ‘how was it done? I remember that Henry VIII had the heads of his wives chopped off. And Mary Queen of Scots was also executed the same way. Did that happen to the Reivers who were executed?’

  Moody shook her head.

  ‘Execution by axe was for the upper classes only,’ she said. ‘Criminals, and that certainly included the Reivers, was by hanging.’

  As Georgiou and Tennyson walked back to their car, Tennyson broke into a chuckle.

  ‘What a history lesson!’ he laughed. ‘I learnt more in twenty minutes with her than I did all the time I was at school.’

  ‘But does it help us?’ asked Georgiou. ‘If she’s right, we have to go even further back in history than the Border Reivers to find the motive of our killer. Back to the Celts.’

  Tennyson shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, boss, I don’t buy it,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t?’ asked Georgiou..

  ‘No,’ said Tennyson. ‘I think all that does is complicate things unnecessarily. What we’ve got is two women murdered. One old, one young, but both women. That’s the common link. We’re looking for someone who hates women.’

  ‘And the heads?’

  Tennyson shrugged.

  ‘OK, maybe he collects them. But not because of anything that happened in history. They’re tokens. Killers and rapists do it all the time, take something from their victims as a memento.’

  ‘It’s one thing taking a watch or locket or a mobile phone, it’s another thing entirely to cut off someone’s head and take it away,’ said Georgiou. ‘Think about it, Mac. Our killer is very methodical. The way he did them, there’s almost a kind of ritual in the way the bodies were hung up.’

  ‘They were hung up to let the blood drain out.’

  ‘But the way the wires were tied. Everything exactly the same. It feels like some kind of ritual. What the actual ritual is, or what it’s based on, we don’t yet know, but I think we’re looking for someone who likes ritual. And every ritual has a root in history.’

  Tennyson shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, guv,’ he said. ‘It seems much simpler than that to me. He does it the same way because it works. It’s that simple.’

  Georgiou sighed.

  ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘May
be I’m seeing too much into this. Anyway, let’s take a break today. I promised Ted Armstrong I’d go and see him and let him know what we’ve got.’

  ‘Which is nothing,’ said Tennyson.

  ‘True,’ admitted Georgiou. ‘But we’re filling in the details. Something will pop up. We’re going to get him, Mac. Trust me.’

  ELEVEN

  Georgiou arrived at the large double-fronted house in Stanwix, where the Armstrongs lived, just after six. His ring at the doorbell was answered by Ted Armstrong. The man looked deathly pale, as if the blood had been drained out of him and only about half the amount had been put back. There were deep lines on his face, grey shadows beneath his eyes.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a lot at the moment,’ said Georgiou. ‘Is this a bad time? Maybe if I came back later?’

  ‘It’s always going to be a bad time from now on,’ said Armstrong.

  He opened the door wider and Georgiou stepped in.

  Sophie Armstrong was sitting on a settee as Georgiou followed Ted Armstrong into the large palatial living room. It had a gold look to it. Gold ornaments on shelves and hanging on the walls, among the paintings. Reproduction classic French furniture: settees and chaise longues with gold upholstery. It was all ostentatious, a way of showing off the fact that Ted Armstrong had gone from nothing to one of the wealthiest men in the city. But now, the overwhelming feeling in this room was pain. It was in the way that Ted Armstrong held himself, like a marionette struggling to stay upright after its strings had been cut. And it was written all over Sophie Armstrong. Georgiou had only met her a couple of times before, at official police functions. Then he had thought she looked a very well-preserved forty, possibly could even pass for thirty. Now, looking at her, drawn and haggard and with her make-up badly applied, she looked more like sixty.

  Georgiou spent an uncomfortable half-hour with the Armstrongs. There was nothing he could tell them, and they knew it. All he could do was be with them and try and share their grief for a short while.

  Georgiou was glad of the drive back home to Bowness. Driving along the road across the marsh, with the Solway Firth stretching away to Scotland, and the vast expanse of sky overhead, it helped wash away the city. Carlisle was only small, but every city had a feeling of intensity about it. It was the closeness of the buildings to one another, the crowds of people pushing and shoving, the traffic. Carlisle was better than most, but Georgiou knew he could never live in a city again. He needed the feeling of space that the expanses of the Solway Plain gave him. Sea and sky.

  That evening, as he ate a supper of pasta he prepared for himself, he finally got down to reading the article in the News and Star. There was nothing new. But that was because there was nothing new to say. The allegations, however, were there in black and white in Mrs Parks’s words: ‘He beat up my son and they’re letting him get away with it because he’s a copper. He’s a vicious thug and he ought to be locked up.’

  Georgiou wondered if they had been deliberately provocative in the hope that he would sue for libel. If so, they were mistaken. In Georgiou’s opinion, the only people who got rich from libel were lawyers. No, the real thing that annoyed him about this case was the fact that Ian Parks was still walking around free, and his supporters, including Councillor Maitland, seemed to be succeeding to a certain degree in their campaign to depict him as the victim of the case.

  Georgiou put the paper aside and sat down with a writing pad and started to jot notes down about what they knew so far about the killer of Tamara Armstrong and Michelle Nixon. It was a thing he did when he had a problem to unscramble, whether it was a particularly difficult crossword, or a case. Put the random thoughts down in a seemingly meaningless way, and sometimes the answer would just pop out at him. He looked at the words he had written down:

  Electric flex. Broad bladed knife. Heads taken. Border Reivers. Head cult. Pagans. Celts. Ritual? Butchery skills. Stanwix. Haltwhistle. Railway shed. Park. Strong wrists. Strong enough to lift body into position. How tall is killer? Fastidious. Neat and tidy. Clothes splashed with blood. No sex. Gloves. Transport for killer? Michelle – prostitute. Drinker. Tamara – virgin. Michelle hanging from girder. Tamara hanging from tree. Eric Drake. Film. Horror? Paul Morrison. Diane Moody. Strong hands. Razza’s bar. Rena Matlock. Donna Evans. Suzie Starr. Ted Armstrong. Chairman of Police Authority.

  He sat for a while, looking at the words, but nothing leapt out at him. It was there, he could feel it. Somewhere in those words was the answer, if only he could find the connection.

  Maybe if he went to the pub he might find the answer forming in his brain. Sometimes, if he had a problem he couldn’t solve, he’d go to the Kings Arms, the only pub in the village, and sit and talk to his friend and neighbour, Denis. Denis’s farm was about five miles outside the village, but he also had a small cottage in the village a few doors away from Georgiou’s house. A bachelor, Denis would often leave his farm in the charge of a nephew and head for the Kings Arms of an evening, where he would sup a few pints and talk to anyone who was in before heading for his small cottage for a few hours then heading back to his farm in time for early milking. He and Georgiou never discussed any of the cases Georgiou was working on; their talk was usually about local issues, farming issues, the fortunes of Carlisle United, other football issues, and the politics of the world. Ecology, the environment, the world economy, nationalism, individualism: you name it, Denis would be able to talk about it. And talk about it knowledgeably and objectively, not just rant from one viewpoint as so many people did.

  And sometimes, as Georgiou and Denis talked, randomly and wide-ranging, a little spark would be set off, a crack in the mystery of whatever was puzzling Georgiou over his latest case.

  He looked at the disjointed list he’d written. Maybe tomorrow he’d talk to Denis. Maybe tomorrow he’d crack the puzzle over a pint. Right now, he was tired. The visit to the Armstrongs had drained him. The pain on Ted and Sophie’s faces. All that grieving. It had been like looking in a mirror.

  He sighed. Maybe tomorrow. Now, it was time to sleep on everything.

  The ringing of the phone beside his bed cut through Georgiou’s sleep. As he struggled to sit up, his eye caught the clock by his bed. Four o’clock. A phone call at four o’clock in the morning always meant trouble. He snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Georgiou,’ he grunted.

  ‘Duty Sergeant Sims,’ said a voice. ‘Sorry to wake you up, Inspector, but there’s been another one. Dead body, hung upside-down, head missing. Thought I’d better let you know at once.’

  Georgiou was already getting out of bed.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’

  TWELVE

  It was lucky it was summertime, thought Georgiou, otherwise we’d need the big lights at this time of the morning, and that would be a big part of our annual budget gone. But here in mid-June in north Cumbria, a quarter to five in the morning was broad daylight. He parked his car by the other police cars and headed for the walls surrounding the old Roman fort of Birdoswald.

  A uniformed officer hurried towards him. Georgiou recognized him as Sergeant Filby. He’d worked briefly with him in the past, but not enough to say he knew him well.

  The body was still in place, hanging upside-down from a wooden beam set in a stone archway. Georgiou was glad to see the area around the body had been taped off by SOCO, keeping casual visitors at bay. From this distance Georgiou could see that the body was fully clothed, this time in jacket and trousers.

  ‘Same MO as the others, sir,’ said Filby. ‘The head’s missing. The wrists and ankles have been tied with electrical wire.’

  ‘Do we know who it is?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s a man, but I didn’t want to start rummaging around in his clothes looking for identification until you got here.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Georgiou approvingly. ‘Are the scientific team here?’

  ‘On their way,’ said Filby. ‘I con
tacted them the same time as I got in touch with you. I’ve also had the area roped off where there are tyre tracks, just in case it’s our man.’

  ‘Good,’ said Georgiou again.

  This was the way he liked it. Keep a crime scene intact until every inch had been explored, every fibre picked up, every piece of evidence extracted.

  ‘Who discovered the body?’

  ‘A man out walking his dog.’

  Another early-morning dog walker, thought Georgiou. He was surprised by the fact that the victim was a man this time. Why had the killer changed his or her pattern? The theory that the killer hated women had just gone out of the window.

  ‘Guv!’

  He turned and saw Mac Tennyson heading towards him. Behind Tennyson the scientific team had just arrived and were unloading their equipment from their vehicles. Things were happening.

  Tennyson looked rough, like he’d just been dragged out of bed. Which, indeed, he had.

  ‘I would have been here earlier but the traffic lights on Wigton Road had got stuck on red. Traffic chaos.’

  ‘Chaos?’ queried Georgiou.

  ‘Well, three cars backed up waiting for them to change. In the end I just went through them. Thought I’d let you know in case you get a complaint.’

  Tennyson gestured towards the taped-off scene..

  ‘What’s the score?’ Tennyson asked.

  ‘Exactly the same as the others, except this one’s male,’ said Georgiou.

  ‘Oh?’ Tennyson frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Exactly my question,’ said Georgiou. ‘We’ll let the science team do their bit, then we’ll go and see what we can work out.’

  Tennyson looked around the area surrounding the remains of the Roman fort, at the open landscape, the nearby road.

  ‘Out in the open,’ he commented. ‘First in Stanwix, now here. He’s taking a chance, isn’t he?’