by Dan Waddell
The woman didn’t see him coming; she just continued to scream. As he arrived, she backed off. He had his hands up to show it was all right, for her not to panic. He looked around but couldn’t see what she was screaming at. Her shouts decreased to a whisper. Her left hand went to her mouth; her right hand pointed to a garage door, half open. The beams lit the door; the gap beneath was in darkness. Nigel walked towards it. All he could see was white graffiti on the door: ‘Fuck Chelski’.
The street was deserted. Nigel licked his parched lips and bent down to see under the door. Too dark. The woman had stopped screaming and started to keen.
Nigel got up and walked to the door. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to take hold of the handle. He began to lift carefully, inch by inch, so that the car headlights and the floodlit glow from the Westway slowly illuminated the interior of the garage. He was hit with a pungent combination of oil and turpentine. As the light grew, the shape of a body was revealed. A young woman. Nigel let go of the door and checked to make sure it wouldn’t fall. Then he stepped inside.
Close up, he could see she was blonde, dressed in jeans and a shirt of several colours, torn open to reveal a pair of bloodied, mutilated breasts. The blood around them seemed to have solidified, become gelatinous. She was laid on her back, arms stretched out. Nigel’s eyes went to her face. It was pristine, untouched. But where once her eyes had been, there were instead two gaping holes, congealed blood and matter garnishing the empty, cavernous sockets that still seemed to stare, baleful and black.
Nigel knew the scene would stay with him until his final breath, that it would play in his mind like some macabre screensaver whenever he closed his eyes at night. He stepped out and slowly lowered the garage door, as if to try and protect what remained of the young woman’s dignity.
Two or three people had gathered in the road; one was attempting to calm the woman. Another was on his mobile phone.
‘You all right, mate?’ one black guy shouted.
Within a few seconds the crowd was in double figures.
Nigel nodded. Slowly he sat on the ground in front of the garage door, blocking the path to it.
In the distance he could hear sirens.
12
The monotone whirr of the police helicopter above echoed through the night, its searchlight swaying and lurching futilely on the surrounding streets. It was too late, Foster knew that. The killer had slipped in, dumped his cargo and retreated back into the vast anonymity of the city. All the while he and his team had been waiting at the wrong tube station. It did not top his list of worries – there was a killer still to catch – but he knew that fact, regardless of whether the murder could have been prevented, would not be welcomed by his superiors. Particularly if it came under the baleful scrutiny of the press. Following the investigation into his father’s death, Foster had exhausted much of the goodwill he had accumulated with the top brass as a detective; he had few remaining allies, if any.
He stood in the middle of Malton Road. He had lost count of the nights when he had stood on some godforsaken street in the wee small hours of the morning, illuminated by the stark glare of arc lights, over the body of some poor unfortunate. When you’ve watched your father take his own life to prevent himself from being wracked by future agonies, some of the venom is drawn from dealing with the murder of strangers. Yet this woman’s death hit him in the pit of his gut. They had matched the killer’s stride only a few hours before he was due to strike, and that had been too late.
Foster looked at the woman, her eyes cut out and her chest torn apart. Carlisle was examining the body. Noticing the detective, he glanced up and the pair acknowledged each other, their tight faces conveying the bleakness of the scene. Neither spoke. Foster cast his eyes around the garage while Carlisle completed his checks. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
‘I’d say she was in her late twenties, early thirties. Time of death was around five or six last night,’ the pathologist said eventually.
Foster nodded. That answered one of his main questions.
‘Cause?’
‘Too early to say. Presumably one of the wounds to the chest, but I’ll need to get her back for a proper look.’
‘The eyes?’
‘Could have been pre-mortem. I hope, for her sake, it was post. They were removed carefully, with some precision and not just gouged out, which would indicate she was at least unconscious. The optical nerve remains but is severed.’
An eye for an eye, thought Foster. Darbyshire had lost his hands. Was the mutilation symbolic, rather than ritualistic? Had this woman’s eyes seen something, or Darbyshire’s hands performed some act that required them both to be severed? And where did that leave the ‘tramp’ whose body remained intact?
‘What about the chest wounds?’
‘Yes, interesting. Seems like he has carved the breasts open. She had silicone implants. They have burst, hence all the mess. When we get her back I’ll remove what’s left, see if we can get a serial number. There are no other forms of identification on her anywhere. Other than a rather distinctive tattoo on her right shoulder blade.’
Foster bent down. Carlisle carefully rolled the woman so he could see her right shoulder. There was a symbol of some sort, obviously professionally done. It appeared oriental. Foster sketched it in his notebook.
‘Know what it means?’ he asked Carlisle.
‘No. But I’m pretty certain it’s Japanese. I spent some time out there years ago. Fascinating place.’
‘That the only markings you’ve found?’
‘Yes. Aside from the chest, of course.’
Foster stared at the bloodied mass that was once the woman’s breasts and upper chest. It was impossible to make out any deliberate markings. He would have to wait until she was cleaned. Yet the state of chest, the severity of the wounds, did not indicate careful precision. It suggested frenzy.
The missing eyes did not.
He was getting a feel for how the killer worked. First, the subject was sedated in some way. Then, in the case of Darbyshire and this young woman, he severed or removed parts of their body before carving the reference. Whether they were still under sedation was unclear but they must have been restrained. Then he stabbed them through the heart. In this case something had interrupted him, or upset him, which explained the bloody mess.
‘He could’ve started carving the reference and got a shock when the implants burst,’ Foster said to Carlisle. ‘Then got angry.’ He paused. ‘But I suppose we all prefer our breasts as God intended,’ he added darkly.
Carlisle’s face betrayed a flicker of humour.
They turned to leave the garage, Carlisle stripping off his gloves.
‘Did you get a chance to have a look at the unnamed tramp at the mortuary?’
‘Not yet. It’s waiting for me as we speak. A fun Sunday in store,’ Carlisle said.
‘For all of us.’
It was almost three a.m. And yet, at the perimeter of the tape they had set around the entire stretch of road, Foster could still see a few sightseers gawping. Andy Drinkwater was standing to one side of the crime scene, in conversation with an officer.
Foster told Drinkwater the result of Carlisle’s preliminary examination.
‘So if she died around tea-time, he dumped the body there tonight. Or, rather, last night,’ Drinkwater added, checking his watch.
‘Seems so.’
‘But what if we’d got the right tube station? We’d have caught him.’
‘He was banking on us getting the wrong one.’ He paused. ‘And he was right,’ Foster added. ‘How’s Barnes?’
‘He’s at Notting Hill with Jenkins. She’s going through what happened with him. He’s a bit shaken up.’
Who wouldn’t be, Foster thought. One minute the guy is peering through his thick square specs at history books, the next he’s staring at the carved-up corpse of a young woman.
‘Any witnesses yet?’ he asked Drinkwater.
‘On
ly the woman who discovered the body. She got back from a dinner party at eleven thirty. We’ve checked that and the story stands up. The garage door was open. Thought she forgot to lock it. Opened up and… there she was.’
‘The lock was jemmied open, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. But it was in a right old state. Wouldn’t have required much effort.’
‘Did she own or rent it?’
‘Rented. From a guy in Acton. We’re on it; we’ve got a name.’
‘Which is more than we have for our victim. Get me someone, anyone, who speaks or, better still, reads Japanese. I don’t care if it’s a fucking sushi chef. Just as long as someone is here soon.’
Less than an hour later, a young police translator, still blinking the sleep from her eyes, was waiting for Foster at the perimeter of the scene with Drinkwater. She was Japanese, or her parents were. Her soft voice was unaccented English.
‘Thanks for coming at such short notice,’ Foster said, mustering a smile. Her handshake was soft and limp. She attempted a smile back but he could see she was terrified. She was more used to sitting in interviews, explaining police procedure. Here she was at a murder scene.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Akiko,’ she whispered.
Foster explained what they wanted. ‘I need you to have a look at her shoulder and see if you can decipher the meaning. I have to warn you: her body is in a bad way. I’m truly sorry you have to do this, Akiko.’
He led the way to the garage. He made sure he stood behind Akiko as she got closer to the body, putting one arm around her to stop her if she fell. Foster had asked that the victim be placed on her side, covered with a blanket.
‘Kneel down with me,’ Foster said.
While he could see her trepidation, he also sensed Akiko was more resolute than her fragile frame suggested. They both bent down and Foster flicked back one corner of the sheet revealing the shoulder and a few strands of blonde hair. He pointed to the tattoo.
Her response was instant.
‘It means “light that shines”.’
‘You sure?’
She nodded.
‘Does that have any special significance?’
She thought for some time. Then shook her head.
Foster replaced the blanket and stood up. ‘Thanks for doing that. Sorry you had to go through it.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said, turning to leave, but then swinging round to face Foster. ‘It’s very fashionable at the moment to be tattoed with the Japanese translation of your name. Quite a few celebrities do it.’
Even after years of policing in west London, where parents named their children Alfalfa and Mezzanine, Foster had yet to come across anyone called Shining Light.
13
The morning sun was too watery to cast more than a weary light into the sitting room of Nigel’s flat in Shepherd’s Bush. But even a blinding sun found it difficult to illuminate a room brimful with objects and books, occupying every corner and empty space. The musty smell of old books filled the air; Nigel possessed few that weren’t second-hand, used and yellowing, their covers and binding tattered and torn. As well as being balanced in perilous, towering piles on the floor, volumes were scattered across his computer table and filled two floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves, their titles rendered even more indecipherable for being hidden behind a mass of ornaments, knick-knacks and photographs. There was no method to it, which is why he was scrabbling on his knees to find a book of names.
‘Well, at least you’re not the sort who stores his books and CDs alphabetically,’ he heard Heather mutter, though he did not reply, so intent was he on finding the volume he needed. Shining Light was the name Foster wanted. He felt certain Eleanor, taken from the Greek, bore that meaning and had told Foster that. But when Heather took him home, with instructions to rest from Foster, he was keen to find out for sure.
‘Are these ancestors of yours?’ Heather asked.
She was holding a photograph from Nigel’s mantelpiece, a family portrait. Father was stood sternly at the back, beard bristling with pride. His left arm was cradled in the elbow of his wife, who was seated. Her hair was tied back, her eyes so bleached of colour by the print she looked almost ghostly. Beside her was a serious-faced boy in a buttoned-up frock coat holding a hoop, while the two girls were seated; the elder, a mirror of her mother, holding a bunch of flowers, the younger mournfully staring with wide brown eyes at the camera, her frilly white shirt in joyous contrast to the monochrome solemnity elsewhere. All, apart from Father, looked as if they had just received the worst news of their lives. It was a picture Nigel loved.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Then who are they?’
‘The Reeve family.’
‘And they are?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘So how do you know the name?’
‘It’s written on the back in pencil. It was taken in 1885.’
‘So how come you have it?’ Heather asked, gazing intently at it one more time. She was frowning.
‘I like it. These people took their family portraits seriously.’
‘I can see that. No saying “cheese” back then.’
‘Most people wanted to convey an image of being serious, dependable and honest. You didn’t do that by smiling.’ He took the picture from her. ‘I like to wonder what happened to them all. The younger girl with the sad face, especially. To be three or four, however old she is, and to seem so daunted by life. It was a different world.’
‘I suppose you don’t know enough to have traced them.’
‘Don’t know where they lived, otherwise I would have. Without that detail it’d be impossible.’
Nigel returned the picture, conscious all of a sudden of the thick layers of dust that had accumulated on top of most of the surfaces in his flat.
‘How did you get it?’ Heather asked.
‘It fell out of a book I bought. I got it framed.’
‘What about this?’ She was holding a picture of a football team. The men, all bar one, bore moustaches; their striped jerseys were woollen and heavy while their shorts reached their knees. The goalkeeper in the front row was enormously fat and held a ball so solid it appeared to have been fired from a cannon.
‘That’s the Sheffield United side from 1905,’ Nigel said.
‘You follow them?’
‘No, I hate football. I just love the fact the goalie is so fat. “Fatty Foulkes”, they called him. Can you imagine him fitting into modern football?’
‘He’d struggle to fit in the dressing room.’
Heather continued browsing while he carried on the search.
Nigel was glad of having something to do. It took his mind off the trauma of the previous night’s events. He knew at some stage tiredness would engulf him but, at that moment, the adrenalin, the disbelief at what he had experienced served to heighten his senses.
‘I’ll make a brew,’ Heather said. She weaved her way through to the kitchen, a small space to one side of the sitting room.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ Nigel said, wondering when it had last been cleaned.
‘I’m a murder detective,’ she said, popping her head around the door. ‘I’m used to dealing with scenes of carnage.’ She winked and disappeared back inside.
Nigel smiled. ‘The kettle’s on the hob. It’s not electric, I’m afraid. The tea is in a metal tin next to the oven. The pot should be around there somewhere. I can’t remember where the strainer is.’
Heather’s face appeared around the door once more.
‘The tea cosy?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘I was winding you up.’
‘Oh,’ he said, feeling foolish.
‘I’m not au fait with making tea with leaves,’ she admitted.
‘I thought you were northern,’ he said.
‘Funnily enough, we have tea bags up there now. Electricity too.’
He smiled, realizing he was being teased once more. It felt good. H
eather returned to the kitchen.
‘You might find a box of some in a cupboard somewhere,’ he shouted.
‘Welcome to the twenty-first century.’
He smiled again and went back to his shelves. Finally he found the book he wanted, lurking in an alcove under a treble volume detailing the development of land enclosure. A book he still intended to get around to reading, but which suddenly lost its lustre whenever he picked it up.
It was one of his newer books, a simple dictionary of first names. He flicked through to Eleanor and saw his hunch was correct. Good, he thought. He made a note of the other derivations of the name – Ellie, Nell, Nella, Nellie – and variant spellings so that they could be passed on to Foster.
Heather emerged with two cups of tea. ‘You might want to do the genealogy of the contents of your sink,’ she said, smiling. ‘Some of it looks like it goes back centuries.’
She stopped, trying to find a free space to put the cups down. Nigel quickly swept a pile of books and magazines off the table in the middle of the room and on to the floor. Heather sat down on the sofa and took a wincing sip of hot tea.
‘I’ve made a note of the derivations of Eleanor,’ Nigel told her. ‘I was right: it means “shining light”.’
She took the piece of paper from him, looked at it and then put it in her jacket pocket. ‘I’ll phone it through to him,’ she said, sighing. ‘God, I’m knackered. How you doing?’
Nigel didn’t know. He felt shaken, frayed, as if he needed to keep occupied, to have a task. He stood, cradling his tea, in preference to sitting down.
‘OK.’
‘Sure? Because we have people you can talk to about this. Good people. I’ve used them before.’
‘I’ll live,’ he said, immediately regretting his choice of words.
Heather nodded and took another sip of her tea.
