by Dan Waddell
‘The past does repeat itself.’
‘That’s a bit cryptic. What you on about?’
‘In 1879, as you know, there were a series of murders in Kensington. The newspapers went ballistic, the natives got restless and the cops panicked; they arrested a guy to stop bucket after bucket of shit being tipped over their heads. Then they realized they’d better get a case against the man they’d chosen to be their suspect. So, lo and behold, a knife turns up in his lodgings.’
‘You’ve told me all of this.’
‘Yes, but what I haven’t told you is that, lo and behold, a knife has turned up in Terry Cable’s garden, just when the press were beginning to get a bit restless about the lack of any charges.’
He could see Heather take this in. Ready to play devil’s advocate.
‘Have you considered the idea he might actually be guilty?’
‘Considered it. Dismissed it. Come on, Heather, you can see what’s happening here as clearly as I can. They’re so desperate they’ve convinced themselves that he’s guilty. It doesn’t follow that, because he’s the only suspect, he’s the right suspect. No one has given me any indication of a possible motive.’
‘What about the GHB?’
‘That’s coincidence: detail, not motive. Why did he kill these people? Why did he remove parts of their body? Why did he leave them in those exact same places on those exact same days? They have no answers to those questions. We know why – the killer’s following a pattern. And because of what happened during and after the trial in 1879, we may even know the motive.’
‘So they have a suspect and no motive; you have a motive and no suspect.’
‘I know in which position I’d rather be,’ he muttered.
‘You hope we find a body, don’t you?’ Heather said, turning to face him, a smile on the corner of her lips. ‘Proves you right if we do.’
‘No,’ he maintained. ‘I think we’ll find a body – different from wanting to. And we might find the killer. But we would have had a damn sight better chance if we had more manpower and if everyone had not been scattered to the four winds trying to fit up some sleazeball to deter a shitstorm in the press.’
His gaze returned to the tower block. Inside, the lights were coming back on.
Noon came. Foster was still there, spent by lack of sleep. He was beginning to doubt whether it was worth it. Cable seemed certain to be charged; a fourth body had not turned up, after all. Had he been wrong? Heather might have been right: Cable could be their man. He shook his head to clear it. However blurred his thinking had become, he still refused to accept Cable’s guilt. Of course, if Barnes called and told him that Terry Cable was a descendant of Eke Fairbairn, that would change everything; until then he would not move.
He had sent Heather home to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. She was reluctant, but he needed someone with energy at his side when the names came through from Barnes. He sat there, window open, a cool breeze helping keep him awake, blowing in more sounds from the street. For the past half-hour loud music had been blaring from a window high up in the tower block, indistinguishable white noise save for the thump of a bass and what sounded like handclaps. There was something familiar about it, Foster thought, but from a hundred feet below it was impossible to assign any tune to the rhythm. Whoever lived in the flat obviously loved the song because each time it ended, it would start again.
His arm was out of the window, absent-mindedly tapping on the car door, beating time along with the percussion and bass. After a few repeat hearings he thought he’d found the rhythm, and it was possible to make out the melody carried by the singer. Foster started to whistle a tune. A disco song, he was sure. Not his favourite genre; he was more a loud guitar and sneering, disenchanted vocals man, but there were a few disco tunes he’d admit to liking. What was this one, though? It was bugging him so much he felt like climbing out of his car, jumping in the lift and asking whoever was playing it to death.
Each time the rhythm changed to indicate the chorus, he started to whistle the hook. The singers were a group of women, though a hazy recollection suggested there might have been a bloke with them. It rhymed with ‘boots’, the only word of the chorus he remembered. Then it came: ‘Going Back To My Roots’, by Odyssey. Got it, he thought, content to have scratched that itch.
Then he stopped, sitting forwards, as if an ice cube had been put down his back.
He sprang from the car, jogged to the tower-block entrance, through the doors and punched the lift button. It clanked into action, but he couldn’t stand the wait. He took the stairs, striding up two at a time, adrenalin overriding fatigue. By the time he reached the tenth floor he could feel his heart pumping in his ears. Through a door he reached a dim corridor, lit only by grubby windows at each end. There was no need for him to follow the numbers on the door; he could follow the noise. As he strode down the corridor it got louder and louder, more and more distorted. A straw-haired woman in a worn red dressing gown over jeans and a T-shirt, her face creased by smoking, stepped out of her door into the corridor. She saw Foster, clocking his suit.
‘Are you here about whoever’s making that bloody noise?’
‘Who lives there?’
She shrugged. ‘Bert died six weeks ago. I thought it had been empty since. Council’s probably given it to some fucking kids who’re gonna make my life a misery.’
‘Go back inside,’ Foster said. ‘I’ll sort it out.’
‘You better,’ she said and disappeared, though Foster noticed she left the door slightly ajar.
He stopped at number 65; the bass was making the door hinges rattle, as if they might blow. He knocked loudly. No response. He tried once more. No answer again.
He took a step back, lifted his foot and crashed his heel against the door. It failed to budge, but he sensed another attempt may break the lock. It didn’t, but on his third kick he heard a splinter, and with his fourth attempt it flew open.
He walked in to be faced with three doors. The noise was coming from the one in front of him. He opened it and was almost floored by the wall of sound. In the middle of the room on the floor was a small, round chrome CD clock radio. The LCD display showed 12.15. Save for the clock, the room was unadorned. A grubby net curtain barely covered the window, through which he could see the outline of central London. He made for the stereo and, covering his hand with the sleeve of his shirt, he bumped the off switch. At last, silence.
Now that one of his senses had been restored, he looked around. The place stank. The flocked white wallpaper was stained and grey, bearing the shadows of old furniture. To one side was a kitchen. He walked in; nothing except a few battered, obsolescent white goods.
He returned to the small entrance hall. Opened one door and was hit by the smell of pervasive damp. The bathroom. Nothing except the drip from a scaled bath tap. Closed the door, tried the next one.
The smell hit him first. One he knew well. It emanated from the only thing in the room. The body of a woman. From the stench, he knew she had been here longer than twenty-four hours. She was on her back in the middle of the floor, dressed in a pair of jeans and a brown sweater. A few flies buzzed around her. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and put it over his nose, then leaned down for a closer look. It was the hair he noticed. There was none. From the brow to beyond the crown was only a fleshy mass and the white dome of her skull.
She had been scalped.
22
Edward Carlisle shook his head.
‘This is like something from the Wild West,’ he said, peering at the exposed scalp. ‘I think what he’s done is lifted up the hair – from what’s left at the back it was brown, about shoulder-length. Then twisted, used the point of the knife to slice around the parting, and then pulled the whole thing off. Must have taken some doing. I’ll tell you one thing, though.’ He looked up grimly. ‘From what I see here, I believe she was alive when he scalped her.’
Foster couldn’t imagine what that was like. Didn’t want to. ‘H
ow long she been dead?’ he asked.
‘Around sixty hours or so.’
Monday, he thought.
‘And from the lividity on her back I’d guess she’s been lying here all that time, maybe a few hours less,’ Carlisle added. ‘Again, she did not die here, she was moved postmortem. Again, there’s a single stab wound to the heart that probably killed her. You can survive being scalped, particularly when as much care has been taken as this.’
The killer knew they might be hanging around, Foster thought. So he got her up here before the place was surrounded. One step ahead again.
Detective Superintendent Harris walked into the room, his long face leached of colour and rigid with concern. ‘What’s the preliminary verdict?’ he said, hands on hips.
‘She was stabbed and scalped,’ Foster said.
‘Scalped? Jesus Christ.’
‘She’s been here since Monday night. She was probably killed then.’
Harris stared down at the floor. ‘You sure about those timings?’ he said to Carlisle.
‘About as sure as I can be.’
‘Cable’s innocent, Brian,’ Foster said. ‘You pulled him in Monday afternoon. He couldn’t have done this.’
Harris nodded slowly. Foster knew he would be playing this out in his mind, how it would go down with the press and the upper echelons of the Yard.
‘Of course, you’ve got the knife,’ Foster added.
Harris rubbed his chin ruefully. ‘Not the knife involved in the killings. Forensics confirmed that this morning.’ He let out an enormous sigh. ‘OK, he’s still out there. I accept that. I should have given you more cover here. I accept that, too.’
Foster held his hands up. ‘Would have been too late, Brian. He was ahead of us. We may have found the body sooner, that’s all. But the fact remains that we have one person to try and save, one last chance. The fifth victim will be killed before one a.m. Sunday morning.’ It passed through his mind that they might already be dead. ‘The body will be found in Powis Square. We have two days, perhaps less.’
‘How do you want to play it, Grant?’
He was back in favour. Back in charge.
‘I’m waiting on a phone call that will help me decide,’ he said.
Carlisle interrupted. ‘There appears to be no identification on her, but the killer missed this in her back pocket.’
He held a tightly balled piece of paper in between forefinger and thumb. Foster took it and peeled it open carefully. It was a receipt.
‘Supermarket. Monday morning. She paid by credit card.’
Harris summoned a detective and asked him to get an ID as soon as possible. Heather entered the bedroom, her hair still wet from a shower. Through the open door, Foster could see forensics working the clock radio. She glanced at the victim, then looked at him.
‘Nigel’s been on the phone. He’s been at it since first thing this morning. He’s already traced a number of Fairbairn’s living descendants and hopes to have them all by the end of the day.’
‘Someone going to fill me in?’ Harris asked impatiently.
‘In 1879 the police arrested a man in connection with the murders in Notting Dale and North Kensington. He was charged with two of them, tried at the Old Bailey, found guilty and hanged.’
‘I see.’
‘Except for one thing: he almost certainly didn’t do it. He was convicted on the evidence of a single witness, who claimed to have seen him following one of the victims.’ He wasn’t sure how Harris would react to the next detail. ‘But the police also conveniently found a knife at his lodging house, although the suspicion was that it was planted.’
Harris flinched. ‘We didn’t plant that knife in Cable’s garden, Grant.’
‘I didn’t say you did. But the similarities are there. My guess is the killer planted it. Maybe he wanted to make a point.’
‘What point?’
‘Fairbairn was treated like a punchbag. The investigating team beat the shit out of him, broke almost every major bone in his body to try and get him to confess. He had the mental age of a child, barely able to finish a sentence, but they still hanged him. For a crime he didn’t commit. And then they ballsed up the hanging and he choked to death at the end of a rope.’
He paused.
‘The killer is seeking to avenge that injustice. And they were seeking to frame an innocent man to make the point that the police never change. Our family historian is tracing every living descendant of Eke Fairbairn, the wrongly accused. We need to feed all their names through the computer and see if any of them set alarm bells ringing. Then we still need to track down each and every one of them in the next twenty-four hours and see if they can explain their actions during the last few weeks.’
Harris’s expression changed from interest to incredulity. ‘You’re telling me that a descendant of this man has copied the killing spree his ancestor didn’t do in order to prove his innocence?’
Foster nodded. ‘It’s the best theory I have. Whoever did this knows their way around the world of family history. What’s to say they weren’t researching their genealogy and found this dark secret? For someone already on the edge, that’s the sort of thing that could tip you over. What I can’t answer is why he chose these victims. Perhaps they were just selected at random: wrong place, wrong time.’
Harris did not look convinced.
‘Where are these names Nigel’s compiling?’ Foster asked Heather.
‘Nigel’s faxing them through to the office,’ she said. ‘So far, they’re scattered all over the country, as you’d expect. We can arm everyone who goes out on the doorstep with the sketch of the man seen drinking with Nella Perry at the Prince of Wales, see if anybody we track down matches it.’
‘I’ll get back to the incident room and get on to it, make a few calls,’ Harris said. Cable’s name went unmentioned. Foster knew he would be let go, perhaps charged with possession. The press would be told that no charges related to the case would be made. When they discovered there had been a fourth victim, put two and two together and realized she was killed when Cable was in custody, the bad press of a few days ago would seem like Hello! magazine.
Foster said he would follow him back soon. Harris could make sure other forces spared the men needed to interview those outside of London. It would have to be handled carefully. Turning up unannounced at people’s homes, informing them someone had been delving into their family history without their knowledge, that their ancestor was wrongly executed for murder, and they were now suspects in a current murder inquiry, was not a common approach.
He was glad to be back in the thick of it, yet unwilling to leave the past behind. There was still more to be learned there.
He and Heather left the room. They were met by the detective who Harris had tasked with identifying the victim from the supermarket receipt. A few simple calls had turned up the name of the credit card holder. A 41-year-old woman, Patricia MacDougall. Divorced, single. They had an address. Foster jotted it down.
As he wrote her surname it hit him in the gut like a punch.
Nigel pulled fiercely on a roll-up outside the FRC. Heather had told him of the fourth victim. Foster had been right, he mused; the man in custody had been innocent. She did not elaborate further, other than saying the victim was a woman. The image of Nella Perry’s corpse flashed across his mind. Nigel puffed away. Since that night he’d been able to busy himself with the case. Once he’d faxed through the complete list of Fairbairn’s descendants, his work for the police would be done. He’d be alone, time on his hands, the events of the past few days hard to deal with.
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. It was Foster. His voice was excitable, higher in pitch.
‘What was the name of the judge?’ he said.
‘In the 1879 case?’
‘No, in the trial of O. J. fucking Simpson. Of course I mean the 1879 case.’
Nigel scoured his memory.
‘Justice MacDougall.’
Foster mutte
red some form of expletive.
‘He wore a black cap, didn’t he?’
‘They always did when they passed a sentence of death. Why?’
‘It’s not confirmed but we think the fourth victim was called Patricia MacDougall.’
Could be a coincidence, Nigel thought.
‘And she was scalped. Her hair was removed from the top of her head. The exact place where a black cap would have been. Do you follow what I’m saying?’
Nigel did.
‘She was born on 15th May 1965. Don’t know where. Can you trace her genealogy and see if there’s a link? I need it quick. Quicker than beer turns to piss.’
‘What about the Fairbairn list?’ He’d been working quickly. He guessed there were only a few more to trace.
‘Forget about that. Come back to it,’ Foster urged.
Nigel went to birth indexes for that year and found three women of that name born in that quarter. He went back outside and called Foster. They had some more information; her middle names were Jane Webster. Patricia Jane Webster MacDougall.
He identified the right one. The certificate gave the names of her parents, which allowed him to trace their wedding certificate and, from that, Patricia’s grandfather. He worked quickly, skipping back three generations in no time, the calls to the General Register Office starting to stack up as he unearthed references more quickly than they could locate the corresponding certificates. Eventually the information he could glean from the era of modern civil registration came to an end and he was left with the name of the dead woman’s great-great-great-grandfather, Montgomery MacDougall.
Nigel felt his pulse quicken: this was their man. He died in 1898 at the age of eighty-four, his occupation high court judge. Nigel was shocked to discover he was still sitting at his death, growing ever more senile. Nigel wondered how many other innocent men his incompetence condemned to the gallows.
He phoned Foster, who was already on his way to the FRC with Heather. Two minutes later they’d arrived and found an empty corner of the main room.
‘She’s a direct descendant,’ Nigel said.
