by Peter James
‘Her rectum, of course,’ the pathologist said dismissively.
Branson turned away, looking repulsed. Then he watched as Theobald brought the beetle towards his nostrils, the long fronds of his moustache twitching, close to becoming entwined in the hair-like spines on the beetle’s legs.
The pathologist sniffed deeply. ‘Formaldehyde,’ he announced. Then he proffered the insect to Grace for verification. The Detective Superintendent fought his revulsion and sniffed also. Instantly he caught the whiff that reminded him of his school biology dissection classes.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. Then he looked down again at the dissection table.
‘That’s why I didn’t detect it on a visual examination of the rectum – it had been inserted too far up.’
Grace stared at the neck of the tube on the table, the dead young woman’s sphincter. ‘In your view, Frazer, inserted before or after her death?’
‘I can’t tell.’
Then he asked the question that was on everyone’s lips. ‘Why?’
‘That’s for you lot to figure out,’ Theobald said.
Branson was standing on the far side of the room, leaning against the work surface adjoining the sink. ‘Remember Silence of the Lambs?’
Grace remembered it well. He had read the novel, one of the few books that had genuinely scared him, and had seen the film.
‘The victims all had a moth stuffed down their throats,’ Branson said. ‘It was a death’s head moth.’
‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘It was the killer’s signature.’
‘So maybe this is our killer’s signature.’
Grace stared at the beetle, which the pathologist was still holding aloft. He could swear for an instant that its legs were twitching, that the thing was still alive. ‘Anyone know what kind of beetle it is?’ he asked.
‘A stag beetle?’ Cleo Morey suggested.
‘Not with that horn.’ Darren, the Assistant Mortician interjected. ‘I studied entomology as part of my course. I don’t remember anything like that in the UK. I don’t think it’s native.’
‘Someone’s imported it?’ Grace said. ‘They’ve gone to the trouble of importing it, then inserted it up her rectum? Why?’
There was a long silence. Finally the pathologist inserted the insect in a plastic bag and labelled it. ‘We need to find out all we can about it,’ he said.
Grace was thinking hard. Over the years he had from necessity read as much as he could find on the mentality of murderers. Most murders were domestic, perpetrated by people who knew their victims. These were one-offs, frequently crimes of passion committed in the heat of the moment. But a small percentage of murderers were the truly warped ones who killed for gratification and thought they could outwit the police – sometimes to the extent of playing games with them.
These were the killers who often left some kind of signature. A taunt. This is my clue; catch me if you can, you dumb mother of a cop!
Grace looked at his watch. There was one person he knew who could tell him, probably instantly, what kind of beetle this was. Whether that would be of any real help or not, he had no idea, but just maybe it would yield a clue.
‘We need to keep this from the press,’ he said. ‘Total radio silence on this, everyone, OK?’
All nodded. They understood his reasoning. With a clue as unusual as this they would know instantly that if a caller claiming to be the killer could describe this, he was their man. It could save them hours, if not days, of sifting through false leads.
Grace told Branson to get one of the team at the Incident Room to trawl the UK for any other murder victims where there had been a beetle found at the scene. Then he asked the pathologist a stupid question. He knew it was stupid, but it still needed to be asked. ‘The beetle was definitely dead before it was inserted?’
‘I doubt anyone would keep a supply of formaldehyde up their rectum,’ the pathologist replied, just very slightly sarcastically. He pointed at a small glass vial on the dissecting tray which contained a murky-looking fluid. ‘There is no trace in there – that’s the bowel lining mucus.’
Grace nodded and did a quick mental calculation. If he left straight after the press conference there would be time to show the beetle to the one man he was certain would be able to identify it.
20
‘Viking north-west, veering south-east five or six, becoming variable three or four later. Showers. Good. North Utsire, South Utsire, north-west, four or five first in South Utsire, otherwise variable three or four,’ the Weatherman said.
He was driving his car, a crappy little white Fiat Panda with terminal rust. On the radio, some plonker, who seriously did not know what he was talking about, was explaining how easy it was to perform identity theft. But driving along the road beside Shoreham Harbour, the commercial port adjoining the City of Brighton and Hove, made the shipping forecast definitely relevant.
On his left was the Sussex Motor Yacht Club, followed by a warehouse, on his right a row of terraced houses. He was on his way again to see Jonas Smith – or Carl Venner, his real name – and the fat man was beginning to piss him off. He had only hooked up with Venner to get revenge on the people he worked for, who really pissed him off big time. Now he had to drop everything each time Venner summoned him, because Venner refused to communicate by phone or email, like any normal person. There always had to be a ridiculous charade to go through, either meeting him in a hotel room, like the last time, in case he was followed, or on very rare occasions in his office, like now.
At the end of the row of houses he passed a yacht chandlery, then pushed the indicator into right-turn mode, waited for a gap in the traffic and accelerated, the engine spluttering under the sudden load, across into the Portslade Units industrial estate. It was easy to spot the building he was heading for; it was the one with the helicopter, like a mutant black insect, parked on the roof. Venner’s private helicopter.
He drove past an antiques depot, then pulled into the carport of a massive modern warehouse alongside a large black Mercedes which he knew was one of the cars that belonged to Venner. The sign on the wall said Oceanic & Occidental Import/Export.
He killed the engine, but continued to listen to Radio Five Live, wondering whether to use his mobile phone to call in and correct the plonker. But he was short of time; he needed to get back to the office. Muttering to himself, ‘Forties, Cromarty, Tyne, Dogger, north-west seven to severe gale force nine,’ he climbed out of the car, locked it and checked each door methodically, walked up to the side entrance and, showing his face to the lens of the security camera, pressed the buzzer.
There was a klunk followed by a rasping buzz as the lock released. He pushed open the heavy-duty door and entered a ground-floor space, the size of a football pitch, filled with massive grey sea containers. Two surly eastern Europeans in overalls, one bald with a tattooed head, the other with a long mane of black hair, watched him, gave a brief nod of recognition and turned their attention back to a container being hoisted into the air on a vast mobile lift.
The Weatherman had hacked into the company’s computer system and read the manifests. He knew what was inside the containers. Half had legitimate goods, mostly machine parts and agricultural chemicals, the other half contained stolen exotic cars for Russia and the Middle East, military equipment destined for Syria and North Korea, and out-of-date pharmaceuticals for Nigeria.
But he wasn’t about to tell Venner he knew that. It was just useful knowledge. He just wanted to see him, tell him what he had found out, then get back to the office. And tonight he had a date with Mona – well, a date on an internet chat site. His third with her. Mona worked for an IT company in Boise, Idaho in America; they talked mostly about the environment.
But the big thing about her was she had read Robert Anton Wilson, and they had so much else in common. She agreed with the Weatherman that quite soon people would be able to download their brains into computers and live a virtual existence, freed from all the crap restraints of being a bi
ological human being.
He rode the industrial-sized, bare elevator up to the floor above. ‘Decreasing in East Forties and East Dogger,’ he informed Mick Brown, who was standing there to greet him as the doors opened, wearing a grey Prada tracksuit and white loafers.
The Albanian had never heard the UK shipping forecast. He had no idea what the Weatherman was on about, and didn’t care. He chewed a piece of gum for some moments with his mouth open, revealing most of his tiny, white incisors to the Weatherman, staring at him, taking in his limp expression, his limp hair, his limp white shirt, beige trousers, his clumsy grey shoes. He was checking for signs of a weapon, not that he thought the weird Mr Frost would be capable of carrying one, but it was something he was paid to do, so he checked all the same.
Frost had no muscles; he looked weak. It was going to be easy to kill this one when the time came. But no sport either. The Albanian preferred fighters; it was good to knock someone about a little while they were trying to knock you back, especially women. ‘Mobile?’ he said in his guttural accent.
‘I didn’t bring it.’
‘Left? In car or office?’
‘Office,’ he lied. ‘That’s what I was told.’
Directly opposite the elevator was a solid-looking door with a security keypad and a closed-circuit camera. The Albanian pulled a card from his pocket, pressed it to the pad, then pushed open the door, beckoning the Weatherman to follow.
Instantly, as he entered, Frost smelled the familiar reek of stale cigar smoke. They went into a small, stark, windowless room, cheaply carpeted wall to wall. It was furnished with an old metal desk that looked like it had come from a closing-down sale, a swivel chair, a wall-mounted plasma television on which a football match was showing, and five monitors, one showing outside the office door, the other four giving 360-degree coverage of the exterior of the building.
‘You wait.’ The Albanian walked to the rear of the office, opened another door, stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Moments later the Weatherman heard raised voices. Venner was shouting, but the sound was too muffled to hear what was being said.
He stared at the television screen. It was lunchtime, another reason he was irritated, the second lunchtime this week he had been summoned by Venner. Staring at the floor, fixating on a tiny piece of silver foil trapped in the carpet fibres, he wondered how to pluck up the courage to tell him that he didn’t want to work for him any more. Then he glanced up at the screen, wishing it was Star Trek instead of football. Star Trek gave him courage, inspiration. He imagined himself as several of the characters, from time to time. Boldly going . . .
‘Hrmmm,’ The Man Who Was Not Timid said, clearing his throat and his mind, thinking, wondering again how to pluck up the courage. Carl Venner was not going to be happy—
Then his thread was interrupted by the sound of Venner’s door opening and the voice of the fat man yelling in his squeaky Louisiana drawl, ‘Just get the fucking little bitch outta my sight – she fucking bit me, fucking bitch!’
Moments later a small, frightened-looking girl staggered out of the room, wearing a bewildered expression. She had eastern European features, long brown hair and a slim figure, and wore vivid lipstick that was badly smudged. She was dressed in tarty shoes, a low-cut top and a miniskirt so short it was barely street-legal. Under her right eye was a fresh weal which looked set to come out as a shiner; her left cheek had an equally fresh blow which had broken the skin and was drizzling blood. There were large bruises running the length of both her arms.
The Weatherman reckoned she was not a day older than twelve.
She caught his eye for a moment as if pleading for help, but he just looked away, searching for that bit of silver foil on the carpet, feeling bad about her but helpless, and even more determined to tell Venner to stick it, except of course he hadn’t been paid yet.
The Albanian spoke sharply to the girl in a language the Weatherman did not understand. The girl answered Mr Brown back in a raised voice, feisty for her young years, looked back at the Weatherman again, desperately, but he was staring at the carpet and muttering silently to himself.
Then the Weatherman felt an arm around his shoulders, and smelled the sour reek of cigar smoke combined with body odour, only slightly masked with Comme des Garçons ‘Homme’ cologne – he had recently learned by heart the smell of all the colognes in a Gatwick Airport duty free shop, as a way of killing time before a flight.
‘She doesn’t like it up the ass, John. What do you think about that?’ Carl Venner asked; his five-foot-five-inch, twenty-six-stone frame looked in a dishevelled state, and he had a fresh scratch on his cheek. His normally immaculately coiffed wavy silver hair was awry and his pigtail had been partially pulled free of its band. He wore an emerald shirt wide open, with half the buttons torn off, revealing the massive rolls of loose flesh of his midriff and a hairless white belly overhanging his shiny belt.
His face was a blotchy red with exertion or anger and dry patches of psoriasis, which the Weatherman had noticed before, showed on his forehead; the man was wheezing so hard he wondered if he was about to have a heart attack.
‘She doesn’t like being fucked up the ass,’ Venner said, rephrasing slightly. ‘Can you believe that?’
The Weatherman didn’t really have an opinion on the subject. Feeling himself propelled forward by the short, dense mass of Carl Venner, he simply said, ‘Ummmm.’
They stopped for a moment and Venner turned his head back to Mr Brown. ‘Do what you want with her, then get rid of the little bitch.’
Putting up with this, and being party to it, was not part of his deal, but then the Weatherman had never understood the true nature of his contractor until he had started looking into Venner’s background by hacking into his private files.
He had first encountered Venner on an internet chatline for techies, where information was exchanged and technical conundrums posited and worked out. Venner had set him a challenge which the Weatherman had thought at the time was hypothetical. The challenge was whether it was possible to put up a website on the internet that would be completely and permanently untraceable. The Weatherman had already designed the system. He had thought of offering it to the British intelligence services, but then he had been pissed off about the Iraq war. And anyway he distrusted all government bodies, everywhere. In fact he distrusted just about everything.
Venner propelled him through into his cavernous office, which comprised most of the upstairs floor of the warehouse. It was a vast, windowless and soulless place, carpeted in the same cheap material as the front office and almost equally sparsely furnished, apart from one area at the far end taken up with several racks of computer hardware – which the Weatherman knew inside out, as he had installed it all himself.
Venner’s desk, on which sat four open laptops and nothing else other than a glass ashtray with two crushed cigar butts and a glass bowl full of chocolate bars, was a clone of the one outside. There was an old executive black leather armchair behind it, and a long brown leather sofa, in poor condition, near the desk. On the carpet just in front of it the Weatherman noticed a crumpled pair of skimpy lace knickers. Above him, raindrops were pattering down on the metal warehouse roof.
As ever, Venner’s two silent Russian colleagues, in their black suits, materialized from nowhere and flanked the fat man, silent and unsmiling, giving the Weatherman just faint nods of acknowledgement.
‘You know, she really did fucking bite me. Look!’ Venner exhaled a blast of cigar-laced halitosis and held up a fat, stubby index finger, nail gnawed to the quick.
The Weatherman could see deep puncture marks just above the first knuckle. Peering at them he said, ‘You’ll need a tetanus jab.’
‘Tetanus?’
The Weatherman fixated on the knickers on the carpet, rocking backwards and forwards in silence, deep in thought.
‘Tetanus?’ the American repeated, worried.
Still staring at the knickers Frost said, ‘The bacterial in
oculum of human bite wounds is worse than any other animal. Do you have any idea how many organisms thrive in human oral flora?’
‘I don’t.’
Still rocking, the Weatherman said, ‘Up to one million per millilitre – with over one hundred and ninety different bacterial species.’
‘Terrific.’ Venner stared dubiously at his wound. ‘So . . .’ He strutted agitatedly around the floor in a small circle, then closed his hands together, his expression indicating a complete change of mood and subject. ‘You have the information?’
‘Ummm.’ The Weatherman continued to stare at the knickers, still rocking. ‘What is going to, umm – going to, ummm – to the girl? Happen to her?’
‘Mick’s taking her home. What’s your problem?’
‘Ummm – no I, umm – good. OK, great.’
‘Do you have what I asked you to bring? What I’m fucking paying you for?’
The Weatherman unbuttoned the back pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small, lined sheet of paper torn from a notebook and folded twice. He handed it to Venner, who took it with a grunt. ‘You are one-hundred-per-cent sure?’
‘Yes.’
This seemed to satisfy Venner, who waddled over to his desk to read it.
Written on it was the address of Tom and Kellie Bryce.
21
Professor Lars Johansson was a man who, in Grace’s opinion, looked more like an international banker than a scientist who had spent much of his life crawling through bat caves, swamps and hostile jungles around the globe in search of rare insects.
Over six foot tall, with smooth blond hair and suave good looks, attired in a three-piece chalk-striped suit, the Anglo-Swede exuded urbane charm and confidence. He sat at his large desk, in his cluttered office on the top floor of London’s Natural History Museum, with his half-moon tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of his nose, surrounded by display cases and bell jars filled with rare specimens, a microscope, and a raft of medical implements, rulers and weights. The entire room could have come straight from the set of an Indiana Jones movie, Grace thought.
