The few streetlights that worked stood far apart, gaping oceans of darkness between them. Buildings lined the street, a demolition alley of decay and neglect. Illuminated by one of the streetlights, a large hoarding on a dilapidated hairdresser advertised new albums by the bands Spineshank and Fear Factory. The final name seemed appropriate for her predicament.
The ache in her legs grew more pronounced, spreading up her torso to produce a stitch in her side that made her wince. The skirt she wore now seemed wholly inappropriate. It tugged at her knees as she ran, a shackle of cotton and lace and her shoulder bag felt like a noose around her neck as it trailed behind her.
In an attempt to lose the man, she feigned heading straight on, then at the last minute, she dodged around a corner into an alley, the severe change of direction shooting sharp pains through her knee.
But it worked, and she heard the man’s footsteps go out of sync as he ran past the alley, and it gained her a few vital seconds as he had to stop and turn to follow her.
She felt a glimmer of hope, only to have it extinguished when she saw she had entered a dead end street. A brick wall loomed in front of her, too high to climb, too encompassing to circumvent. It stretched between crumbling buildings, a net of brick.
She slowed her speed, her legs grateful for the slight change of pace, and looked around, eyes wide and chest heaving. A few wooden pallets lined the wall, and she noticed a couple of empty beer cans littering the dirty pavement, but that was all. Alarmed to see no way out, her breath hitched in her throat.
Jane looked back and saw the man enter the alley. He withdrew a long knife, and the scream she had so far managed to suppress burst out.
CHAPTER 3
The Oracle looked down at Jane’s naked body without blinking.
The light from the two lamps set on the stone floor beside her didn’t illuminate much of the cavernous room, just highlighting a couple of the metal columns that extended into the darkness above, but they were sufficient to allow him to see.
With the help of the chloroform he had used to knock her out, Jane had remained unconscious throughout the car ride to his lair. While she had a nice body, he didn’t take advantage when he undressed her, and one look at her marred face quelled any desire he might have had.
After a while, she started to stir; opened her eyes, her expression fearful as she tried to take stock of where she was. She struggled to move on the cold stone floor, hampered by the plastic ties that bound her feet and wrists. As though realising she was naked, she scrunched herself up a little to hide her body. Goose bumps erupted along her flesh.
“Where am I?” she asked, her voice choked by tears.
The Oracle didn’t reply. He continued to stare at her, channelling his emotions into a single ball of anger.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t hurt me.”
He didn’t respond, although it seemed something deep down inside heard her pleas and he blinked and licked his lips, pausing for the briefest of moments. Then he picked up the welding torch connected to the two compressed gas cylinders. One tank contained oxygen, the other acetylene. He turned the valve on the acetylene, struck a lighter, and ignited the gas which popped as it lit. Then he turned another valve to introduce oxygen, adjusting the mixture with the controls on the torch head until the flame burned vivid blue. Even holding it at arm’s length, the Oracle could feel the intense heat.
Jane screamed – a deep, throat searing sound that reverberated around the large room as he approached her, but he knew no one would hear her cries, not out here.
With one foot on her stomach to stop her moving, he touched the flame to her arm. The flesh bubbled and swelled, then blackened and crackled like plastic as the extreme heat burned through skin, muscle and then bone. Smoke rose from where her flesh burned, carrying with it the aroma of overcooked meat. Blood bubbled around the wound, but none flowed out, the flame’s heat congealing it on contact.
The Oracle ignored her screams, focusing his anger as he worked. Anger was the fuel that powered him. Pure, unadulterated anger.
CHAPTER 4
Detective Chief Inspector Prosper Snow looked up from his crossword puzzle to stare at the tower of paperwork in his inbox. He sighed; the onerous heat making him more lethargic than usual. It didn’t help that the powers up above wanted everything writing in triplicate. He spent more time writing reports than he did working on cases, and he often said, “If he wanted to write, he’d have become an author, not a law enforcement officer.”
The fan on his desk droned away, plastic streamers waggling from the front like tentacles.
He loosened his tie and wiped perspiration from his brow with his handkerchief. Leaning back in his chair, he looked at the picture of his wife and son that stood next to the paperwork. The photograph showed Natasha devoid of the leg brace and crutches that she required since the accident; depending how sorry he was feeling for himself at any one moment, it was either a guardian angel or a devil on her shoulder the day of the crash. He knew she could have died – they both could.
As he turned his attention back to the crossword in the newspaper, a commotion outside the office drew his attention and he saw his new partner, Jill Jones shaking her head and talking animatedly to one of the other officers.
They had only been working together for a few months. She was career minded, and he felt she wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to advance through the ranks. She seemed to operate by the ‘live to work’ philosophy, whereas Prosper preferred to kick back now and again, shirking the workload wherever possible.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Jill said as she burst into his office brandishing a manila envelope in her gloved hands. Behind her, a group of officers crowded the doorway.
Prosper dropped his newspaper and latched his fingers behind his head, ignoring the rankled expression she assumed when her enthusiasm didn’t prove contagious. “Six letter word for reciprocal?”
Jill stared at him in puzzlement.
“Got it,” Prosper said, answering his own question. “Mutual.” He scribbled the answer into the empty boxes of the crossword puzzle.
“You’d better look at this,” Jill said. “We had a missing person report a couple of days ago. Young girl called Jane Numan.”
“I take it she’s turned up then.” Prosper leaned back and latched his hands behind his head again.
“Not how we wanted. All we have is this.” She opened the envelope and pulled out a photograph that she thrust in front of him.
Prosper stared at the image for a moment. As it came into focus, he unlatched his fingers and sat up straight. “Fuck me.” He whistled softly, his earlier breakfast of poached egg on toast churning in his stomach.
The A4 sized photograph showed a young woman. The disfigurement on the side of her face made him feel uneasy, but it was the way she’d been butchered that made him feel sick. A lump lodged in his throat and combined with the heat, the image made him feel giddy. Despite nearly sixteen years on the force, he had never seen anything like it. As if the girl hadn’t probably suffered enough with her disfigurement.
What remained of her body was naked; arms and legs incinerated with an extreme form of heat, the flesh and bone reduced to ashes and arranged around her torso like gossamer wings. It reminded Prosper of a snow angel. A label attached to the photograph read: PHOENIX, courtesy of the Oracle.
There were a series of nine portrait photographs placed around the body. Prosper peered closer to make them out, recognising a couple straight away as those of serial killers, Dennis Nilsen, Harold Shipman and Jeffrey Dahmer.
“What do we know about her?” he asked.
Mike Holmes appeared behind Jill and shrugged, his buzz cut giving him a thuggish look that belied his law enforcement status. “Not a lot so far. She was reported as missing two days ago after not turning up for work at a burger bar on the high street.”
“Well, that's not good enough. I want to know everything. I want to kno
w where she went to school, what she ate for breakfast, family, boyfriend, girlfriend, everything. Do you understand?”
Mike nodded.
“And do a check on the PNC to see if there have ever been any other killings that featured pictures of serial killers at the crime scene.”
The Police National Computer held over 97 million records, including the national criminal record database, along with other services such as crime pattern analysis and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), so if there was a link anywhere, Prosper knew it would be found.
“Well, don't just bloody stand there.”
Mike bobbed his head and started out of the room.
“And don't let the press know anything until we know more about her. I don't want those bastards harassing any family or friends before we've had chance to talk to them first.”
When Mike left the room, Prosper pulled a pair of gloves from out of his desk drawer, put them on, and took the picture from Jill. The photograph shook within his grasp as though he had palsy and he took a steadying breath. Phoenix. Did the title hold some meaning to the killer-cum-photographer? Prosper placed the photograph on the desk and leaned across to call up the Google search engine on his computer. He hammered the word ‘phoenix’ out on the keyboard with his sausage sized fingers, and watched the thousands of results that came back before selecting one on an online dictionary.
Phoenix: Legendary Arabian bird, representing resurrection and immortality. Only one bird existed at a time, setting fire to itself and rising anew from the ashes every 500 years. Also a thing surpassing beauty or quality.
Prosper read the results again and then looked at the photograph.
Did the killer think in some way he unleashed Jane Numan's inner beauty? That she would rise from the ashes?
He dabbed at his brow with the handkerchief. A correlation existed between the temperature and murder, as though the heat released a valve on a cerebral pressure cooker. Prosper called it the Summer Madness. But this went beyond the usual madness, into the realms of psychotic.
Throat dry, he ran the back of his hand across his mouth and licked his lips, then conscious of the sweat patches staining his armpits, he quickly lowered his arm; in his mind it was a lingering result of the adipose tissue he carried around as a teenager. In those days, he used to sweat profusely just walking to Kingswood High School. Half the man of yesteryear, his thirty-four inch waist was a vast improvement on his previous forty-eight inch waist. Not that he had any photographic evidence of his corpulent past – he had burned the pictures – but he didn’t miss the strange parallel with the Oracle's photograph and its title. He had risen from the ashes of his own past a new man, a phoenix in his own right, but the similarity ended there. He quickly shut the door on the memory of his teenage years.
By late afternoon, Prosper had the information he needed on the victim.
Jane Numan's dossier read like a Shakespearean tragedy:
23 years of age, she lived alone at flat 20a,
Golden Hill Road – Prosper knew the area well as a proverbial cesspit of iniquity. She’d been born with a craniofacial disfigurement, and on top of that, blighted with a port-wine stain.
She’d attended John Smith secondary school, but after an intense period of bullying, her parents moved her to a special school.
For the past two years, she’d worked in the burger bar on the High Street. Before that, she worked in telesales, a faceless voice on the end of the telephone.
Was this through choice due to her disfigurement? Her way of hiding away? Prosper wondered.
From the information his colleagues gathered, it appeared she didn't really have any friends, but she didn’t have any known enemies either.
Prosper put the dossier down and wiped his brow again. The sun had passed its zenith, but it left a wave of heat in its wake. Every breath he took seemed to scorch his throat and he waggled the knot of his tie to loosen it and then took a sip from the bottle of warm water on the desk. He licked his lips, tasting the salty residue of his own sweat.
It had taken a while to track them down, but all of the portraits featured in the Oracle’s photograph were of serial killers who had committed a catalogue of heinous murders. The list included, Colin Ireland, known as the ‘Gay Slayer’ as he targeted gay men. His tally of kills reached five. Then there was Patrick Wayne Kearney, a gay killer who targeted other gay men. His tally reached thirty-two. John Wayne Gacy, who raped and murdered thirty-three boys and young men, and Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman, the notorious doctor held responsible for killing over four hundred of his patients.
The rest of the portraits included, Coral Eugene Watts, who committed over twenty-two murders, Dennis Andrew Nilsen, sixteen kills, Anatoli Onoprienko, whose portrait appeared twice for some reason. Dubbed, ‘The Terminator’, he tallied up to fifty-two victims in a six-year killing spree. And finally, Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered seventeen men and boys.
The fan on the desk had given up the ghost, beaten into submission by the heat and Prosper dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief before stuffing it back in his pocket. He stared at Jill. She seemed unaffected by the heat, allowing her to maintain a cold demeanour. He envied her asbestos constitution.
After a moment, he picked up the dossier again and made a note of Jane Numan's parents’ address.
“Okay, Jill,” he said, wafting the dossier like a fan to cool himself. “Let's get this over with.”
The car’s air-conditioning felt like luxury. Prosper sat back in his seat, enjoying the journey. Outside the car, the streets baked and shimmered in a heat haze, a Salvador Dali painting brought to life.
“So have you got any theories about the murder?” Prosper asked.
Jill pursed her lips. “That’s if it is a murder.”
“Well judging by the photograph, I don’t think she’ll be up to running a marathon anytime soon.” Prosper turned his head to look at Jill as she drove.
“Yes, but that’s the point I’m trying to make. All we have is a photograph. Who’s to say it’s real?”
Prosper shivered as he recalled looking at it. “Well it looked bloody real enough to me.”
“I’m not saying it’s not,” Jill glanced quickly at Prosper before returning her eyes to the road, “but gone are the days when the camera doesn’t lie. Now there are all sorts of photographic trickery people can do on a simple home computer.”
“What would be the point of fabricating her death?” Prosper pursed his lips.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You asked a question, I’m just giving you an opinion.”
“Well I can’t see the point of anyone going to all that trouble.”
“Probably easier manipulating a photo than to actually do for real what was on the picture. Certainly a lot less messy.”
Prosper shook his head and folded his arms across his chest. “That wasn’t camera trickery. That girl’s body had been butchered for real.”
Jill drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, lips pinched. “Things aren’t always that clear cut.”
“Perhaps not, but in this case, I think we need to be looking at it as a murder case, not as a photographer with some desktop software getting his kicks by manipulating photos. I’m about to confront a family with photographic evidence that their daughter’s been murdered. Do you know how goddamn difficult this is? I don’t just think you’re barking up the wrong tree, I think you’re in the wrong bloody forest.”
Jill shrugged again.
They continued the rest of the journey in silence. Prosper ruminated on his partner’s fanciful theory. It probably wasn’t as stupid as it sounded, and he liked that she was looking at it from a fresh angle, but this time, she was wrong.
When they reached their destination, Jill parked the car and turned the engine off. Prosper didn't want to leave the icy comfort the vehicle provided. It was like an incongruous igloo, but he knew procrastinating wouldn’t get the job done.
He sighed, relishing in the co
olness of the vehicle, then he opened the door and stepped into the heat. His brow immediately prickled with sweat and he took the sodden handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it away.
Jill exited on the other side, as composed as ever. Prosper exhaled slowly.
“OK, let’s go.”
Prosper parked his Ford Focus in the drive of his house and switched the engine off. It had been a long day. Interviewing Jane’s parents had taken its toll on him and nothing helpful had come of it. He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lit it with his lighter, and blew a steady stream of smoke at the windscreen. He had to finish it before going inside; Natasha would go nuts if he smoked in the house.
The image of Jane Numan’s photograph swam in front of his face again. This was one of those cases where he couldn't leave his work at the office; it lingered like the smoke on his clothes. When the cigarette was spent, he opened the door, breathing heavy as he stubbed the butt out on the drive – like an inept villain, he couldn't be bothered hiding the evidence. No doubt Natasha would moan if she spotted it tomorrow when she went to work at the bank, spouting her usual spiel that 'the drive isn't an ashtray, honey', but he was too tired to care.
The house slept in darkness, and as he entered, Prosper switched the hall light on, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Natasha would probably be in bed, it was late, and the hours they worked often kept them apart.
In the lounge, Prosper almost tripped over an Action Man his son, Leon, had left on the floor. He grabbed a bottle of brandy and a glass from the cupboard, poured a large measure and then retired to the third bedroom and switched his computer on.
After he logged in, he read his personal e-mails, which consisted mainly of junk mail – how much Viagra did he need for the penis extension they seemed so keen on him having – and he was about to switch the computer off when a program installed by one of his friends flashed a message on the screen. It informed him of an e-mail in the Hotmail account that he shared with his old school friends.
Prosper Snow Series Page 2
