by Tim Ellis
'Maybe we should take another look around the house,' Harry suggested. 'I wonder why he never took them back to where he got them from.'
'I guess we'll never know now. So, we'll do what we did before. You look upstairs, I'll look downstairs and then we'll swap.'
'And do the cellar together?'
'Yes. And don't bother looking in the obvious places. His wife must have searched the house from top to bottom a dozen times.'
'I expect so.'
***
'Maybe I should ask for a receipt and claim on my expenses,' he said as they shuffled along in the queue at the cafe. 'What do you think, Rummage?'
'I think the people in finance would laugh at you. If you did put in a claim, it would appear on one of those lists about the funniest claims sent to the finance section. They'd pin it up on the station notice board, publish it in the police gazette, and it'd probably go viral on social media.'
'You're not being very supportive, Rummage. I mean, a Detective Inspector is paid peanuts, and he should not have to swap those peanuts for information on the victims in his investigation from the forensic pathologist. Where's the justice in that? The government will do anything to squeeze more money out of us. It's like one of those stealth taxes you hear so much about.'
'It's a lemon tea and a croissant.'
'Yes, today! But next week it'll be a three-course meal and a bottle of the best champagne peanuts can buy. It's the principal of the thing.'
As they reached the table with the tray, Doctor Solberg appeared carrying a thick file under her arm. 'How are you feeling now, Inspector?'
'Light in head and wallet.'
'I'm sure the coffee will sort your head out, and you'll be able to overclaim on your expenses to increase the weight of your wallet.'
'That's exactly what I said. See, Rummage. Someone else who knows the value of peanuts. So, I hope you've got good news for us, Doctor?'
She took a bite from her croissant and opened up the file. 'I will leave you to judge.'
'That seems fair.'
'So far, we have only carried out eight of the fourteen post-mortems . . .'
'On a go-slow?'
'I will treat that with the contempt it deserves. So, what I tell you is based on those eight post-mortems, but the results are all very similar. First, all eight were murdered. The cause of death was catastrophic brain injury caused by a long thin spike pushed through the cerebellum at the base of the brain and angled upwards into the temporal lobe. Death would have been almost instantaneous and there would have been very little blood. We obtained DNA and fingerprint samples and ran them through the databases. There was one match – twenty-seven year-old Katherine Bush.' She passed him a Missing Persons poster of an attractive woman with dark hair, a thin face and a friendly smile. 'She was reported missing by her boyfriend on September 14, 2017.'
'Which exhibit was she found in?'
'Baby Spice.'
'And that went on display when?'
'November 2017.'
'She could have been murdered to order,' Rummage suggested.
He glanced at her. 'That was running through my mind as well.' He took a swallow of his coffee. 'Okay. Carry on, Doctor.'
'We tested the wax covering the bodies. I can confirm that it is not beeswax. As I suspected, it is adipocere, which as you'll recall is formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in the tissues, internal organs and the face of corpses. We found the DNA profiles of thirty-seven people in the wax. However, I have produced a timeline for you, because he is adding wax to the quantity as he goes along.'
'Meaning?'
'The adipocere used to cover the first corpse in the timeline consists of only twelve DNA profiles. In the second one, there are fifteen, but it doesn't include two DNA profiles that were identified in the wax covering the first corpse, which means he added the adipocere of another five corpses, and so on. Now obviously, what I can't tell you is anything about when or how each victim died. But I have identified three of the DNA profiles.'
'DNA profiles with names,' he said. 'Whatever next?'
'That's what you could be instead of a murder detective, Sir,' Rummage said.
'And what would that be, Rummage?'
'A failed, down-on-his-luck comedian who isn't funny.'
'I agree, Jezebel,' Solberg said. 'He is not at all funny.'
'It's great to have so many fans. Are the victims Missing Persons, as well, Doctor?'
'Yes. And as I told you yesterday, adipocere is a product of decomposition that turns body fat into corpse wax. The wax is also called the fat of graveyards, because it forms through a process called saponification and tends to develop when body fat is exposed to anaerobic bacteria in a warm, damp, alkaline environment, either in soil or water. Depending on the environmental conditions, the presence of adipocere usually indicates a post-mortem interval of at least several months.'
His brow furrowed. 'When you mentioned adipocere yesterday, I got the impression that it formed over years, but now you're saying it's actually months?'
'That's right. What I am also saying is that he is creating his own conditions to harvest the adipocere. We are not talking about someone digging up graves to collect the wax from corpses like a person wandering through the forest with a pig searching for truffles. He is probably keeping them in a temperature-controlled water environment. And, not only is he killing the people he is using in the exhibits, he is also killing the people to harvest their body fat. So far, we have fourteen – possibly seventeen – corpses in the exhibits, plus another thirty-seven DNA profiles in the adipocere. That means . . .'
'There are at least fifty-four murder victims?' Rummage concluded.
Quigg shook his head. 'That's preposterous, Doctor. Someone would have noticed that fifty-four people had gone missing.'
'Forensic science doesn't lie, Inspector.'
'But you could be mistaken?'
'Do you think I have not checked my findings? Do you think I have not had others check my findings? Do you think I am a junior doctor with very little training and experience? Do you think . . .?'
'It was only a suggestion.'
'A stupid one, if I am being honest. I am not mistaken. DC Rummage is correct – you have at least fifty-four victims so far, but I estimate that by the time we complete the post-mortems and the scientific analysis, there will be a lot more.'
'So, he's collected the fat, but where are the bodies?'
'That is your problem, not mine. I have enough bodies, thank you very much.'
'I'm not sure that anyone would notice fifty-four people going missing, Sir,' Rummage said. 'There's been a seventy-two percent increase in reported cases in London in the past decade, with about fifty-five thousand cases each year. And don't forget, our fifty-four cases are spread over at least nine years.'
He took his phone out and called Sergeant Coveney.
'Hello, Sir. How are things going with you?'
'Why do you ask?'
'Just being friendly.'
'You're not paid to be friendly, Coveney. I know to my cost that being friendly can get you into a lot of trouble. Take these names down.'
'Okay, Sir.'
He referred to Doctor Solberg's timeline. 'Katherine Bush was reported missing by her boyfriend on September 14, 2017; Scott Bolt was reported missing by his wife on January 5, 2011; Peter Willis was reported missing by his brother on November 26, 2013; and John Ambler was reported missing by his boss on March 19, 2016. After a hard morning's work, Rummage and I are going to have some lunch now, but then we're coming back to the command centre. When we get there, I'll expect to hear everything you've found out about those four missing people.'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Excellent.' He ended the call. 'Anything else, Doctor?'
'You will have my final report by email tomorrow morning.'
'I look forward to reading it. And I hope it'll be worth a lemon tea and a croissant.'
'You can be objectionable at t
imes, Quigg.'
'Very good of you to say so, Doctor.' He stood up. 'Right, Rummage. Ready to eat?'
'Yes.'
'Let's go then. My stomach thinks my mouth has stop working.'
'There's not much chance of that, Sir.'
'You're on a roll today, Rummage.'
Chapter Eighteen
After a short phone call, the man and the woman had left her strung up by her wrists and bleeding out. She could feel her life drip-dripping away through a wide-bore cannula that they'd inserted into her femoral artery. Each drop of blood splattered into a grey-coloured bucket beneath her. Now, it was looking like there was more of her in the bucket than hanging from the hook in the ceiling.
Before the phone call, they'd planned to torture her. She could see the instruments of torture scattered all around the shipping container – hedge cutters, scalpels, pliers, an assortment of hammers, a battery-operated drill, bolt cutters, and an open canvas roll full of dental equipment on a plastic table. The walls were sound-proofed and coated in a reflective silver aluminium insulating film. There was a dental chair with straps for the wrists and ankles, and a trolley full of medical equipment. She'd been lucky. Well, lucky as long as they didn't come back. But even if they did, she imagined she wouldn't last long anyway. The woman had said, 'We plan to come back and have a little fun, but if we don't, you'll be dead in about three hours.'
The man ran his garlic-stinking tongue up her face, squeezed her right breast and stuck a gloved finger into her vagina. 'While she's doing that, I'll be doing other things.'
'I'm going to fucking kill you.'
He laughed like a demented animal. 'Of course you are.'
How long had she been here now – hours, days, weeks?
She felt cold and clammy; her heart was beating like it wanted to escape from its prison; she was struggling to breathe; and she had the worse throbbing headache she'd ever had.
Regrets! I've had a few . . . A man began singing inside her head. Did she have any regrets? No, no regrets. She was living her best life. Of course, there were lots of other things she planned to do, but no regrets. She had Quigg, Ruth and Duffy. And she loved those rugrats as if they were her own children. Maybe she should have let Quigg get her pregnant. No! She was being crazy. It was the loss of blood talking – not her.
'Just one baby,' Quigg said.
'No babies, Quigg. No glove, no love.'
'One baby wouldn't hurt.'
'Have you ever had a baby?'
'Well, no.'
'So, how would you know whether it hurt, or not?'
'I have anecdotal evidence.'
'And I've seen the movie. No baby, and that's final. Go away, Quigg.'
'You don't know what you're missing.'
'I think I have a pretty good idea.'
Her father was standing in front of her shaking his head. 'You're a fool, Lucy Neilson.'
'Says the father who gave his own daughter a ticking microchip.'
'You should have checked it was safe before injecting it into your hand. What were you thinking?'
'Are you going to get me down from here?'
'I'm in your head, Lucy.'
Tears ran down her face. 'I'm going to die, aren't I?'
'It's looking that way, Lucy Fifi.'
'Tell me about mum.'
'What's to tell? Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, with yellow feathers in her hair . . .'
'At the Copacabana?'
'That's the place – we fell in love.'
Duffy appeared. 'You'll be a ghost soon, Lucy. I'll investigate you.'
'And I'll fucking haunt you.'
'I'll be able to detect your haunting through my new instruments, won't I? They'll be here soon. Don't die until I get my instruments.'
'Where are you, Duffy?'
'I'm still here.'
'Then why can't I see you?'
'Because you're hallucinating and losing consciousness.'
'Goodbye, Duffy.'
'Don't forget to come back and haunt me, will you?'
'I won't . . .'
***
It was Harry who noticed the specks of plastic and wood on the floor at the end of the bath while he was relieving himself. He thought it odd, especially as Gregory had supposedly cleaned the house. The white bath was an encased plastic bath with a side and end panel positioned to hide the wooden framework holding the bath in place underneath.
After washing and drying his hands, he squatted and removed the bath end panel, which was held in place by clips. Inside, he found six A4 hardback notebooks. Each was a different colour – black, green, red, orange, blue and purple.
'DUFFY!' he shouted.
'Yes?'
'I've found them.'
She ran up the stairs and hurried into the bathroom. 'The notebooks?'
'In here.' He reached his hand into the space beneath the bath to lift out the notebooks.
'Stop!' Duffy said.
'What?'
'Don't touch them.'
'Why not?'
'There could be fingerprints, blood, fluids, hair and other forensic evidence on them.' She reached into her bag, took out two pairs of plastic gloves and passed him one pair. 'Put these on.'
'Evidence of what?'
'We won't know until we look through them, will we?'
'I guess not.' He stuffed his hands into the gloves.
'Have you got your camera with you?'
'In my bag downstairs.'
'Can you get it? I think we should take photographs of where we found them, just in case.'
'Just in case of what?'
'I don't know, but that's what forensic officers do.'
He shrugged. 'Okay,' he said, and made his way downstairs. After a few minutes, he clomped back up holding the camera, and took a number of pictures of the notebooks in-situ under the bath, and of Duffy lifting them out. Each notebook had a number from 1 – 6 printed in the top right-hand corner.
'Let's take them downstairs and examine them on the kitchen table?' Duffy suggested.
'Good idea.'
Harry made the tea again before they sat down and began examining the notebooks one at a time.
Each notebook had six sections, which were delineated by a colour-coded divider page. On the front of each of the six divider pages someone had printed, in neat black ink: PROJECT . . . The six projects in the first – black – notebook were:
1. BLACK
(JANUARY – DECEMBER 2014)
PROJECT
AVRIL
BEATRICE
CATHERINE
DENISE
EMILY
FREDA
2. GREEN
(JANUARY – DECEMBER 2015)
PROJECT
GIGI
HELEN
INDIA
JACKIE
KAYLEIGH
LINDA
3. RED
(JANUARY – DECEMBER 2016)
PROJECT
MAUREEN
NOLA
OPHELIA
PAULA
QUEENIE
RINA
4. ORANGE
(JANUARY – DECEMBER 2017)
PROJECT
SALLY
TANYA
UMA
VICKIE
WENDY
XENA
5. BLUE
(JANUARY – DECEMBER 2018)
PROJECT
YVONNE
ZELDA
ANNA
BUNNY
CHARLENE
DOREEN
6. PURPLE
(JANUARY – DECEMBER 2019)
ELISE
FIONA
GINA
HARRIET
ISOBEL
'The names are in alphabetic order,' Harry said.
As Duffy turned the pages and they both saw the terrible details of each project, they reeled in shock and horror.
'I can understand why Estelle wrote that she was scared,' Duffy said.
&n
bsp; 'I think I'm going to be . . .' Harry put his hand up to his mouth, hurried to the kitchen sink and puked up the Viennese whirls and cups of tea he'd consumed. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I didn't think I'd make it to the toilet.'
She didn't say anything. She remembered the first time she'd seen a dead body in the mortuary with Quigg – she'd fainted, but she wasn't going to mention that.
Each project described – in meticulous detail – the abduction, torture and death of a woman. It included the preparations he made; dates; times; method; equipment used; items taken from the victims; the exact amount of ketamine injections to immobilise them; the times he administered the drug and where; how they responded; how he tortured them; the date and times of their death; any last words uttered; photographs; drawings; newspaper articles; and there was also references made to video and voice recordings. Through the notebooks he could re-live every detail of his crimes.
And if all that were not enough, he described how he had sex with each woman and abused their corpses, masturbated to the sight and sound of his recordings, and the details he'd written in the notebooks.
Everything pointed to him having a pathological need for control, and that he felt godlike because he could do whatever he wanted to them. To him, the women were simply experimental subjects, objects to be used and abused.
Duffy closed the last notebook. 'Have you seen enough?'
'More than,' Harry said, resembling a street entertainer smothered in white chalk and powder make-up. 'Things like that make me sick.'
'I can still smell it.'
'Sorry.' He stood up, found some air freshener under the sink and sprayed it around the room, then poured bleach down the sinkhole. 'That should make it a bit better.'
'Yes.'
'He's starting again from "A",' Harry said.
'Yes. And not only that, these notebooks were taken from Mister Keller's house in October. If he's still following the same timeline of taking a woman every two months, then he abducted his latest victim last month – she might still be alive.'
'He's abducted and murdered thirty-five women so far. He'll be starting a new project next month.'
