by LJ Ross
“How about time of death? We were the first on the scene, we found her just before four o’clock.”
Pinter let out a theatrical whoosh of breath, causing the two other men in the room to regard him with thinly-veiled irritation.
“Well, this is only a very rough estimate, but I’d say that the post mortem interval was anywhere up to fifteen or sixteen hours, by the time you found her.”
“Which would put her death at around midnight last night,” Ryan murmured.
“Yes. Her body is already in quite an advanced stage of rigor and her core temperature was ambient when she was brought in to us. Bearing in mind that the body cools at a rate of around one and a half degrees Celsius per hour and factoring in variables like her size, the likely stoop in core temperature as she suffered cardiac arrest…it’s difficult, but I’d still say roughly fifteen hours.”
“That would tie in with what we already know about her movements,” Phillips observed, thinking of the statements they had taken from Beth’s friends.
Pinter rocked back on his heels, waiting to deliver the most exciting piece of information he had discovered. It was another one of his little habits that they had come to expect over the course of their working relationship and it was fortunate that they could offset his many idiosyncrasies against the fact that he happened to be the most experienced and capable pathologist within a hundred miles.
“There’s something else and you’re not going to like it,” he gestured them towards the computer screen on his desk and brought up a recent photograph taken of the girl’s body. “Take a look at this.”
And there, written in plain black ink on the palm of Bethany’s left hand, was an eight-letter word:
INVICTUS
Phillips leaned in to inspect the photograph and then turned back to the other two men in the room with a look of consternation on his face.
“What does it mean? I feel like I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s Latin,” Ryan explained. “It means, ‘I remain’.”
Phillips raised a single bushy eyebrow.
“Latin lessons twice a week when I was at school,” Ryan elaborated.
“Oh, aye. I forgot you went to one of those posh gaffs. I bet you never thought it would actually come in useful, though.”
“For a dead language, it’s a remarkably popular choice for a certain brand of egotistical serial killer,” Ryan agreed.
Phillips had to smile.
“Why can’t these fruitcakes use plain English? They always have to have the last word and it always has to be melodramatic.”
“It’s completely in keeping with his character,” Ryan said. “He wants to be noticed, admired and feared. Latin allows him to project a veneer of intelligence. I remain. Is it a show of supremacy or defiance?”
Phillips considered the psychology of the man they hunted.
“Everything about this girl’s death was a show of supremacy. It was all staged especially for you to find.” He nodded at Ryan. “The way I see it, he’s sending out a challenge.”
A muscle ticked in Ryan’s jaw as he looked at the image on the screen.
“In that case, I accept.”
* * *
MacKenzie heard the soft tread of footsteps on the stairs and hurriedly stripped off her support splint, stuffing it underneath the bed before he entered the room. She sat meekly on the edge and waited for him to unlock the door.
“Dinnertime, Ruth,” he sang out, holding out a cracked plate with a meagre portion of what looked and smelled like tinned anchovies.
She accepted the plate with demure thanks and immediately began to force it down her throat, hating the salty taste of fish that had been embalmed in brine for too long. She chewed methodically, reminding herself that her body required fuel and silently reciting Yeats to take her mind off its rancid flavour:
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands.
The poetry reminded her of Frank, and she wondered where he was and if he thought she was dead already. Then Edwards clicked his fingers in front of her face, demanding her attention.
“Ruth? Pay attention when I’m talking to you. Rudeness is most unbecoming.”
MacKenzie didn’t bother to point out the obvious fact that he was hardly qualified to comment on manners or much else relating to the human condition.
“I beg your pardon.”
Edwards seemed to accept her apology at face value or else decided to ignore the sarcasm leaking from every pore.
“That’s better. If you’d been listening, you’d have heard me telling you that I’ll be going out again tonight. Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he wagged his finger at her and dropped down on one knee so that his face was less than five inches away from hers.
MacKenzie recoiled and the plate clattered to the floor.
“Tsk tsk,” he said. “Look at the mess you’ve made.”
“S-sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll clean it up.”
“Yes, you will,” he said patiently. “When I return, I’d like to see this room spick and span, and you sitting right here where I left you. Is that understood?”
MacKenzie’s lips trembled.
“Yes.”
He sighed dramatically and flicked a finger across her nose in the kind of casually intimate gesture that made her stomach turn.
“I can read you like a book,” he said, with a malicious smile. “I know that, as soon as my back is turned, you’ll be thinking of how you can scamper away across the hillside to find your knight in shining armour.” He paused and cocked his head. “Incidentally, where is the good sergeant? Surely, if he really cared, he would have come to save you by now?”
MacKenzie told herself not to react. His words were calculated to hurt and to undermine her resolve. She must not react.
“I don’t need anybody to save me,” she surprised them both by saying, and Edwards bared his teeth in something resembling a smile.
“Feisty! I do like that about you,” he confessed. “Practical, too, because—and let’s not beat around the bush—it’s no use hoping for a saviour. I could kill you very easily, whenever I choose.”
He said it so nonchalantly that it took her breath away.
Suddenly, Edwards sighed again and rose to his feet, raising an arm to stretch out the muscles across his back. She watched him stroll to the window and look down at the patch of ground he had designated as an exercise yard.
“I hope you’ve been enjoying the view,” he threw a wink over his shoulder.
MacKenzie looked away, feeling bilious. It could have been the anchovies, but she suspected it was the thought of Edwards attempting some form of mild flirtation with her, for some malevolent reason known only to himself.
“You know, Ruth, if you’re feeling lonely at night, you can always just tap on the wall and I’ll be happy to oblige,” he continued, watching the changing expressions on her face. Fear came first, followed by some other emotion he didn’t understand, nor had any particular inclination to try to decipher. Frankly, the effort of feigning ordinary human empathy was something he no longer felt obligated to do.
Then she surprised him again.
“Perhaps you’re the one who’s lonely,” she said, turning her cat-like green eyes on him.
MacKenzie felt her stomach quiver as the silence stretched on and she worried she had gone too far. During the long hours spent on her own, she had considered the possibility of striking up a rudimentary connection with her captor, to test whether anything remained of Keir Edwards, the man. Now, she could see aggression warring with curiosity and she assumed aggression would be the natural victor, so she prepared herself for further injury as punishment for her audacity.
The silence thrummed for long seconds, then he relaxed his frame against the wall and crossed his arms across his chest in a manner that reminded her unnervingly
of Ryan.
“And what makes you think I’m lonely, sweetheart?”
Her skin itched at the sound of another endearment from the lips of a killer, but she concentrated on saying the right things and providing him with a response that would be acceptable.
“It must be…difficult,” she said, searching for the words to convey the right amount of implied sympathy for a man she considered no better than a wild animal. In fact, he was worse. At least animals killed to defend themselves or to survive. He took lives for the sheer joy of it.
“It must be difficult—” she tried again.
“To what? To be me?” he offered, pointing a finger at his own chest.
He threw back his head and laughed, long and hard.
“Let me tell you something about myself,” he said conversationally, once the laughter dried up. “I look just the same as other men—other exceptional men. I have arms and legs, two ears, ten fingers and toes.”
He wriggled his fingers and moved towards her again. MacKenzie’s heart hammered against the wall of her chest as he drew nearer and she felt his rage growing stronger with every step.
“This body,” he gestured to himself, “is nothing more than a superficial shell. I like to hone it, to keep it running smoothly, but it’s just the suit that I wear every day. Underneath it, there isn’t a single thing that connects me to the rest of you. Nothing remotely resembling ‘emotion’; at least, not in the way you mean. I look at you, sitting there shaking with fear, and I feel nothing. Do you understand? Not an inordinate sense of achievement, or even the kind of pleasure I was hoping for. I feel nothing, Denise. Not love, not hate, not pity, not pain. The only thing I feel is an urge to find out what your insides look like and how long it would take your pretty green eyes to die. The urge is getting stronger every day, so much so that I barely see you as a person. You’re just a mass of flesh and bone.”
He came to stand in front of her and dropped back down so that she could feel his warm breath against her face.
“So,” he said, very softly. “Why don’t you ask me again if you think I feel lonely?”
* * *
MacKenzie could not move from her position on the bed for a long time after he left. Partly, she was fearful that he would return and remember the reason he had visited in the first place: to incapacitate her somehow and remove her ability to walk or run. The other reason was the degrading knowledge that, at some point during his introspective monologue, she had wet herself.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, but she dashed them away because she had achieved a small success, whether he realised it or not.
Edwards had not attacked her and he had also called her ‘Denise’ for the first time, unconsciously reinstating an aspect of her identity that he had tried so hard to remove.
She wondered if he was even aware of it.
Outside, night had fallen and a light rain pattered against the roof above her head, filtering through the open window so that the room was not only cold but damp. She raised herself from the bed, cleaned herself up as best she could, and when she heard him leave—whistling to himself as he rounded the side of the house—she trained herself to fight again.
CHAPTER 12
Ryan found Jack Lowerson hovering outside the back entrance to CID Headquarters, sucking deeply from an apple flavoured e-cigarette. He stood beneath the smoker’s canopy listening to the sound of rain hitting the plastic roof, while he looked out at the unappealing vista that was the staff car park. Ryan tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket and walked across to stand beside him.
“I wanted to thank you, Jack.”
Lowerson took a long drag of his cigarette and it bubbled like a shisha, emitting a faint aroma of Golden Delicious. Ryan smiled to himself, thinking that the man had certainly learned a thing or two about the value of silence in drawing people out.
“I wasn’t myself earlier today and I know you and Phillips were there for me when I passed out. I appreciate it, and I want you to know the reason I didn’t want you working the scene had nothing to do with your capabilities.”
Lowerson maintained his silence and Ryan supposed he should congratulate himself on having taught him so well but he hadn’t anticipated that his own methods would be used against him one day.
“Alright, you’re angry. You’ve a right to be,” Ryan bit out, and watched surprise flit across the other man’s face. “I was wrong to shut you out but I won’t apologise for wanting to protect you from the worst damage one human being is capable of inflicting on another.”
Lowerson took a final drag of his e-cig and then tucked it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, which still carried a lingering scent of death from earlier in the day. He imagined he would continue to smell it, long after the suit was dry-cleaned.
“I understand why you wanted to keep me out. But you need to understand that I chose this job for the same reasons as you. I can’t get any better at it if you wrap me up in cotton wool.”
Ryan inclined his head.
“Just one last thing,” Lowerson said. “Next time, if you’re going to fall like a redwood, give us some bloody warning. I nearly put my back out making a dive for you.”
“Noted.”
* * *
Phillips ended the call and let his mobile fall onto the desktop in disgust, replaying the conversation he’d just had. Durham CID re-interviewed the helicopter pilot, Andy Hayworth, and his wife earlier in the day but hours had passed without any update. Feeling impatient, he had taken matters into his own hands and put a call through to the detective in charge. Detective Inspector Bill Rodgers was close to retirement, with nearly forty years on the force. He knew how to run an investigation and didn’t appreciate being taught how to suck eggs, even by someone he respected as much as Frank Phillips. Was it his fault, if the pilot’s wife couldn’t remember any more details about her attack? The woman was traumatised, for heaven’s sake.
In truth, Rodgers knew the real reason Helen Hayworth refused to talk. It had nothing to do with trauma and everything to do with fearing that her life, or the lives of her husband and son, might be in danger if she blabbed. He’d seen it dozens of times before and said as much to Phillips.
“You and I both know what’s happened here, Frank, but we’ve tried pushing the wife and she’s not budging an inch. As far as she’s concerned, it was a muscular man of average height and mid-brown hair who turned up on her doorstep, pretending to be selling steam cleaning services. He talked his way inside under the pretence of needing to use the loo, following which he got hold of her little boy and told her to pack a bag. He threatened to hurt the boy if she didn’t do as he said, so she hopped to it and got inside his blue van. She thinks it had a white steam cleaning logo on the side. He took her and the boy for a long drive during which time they were kept in the back, out of sight. He kept driving and didn’t stop except to let her hunker down beside the road and relieve herself a couple of times, then dropped them off the morning after it was all over beside the junction at Scotch Corner and the rest you already know. That’s all she will say.”
“She must be able to tell us something about his accent, his name, his clothing,” Phillips gabbled. “Have you shown her some photos of the usual suspects?”
At the other end of the line, Rodgers rolled his eyes.
“Aye, Frank, we have. She claims that none of them are the man who abducted her and the littlun.”
“Give me strength,” Phillips had muttered. “What about the pilot?”
“As for the pilot, he only saw Edwards in person and you know all there is to know about that,” Rodgers pointed out. “If the wife has told her husband anything about her mystery abductor, he’s keeping schtum as well.”
“Bill, please. This could mean the difference between finding Denise and losing her.”
At the other end of the line, Rodgers pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I know it, Frank. But if we push that family any harder, anything the
y tell us won’t stand up in court. We’ll have some snotty little defence barrister quoting chapter and verse from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act about intimidation of witnesses and that’ll be all it takes to throw everything to the wind. Besides,” Bill said, “there’s a very real danger of harm. It’s a small community, up here in the North East. If Helen Hayworth points the finger at who’s responsible, whoever was the money and brains behind it all will find out pretty quickly, and the repercussions for that family could be devastating.
“Truth be told, Frank, I might do the same thing myself, if I were her.”
With Rodgers’ words ringing in his ears, Phillips had hung up the phone and resigned himself to a process of elimination. He turned his mind to the question of who was responsible for helping The Hacker break free. Whose reputation generated enough fear to prevent the Hayworths from giving a clear description of their attacker? It could only be somebody well known in the area as being a dangerous entity. According to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, there were about forty organised criminals operating in the North East, but he would have said the number was closer to fifty or sixty, most of whom belonged to two or three ruling gangland families operating in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Durham. They mostly ran protection rackets and facilitated drug trafficking through the control of pubs and clubs throughout the region, but one or two of the more sophisticated outfits were branching out from the kind of traditional, enterprising crimes that Phillips remembered in the old days, towards financial crimes like counterfeiting and fraud.
He picked up his biro and spent some time drawing a detailed network of what he already knew to be in operation, in Newcastle and Durham particularly. Keir Edwards had been careful in his communications with his solicitor, Phillips thought, and had only slipped up once by sending an e-mail setting out MacKenzie’s address and when the notes should be delivered to have maximum impact. There were no telephone recordings to the solicitors firm and no other written communications to give so much as a hint of who was funding Edwards’ escape.
If Edwards had money squirreled away somewhere waiting for him, he might have made a promise of payment to his mysterious benefactor in exchange for services rendered. But with three significant criminal families operating in the region, all of them with the means to intimidate witnesses and procure a helicopter, it was going to take more than a prayer to flush out the rat.
