Jacob's Ladder (Stone & Randall 1)

by Ellis, Tim

‘And he doesn’t want to come back as a DI?’

  ‘No. He thinks people will still have doubts about whether he did it or not.’

  ‘What’s he going to do then?’

  He’s going to be my partner again, Ma’am. A silent partner this time, operating outside the law. Together we’re going to hunt down the murdering bastard and kill him. That will save the taxpayers money, Ma’am. ‘He’s going to take his compensation and quietly fade away, Ma’am.’

  ‘Excellent. Well done, Inspector, the Commissioner will be over the moon. Now, all you need to do to win the jackpot is catch this lunatic. What about the pubic hair?’

  ‘Because the evidence at the Randall crime scene was fabricated, who’s to say that the pubic hair, or for that matter any other evidence we might find, hasn’t also been planted? The pubic hair might belong to the killer, but he has a ready-made defence: "It wasn’t me M’lud, my pubic hair was planted at the crime scene like the evidence at that nice Mr Randall’s house." Reasonable doubt, not guilty. We need considerably more than one pubic hair to tie the butcher to the murders.’

  ‘You’re right, you have had a productive day.’ She took a swallow of her coffee. ‘A streak of piss from forensics called Perkins came to complain to me about you earlier, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I told him that unless he did as you asked he’d be analysing turds in the sewers for the rest of his life.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma’am.’

  ‘Go home and get some sleep now, Inspector, you look like shit. You have the press briefing in the morning, and you don’t want to look like shit for that.’

  Molly stood up to go. She has a bloody nerve saying I look like shit, she thought. ‘Yes, it’s been a long day, Ma’am. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, DI Stone. Good job today.’

  Chapter Nine

  At quarter-past six she opened the rear door of the station, stepped into the car park, and lit up a cigarette. It was dark, but there was enough light from the orange streetlamp on Cambridge Grove to notice the glut of free parking spaces at this time of night.

  The swirling Siberian wind made her neck and face cold as she crunched over the gravel to her car, slid in the driver’s seat and switched on the ignition. She took a last puff on her cigarette, checked there was no one watching, and flicked the butt out of the window. She didn’t like to stink out her car by using the ashtray.

  Pulling out into Cambridge Grove, she turned right and as she came up to the STOP sign at the junction with King Street she could hear a noise coming from the front of the car. She checked her mirrors. Thankfully, there were no cars behind her, so she climbed out to investigate.

  ‘Shit!’ she said out loud as she saw the state of the front off-side tyre. All she wanted to do was go home, soak in a perfumed bath, and crawl into bed, but now she had to change a flat. She left the engine running and the lights on, and then went to the boot to get the tools and the spare out.

  ‘Can I help?’ It was a man’s voice.

  She jumped and banged her head on the open boot. ‘Ow!’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘Well you did, you imbecile. You shouldn’t sneak up on people in the dark, especially women on their own.’

  ‘It was stupid of me, but by way of an apology let me change your tyre cloaked in the demeanour of a penitent man?’

  Rubbing the back of her head she stared at the Good Samaritan. Underneath a dark grey cashmere overcoat, he wore a dark suit, white shirt and red tie. The wind whipped his dark hair, which was long on top, but short at the sides and at the back. He was about her age with an easy smile, white teeth, and movie-star good looks. She guessed he was an estate agent, a banker, or a financial consultant.

  ‘I like the sound of that,’ she said more calmly, ‘but you’ll get your clothes dirty.’

  Shrugging out of his overcoat and passing it to her he said, ‘I have other suits.’

  It took him less than ten minutes to change her wheel with the spare. ‘Don’t forget to get the spare tyre replaced,’ he said to her as he put it back in the boot with the tools.

  ‘I won’t, and thanks.’ She passed him his overcoat. ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’

  ‘My car is in the multistorey on Galena Road, but thanks for the offer.’

  ‘Okay. Well, goodnight then,’ she said opening the driver’s door.

  ‘Goodnight.’ He started to walk away, but then turned back to her. ‘If you want to thank me properly, let me take you out for a meal?’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t even know you.’

  ‘I’m Andrew Harvey, thirty-two years old, and I change car wheels for a living. Now will you come out with me?’

  She wondered where the tiredness had gone. ‘You don’t even know who I am?’

  ‘You’re the beautiful Princess that I’ve just saved from the evil flat tyre monster, but my work here is not yet done. The Princess needs sustenance after a hard day spent waiting for her Prince to arrive.’

  Her heart fluttered like a teenager’s. ‘Somewhere local then?’ she haggled.

  ‘Reverse back from the junction, pull up on the pavement, and leave your car there, there are no evil parking attendants about at this time of night. We can cross the road and eat at the Italian restaurant opposite the Town Hall.’

  ‘I like Italian,’ she said.

  The traffic on Kings Street stretched tail to bumper in both directions as they snaked through the cars. Leaning into the wind, they reached the restaurant where they were given a table for two in a secluded corner. It was early, and there were only a few customers.

  After they’d ordered Andrew said, ‘So, should I continue to call you Princess, or do you have another name?’

  ‘Molly Stone.’

  ‘Hello, Molly Stone. You seem familiar.’ He held up his hand to stop her speaking. ‘No don’t tell me. You’re a movie star, or maybe a model, or…’

  ‘I’m a Detective Inspector in the Murder Investigation Team at Hammersmith Police Station.’ She cocked her head in the direction of the station.

  He laughed. ‘I wasn’t even close was I? You’ve been on the television haven’t you?’

  ‘A few times.’ She didn’t want to talk about her job. ‘Besides changing car wheels, what else do you do?’

  ‘I’m a property solicitor, boring, not even worth talking about. Don’t tell me you’re involved in the Butcher Murders?’

  ‘All right, I won’t. I didn’t agree to come here so we could talk about my work.’

  ‘Of course, I’m sorry.’ His face drooped, he pointed a finger at it and said, ‘Penitent man.’

  She laughed. ‘What the hell is this penitent man you keep harping on about?’

  His eyes lit up like a child’s. ‘Don’t you remember? In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the first clue was: "Only the penitent man shall pass, the penitent man is humble and kneels before God?" Indy had to bow down to stop himself being decapitated.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t watch television.’

  ‘Oh my God…’

  The meal arrived. She had Alla Crèma – bacon and mushroom in a cream sauce; and Andrew had Linguine alla Pescatora – Seafood in white wine sauce and cherry tomatoes. They talked about everything and nothing until the night had been swallowed up and the waiters were hovering around them waiting for them to leave.

  She wanted to go Dutch, but he absolutely refused to entertain the idea. They tumbled out into King Street at eleven forty-five. He walked her back to her car.

  ‘I want to see you again,’ he said.

  She gave him a business card. ‘Ring me.’

  He pulled her to him and kissed her. She kissed him back. They parted in silence.

  Molly was sitting in her car wrapped up snug in a warmth she hadn’t felt for so long, but then she remembered the gift of madness her father had given her, and that any babies she might produce would also be mad. As she switched the engine on, tears cascad
ed down her face like a waterfall. She knew she must never have babies. The Stone family tree must end with her.

  King Street was nearly deserted when she swung left. After a mile-and-a-half she turned into Hammersmith Bridge Road and crossed over the Thames. She came off at Riverview Gardens in Castelnau, and parked outside a six-storey building overlooking Harrod’s Wharf. The fourth four flat cost her half her wages each month, but it was worth it for the view alone. Not that she was ever there to enjoy it.

  In the flat, she stripped off her clothes and left them where they fell as she made her way to the bathroom. She stepped naked into the shower and let the hot water massage her neck and shoulders. With Andrew Harvey she had forgotten who she was, forgotten the curse she carried inside her. For a handful of minutes she had felt like a normal woman. She slid down the tiles and curled up in a ball in the shower tray. When the water ran cold and her skin became wrinkled like a corpse, she crawled into bed without drying and cried herself to sleep.

  Day Two

  Friday, 6th November

  Chapter Ten

  In her nightmare a man with a butcher’s axe was chasing her. His face was in shadow. She was the little girl who kept running and getting nowhere until she fell to the ground exhausted. As she turned to look up at her pursuer, she saw her father’s face turn into a grotesque skull with the skin dripping from his bones. Screaming like a monster, he raised the axe to hack her to pieces, and that’s when she always woke up.

  In some versions of the nightmare she ran towards her mother who was calling for help, but she could never reach her. After he’d killed her mother, her father came after his little girl.

  It was five to four when she jerked up in bed soaked in sweat and crying. She’d slept fitfully for three hours. This was usually how her day began. She went for another shower, but this time she dried herself and brushed her teeth. Then she changed the bedding, which wasn’t due to be changed until Sunday, but then she hadn’t planned on going to bed soaking wet. Like a closet naturalist, she padded through the flat naked picking up clothes, putting washing in the machine, and then vacuumed throughout.

  She avoided looking at her unused and unloved body in the bedroom mirror as she put on her white air-filled bra over firm 34B breasts, and pulled her shorts over a tight bottom and a hard flat stomach. At work, on the outside, she tried to look like a man, but beneath the non-flattering clothes she was still very much a woman.

  Maybe she should go out with Andrew Harvey if he called. Let him wine and dine her, buy her expensive presents, take her to exotic places, and then make love to her night after night. Her young body needed someone. She was wasting away, shrivelling up like a raison. Soon enough, she would be a sagging bag of skin. No man would want to look at her – never mind take her to bed. She had to forget about the schizophrenia until the day that it took her by the hand and led her into the darkness. As long as she didn’t fall in love, as long as there were no babies, everything would be fine.

  She pulled on a pair of black slacks, a baggy lambswool lilac crew neck jumper, and slipped on her flat black shoes. In the kitchen she made herself two pieces of toast and a coffee, and listened to the five o’clock news. Tomorrow, she would be the five o’clock news.

  The Butcher Murders were the second item after the hung parliament. Roving reporter Emma Potter was standing outside 16 Crisp Road in a pink jacket that would have looked warm on the north face of the Eiger:

  Detectives in Hammersmith found another family of four butchered in the early hours of yesterday morning in this house behind me. This is the fourth family that has been killed in the last two years in Hammersmith. You will remember that a Detective Inspector – Cole Randall – was convicted a year ago of murdering three families, the last of which was his own…

  She turned it off, glad that she didn’t watch television. What was she going to say to the press? She recalled the Chief’s words: "Deny everything, and tell them nothing". Yes, she could do that. Maybe she could adopt her dumb blonde persona. She thought about the questions they might ask. She would have no trouble in telling them nothing – she knew nothing. Oh there were the heads in the bathroom and the symbols carved into the daughters, but some information the press were never told. They would ask about Cole Randall, but she wasn’t going to say anything about him either. He would be released this morning while they were all sitting in the press briefing room getting no answers to their questions. As soon as he stepped out of Springfield Asylum Cole would disappear, and then she would wait for his call. God, what was she doing? Helping Cole was so far from her job description as to be bordering on lunacy. In fact, it was probably something a practising schizophrenic would do.

  At six forty-five she left the flat and made her way to the station. She’d be there before the senior officers, before the day shift, before the bastards who kept taking all the parking spaces.

  As it turned out, she wasn’t there before any of them. She arrived at eight-fifteen and wasted another ten minutes trying to find somewhere to park on a side road. There had been a crash on Hammersmith Bridge Road and she was sitting in her car listening to the radio for an hour and a half while police and a fire crew cleared away the debris and two ambulances took the bodies to the morgue at Hammersmith HospitalaHHHH. If she’d left her car where it was and walked, it would probably have taken her twenty minutes. So when she arrived in forensics at half past eight she was in the foulest mood she had ever been in.

  ***

  Perkins was waiting for her arrival in his laboratory cum office.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector Stone.’

  ‘Well, Perkins?’ She wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries, and after he’d tried to drop her in it with the new Chief she wasn’t in the mood for him either. She’d had loads of time this morning. All the plans she’d made to use up that time had disappeared along with her patience. Now, she didn’t have much time at all before she had to go to the press briefing and stonewall the reporters.

  ‘You’re in luck, Inspector, we’ve found something.’

  ‘You mean you’re in luck, Perkins,’ she threw back at him. ‘If you’d have come up empty-handed I would have had you replaced with a monkey.’

  His thin face turned white. ‘I… I…’ he stuttered.

  ‘Just get on with it, Perkins. You might have loads of time up here in forensics, but I work for a living and don’t have the luxury of procrastination.’

  ‘As you requested, I had my people re-examine everything from all four of the crime scenes. At each one we found a Tarot card.’ He pushed a sealed evidence bag towards her. ‘The Fool was left at the first crime scene.’

  ‘Why didn’t you spot them before?’

  ‘A different card was being used as a coaster at each crime scene. They were on the coffee table in the living room with a coffee mug placed on top of them. My officers bagged the cards as evidence, and recorded them as coasters. No one realised their significance until late last night when we compared the evidence from each room at each crime scene.’

  ‘What about the cards at the other crime scenes?’

  Perkins pushed three more cards across the table. ‘The Magician or Juggler was at the second, The High Priestess at the Randall crime scene, and The Empress at 16 Crisp Road. I’m no expert on the symbolism of the Major Arcana, but I do know that each of the twenty-two cards is associated with a number, and you have the first four trump cards. I say the first four, but The Fool can be either zero or twenty-two.’

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Perkins,’ she said examining each of the cards in turn. ‘The implication is that the killer won’t stop until he’s butchered twenty-two families.’

  ‘Yes, that idea had crossed my mind as well.’

  She looked at her watch. It was eight forty-five. ‘I have a press briefing at nine so I need to go. Have you…’

  He passed her a colour photocopy of each card.

  ‘Thanks… and good work, Perkins.’

  He shrugged
. ‘You deserve the credit for this discovery, Inspector. If you hadn’t pushed, we probably never would have found them. As a consequence, I’m looking at our procedures to make sure it never happens again.'

  ‘Okay, well… thanks anyway.’

  She made her way along the adjoining corridor to the incident room. The team was busy finishing off their boards. She handed the photocopies out.

  ‘Perkins and his team found a Tarot card at each of the crime scenes. The Fool is zero; The Magician is number one; The High Priestess is number two; and The Empress is number three. Does anybody know anything about Tarot cards?’

  There were lots of blank faces and shrugging.

  She left them to it. On her way to the press briefing room she made a detour into the toilet and puked.

  Chapter Eleven

  To avoid the press, Cole Randall slipped out of the back exit of Springfield Asylum with his bag slung over his shoulder, and the cold November wind whipping his unkempt grey-streaked hair about his face. This was the first day in a year that his mind wasn’t anchored down with anti-psychotic drugs.

  If people watchers had guessed at what this person did for a living, they would have said he was a porter in the asylum. It wasn’t his faded jeans, the soft black leather boots, or the donkey jacket, which made him look for all the world like a porter in a loony bin, it was his light grey – nearly white – eyes that betrayed him. They had the look of someone who had seen monsters, which no human being should ever have to see, wraiths that he had locked away inside boxes, and camouflaged amongst the trivia of everyday memories.

  As he walked along the road towards the bus stop, he hit a wall. Tears burst from his eyes like geysers from a geothermal well. For a year they had treated him as a killer, given him drugs to keep him calm and mask his feelings. At no time had they allowed him to grieve the loss of his wife Sarah and his two beautiful children, Mathew and Tilly. Now, without the drugs, he realised he was alone. He wasn’t a family man anymore. His life had been wrenched from him. He was a copper who hadn’t been able to protect his own family.