Cleanskin

by Val McDermid

  But Cooper clearly had more people on his case than Jack Farrell. And one of them had got rid of him in a very ugly way.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BRIAN COOPER HAD TAKEN a long time to die. And it hadn’t been a good time. He’d been murdered in the warehouse where he stored his stock. His killer had tied him to a chair then put his feet in buckets of fast-setting concrete. Once he was sure Cooper wasn’t going anywhere, the murderer had cut into his veins at the wrists and the elbows. Cooper had bled out, naked, trapped and most likely alone.

  I stood in the warehouse, trying not to look at the bloody mess. But it drew my eyes back time and time again, as if it was a magnet and I was the iron filings. First Joey Scardino and now Brian Cooper. Somebody out there was trying to carve out an empire for himself and he was doing it in the most brutal and heartless way he could think of.

  If I had been a criminal near the top of the tree, I’d have been gibbering with fear. I’d have locked myself into my most secure room, armed to the teeth with guns and bullets, and stayed there till the war to fill Jack Farrell’s shoes was over.

  I’d still have had to come out one day and face the last man standing. But at least the odds would be in my favour. I’d know where to look.

  Of course, I was on the other side of the law. I was the one charged with finding out who was behind this before there was only one man left standing. If I left it till then, I’d be too late. Everybody would be locked into the new regime. They’d be too afraid to turn in the brute who had the power of life and death over all of them. The king is dead. Long live the king.

  It was cold in the warehouse and I shivered, in spite of my warm coat. I turned to my sergeant. ‘Any ideas, Ben?’

  He gave a weary sigh. ‘None that make any sense. We’ve got plenty of bad lads to choose from, but I can’t think of anybody as extreme as this.’

  I knew what he meant. Violence like this doesn’t just spring up from nowhere. It has roots. It takes time to develop. And I couldn’t put a name to the person who had reached this level of sadistic bloodshed. ‘It’s got to be a new face,’ I said.

  ‘Russians? Chechens?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Could be.’ I sighed. ‘Why can’t they just stick to football?’

  ‘Not enough money in it, boss. Not unless you’re David Beckham.’ Ben sneaked a look at what remained of Brian Cooper. ‘Whoever he is, he’s sending a message loud and clear.’

  ‘Yeah. “Farrell’s gone and I’m the new king of the world,”’ I said. ‘We need to put some pressure on our snouts. They seem to have gone very quiet all of a sudden.’ I roused myself, rolling my shoulders and stamping my feet on the cold cement. ‘Time to rattle a few cages, I think.’

  ‘Leave it with me, boss. I’ll put the word out,’ Ben said.

  I nodded. It was good to have someone to rely on for the legwork. Ben had been the one person I’d been adamant about bringing with me when I made the move to Serious Crimes. We knew our way round each other and I knew I could trust him to do what needed to be done. It also didn’t hurt that he looked like the hardest bastard on legs. You had to see him with his kids to understand what a pose that was.

  ‘We any further forward on who killed Katie Farrell?’ I asked as we walked back to the car.

  Ben shook his head. ‘Not a whisper.’

  ‘I’d have thought with Farrell out of the way there would be no shortage of takers,’ I said. ‘Who could resist the chance to look so bold when there’s no chance of payback?’

  Ben spat a wad of nicotine gum on the ground as we came out of the warehouse into the cold raw air of the morning. ‘Good point. But I reckon whoever did it knows there’s no mileage in claiming it. Killing Jack Farrell would have been something to shout about. But burning a nine-year-old to death? I don’t think there’s many would be too quick off the mark to claim that.’

  ‘Maybe so. But I still don’t like the fact that we’ve not had so much as a whisper.’ We headed for our car, walking faster as the wind cut into us.

  ‘When’s Stella back?’ Ben asked as he tucked himself behind the wheel.

  ‘A week or so.’

  Ben gave a little snort of laughter.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘You think I’m counting the days or something?’

  ‘I never said a thing, boss,’ he replied, starting the engine and reversing out of our parking spot. ‘I was just thinking how pissed off she’s going to be at missing all these good bodies. First we got Farrell, then we got Joey Scar, and now we’ve got Cooper. Not that there’s any mystery about any of them. But she likes something a bit out of the ordinary, does Stella.’

  With anyone else, there might have been suggestive overtones in that last sentence. But Ben knew better than to try to be a smartarse about Stella in front of me. I was sure the two of us were the butt of squadroom jokes. Knowing cops, how could we not be? Still, as long as they kept their seedy little routines behind my back, I didn’t much care. The day they dared to try it to my face would be the day I knew I’d lost it. But I planned to make sure that day stayed a long way down the road.

  ‘Well, she can always pull out the drawers down the morgue and take a look at them when she gets back,’ I said. ‘It’s not like they’re going anywhere.’

  Ben laughed. ‘Best place for them. It’s a pity we can’t put more of the bastards in a mortuary drawer. It would make our job a lot easier.’

  I remembered his words when the next body turned up. He couldn’t have been more wrong, as it turned out.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I WAS AT HEATHROW AIRPORT, waiting for Stella to emerge from customs and immigration, when I got the call. The clerk on the other end of the phone didn’t have much info. All she could say was that a body had been found in Paddington Basin and that she had been told to let me know about it.

  ‘Do they want me at the scene?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Soon as you can get there, my screen says.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said, ending the call. I’d come all the way out here to get Stella and I wasn’t going back empty-handed. She wouldn’t be much longer, and if she felt up to it, she could always come to the scene with me. It was on the way back to her house in St John’s Wood, after all.

  I hadn’t told Stella I would meet her. I’d got the flight details from her secretary, not from her. I wanted it to be a surprise. So there was no way I was going to walk away right then, not just for a dead body that wasn’t going anywhere.

  Within a couple of minutes of the phone alert, I saw Stella walking down the concourse towards me. It was a rare treat for me to be able to watch her without her knowing, and I took pleasure in letting my eyes follow the easy swing of her walk. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail and she looked a bit bleary-eyed, but given that she’d just got off a night flight, she seemed pretty alert. I couldn’t help myself. I was grinning from ear to ear.

  She was only a few yards away when she spotted me. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, but the smile followed so fast I knew it was real. I stepped forward and we kissed like friends, cheek to cheek. ‘Wow, Andy,’ she said, putting down her suitcase and hugging me. ‘My very own police escort.’

  I let my arms slip around her, smelling lavender and feeling the warmth of her flesh. ‘“Working together for a safer London,”’ I said. ‘That’s our motto.’

  I grabbed the handle of her wheelie suitcase and fell into step beside her. ‘Flight OK?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s over. That’s the best thing you can say about any flight,’ she said. ‘So, how have you been managing without me?’

  ‘Andy the man, or Andy the cop?’

  She tucked her arm through mine. ‘We’re in a public place, Andy. Better stick to the cop angle for now.’

  As we made our way to the car, I filled her in on what she’d missed while she’d been watching bodies rotting in the States. By the time I’d finished, we were on the motorway back to London. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Jack Farrell kills himself and the genie is
let out of the bottle.’

  ‘Some genie,’ I snorted. ‘If I had three wishes, I wouldn’t spend them like that.’

  ‘You sure? It gets a lot of garbage off the streets.’

  She had a point. ‘I don’t mind losing any of them, it’s true. But I could do without the extreme crime scenes.’

  ‘Deep down, Andy, you’re a wuss,’ Stella said.

  We both laughed. Then I said, ‘If you really feel like you’ve been missing out, we could take in a nice fresh corpse on the way back to yours.’

  Stella turned in her seat to look at me. ‘You know the way to a girl’s heart, don’t you?’

  I risked a quick glance at her. ‘I hope so. At least where you’re concerned. I missed you, Stella.’

  She nodded, as if she got it. ‘Nice of you to say so.’ She shifted in her seat and put her hand on my thigh. It didn’t feel sexual. It just felt like she wanted to be touching me. ‘Being apart’s useful, though. It made me wonder if it was time for us to rethink what’s going on between us.’

  This wasn’t how I’d planned it out in my head. I thought things would settle right back into the same groove as before. I’d had a month of sleeping on my own and I’d been looking forward to changing that. Time for a bit of sweet talking, I thought. ‘Seems like you had to go all the way to America before we noticed how much we care about each other,’ I said, patting her hand.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ she said slowly. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that we need to make our minds up.’

  I didn’t much like the sound of this. ‘About what?’

  ‘About being together.’ She moved her hand back into her lap. ‘Andy, I’m at a crossroads in my life. At the Body Farm, they made it clear that there was a job for me if I wanted it. Now, I love what I do here. But I know I would also love working there. I can’t choose between here and there based only on the job.’ She sighed. ‘I’d hoped I could work up to this in a more relaxed setting.’

  I knew just what she meant. This wasn’t the scene I’d imagined on my way to the airport. ‘What are you saying, Stella?’

  ‘It’s pretty simple, Andy. If I’m going to stay, there needs to be a strong reason why. You could be that reason. But if you’re going to be the reason, I need more from you than you were giving me before I went away. I want something more than a friendly fuck.’

  I pursed my lips and blew out the breath I’d been holding. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. ‘Stella, I don’t know how to …’

  ‘No. Not now,’ she said, her tone abrupt. ‘Think about it before you say anything. We don’t have to rush it.’ She sat up straight in her seat, making it clear the subject was closed for the time being. ‘Now, didn’t you say something about a body?’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I WAS STILL REELING FROM Stella’s words as I parked beside the other police motors that marked the fringe of the crime scene. But within minutes, they felt totally trivial.

  The police tapes marked out an area by one of the giant pillars that held up the raised section of the Westway. It was a classic scrap of urban desert. Scrubby grass, rubbish all around, the stink of engine fumes and decay in the air. Stella grabbed her kitbag from the boot and we walked over to the cluster of white suits that marked the target of our interest.

  We were still a few yards away when one man peeled off from the main group and blocked our way. I had a vague memory of meeting him on some training course, but I couldn’t recall his name or rank. Luckily, I didn’t have to. ‘DCI Martin,’ he said, voice raised to be heard above the traffic noise. He extended a hand. I was a bit taken aback. Cops don’t usually do the handshake thing. As we shook, he carried on. ‘John Burton, DI Burton. I’m really sorry about this.’

  I shrugged. ‘I get called out to stuff all the time. Sometimes it’s linked to my beat, sometimes not. Nothing to be sorry about.’

  Burton looked confused. ‘Did nobody brief you?’

  ‘All I got was a request to attend,’ I said. ‘Why? Is there something more?’

  Burton’s eyes were all over the place. He couldn’t settle on me or Stella or on anything else. ‘Christ,’ he said softly. He took my arm and tried to steer me off to one side.

  I shook free. ‘You can say anything you have to say in front of Dr Marino,’ I said. ‘If this body’s one of mine, she’ll be doing the post mortem.’

  Burton licked his lips. ‘I really am sorry about this,’ he said again.

  ‘Can we cut to the chase?’ Stella said. ‘I’ve just flown in from America and I need to check this out before I die from lack of sleep.’

  Burton nodded and cleared his throat. ‘We know who the victim is,’ he said, still not meeting my eyes.

  I didn’t have any sense of looming disaster. None at all. So much for cop instinct. ‘Yeah?’ I said, edgy at being kept waiting.

  Burton took a deep breath. ‘It’s your bagman. DS Wilson.’

  It was like a punch to the throat. I couldn’t breathe and my legs felt like I’d run a half marathon. I felt Stella’s hand on my arm. That was all that was keeping me steady. ‘Ben?’ I said, not wanting to believe him.

  ‘No room for doubt. He’s got ID on him, and one of my lads trained with him.’

  I felt ill. I wanted to collapse to the ground and wrap my arms round my knees. But my feelings would have to wait. I owed it to Ben to find out what had gone down in this hellhole. ‘I need to take a look,’ I said, moving past Burton.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a great idea,’ he said.

  ‘My bagman, my case,’ I said roughly. ‘He’s mine now.’ I strode off to where I knew the body would be, at the centre of the group of white-clad figures. I could sense Stella at my back.

  When I saw what was left of Ben, I understood why Burton had wanted me to keep away. Even Stella, who has seen most of the worst that human beings can do to each other, gasped at the sight.

  He was sitting, propped up against one of the pillars. His legs were spread apart, to stop him toppling over. His head lolled to one side, looking quite normal apart from having no face. It had been skinned, like a scalping in reverse. Hair intact, face gone. His torso was naked and he’d been cut from his throat to his navel. He’d obviously been alive when it happened. His hands gripped his internal organs, as if he was trying to push them back inside.

  I’ve never cried at a crime scene before, though God knows I’ve seen my share of horrors. But I cried for Ben, big fat tears that spilled down my cheeks. I didn’t even brush them away. I felt no shame for showing my feelings.

  At last, I turned away. Stella was at my shoulder, her face a rigid mask. ‘On you go,’ I said. ‘Find me something to nail this bastard.’

  ‘If it’s there, I’ll find it,’ she said.

  Burton was right beside her. ‘How do you want to run this?’ he said.

  ‘Everything goes across my desk. Get your boss to talk to my boss. We need to be in the loop on this one. We have info you don’t, but we’ll share on a need-to-know basis. Bottom line is we nail the animal who did this. And I don’t give a toss what it takes. The rule book’s out of the window on this one.’

  Burton nodded. ‘I can’t fault you on that. I’ll make sure we keep you up to speed.’

  I took a couple of steps towards my car, then stopped. ‘Who found him?’ I asked.

  ‘The Fire Brigade.’

  ‘The Fire Brigade? What’s that all about?’ I was puzzled.

  Burton pointed to an area of scorched grass about twenty feet from Ben’s body. I hadn’t even noticed it. That’s how far I was from being a cop right then. ‘Someone had lit a fire,’ he said. ‘Like a beacon or something. A train cleaner going home from Paddington spotted the blaze and called it in. When the firemen got here, they found Sergeant Wilson.’ Burton looked away. ‘They reckon he wasn’t long dead.’

  I tried not to think about that. I drove back to my office, wondering about the fire. What was the point of making sure Ben was found quickl
y? Why shout murder from the rooftops? Mostly, killers want bodies to stay hidden so they have more time to cover their tracks.

  Whoever had killed Ben wanted us to know about it. He was sending us a message and he wanted us to get it. Fast.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THEY SAY IF A CASE doesn’t start to break in the first twenty-four hours, it won’t break at all. I’ve never worked to that belief. If I did, I wouldn’t have cleared half the cases I have. If you keep pushing, nine times out of ten something will give. But after five days of getting nowhere, I was starting to fear that Ben’s murder might be the one in ten that doesn’t crack wide open.

  It wasn’t for the want of hard work. I knew that every officer on my team was working way over their set hours, not caring whether they were being paid overtime or not. And from what John Burton said, the same was true of his squad. When a cop goes down, that’s how it is. Joey Scardino and Brian Cooper were not just on the back burner – they were right outside the kitchen.

  I’d hardly seen Stella since the morning of her return. I was working from breakfast to bedtime and beyond, only going home to grab a few hours’ sleep when my body and brain could go no further. Stella had done the post mortem report on Ben. Her report had been the most detailed I’d ever seen. But apart from that, I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. So much for working out how we could change things between us. That was going to have to wait until I had put Ben’s killer behind bars.

  Six days after we’d started the hunt for the monster who had butchered Ben, Stella turned up in my office, looking grave. ‘I need to talk to you, Andy,’ she said, dropping into the chair opposite my desk. She looked as if she hadn’t had much more sleep than I had since her return.