by J. F. Kirwan
He’d even sorted the murders out for them into nice neat piles. Rickard would go through the red pile, because he’d have no choice but to get involved now. He’d discount the Ellerton case as irrelevant, then update his Schism theory, arguing that Greg had flipped and become like the serial killers he’d put away or was investigating, replicating cases he’d solved in the past, identifying with the aggressor… Greg could just imagine it, a new theory, a new serial killer typology, provided by Rickard. It would make his book a bestseller.
But even with Fergus, it was all still circumstantial. The frame wasn’t complete, and a judge should instruct a jury in such a case to err on the side of caution, if it ever came to that.
And if somebody wanted to implicate him in Kate’s murder? That at least wouldn’t work.
Except he’d just provided a plausible explanation, by suggesting there were two killers involved.
He tried to calm down. He wasn’t helping himself; his mind was running in all directions. Whoever was behind all this had really rattled him. And where was Donaldson? Still not back, still not answering messages apparently, not that Greg could call him as they’d confiscated his phone.
At least he still had his belt and shoelaces.
It irked him that Finch wouldn’t hear him out about looking back further in time to find the murdered Dreamer, as well as digging deeper into the elderly man, Alfred Ellerton’s death. But Finch had already gone out on a limb for him with Rickard, ignoring the schism warning. She must have felt that branch crack and splinter while down in the autopsy room.
He sat cross-legged on the lumpy sofa, the back of his head resting against the wall. He heard rushed, heavy footsteps, the rattling of keys, the tumbling of locks. The door swung open to reveal Donaldson, looking like hell.
‘Shut up and listen,’ Donaldson said before Greg could utter a word. ‘We’ve got almost no time, and I shouldn’t even be here.’
Greg had never seen him so agitated. He kept his mouth closed and waited for Donaldson to spit it out. Donaldson turned away from Greg, towards the window near the ceiling. Towards the daylight.
‘We found Raj,’ he said, his voice croaky. ‘What was left of him.’
Greg slumped on the sofa. He didn’t need an explanation. Didn’t need photos. Next in his playbook of signature serial killers, which the current killers seemed to have adopted as a manual, was The Surgeon. Dismemberment. Greg recalled that Kate had once mentioned that Raj was a triathlete. Whether it was the Schism theory, or the larger frame, both theories would hold water now, especially as Greg had just found out that Raj had been his dead wife’s lover. For many jurors, that would create an indelible line connecting the dots. But Christ Almighty, he’d just met Raj, and despite everything he’d seemed a genuinely nice guy, wouldn’t hurt a fly. To die like that… Kate would have raged at Raj’s horrific demise, demanded that no matter what had happened, Greg bring the killers to justice. He felt dizzy and nauseous in equal measure.
Donaldson turned around, faced Greg. ‘That’s not all.’ His breathing sounded laboured. ‘We decrypted the data-feed from the previous twenty-four hours from the hidden webcam in your home. The night you met Raj… According to the feed, you didn’t arrive home until 6am. And Raj was killed…’
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. ‘This whole thing stinks of a set-up, Greg.’
Greg decided to let him off the hook. ‘But there’s procedure, right?’
Donaldson said nothing.
Greg felt numb. The world was slipping away from him. He recalled his own analysis about serial killers, the need to be cold and calculating. Whoever was orchestrating this was a grandmaster. He heard purposeful footsteps stomping down the corridor. He was being set-up for Fergus’s murder, and Raj’s, but whoever was doing this would try to link him to Kate’s as well, he was sure of it, because this was clearly personal, and that was the most effective way to hurt him.
The door swung open. Matthews barged in, Finch behind him. Greg stood up, turned around, his arms behind his back. Cold steel rings locked around his wrists.
Matthews did the honours. ‘Gregory Adams, you are hereby placed under arrest for the murders of…’
It was a cell. No question. His belt and shoelaces confiscated. But he wasn’t interested in feeling sorry for himself for being framed, or even outrage at the sheer injustice of what had transpired. After all, a few days ago he’d nearly ended himself. No, the problem was, the killer – killers – were still out there. They’d kill again for sure. His being set-up to take the fall for their murders would give them carte blanche to continue afresh. And two serial killers working together… that was unprecedented. They’d be harder to stop, almost impossible to profile. Their killing spree could go on for years.
He thought of all the crime scene photos, all the victims’ faces he’d stared into over the years, always with an unspoken promise to them in his mind – a contract – that he would find and bring the killer to justice. He felt their eyes on him now. But he was out of the game, a prime suspect himself. What could he do from inside a prison cell?
He waited for his one phone call. A police sergeant opened the door and brought him an old-style, wifi-less mobile phone, what Kate used to call a dumb-phone. No matter. He knew the number. He dialled, listened to the ringtone, got the automated response, and knew he had just twenty seconds of message time. He spoke as clearly and calmly as he could.
‘It’s Greg. I’ve been arrested. There’s something I need you to do…’
Part II
19
Finch pulled up outside the slaughterhouse on an industrial estate that had seen better days. Men in thick black woollen coats buttoned-up over their blue overalls and khaki wellingtons chain-smoked around a brazier blazing in the morning breeze, probably wondering when they were going to be told to go back inside or go home. One of them called out, ‘Nice shoes, luv,’ which was immediately followed by sniggers, then another wolf-whistled until she spun around and glared, and suddenly they were all facing the fire, palms outstretched, saying nothing, good as choir boys, one and all. She ignored them and approached the sergeant in charge, flashed her badge and was let through the police cordon and successive perimeters of black and yellow tape. Inside the abattoir she walked between rows of hanging carcasses, impossible to think of them as simply beef; they were cows who’d been starved for a day, transported, had their heads drilled with a retractable bullet, then been hung upside down, decapitated and skinned. She was glad she’d skipped breakfast.
She zipped her jacket all the way up on account of the chilled air, her breath frosting in front of her. The floor was wet, her shoes already damp with blood-and-water run-off. So that’s what the men had meant. Maybe the shoes would survive. They were leather, after all. She wasn’t vegetarian but began to wonder if she might be by the end of the morning as her eyes swept over the orgy of chopped-up animal parts near the crime scene.
Entering via a sliding metal door, an officer looking cold and wretched pointed to an enclosed room inside the otherwise empty square strewn with straw and reeking of cow piss and dung. A staging post, before the cattle were slaughtered. She glanced down. Her shoes were history. She walked through a double swing door, then stopped as she saw Raj’s corpse, what was left of it. She’d seen more than enough mutilated bodies out in Afghanistan, where ‘roadkill’ took on a new meaning. But that was war, or insurgency, whatever you wanted to call it. And it was far away. This was close.
This was home.
The truncated torso wasn’t the worst of it. Adams was lucky to be locked up. He wouldn’t get to see Raj’s face. She hunted for a word to describe the tortured expression. None did it justice. Justice. Her right hand clenched, as if around the military issue pistol that had never left her side out there, where she and her elite squad could execute spot interrogations and rough justice when crap like this happened. She relaxed her hand with an effort of will and addressed the lead forensics expert.
; ‘What can you tell me?’
The man was clothed head to foot in semi-transparent blue plastic coveralls, with only his eyes showing. It was funny seeing men like that, after eight years in a place where it was habitual for so many women. But it meant she’d learned to read people by their eyes alone. Mostly what she saw in this man’s near future was a stiff drink at the end of the day.
‘Nothing good,’ he replied.
Obvious. He amplified so that it made more sense.
‘I was involved in the original Surgeon’s killings,’ he said, for a moment staring into a private space where he probably re-saw things he could never unsee. ‘At least that sonofa… At least he knew what he was doing. He used heavy anaesthetic, because according to your Mr Adams–’
Not my, or even our Mr Adams at the moment. Evidently this guy hadn’t heard.
‘–The Surgeon’s goal was to inflict massive surprise, maximum shock when his victims awoke.’ He turned back to Raj. ‘This poor fellow, well, he experienced extreme pain during botched surgery, under woefully insufficient sedatives. I wouldn’t be surprised if his heart gave out before the end.’
She stared towards the knife hilt protruding from Raj’s sternum. Some would have called it a coup de grâce.
‘Will we ever know?’
He shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Best guess? Around 4am yesterday. Workers usually arrive here by five thirty, but they had the morning off yesterday, so he wasn’t found until mid-afternoon.’
‘Anything else?’
He gave her a measured stare, knowing full well the list of items she was referring to, including fingerprints, traces from clothing or boots, the whole caboodle. She never overspecified, preferring to presume that people knew their jobs.
‘Nothing so far. It looks pretty clean.’
She nodded a thanks and he returned to his business, while she made eye contact with Matthews who’d just arrived. They stepped outside for some air. She looked down at her shoes, then away.
Matthews wasted no time. ‘You think it was Greg?’
She said nothing.
He made a face like a big sulky kid. She’d been offered more ‘suitable’ partners more than once. But Matthews would never screw her over, and he always let her take the lead. If she was Holmes, he was Watson. Besides, for whatever reason, the team chemistry worked fine – they had a string of successes behind them.
‘Nah, me neither, more’s the pity,’ he said, then glanced sideways at her to gauge her reaction.
‘Because?’ she asked.
‘Well, most obvious is the original-but-broken electronic bracelet turning up here, tipping us off. Second, I just don’t think he has it in him, and if he did, he’d have sedated the dude into a bloody coma.’
She ignored the ‘dude’ reference. She knew Matthews watched too many American crime series. Maybe all of them.
‘Because?’ she repeated. This was their routine.
A wry smile crept onto his face. ‘Because he’s a bleeding heart and artist, the way you like–’
She shot him a look. The unspoken word died in his mouth. He found an old tin to kick. ‘It’s all too pat, it has “frame” plastered all over it.’ He looked up at her. ‘Did I skip anything?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you want me to check out that other stuff he was blathering on about? Go back three months earlier to hunt for The Dreamer’s corpse, however the hell I’m supposed to do that, and reopen the Alfred Eggerton case, the old guy who drowned in his bath?’
‘Ellerton,’ she corrected. ‘And yes.’
‘Are you going to talk some more to Greg?’
She’d considered it. ‘Not yet.’
‘All right,’ he said and began whistling ‘Heigh-ho’ in perfect key, as he shuffled off to his car. She’d been told Matthews had perfect pitch, though he didn’t play any instrument. She watched him fumble in his pockets for the key to his Clubman Mini. It wasn’t that there was more to the guy, it was simply that there could have been so much more. Yet he seemed happy enough the way he was. Smart attitude. She watched as he did his magic trick of squeezing his oversized body into the small vehicle and drive off, mud spitting off his rear tyres.
She wandered over to her Land Rover. She needed to head back to the Yard to see if she could help extricate Donaldson from the truckload of shit he’d waded into. No doubt he was being grilled by his superintendent, as well as by Internal Affairs. It wouldn’t do her any favours to vouch for him, though career-wise she wasn’t going anywhere, so what the hell. Besides, she and Donaldson needed to put their heads together. Her gut told her Adams was innocent, if a little unstable, and that someone was doing a bang-up job of framing him. But who? His potential nemeses were either behind bars or pushing up daisies.
She opened up the boot, pulled out a pair of running shoes and changed into them. Closing it up, she walked over to the men by the brazier, and tossed her ruined shoes into the flames. The men started a chorus of ‘We’ll meet again’. She couldn’t help but smile, and begged a cigarette off one of them. She watched her shoes darken, warp and catch fire.
‘You think we’re going back in there, miss?’ one of them asked.
‘You don’t want to,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’
No one spoke after that, and she felt the warmth of the flames on her palms and face, and as one they listened to the crackle and sputter of the leather and wood as it transformed into ash. Finch flicked her cigarette into the flames and headed back to her car.
And then the obvious question hit her. If this was all a set-up, the killings should stop. Yet having seen Fergus’s bashed-in face, and Raj’s intact one, she doubted the killer would stop there. The tandem question, of course, was the one that mattered most.
Who was next?
Donaldson looked distinctly unhappy as he tucked into his fish and chips. She’d ordered the same, minus the mushy peas. Could anything natural look that shade of green? She carved the batter from the fish and piled it up on one side.
‘Did you know,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘that fish and chips isn’t actually British? The Portuguese brought it over, ages ago, and the idea took off.’ He put his knife and fork down, mainly so he could knock back a few swigs of bitter. ‘Imagine – we might have prevented the whole Brexit debacle with that single fact.’ He sat back and drew his palms apart as if holding a newspaper. ‘Headline in the Daily Mail: Fish and chips brought to England by immigrants.’ He dropped the theatrics, picked up his knife and fork again, scanned his plate, then speared the fattest chip left. ‘And don’t even get me started on curries.’
She’d hardly touched her food. A few mouthfuls. The cod was good, though. She wondered how he could eat with such gusto after seeing the photos of Raj, and while knowing that Adams was stuck in a cell. Donaldson clearly believed him innocent.
‘How was Internal Affairs?’ she asked.
He didn’t even pause mid-chew. ‘Better than Holthorpe. He says we have to be tough with Greg, or else the media will have a field day. And Holthorpe and Rickard float in the same soirée circles, so mind your Ps and Qs with him.’
Holthorpe. The Big Boss. Just one below the Chief Constable herself. ‘Still got your job, then?’
He put down his cutlery, but only to use his fingers to rustle up a chunk of batter and use it to scoop out the last of the mushy peas from the dainty little bowl. He didn’t apologise and, in her eyes, didn’t need to. She’d once eaten raw goat with her bare hands while stuck in the Hindu Kush mountains, starving and freezing with the survivors of her platoon after an ambush. Donaldson had never asked her about her time in the army. Another reason she liked him.
‘For now,’ he said. ‘I have to be a good boy, though. Squeaky clean.’ He gulped down the last of his bitter. He turned to her. ‘You, on the other hand, get to play the hard-ass. Bust Greg’s balls. Go for him like you really mean it.’
‘To convince Rickard
?’
He leaned forward. ‘No, to convince Greg. Because Rickard won’t trust you on this unless he knows Greg is hurting. Rickard can’t read you, but he can read Greg. Fuck, everyone can.’
And you can read me, apparently. ‘What makes you think–’
He held up a greasy hand. ‘We’re both straight-to-the-point people, right?’
‘What’s the plan, then?’ she asked.
‘You have a secret weapon.’
‘I do?’
He folded his arms. ‘Matthews. Nobody watches him. He’s so loud and obnoxious, he’s invisible. Have him chase down Greg’s leads.’ He paused, then checked himself. ‘You’re already on it, aren’t you?’
She toyed with a chip.
He waved to the waitress, dropped a couple of notes on the table.
‘Rickard will be present during the interview tomorrow morning.’
She put down her fork. ‘That’s not exactly protocol–’
‘It is now. So, you have the whole night to get your game face on, because Rickard may be many things, but he’s no fool. If he thinks you’re not objective about Greg – in fact, if he thinks you’re not out for his blood, he’ll get someone else assigned to the case.’
She was about to say ‘Can he do that?’ but didn’t, because if it wasn’t true Donaldson wouldn’t have said it.
Donaldson rose. She hadn’t finished her glass of Chardonnay. He hadn’t asked her if she wanted dessert.
‘I can see why you get all the girls,’ she said. In truth, she reckoned he got his fair share. Unbridled self-confidence did it for a lot of women she knew. Not her, of course.
He burped.
She smiled, despite herself.
‘Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ He gave her one of those damned grins of his, like her Sarge, who’d stepped on a landmine, heard the click, turned back to her, grinned, shoved her away, then lifted his foot. Her Sarge could get away with anything. Well, almost anything. So, apparently, could Donaldson.
