by Mark Roberts
‘Sarah, we have to accept the truth, we can’t have a child. I thought we’d accepted that—’
‘Look!’
He looked, not quite understanding what he should be looking for in the device in his wife’s hand. A small grey rectangular screen at one end read: Pregnant.
‘Sarah, love, listen to me. It looks like the kit is saying you are but let’s not run away with ourselves. It could be faulty, it could be a mistake . . .’ He was about to say you but stamped it down. ‘We can’t have children, Sarah. We haven’t got the ability.’
‘I’ll tell you what I haven’t got, David. I haven’t got a peptic ulcer. I’m pregnant. Aren’t you happy about it?’
He looked at the screen and then snatched up the box because he just couldn’t answer his wife’s question in the affirmative. He scanned the instructions. They stated that the digital kit would deny or confirm pregnancy. They also advised that a confirmation should be sought from a health practitioner.
He laid the box back down in the sink, looked at Sarah and then at the screen on the kit.
‘You know I want a baby as much as you, of course I do.’ But, he thought, I don’t want the despair that I can feel just around the corner.
When he saw her break into a smile, he did the only thing that seemed right.
He put his arms around her and said, ‘I love you.’
26
The advantage of driving around in a vehicle that looked exactly like a paramedic ambulance was that everyone noticed but no one saw. It was a thing of despair, and other people – motorists, passengers and pedestrians – consciously or unconsciously pushed the thing of despair to the margins. It was all right to drive a little too fast, and acceptable to be a bit too slow, but most of all it was OK to hit a steady 35mph, as Herod did when he was gathering in the carriers and disposing of their remains.
The one thing he never did was turn on the flashing light or blare the siren. He had disabled both features. A light and a siren made the almost invisible screamingly obvious, and works of faith required discretion.
Julia Caton was in the back wrapped in a thick black plastic sheet, her womb filled with a smooth-surfaced rock: five kilos of ballast to keep her where she needed to be at the drop-off point.
She was foetal in pose, and balanced on a four-wheeled scissor stretcher.
It was to be a river drop-off, this time near Albert Bridge Road. As he negotiated the streets of SW11, the night was clear and the traffic was light, for which he gave praise and thanks in abundance.
He backed up the ambulance. Two unskippered boats bobbed on the swell, the sound and the sight of the water restorative to his ears and eyes.
He grew impatient with having to wait He got out and stood at the back, conscious of the cold through his green paramedic’s uniform.
He could hear the traffic but not see it, which meant no one could see him. He opened the back of the ambulance and had a good look around.
A tramp wandered near the water’s edge, along the river’s westward curve, and dissolved into the darkness. If some unfortunate soul happened to disturb him as he wheeled the stretcher to the water, he was ready with a story: ‘I’m retrieving the body from the water. It looks like suicide. Could you just come a little closer, my partner’s down there, see, if you could just – come here . . .’
So far, the work had been undisturbed – his prayers had been answered.
He untied the plastic sheet and tipped her into the water. It lapped over her and would ebb to reveal her as night gave way to dawn.
If he complied with instructions, he would succeed where Alessio Capaneus had failed.
He lingered a moment, observing the form beneath the water. She’d been the prettiest of the unbirthed and, now that she was no longer under his influence, he was surprised by a feeling that had swamped him in childhood, something he believed he’d long overcome.
In the ambulance, he slipped through the light traffic that surfed the dead of night, but couldn’t shake off the feeling.
In an attempt to drown it out, he thought about the detective who was running round in a circle after his own tail. David Rosen.
He turned on the radio to hear the sound of human voices and kill the unfathomable depths of his loneliness.
27
A bank of cloud fell away from the moon and a beam of pale light picked out the face of Jesus Christ. His eyes were closed and the upper half of his face covered by a length of gauze.
Eyes wide open, sleepless, Father Sebastian stared up at the wall and the picture of the Messiah above his bed.
Dawn was an ocean away. He turned his eyes to the window and the night sky. Judging by the position of the stars, Aidan and the others would be filing into the chapel for Matins – prayers at two in the morning – and it was there, at the door of the chapel, that Sebastian was going to address the leader of the community.
He closed the door of his room and walked through darkness.
Even at the height of summer, the corridors of St Mark’s were cold, and in March there was a bitterness seemingly designed to turn a man against his own body, creating enough discomfort to make him yearn to cast off his skin, so that the death and decay of flesh and bone would be a thing to look forward to.
There was a window seat, cut into the wall, and it was here that Sebastian waited, unnoticed by the thin trail of men who fled past him into the chapel. He counted them in like sheep.
Aidan’s footsteps stopped in the corridor as he looked around.
‘I’m here, Aidan. I’m here.’
Aidan stared into the darkness.
Sebastian stood up from the window seat, separating from the shadows in the moonlit corridor.
‘You’re joining us for prayers, Sebastian?’
‘I’d like to make a request.’
Aidan’s eyes flicked from the chapel door to Sebastian’s face, settling uneasily on the priest.
‘And your request is?’
‘I want to go to London.’
‘Why?’
‘ To visit Detective David Rosen.’
‘If you want to see Rosen, surely he would come here as he did last time.’
‘I’ve recalled something that could prove useful to Detective Rosen.’
‘Perhaps you could phone him in the morning.’
‘Perhaps, or perhaps I could go and see him in person, as he did with me.’
‘What is it you’ve remembered?’
‘A memory. I’ve recalled something, Aidan. Are you listening to me?’
‘I’m late for prayers.’
‘This is important, Aidan.’
‘You’ve never asked to leave before . . .’
‘I’ll get the seven-thirty-seven to Charing Cross. I’ll return on the five-fifteen.’
‘Maybe you’ll arrive in London and it’s Detective Rosen’s day off, or he’s otherwise occupied?’
‘Is this my prison?’ asked Sebastian.
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘I haven’t been found guilty of a crime. Can you say the same?’
‘No.’
‘Dizzy days, weren’t they, on the London Stock Exchange?’
Aidan looked away.
‘All that money. Exhilarating, risky business, and then Pentonville. The place where you rediscovered the God of your childhood, and that’s how you came to know me. The Lord surely moves in mysterious ways. I’ll ask again. Is this my prison? Are you my gaoler? I need an answer now.’
‘I’ll open the safe in the morning. You’ll need money for your rail fare, to travel on the tube, to eat.’
Aidan moved to go into the chapel for prayer but was held back when Sebastian said, ‘Don’t wait until the morning. I know, tell me the safe’s combination number now and I can be on the seven-thirty-seven to Charing Cross and no further trouble to you.’
‘Please stay, Father.’
‘You should go and pray, Aidan.’ Sebastian moved his face a little closer to Aidan, pinning
his eyes with a look. ‘You’re trembling, Aidan. Are you cold?’ Sebastian smiled. ‘Don’t be scared, Aidan, just give me the combination and you can go and pray.’
Aidan remained still.
‘You’re keeping God waiting, Aidan. Tell me the combination.’
‘One-two-three-four . . .’
‘Thank you, Aidan. Now, go on,’ said Father Sebastian. ‘Go, go worship God.’
28
At eight-forty-five in the morning, Bella Dunne, a practice nurse in the Rosens’ GP’s surgery, turned away from Sarah’s onscreen notes and said, ‘These things happen.’ Bella looked from Rosen to Sarah, focussed on her and smiled. ‘You’re definitely pregnant.’
Sarah’s fingers squeezed Rosen’s tightly. She glanced at her husband, knowing that the nurse’s confirmation hadn’t prompted in him the same unequivocal surge of joy that it had in her.
‘There could be complications. Your age, of course, is an issue, but with your medical history this could well be an ectopic pregnancy and, as you know – and I don’t want to alarm you – ectopic pregnancies don’t succeed to full term. They’re dangerous. I have to be totally honest with you, as I appreciate all you’ve been through . . . When was your last period?’
‘I’ve missed two, I think.’
‘So at least eight weeks – perhaps more?’
‘Does that add up?’
They’d had a few days away in the Cotswolds, a Christmas break to escape the pressure of the case. Away from London and home, and given the terrible weather, in that short time they’d had more sex than in the previous few months put together. It was one of the few recent memories that automatically made Sarah smile to herself.
‘Yes, yes, that sounds right.’
‘And do you want—?’
‘Yes!’ Sarah almost shouted.
‘In which case we have to get a move on,’ said the nurse. She picked up a phone. ‘Given the circumstances,’ she said as she dialled, ‘I’m going to pull strings.’ She spoke to three people in the course of two calls before reaching her ultimate target. She turned to Sarah and David Rosen.
‘OK, you’re booked in for an ultrasound, this afternoon, three o’clock at St Thomas’s Hospital.’
‘Three o’clock, thank you,’ said Sarah.
‘Mrs Rosen? I’m aware of your medical history. Your notes indicate the gynaecological complications you’ve been through, the death of your daughter, your depression. Please be careful with how you approach this . . . unforeseen development.’
‘Be careful?’ Sarah almost whispered. The nurse nodded.
Sarah turned to her husband, who spoke so low as to be almost inaudible. ‘Hope can be a terrible thing.’
As they headed out of the surgery, Rosen felt the vibration of his phone inside his jacket. He closed the door and answered the call. It was Bellwood, and she was driving at speed.
‘David, Julia Caton’s body has turned up.’
‘Same MO?’
‘Herod.’
‘Where?’
‘Bank of the Thames, just beyond Albert Bridge Road.’
‘If you’re there before me, take charge of the scene, Carol.’
As he ended the call, Sarah said, ‘Go on, David, go now.’
29
When DCI David Rosen arrived, a small crowd had already formed at the scene-of-crime tape at the junction of Albert Bridge Road and Oakley Gardens. The white tent erected over Julia Caton’s body by Parker and Willis was more to do with salvaging what was left of her dignity than protecting forensic evidence: given the action of the Thames and the length of time she’d been there, it was unlikely there would be much left in the way of it.
When Rosen arrived at the tent, the first face he saw was Harrison’s, white protective suit, muddy overshoes, eyes fixed on the middle distance.
Rosen pulled a white suit from the back of the van and started hauling himself into it.
‘It was a jogger who found her,’ said Harrison. ‘She thought it was a sheet of plastic embedded in the mud at first but when she took a closer look—’
‘Is it definitely Julia?’
‘It’s definitely the Caton woman, sir.’
‘She had a name.’
‘I’m trying to remain detached.’
‘Got your digital camera with you?’
Harrison nodded.
‘Then go and take pictures of the ghouls at the SOC tape.’
Inside the white tent, Julia lay on her back, arms at her side, eyes shut as if she were in a deep sleep.
And Rosen found he just couldn’t look.
‘Water’s washed away anything that may have been here.’ Parker sounded the way Rosen felt: picked on by the universal engine, bullied by the stars. Rosen’s gaze dropped to the mud and he reminded himself of the true victim. Sixty years hence, she should have been passing away peacefully, medicated to ease the journey, her children and grandchildren in attendance.
Parker shone his hand-held torch below Julia’s collarbone and slowly tracked the light to the point between her ribs where an almost imperceptible red dot nestled.
‘Cause of death, same as the other ladies,’ said Parker.
‘Cardiac tamponade. I wonder where he got the idea from?’
‘Could be the killer’s a Kenyan,’ suggested Bellwood, at her first body recovery.
Willis stopped taking pictures. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but, yeah!’ Willis turned her attention to Bellwood and Rosen suddenly felt as if he were tuning in to a foreign language
‘What do you mean, Carol?’ asked Rosen.
‘It was a popular murder method in the gang wars in Nairobi back in the nineties. The hoodies would pull a spoke off a bicycle wheel, sharpen it and puncture the heart of their opposite number in the other gang. Look at the size of the hole. It’s minute. On black skins, the puncture was usually overlooked at first and the doctors in casualty were at a loss to know how come this fit young kid’s had a massive cardiac arrest.’
A moment of quiet passed, then Eleanor Willis said, ‘It’s how that Australian guy, Steve Irwin, died. The stingray penetrated the pericardium, into the heart; blood from the heart floods the pericardial space, stops the heart pumping; he was dead in seconds flat.’
‘Cheaper and easier to find than a gun,’ concluded Bellwood.
‘Murder weapon easy to dispose of,’ added Willis.
Parker flicked the light onto Julia’s hands. There were no apparent signs of damage to the fingers or nails, as there had been with the first four victims.
‘Maybe he didn’t lock Julia up in the same box, like the others. Maybe she was killed before she had a chance to—’
The mental image left a foul taste in Rosen’s mouth and he wondered if he was merely making noise to fend off the moment when he had to follow Parker’s light to the extensive wounds around Julia’s abdomen. He forced himself to look.
The sight of the stone in her womb, the deadness of the rock in the seat of life, dried Rosen’s mouth and throat. He’d considered in depth the ritual significance of the stone in place of the carved-out womb; he had taken the advice of anthropological experts and found no precedent for it. It was, it seemed, a practical device, a deadweight to anchor the body to the spot.
The idea made Rosen want to scream out loud, long and hard at the top of his range. He left the tent.
‘Can I have the map?’ Rosen called to Bellwood. ‘The map, please.’
Bellwood came outside and handed him a clear plastic wallet with a map of London. He unfolded it and marked the location of Chelsea Embankment and Albert Bridge Road with a blue cross and a circled number five. The blue crosses for the first body in the lake at St James’s Park, and the third body at the corner of Victoria Street and Vauxhall Bridge Road, connected with Julia’s site to form a crooked diagonal trajectory.
‘The odds form one line,’ said Rosen, tracing it with his finger down to St James’s Park. ‘The evens form another line, coming down. Second body drop-off, A
lison Todd, just under Lambeth Bridge; fourth body, Sylvia Green, outside the Oval cricket ground. Carol, can you see? Can you see what this is?’
‘A crooked triangle without a base.’
‘No, not a crooked triangle; in fact, not a triangle at all. This is a letter, the letter A. A for Alessio.’ His voice dropped both in volume and octave. A dark and private thought crept out into the morning light. ‘I need to speak to Father Sebastian. A for Alessio. He’s marking the earth with the initial letter of the name that mankind tried to obliterate.’
Rosen placed his finger on the centre of Vauxhall Bridge Road, the space at the heart of the A where the dash would go to link the two diagonal sides, and felt a frisson of certainty about the future. Father Sebastian was right – Herod would kill again, and soon.
——
AT THE JUNCTION of Oakley Gardens and Albert Bridge Road, a thickening band of pedestrians gathered at the SOC tape. A sergeant refused to answer their questions while, a little further up the road, a constable made sure the traffic followed the diversion sign.
Two police cars, one marked, one unmarked, parked at the tape but Harrison didn’t notice who got out because his attention was drawn to a single figure at the back of the gathering crowd.
Black suit, black coat, face turned to the sky, he appeared to be gazing in accusation at the clouds. One of many unhinged wanderers on the streets of London, albeit well-dressed and physically fit-looking, head tilted upwards, his features not visible for a separate shot on the digital camera.
Harrison took pictures of individuals and groups, couples, people arriving and departing, forced to leave by other commitments. The black suit was still looking skywards, but his head was slowly sinking, his face clearly visible now. Harrison took a snap of the man. He checked the picture. The glare was horrible and all he could see was a blurred shape. Delete? Harrison pressed OK. Image gone.
He noticed that all eyes were fixed on the white tent on the banks of the Thames. All except for one pair.
The man in the black suit was looking directly at him. Or was the man staring into the space that he just happened to occupy? The man’s gaze hardened and Harrison knew the man was watching him. The man smiled but the smile faded almost at once. He half held up a hand in salutation, pointed at Harrison and then at himself, making a connection between them. Then, he pointed to an area a little way from the crowd and walked to it. Harrison followed.
