Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Thank you, Doctor Lamb,’ said Winters, considering the dark tone of her unburned skin; he was reminded of a mass-produced painting from his childhood of a young Spanish woman, which took pride of place in his grandmother’s sitting room.

  You have the same skin tone as Catalonian Maiden, thought Winters, but you’ve got a few more years on her, for sure. Mid-thirties, more or less.

  Harper poked the tip of the scalpel into the knot of the victim’s fist, where the stump of her little finger clung on to the outer edge of her charred palm. ‘They’ve melted together, it’s like it’s become a single piece of the body, not fingers, thumb and palm.’ Harper looked at Doctor Lamb questioningly.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to separate what’s left of her fingers and thumb from her palm, so if I were you, Harper, I’d be as firm but gentle as possible. Left hand first, right hand second.’

  As Harper pushed the scalpel into the victim’s left fist, Winters heard the ripping of flesh; as her fingers moved away from her palm, it gave the eerie effect of the dead woman coming to life and moving what was left of her digits of her own accord.

  The piece of her palm that her fingers and thumb had protected was bleached out and the lines like brown rivers. Winters looked at her palm closely and was disappointed that it was empty.

  ‘Do you want me to straighten her fingers out further, Doctor Lamb?’

  ‘No need, thank you, Harper.’

  Harper walked around the aluminium table to attend to the victim’s right fist. He stuck the scalpel between the little finger and palm and slid the blade into the melted fingers. He used a little force to prise flesh from flesh, and there appeared to be little difference between the open left and right palms.

  He stepped back.

  ‘Doctor Lamb,’ said Winters. ‘May I borrow your torch, please?’

  She handed him the light. Winters ran it across the right palm, looked at the complex web of fine lines that ran into the deeper lines on the surface of her inner hand.

  Doctor Lamb joined him to peer closely. ‘Harper, there’s a magnifying glass on the bottom shelf of the trolley. Could you bring it and hand it to Clive, please?’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Winters noticed that the woman’s inner thighs and pelvis were darker than the rest of her torso. He highlighted it with his torch and asked, ‘What’s this discolouration, Doctor Lamb?’

  ‘She could only bruise while she was alive. It’s livor mortis as opposed to straight bruising. I suspect there is bruising here, but after death blood accumulates beneath the skin because the heart can no longer circulate it. It’ll help me to determine the time of death.’

  Harper handed the magnifying glass to Winters, who shone the light on the woman’s right palm.

  And there, lying on the dry bed of her life line, was a single hair.

  ‘Harper, can you get a series of still pictures of this palm and close-ups of the hair on the life line.’

  Winters stepped back and listened to the clicking of Harper’s camera.

  ‘Is that enough?’ asked Harper.

  Winters checked the set of good-quality images of the woman’s right palm. ‘Thank you. Hold the light for me, please.’ Winters swapped the torch for the tweezers and brought the silver tips to the centre of the woman’s life line. He felt the pressure of contact and slowly lifted the hair and held it into the light.

  ‘Pictures, please, Harper,’ said Winters.

  The ends of the hair were shrivelled by fire, but the body of it was thick and grey or fair, and appeared to be human.

  ‘Bring an evidence bag, please, Harper.’

  Harper held the small bag open and slowly Winters placed the top third of the tweezers inside the inner space. He opened them, lifted them to the top of the bag, and saw that the hair was no longer between their tips.

  He turned the bag’s transparent strip to the autopsy suite’s fluorescent light and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the hair was safely inside.

  ‘I’m going to call Eve,’ said Winters. ‘Thank you, Doctor Lamb. Can you please send your still pictures and videos to my phone and DCI Clay’s.’

  Doctor Lamb’s voice followed Winters as he headed for the changing room.

  ‘Strike while the iron’s hot, Harper.’

  57

  7.25 pm

  Walking down the path leading from Jericho Lane to the railway bridge in Otterspool Park, Clay felt like she had never experienced such darkness. The branches of the trees above reached towards each other, creating a continuous canopy.

  As she headed for the arc light near the railway bridge, she flashed her torch on the steep banks of earth to either side of the path. Then, under the light, she picked out Detective Sergeant Karl Stone. In each hand, he was holding a large evidence bag.

  ‘Karl!’ she called, as she walked towards the arch of the bridge. It was filled with a bizarre clash of light and shadows, like a scene from a living nightmare.

  Clay looked at the bank where the victim’s burned body had been discovered and the white tent that was now empty but still there. She recalled the fire damage to the woman’s face, the way she had bled from her vagina and anus, and felt a combination of sorrow and horror that made the writing on the wall even more sinister.

  Killing Time Is Here Embrace It.

  Stone met her on the path under the bridge.

  ‘What have you got, Karl?’ Clay’s voice echoed.

  ‘Good news and bad news. When are the two ever apart?’

  He handed over an evidence bag. As she looked inside, he said, ‘It’s a black corduroy jacket, not really suitable for this kind of weather. In the bag I’m holding there’s a grey T-shirt with a lighter splash of colour and the word ‘love’ on that splash.’

  ‘Who were they manufactured by?’ asked Clay.

  ‘The corduroy jacket is mass-produced – Primark. The T-shirt is by Mokles. It’s a firm in the Czech Republic.’

  ‘Show me, please.’

  Stone opened the evidence bag and turned up the manufacturer’s label on the neckline.

  ‘Czech. Same nationality as Marta and her mother Verka,’ observed Clay.

  ‘What’s the likelihood that Verka knew the victim?’

  ‘Ex-pat Czech women in the same city in England. Verka’s got to be our first port of call.’ Clay turned a slow circle and weighed everything up.

  ‘Tyre indentations just outside the gateway on Jericho Lane,’ said Stone. ‘The victim was brought here in a car to this secluded spot on a foul winter’s night. Five metres from the bridge.’ He pointed to the tent. ‘The sexual attack and murder took place there. They left their written and symbolic graffiti and set her corpse on fire.’

  ‘Where were the clothes discovered?’

  ‘Left-hand embankment near the gateway, near where the car was parked. They made an effort to cover them with a layer of dead leaves.’

  Clay worked out the logic of the piece. ‘So they took clothing away from the scene as trophies and when they got closer to the car, they either got cold feet or saw something that made them think, This is a shit idea. This could implicate us. You said there were three items of clothing, Karl.’

  ‘The third one’s being hotfooted down to the lab. It was a white denim mini-skirt. I’ve saved the best for last. There was semen on it. Not a trace – a substantial amount.’

  ‘The poor woman,’ said Clay. ‘The stupid, evil bastards.’

  She looked up at the ivy hanging from the top of the bridge and watched how at the top it stayed still, while the trailing ends rustled and shifted in the mean wind. In the arc light, it looked alive with an alien and malevolent intelligence.

  ‘Thank everyone for me, Karl. Please call Carol White and Poppy Waters and send them images of the skirt, coat and T-shirt, so that they can look out for them on the CCTV from Aigburth Road.’

  ‘Sure. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes.’ Clay felt swamped by darkness. ‘Send the pictures of the clothes throug
h to Gina Riley at Alder Hey right now. Verka’s with her there. See if she can identify them as belonging to anyone she knows. If she can do so, we’ll have to arrange for her to look at the victim’s body in the mortuary.’

  58

  7.53 pm

  ‘Aneta, there are two photographs in front of you. One is of what is almost certainly Marta Ondřej’s hair...’

  ‘Where’s the hair now?’ asked Aneta.

  ‘It’s been sent away for DNA analysis,’ said Hendricks. ‘Please listen to DCI Clay and please don’t interrupt.’

  ‘The second photograph is of Václav Adamczak’s phone. We’ve transferred the videos that we found on it onto this laptop.’

  On the table between them in Interview Suite 1, Clay lined up one of two films on her laptop.

  Hendricks made eye contact with Ms Jennings, Aneta’s solicitor and said, ‘We’re going to show your client two films that were made of Marta when she was in captivity. They were on Václav’s phone.’

  ‘For the sake of the audio recording, Aneta, I’m going to tell you what’s happening as you see it. These are the seventh and eighth videos in the sequence. Are you ready to watch?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Yes.’

  Clay pressed play.

  ‘Darkness,’ she said. ‘A light bulb crackles on suddenly and we see Marta’s face, blinking hard against the harshness of the light. Her hair is shaven and she looks hungry. The camera pulls back from her face to get a full shot of her, head to toe. She is wearing striped pyjamas. The light goes out. In the darkness, she makes a noise. Listen.’

  The sound of crying drifted from the laptop and stopped with the end of the film.

  ‘Did you recognise the room, Aneta?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Could it be the box room in Karl and Václav Adamczaks’ flat on Picton Road?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Why has her hair been shaven off?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Excuse me, Aneta,’ said Ms Jennings. ‘What was my advice to you?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Why has she been deprived of food and water?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Why has she been kept prisoner?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Clay looked at Hendricks.

  ‘Aneta,’ said Hendricks. ‘Did Karl or Václav Adamczak have strong right-wing views?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did either of them ever express racist views to you?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did either of them ever express specific racist views against Roma?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did either of them have views that were pro-Nazi?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Clay caught Ms Jennings’s attention.

  ‘Yes?’ asked the solicitor.

  ‘I think you’ve advised your client badly.’ Clay looked directly at Aneta and waited until their eyes were locked. ‘I’ve sat through all kinds of no comment interviews over the years, from the heights of hard-faced contempt to the depths of ineptitude, but yours is by far and away the most uncomfortable performance I’ve ever seen. I’m going to give you a minute to decide who you’re going to listen to. Your solicitor, or yourself. Time starts now.’

  Clay turned the laptop back to herself and lined up the next piece of film.

  ‘I think,’ said Clay. ‘No, I believe you want to answer these questions, so I’m going to cut to the chase before I show you the next piece of film. Karl and Václav shaved her head, starved her, deprived her of water and dressed her in striped pyjamas because they were recreating a microcosm of the Nazi concentration-camp system. What do you think?’

  ‘They would never do such a hideous thing,’ said Aneta.

  ‘The strange thing is, Aneta, Scientific Support turned their flat upside down and they couldn’t find any sign of anything to do with the Nazis, apart from this.’ Clay showed Aneta a photograph of the Black Sun graffiti. ‘It’s an occult symbol, seized on by the Nazis. Did Karl or Václav paint this on their bedroom wall?’

  ‘It wasn’t on the wall when I was last in their flat on Friday. Do you know how people in Poland feel towards the Nazis? There are still people alive who lived through the occupation – Karl and Václavs’ grandmother being one of them. They hated the Nazis.’

  ‘True. But a lot of Polish people collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘No, Aneta, we are listening to you. It’s easy for anyone who lived through the occupation of Poland to say that they hate the Nazis. And that’s especially true and convenient for people who collaborated with them. We want to hear what you have to say,’ insisted Clay. ‘While we’re being as open-minded as we can, in the light of some pretty damning and compelling evidence, we’ve also got witness reports of you approving enthusiastically of the Nazis sending Roma to their concentration camps.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘Your place of work. And we know how and why you got away with it with the hotel’s manager.’

  Aneta’s face turned light scarlet.

  ‘And we know where to find the domestic who you told that Hitler was right to put Roma people in death camps.’

  A look of complete sickness settled on Aneta’s face.

  ‘You are at liberty to deny you said such things, Ms Kaloza,’ said her solicitor.

  There was a deep and ugly silence.

  ‘I cannot deny it.’

  Ms Jennings said, ‘All right, let’s just move on, shall we?’

  ‘Watch the next film, Aneta.’ Clay pressed play, turned the laptop towards Aneta, stood up and walked behind her.

  The darkness on-screen lingered for moments, and then the light came on.

  ‘She’s getting wise to it now. She’s keeping her eyes tightly shut so that the light doesn’t hurt them. We can see her face and head and the top half of her body. She is still wearing a concentration-camp uniform. A hand in a black leather glove comes into view and rolls up the right sleeve of the top Marta has been forced to wear. This reveals her right arm halfway up to the elbow.’

  Clay leaned over and pressed pause on the image of Marta’s arm.

  ‘What’s been written on Marta’s forearm, Aneta?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘A six-digit number.’

  ‘What does that bring to mind?’

  Aneta looked set to collapse. She put her elbow on the table and leaned her head on her hand. She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know anything about what happened to this little girl. It’s nothing to do with me, and I’m almost certain it had nothing to do with Karl and Václav.’

  ‘You’re almost certain? You were certain of their innocence in your last interview,’ observed Clay, returning to sit across from Aneta again and drawing the laptop closer to herself.

  Aneta sat back, her head flopping down, eyes on the floor. ‘I didn’t think they lied to me about anything. But it looks like I’ve found out that they did. They lied to me about working in the Anfield district for CJ Construction. They weren’t there at all. Why? Why did they lie?’

  She lowered her head as if it was a ton weight, looked at Clay and answered her own question. ‘Because they were doing something else, maybe. Something they wanted to keep secret. Something shameful, I don’t know. I’ve known them all my life and thought I knew them as well as I know myself, but they lied to me. And if they lied about one thing, why not about other things? Or anything? Why not about everything?’

  Clay indicated the screen of the laptop, pointed at Marta’s wrist. ‘This is a six-digit concentration camp-style tattoo.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Maybe they were madmen, monsters hiding behind friendly masks. Monsters pretending to be decent hard-working men.’

  ‘I’ll be blunt with you, Aneta,’ said Clay. ‘Your problem is this. On Friday, 28th November, you were in the Picton Road flat. Marta was missing on that day. She w
as kept prisoner in the box room, a room you say you looked into, but you claim there was no sign of her. Do you want to reconsider your position on that one?’

  ‘There’s nothing to reconsider. I was there. She wasn’t. If she had been I’d have taken her to the nearest police station and reported Karl and Václav. They have a white van. Maybe they moved the child when it was time for me to clean their flat.’

  ‘But that would have involved them getting Marta in and out of the van on Picton Road, a major arterial road leading in and out of the city centre, a road crawling with pedestrians,’ replied Clay.

  ‘DCI Clay,’ said Ms Jennings. ‘Are you linking the murder of Karl and Václav Adamczak to their alleged abduction of Marta Ondřej?’

  ‘It’s early days yet, but we think whoever killed Karl and Václav did so because of Marta,’ said Hendricks. ‘That’s one possibility. More will no doubt arise as we gather further evidence.’ Clay turned to Aneta. ‘Aneta, I’m going to close the interview now. When Sergeant Harris takes you to the cell, I’m going to ask him to give you pen and paper and I want you to write down the names of any of Karl or Václavs’ friends, colleagues or associates. Put an asterisk next to the name of any individuals you know who were hostile to them.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Aneta.

  Because whoever killed the brothers knew them, thought Clay. ‘We want to talk to them. Have a think about what you’ve seen on the laptop, Aneta. You really don’t want to be implicated in any of this, do you?’

  59

  8.01 pm

  Carol White placed a mug of coffee next to Poppy Waters and said, ‘It’s really decent of you to come and help me with the Aigburth Vale CCTV trawl.’

  ‘Thanks for the coffee. Time goes quicker when you’re busy.’

  White sat across the table from Poppy, each at their own laptop.

  ‘We’ve got three lots of footage,’ said White. ‘One’s from the CCTV at the bus terminus near the subway under Aigburth Road. One’s from the launderette on the way out of the Vale and leading onto the residential section. And one’s bang in the middle, outside Gino’s Bar.’ She paused. ‘Have you seen the Otterspool Park victim’s clothes?’