Blood Axe

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Ian! I’m home!’ Bev called.

  With a sigh he heaved himself off the sofa and went out to the hall to greet her. ‘How was your weekend?’

  Bev shook her head and pulled off her dripping raincoat. Her short fair hair was plastered to her scalp making it look absurdly small, like a child’s head.

  ‘It’s raining. You should have called me from the station.’

  ‘It’s bloody pouring out there.’ It sounded like an accusation. ‘You knew what time my train was getting in. I texted you this morning. When I didn’t see you at the barrier, I assumed you were at work. You usually are. So I took a taxi. I still got soaked though.’

  Apologetically, Ian said he must have dozed off, and not realised the time. It was a pathetic excuse. Expecting her home that evening, he ought to have checked the time of her train and been at the station to meet her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, shrugging off his apology.

  He put his arms out.

  ‘Not now, Ian,’ she said, avoiding his embrace, ‘I’m all wet. I just want to get dry and go to bed.’

  ‘Why don’t I make you a cup of tea?’

  She shook her head. ‘I had something on the train.’

  He trailed after her up the stairs but she insisted she was too tired to talk.

  ‘I’m going to have a hot shower and go to bed.’

  Ian returned to the living room to wait for the national news. It wasn’t encouraging. Although this particular reporter didn’t utter a word of complaint against the police, the implication was clear. An interview with a strident woman demanding the police do more to protect the public seemed to go on for a long time. There was no answering interview with the police to balance the report. An uninformed member of the public might well conclude that the police were dragging their heels. However hard the team was working made no difference. All the public were interested in was the outcome, and so far the police had only managed to eliminate a couple of suspects. Two down, several millions to go. With the interviewee’s unhelpful comments ringing in his ears, Ian went upstairs.

  Bev was already in bed. Wearily he undressed.

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he mumbled.

  He kissed the side of her head, feeling the visceral comfort of her warm body beside him. Her hair smelt damp. The familiar scent of her shampoo made him want her. Pulling her towards him, he told her he had missed her.

  ‘You haven’t wrapped up the investigation?’ she asked, resisting his embrace.

  ‘We’re making headway, but we haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘Your Axe Man.’ On her lips the nickname sounded like a sneer.

  ‘We’re doing our best.’

  ‘What happens when the best just isn’t good enough?’

  He frowned at her, uncertain what she meant. ‘Then he gets away, I suppose. Is everything all right?’

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t enquired about her parents, hadn’t gathered anything at all about her weekend. Afraid she was offended, he asked how her family were. She turned her back on him.

  ‘Not now, Ian. I’m tired. Leave it till tomorrow.’

  He suspected she would be fast asleep when he left for work in the morning, but there was no point trying to talk to her when she was going to sleep. Somehow he had missed an opportunity to reach out to her. He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘It’s good to have you back.’

  She didn’t answer.

  32

  Fear was an unwelcome companion to a warrior of his stature. It was unfitting, but he struggled to control his terror when he saw the news on the television. Somehow the police had stumbled upon the contents of the bag he had emptied so thoughtlessly into the river. He had never considered the possibility that it might be discovered. His enemy’s head should have sunk down to the riverbed, or else been carried far out to sea by the current. Instead the head had turned up, bobbing about, very near to the place where he had thrown it in the water. The gods were playing with him, but he was strong enough to withstand whatever trials they sent him. Many more would fall at his hand before he carried his weapon to Valhalla.

  The police were searching for him. A policeman on the local news said they were following several leads. It would be wise to wait indoors for a while before planning another raid, and keep out of sight. He tried to think if there was any way they could track him down. They were using dogs, but that was no cause for panic. He had outwitted them so far. Dogs couldn’t track him on the water. That was good. The gods had protected him. They wouldn’t abandon him now, not so long as he remained steadfast in his prayers and kept his wits about him. The treasure was safely stowed in its hiding place but the bags – one bloodied – were still lying on the floor of his living room where he had dropped them three nights ago. In his triumph he had forgotten about them, focussing only on his spoils. The bags were of no value. He folded them, and squashed them into two black plastic bin liners which he crammed into the massive waste bins at the back of his block of flats. The refuse collectors were due to clear the bins the following day, when the evidence of his victim’s blood would be crushed and pulped. No one would recognise the material that had once formed bags. The detritus would never be tested for blood or DNA. It could never be traced back to him.

  Next up was his cloak. Back in his bedroom he sat staring at it, undecided what to do with it. The cloak was long, not quite reaching the ground, and voluminous, with a loose hood, perfect for his purposes. He was loath to let it go. Wide streaks of blood down the front had dried so that it looked uniformly black. There was no reason for anyone to suspect it had been present when jets of blood had spurted from a dying man’s throat. But the police had ways of testing for such evidence, and a tracker dog could scent blood from far away. He would be playing with danger if he kept it at all, let alone risked wearing it out on the street. He could just imagine the scene. Walking innocently along the pavement he would be assaulted by a baying dog. Within seconds he would be surrounded by men in uniform, slammed up against a car and handcuffed. His cloak would be torn from his shoulders and sent away for forensic examination, the results of which would condemn him to decades in a prison cell. It wasn’t worth the risk. The cloak had to go. It barely fitted inside a bin liner. He carried it out to the waste bins. Grunting with the effort of squashing it down, he heard himself begin to sob at the injustice of it all. The cloak had been a part of his routine. His life would never be the same again. He had no idea how he was going to replace it without leaving any traces. At the last minute he changed his mind and pulled the bag out again. Somehow he would wash his cloak, scrubbing away all traces of blood until it was safe to wear again. He had not finished with it yet. Trembling, he slung the black bag over his shoulder and hurried back to his room.

  The axe was a different matter altogether. Without his weapon, a mighty warrior was no more than a man. He ought to be brandishing his sharpened axe above his head, shouting aloud, ‘Look what I and my trusty blade have achieved!’ But no one else understood the power behind his dark desires. He would hide his axe away, like some wild shame, until it was time to glory in using it again. Meanwhile fools would run around, looking for him. While the gods willed him to claim more victims, mere men could never stop him.

  33

  Ian felt a guilty relief that Bev was fast asleep when he left for work in the morning. In some ways her interest in his work was more wearing than her complaints about his long hours. He could never be sure what his day would hold and suspected she felt excluded when he rebuffed her questions.

  ‘You have to understand that I can’t talk about it, not even to you,’ he had told her.

  ‘Of course I understand,’ she would answer, with a sour expression.

  ‘Most of what I do is really dull,’ he might add, to which she would respond with sceptical silence.

  That Monday began like most others. He s
pent a dispiriting hour reading through statements, and writing up his own records. The only encouraging aspect of the early morning was reading Ted’s decision log. Ian had done his best to impress on the sergeant the importance of keeping detailed records.

  ‘It’s for your own protection. You can never tell when something might unexpectedly blow up in your face, so you never know when you might be called on to justify your actions. It’s not always easy to remember your reasoning afterwards, especially when you have to act quickly. It’s not about catching you out. We all have to watch our backs. The fact is, there isn’t always an obvious course of action in any given circumstance. You just have to do the best you can and as long as you can explain why you did what you did, you’ll be supported, even when things go wrong.’

  The sergeant’s reports were becoming more thorough yet more concise as he grew in confidence and understood more clearly that the decision log was there for his own protection. It was not a platform for self-promotion. Ted’s decisions had consistently struck Ian as sound and sensible. As the officer responsible for the sergeant’s professional development, Ian had found his log worryingly slapdash when they had first started working together. He felt pleased with the progression in Ted’s reporting. In his own way, Ian had contributed to the success of Ted’s career.

  Soon after nine o’clock, Avril sent through an image of the bruise on Tim’s decapitated head. The photograph had been digitally enhanced until the original pattern on the bruise became visible, although it had been impossible to see with the naked eye. Ian stared at it. There was something familiar about the pattern of a capital Y with a vertical line between the two upper branches of the letter. Feverishly he scanned through his notebook until he found the notes he was searching for. He had been off duty and hadn’t bothered to log an official record of the reported theft of a replica Viking axe at the Festival. Nevertheless he had noted the incident, more by habit than design. Several possessions had probably gone astray in the bustling crowds. This man had lost his grip on his axe, and someone else had taken it. At the time it had seemed unimportant, hardly a matter for a police investigation. Now Ian was glad he had kept a note of the theft.

  The new information from Jonah placed an entirely different complexion on the incident. Whoever had taken the axe appeared to be using it to kill in earnest. This information was an additional piece of the puzzle. Ian just wasn’t yet sure of its significance, or how it was going to help them track down the killer. After writing up his notes, he decided to speak to Andrew Hilton, the man whose axe had been stolen at the Viking Festival. Although they hadn’t found the murder weapon, they might be able to gather more information about it.

  Andrew Hilton lived in Driffield. It was a pleasant drive there along fast roads, to a small house in a rundown back street. A plump woman opened the door. She narrowed her eyes when she saw Ian.

  ‘I thought you were Ellie,’ she said, as though Ian ought to know who Ellie was. ‘Whatever you want, we’re not interested.’

  Ian stepped forward quickly to introduce himself, before she could close the door.

  ‘What do you want with him?’ she asked suspiciously when Ian asked for Andrew.

  Once Ian had explained the purpose of his call, she turned and yelled out. ‘Andy! Come here! They found your axe!’

  A few seconds later Andrew appeared.

  ‘Do you remember your axe that was stolen at the Festival…’ Ian began.

  He was loudly interrupted. ‘Of course I bloody remember. So, have you found it?’

  Ian faced the other man calmly. He wasn’t about to be intimidated by this aggression. Quietly he explained his interest in the missing axe.

  ‘What I’d like to know is where you bought it. We need to discover how common such axe heads are. It seems possible the killer might be using your stolen weapon.’

  ‘Oh bloody hell! You’re telling me I’m not going to get it back? You’re going to need it for evidence?’

  Ian swallowed, momentarily taken aback. Andrew genuinely appeared to be more interested in recovering his axe than in assisting the murder investigation. Having taken down details of the missing axe for a second time, Ian learned that it had been purchased from a stall holder exhibiting at the Viking Festival three or four years before. Andrew couldn’t remember the name of the stall holder, and had no paperwork relating to the purchase. He wasn’t sure exactly when he had bought it, and said he had paid cash. Ian thanked him for his help. It might be possible to trace the stall holder who had been selling replica Viking weapons at the Festival three or four years previously, but the chance that there would be any record of other sales of similar axes was slim. In any case, if the killer was using a stolen axe, which seemed likely, then there would be no way of tracing him through the purchase.

  ‘All I remember is that I was chatting to some people who said they worked at the Viking museum. There was a woman and a couple of blokes, I think. It’s difficult to remember. It was such a ruck there, and it’s a long time ago. So with them saying they worked at the museum I showed them my axe. I mean, there was no reason not to. Next time I looked, it had gone.’

  It wasn’t much of a lead, but Ian decided to go to the Jorvik museum. He had been intending to go there anyway. It was a popular tourist attraction in York, and had been recommended by a colleague as offering an insight into life in the Viking settlement. Bev had been there and had described the place to him, but Ian hadn’t really listened closely to her enthusiastic account of her visit. All he really knew was that a significant hoard of coins buried in the tenth century had been discovered in York in 2007. Known as the York Hoard, it was on display in the museum, along with other artefacts, and a complete reconstruction of a Viking community. Bev’s imagination had been particularly captured by one of the figures in a model village, which had been created using facial reconstruction from an authentic Viking skull.

  ‘You can tell what he actually looked like, all those centuries ago!’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Ian, you’re not listening, are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m listening.’

  He wasn’t.

  ‘Well, you ought to go there,’ she had replied, peeved at his lack of interest. ‘Then you’d understand. Really, it’s amazing looking at that face. The only trouble is, you’re on this little train thing, and it moves along too fast to really study the face. But they weren’t the aggressive raiders everyone thinks, they were traders and settled peacefully here. Only they were better looking than the locals, and many of the local women preferred the Viking men. That’s why they got such a bad reputation for raping and pillaging, because the indigenous population resented the tall blonde invaders taking their women.’

  ‘Tall and blonde, eh?’ Ian smiled. ‘Perhaps I’ve got Viking antecedents.’

  He was joking, but Bev took him seriously. ‘Yes, I’ve always thought so.’

  Ian had promised to go to the Jorvik museum with her, but somehow they had never found the time. Now he was going there with a different purpose in mind. Ignoring the queue waiting patiently to enter, he rang the bell by the door to the right of the public entrance. Once he had been buzzed in, he went straight up a narrow flight of stairs to a carpeted corridor of offices above the museum. At the top of the stairs a young receptionist asked him to take a seat. He explained that a team of officers would arrive shortly to speak to the entire staff, and the receptionist hurried away to speak to her boss.

  ‘The head of operations will be with you in a minute,’ she told him when she returned.

  A moment later, a tall man in a dark suit appeared around the corner of the corridor.

  34

  Extending a hand, the man greeted Ian with an easy smile. ‘Good morning, I’m Ralph Grey, head of operations here. How can I help?’

  Ralph was tall and thin, and would have been good-looking if he hadn’t been slightly cross-eyed.
He led Ian along a narrow corridor, past several whiteboards and peg boards, to a small office with three pine desks and shelving, and a large window. It was bright and airy, though small.

  ‘Now,’ Ralph said, ‘what’s the problem?’

  Ian explained that he wanted to question staff at the museum, following a suspicion that the weapon used in the recent spate of murders was a replica Viking axe.

  ‘The axe murders, you mean?’

  Ian nodded, acknowledging the name the press had given to the case.

  Ralph’s eyes narrowed. ‘But it was a replica,’ he repeated. There was no reason why a copy would be in any way connected to the museum. ‘Anyone could get hold of a replica,’ he added, as though the implication might have been lost on Ian.

  ‘Indeed,’ Ian agreed. ‘What I’d like to know is how many of these axes there are around, where they are made, and where they can be obtained.’

  Ralph nodded slowly. They both knew the question was faintly absurd. ‘We have a description,’ Ian added.

  ‘If it’s specifically an axe you’re interested in, you could talk to Ollie. He has a particular interest in the weapons here and probably knows more about them than anyone.’

  Ralph picked up the phone and made a quick call. A few moments later, there was a tap at the door. It opened to admit a skinny young man whom Ralph introduced as Oliver. With straw-coloured hair and pale blue eyes, Oliver Hemmings looked younger than his twenty years. He explained diffidently that he had spent a year studying at the university in York. He had dropped out at the start of his second year, after which he had been lucky to find a job at Jorvik museum.

  ‘And here I am,’ he added simply.

  A shy smile played on his thin lips as he spoke, but the expression in his eyes remained sharp. Like Ralph, he had noticed no strange activity in the museum recently, and he wasn’t aware of any problems in the shop. As far as he knew, the weapons cabinet always remained securely locked and no one had paid any unusual attention in it. He leaned forward and stared intensely as Ian described the rune on the bruise that had shown up on the second victim’s head. Ian said nothing about the axe that had gone missing at the Viking Festival. For a moment Oliver was silent as Ian held up an image of the bruise on the side of Tim’s head. Ian watched the young man closely. There was a brightness in his eyes and the tip of his tongue flickered in and out, wetting his lips as though he was nervous. Eventually he lowered his head, making his fair fringe flop forward over his eyes.